You can toggle your mask on and off as required. Meanwhile my 5 year old is required to wear a mask for 8 hours a day. Every working day.
Anybody can get a vaccine if they want to. Meanwhile, a lot of people have to chose between getting a vaccine they do not want or losing their jobs. Mandates for kids are coming, scratch that—happening already.
Just because government mandates coincided with your personal choices does not mean that life returned to normal. We’re very far from normal.
[Hope this isn’t rude: On the chance that you haven’t already seriously considered homeschooling/unschooling: Now may be the time to reevaluate to what extent the system controlling what happens to your child at school—the system as revealed in this non-normal time, but as operating even in the normal times—is aligned with your and your child’s interests, and to evaluate what other possible options there might be (perhaps giving your child a hearing and a voice in the process).]
I know at least one person whose doctor agreed they might want to avoid getting vaccinated for health reasons, but refused to put it in writing, even knowing they were going to lose their job if they didn’t either get vaccinated or get an exemption from a mandate.
Mask mandates for students are ridiculous. Vaccine mandates are significantly more complicated, but honestly, people that are putting others’ lives in danger based on misinformation should not be allowed to keep their jobs so they can continue to do so.
Do you think that people’s driving license should be revoked after the first time they are caught speeding? Should DUI infractions mean that you automatically get fired from your job? Should convicted violent criminals never be allowed to hold another job? We need to maintain a sense of scale between the crime and the punishment, getting your livelihood taken away for the “crime” of not getting vaccinated is way way too excessive for the current death rate of covid. If you think the current death rate warrants such harsh punishments, what’s the death rate where you think the threat of joblessness can be removed?
This is a bad analogy. A DUI or speeding could be a one-time thing. Not getting vaccinated is a continuous decision. All you have to do to reverse it is make the right choice once (or twice if you get Moderna or Pfizer).
Also, drunk driving and speeding are not contagious. A drunk driver can hurt or kill anybody they crash into, but that doesn’t make those people go on to become drunk drivers as well.
I’m not sure that contagiousness is a good reason to believe that an (in)action is particularly harmful, outside of the multiplier contagiousness creates by generating a larger total harm. It seems clear that we’d all agree that murder is much worse than visiting a restaurant with a common cold, despite the fact that the latter is a contagious harm.
Although there is a good point that the analogy breaks down because a DUI doesn’t cause harm during your job (assuming you don’t drive in your work), whereas being unvaccinated does cause expected harm to colleagues and customers.
I’ve known plenty of people that had security clearances revoked for getting a DUI, which meant that they not only lost their jobs, but in their line of work they had to change careers.
Agreed. A more on point analogy would be that you’re not allowed to drive a car that hasn’t passed a safety inspection, since it poses an active threat to other motorists.
I’d be interested to see a good estimate and analysis of this multiplier. In places and times when r>1 the multiplier would be quite large indeed, whereas if r<1 then the mutiplier would be more modest. Some sort of time analysis is needed as to how long r stays greater than 1. (r here is the average number of new people infected by a person with covid.)
The punishment actually scales quite naturally to the crime, because you’re most likely to get caught if you contract Covid, or—worse—cause an outbreak. In the event of an outbreak, contact tracers are allowed to verify who’s vaccinated, inspect security cameras, etc. So the ability to practically enforce the mandate is commensurate with the degree of harm caused.
Canada (where I live) has QR codes that are scanned to verify your vaccination, you can’t avoid a mandate by just lying and risking to get caught if you cause an outbreak. But in fact, I don’t think you should get fired even if you do cause an outbreak, the death-rate of covid in a world with current vaccination levels is just not enough to warrant such a drastic punishment. Things would be different if no one was voluntarily taking the vaccine, and things would be different if covid had a 10x or 100x higher death rate.
Please allow me to be very angry.
You can toggle your mask on and off as required. Meanwhile my 5 year old is required to wear a mask for 8 hours a day. Every working day.
