I personally had the vaccine because I have very high blood pressure, have pretty high blood sugar (even though I'm fit/in shape) and am almost 40. It was MY CHOICE in the risk vs reward game of numbers it I did it only for myself with a good life insurance already in place that covers death/incapacity from medication too(covers COVID vaccines too).
What if I would of ended up like that BBC presenter? Dead. For me it's down to my family and that is it.
This will be a bit exagerated but (hopefully) shold get the point across: At the end of the day anyone else is disposable as long as my family is safe from harm.
As long as the vaccine is not 100% safe nobody should be allowed to force anyone else to take it.
Edit: One thing that puzzles me though - Why is nobody talking about those that are immune or already have the antibodies and don't need a vaccine? Why force them to have it if those vaccinated are safe?
The mRNA vaccines do appear to reduce risk (of infection and of symptoms) in recovered patients as well. (See e.g. https://theconversation.com/if-ive-already-had-covid-do-i-ne...)
That said, the German "geimpft, getestet, oder genesen" strategy ("vaccinated, tested, or recovered") is explicitly what you suggest.
The tradeoff here, to me, is that:
- If we do not mandate vaccination, people can preserve their individual autonomy and will, nonetheless, probably get infected sooner or later and thus have some immunity. (According to some research, greater than that of vaccinated people against the same strain, but perhaps reduced against other strains.)
- However, that relies upon maintaining sufficient hospital capacity for the additional cases with severe symptoms. So as long as hospital capacity remains an issue, mandatory vaccinations make sense.
I'm assuming you're in Germany/know someone in Germany when asking this and you might of heard something about it: -Is it true that Hungarians are using some sort of medication as treatment? I heard it from a guy at work(hungarian) and was stumped.
Thankfully, the “or test” part distinguishes this from a vaccine mandate. We should have been testing most of the population since last March, and if anything we should have stronger testing requirements than this guidance dictates.
Vaccine requirements have been commonplace for decades now, and society has greatly benefited from it.