Anybody can get a vaccine if they want to. Meanwhile, a lot of people have to chose between getting a vaccine they do not want or losing their jobs. Mandates for kids are coming, scratch that—happening already.
Just because government mandates coincided with your personal choices does not mean that life returned to normal. We’re very far from normal.
Respectfully,
Alex N
[Hope this isn’t rude: On the chance that you haven’t already seriously considered homeschooling/unschooling: Now may be the time to reevaluate to what extent the system controlling what happens to your child at school—the system as revealed in this non-normal time, but as operating even in the normal times—is aligned with your and your child’s interests, and to evaluate what other possible options there might be (perhaps giving your child a hearing and a voice in the process).]
I’m so sorry about your kid having to wear a mask 8hrs/day :(
I agree with most of what you wrote, but...
...some people can’t, for health reasons (I do not remember what exactly). Also, kids under 5.
BTW, I do not have a strong opinion in either direction, just nitpicking.
I know at least one person whose doctor agreed they might want to avoid getting vaccinated for health reasons, but refused to put it in writing, even knowing they were going to lose their job if they didn’t either get vaccinated or get an exemption from a mandate.
Mask mandates for students are ridiculous. Vaccine mandates are significantly more complicated, but honestly, people that are putting others’ lives in danger based on misinformation should not be allowed to keep their jobs so they can continue to do so.
Do you think that people’s driving license should be revoked after the first time they are caught speeding? Should DUI infractions mean that you automatically get fired from your job? Should convicted violent criminals never be allowed to hold another job? We need to maintain a sense of scale between the crime and the punishment, getting your livelihood taken away for the “crime” of not getting vaccinated is way way too excessive for the current death rate of covid. If you think the current death rate warrants such harsh punishments, what’s the death rate where you think the threat of joblessness can be removed?
This is a bad analogy. A DUI or speeding could be a one-time thing. Not getting vaccinated is a continuous decision. All you have to do to reverse it is make the right choice once (or twice if you get Moderna or Pfizer).
Also, drunk driving and speeding are not contagious. A drunk driver can hurt or kill anybody they crash into, but that doesn’t make those people go on to become drunk drivers as well.
I’m not sure that contagiousness is a good reason to believe that an (in)action is particularly harmful, outside of the multiplier contagiousness creates by generating a larger total harm. It seems clear that we’d all agree that murder is much worse than visiting a restaurant with a common cold, despite the fact that the latter is a contagious harm.
Although there is a good point that the analogy breaks down because a DUI doesn’t cause harm during your job (assuming you don’t drive in your work), whereas being unvaccinated does cause expected harm to colleagues and customers.
I’ve known plenty of people that had security clearances revoked for getting a DUI, which meant that they not only lost their jobs, but in their line of work they had to change careers.
Agreed. A more on point analogy would be that you’re not allowed to drive a car that hasn’t passed a safety inspection, since it poses an active threat to other motorists.
I’d be interested to see a good estimate and analysis of this multiplier. In places and times when r>1 the multiplier would be quite large indeed, whereas if r<1 then the mutiplier would be more modest. Some sort of time analysis is needed as to how long r stays greater than 1. (r here is the average number of new people infected by a person with covid.)
The punishment actually scales quite naturally to the crime, because you’re most likely to get caught if you contract Covid, or—worse—cause an outbreak. In the event of an outbreak, contact tracers are allowed to verify who’s vaccinated, inspect security cameras, etc. So the ability to practically enforce the mandate is commensurate with the degree of harm caused.
Canada (where I live) has QR codes that are scanned to verify your vaccination, you can’t avoid a mandate by just lying and risking to get caught if you cause an outbreak. But in fact, I don’t think you should get fired even if you do cause an outbreak, the death-rate of covid in a world with current vaccination levels is just not enough to warrant such a drastic punishment. Things would be different if no one was voluntarily taking the vaccine, and things would be different if covid had a 10x or 100x higher death rate.
OK, I’ll revise. Should you be fired if you lie about your vaccination status and cause a deadly outbreak?