What are your reasons to refuse a vaccine? Weren't you vaccinated as a child for polio & chicken pox? Why is this vaccine a hill to die on? Thanks.
Not every anti-covid-vax person is anti-other-vax. The mRNA vaccine is novel. Many believe its long-term safety profile is TBD. They think comparing vaccines with decades of safety data to ones with months is apples to oranges. They may also believe that Covid is not very dangerous to their demographic and don't like the risk/benefit calculation. They may also not trust the pharmaceutical industry and its influence on global health policy. The indemnifications of liability may give them pause to accept all the risk of side-effects. The censorship of contrary opinions on media may also affect their willingness to believe everything they are being told about the safety, efficacy, and necessity of the vaccines.
"Anti-vax" has become a convenient political weapon. It's important to unpack what it means and who is using it and why.
> some believe mandates are illegal and constitute government tyranny
This isn't a vaccine mandate. You are free to choose to be tested or vaccinated. Do you feel being forced to make this choice is tyranny, if so how bad do things have to get before the good of society becomes more important than your personal choice?
What is the 'good of society' and who decides it? In a pluralistic society there is valid disagreement about which are the goods (plural) of society. It seems you don't agree.
I feel that forcing an uncomfortable nasal swab test is being used as a means of punishment, and not based on science. If it was just saliva I wouldn't feel that way.
This makes as much sense as a family member I have who wont wear his seat belt. He admits that seat belts save lives and greatly improve safety, but won't wear his out of spite because "the government shouldn't force me to do it". Imagine deliberately choosing to amplify the danger of driving, every time you drive, purely on principle to "Oppose Tyranny."
1) If you want to get vaccinated, get vaccinated.
2) If you don’t, don’t.
3) If you go to the hospital with a COVID infection, your care is covered by insurance if you are vaccinated. If you are not, your care is not covered by insurance.
This allows people to make decisions about their bodies, while also fending off the two main arguments I see for why everyone should be vaccinated. Those arguments are:
1) Unvaccinated people are hosts for mutations which can break through vaccines. Since we are already going to be doing yearly updates to this vaccine a la flu vaccines, this is not a concern to those who want to be vaccinated as they will get fresh protection each year.
2) Hospital beds are being filled with COVID patients, thus blocking people with e.g. heart attacks, car crash injuries etc. from getting care. With my plan, the unvaccinated will be disincentivized to go to the hospital to get COVID care, thus freeing these beds up. Again, this respects personal choices.
But forcing people to do something to their body? Not cool with me. Also not logically consistent with being pro-choice, which most of my pro-mandate (anti-choice) friends are.
The fact that this sentiment already exists in America (via private insurance and out-of-network costs) is absolutely abhorrent.
Citizenry should never be disincentivized from seeking out healthcare.
I am proposing a more direct penalty, which is only put into effect if:
1) you don’t get vaccinated
2) you get COVID
3) you get treatment at the hospital for COVID
The current penalty proposal (getting fired) happens at step 1. I do not agree with that.
In a socialized healthcare system, my penalty would be the same. Instead of your insurance company doling out the penalty (withholding payment), it would be your government, but the effect is the same.
I do not want to force people to do something they don’t want to do to their bodies, and I do not want others to suffer for the unvaccinated’s choices. Therefore, if you decide not to get vaccinated, you pay for your own healthcare if you go to the hospital for COVID treatment.
Personal choice comes with personal responsibility. But personal choice should still be allowed.
There are some other reasons, but those are purely related to political situation in my homeland.
This is not true. They got emergency authorization, but had to go through the same test phases as with normal authorization and will eventually get full authorization. This is not really different than in the USA and does not make it a 'test vaccine'.
Also I was vaccinated in the EU and I did not have to sign any papers or 'take full responsibility for any side effects' in any way, nor did anyone else I know that was vaccinated in the EU. This may be the case in your country (I'd be interested to know which country that is), but it is certainly not a EU wide requirement.
- I already had long covid (lasted 14 months), and don't want the vaccine to cause a relapse. It did exactly that to a family member who also had long covid, and she's still not better. It's just anecdotal but I've seen on longcovid forums multiple people claiming the vaccine CAUSED their longcovid.
- I don't believe CDC recommendation that increasing antibody titers through vaccination offers better protection against the virus than convalescent immunity through prior infection. Antibody titers are just one aspect of immunity and BCells make antibodies when exposed to a virus again. Actually I'd be worried about training my immune system with only one part of the virus, it's possible that would hurt my robust immunity against variants, not help it.
- CDC is dishonest with numbers by not tracking mild/non-hospitalized breakthrough cases. There is no reason not to track them. From the UK Gov on Page 12... 37 of 73 deaths from Delta variant are vaccinated: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/... According to the CDC and media such numbers of deaths among vaccinated would be statistically impossible.
- FDA not approving an inactive virus vaccine is BS. It's a monumental failure of the US government if they want a high % of people vaccinated to only offer DNA/RNA vaccines that are nothing like traditional vaccines people receive as children. China's Sinopharm works at preventing death and is just inactive virus. If required to take a vaccine I'd travel to another country to take that. Actually I'd even pay $10k to have an inactive virus vaccine imported if it prevented me from being discriminated against.
- If there was such a thing as "misinformation" then it should be openly mocked, ridiculed and contested with facts. What's happening now with censorship is unprecedented - we even need a dedicated news site to keep track of it: https://reclaimthenet.org/ . Organizations like the EFF should be presenting legal challenges for many of these things but it seems like everyone has gotten on the "misinformation" bandwagon. Doing that will lead to authoritarianism. Health policy should not be political, but opposing forced medical procedures is a fundamental human right, no exceptions.
Also, since you mentioned Polio and chicken pox, I don't consider those the same because they are not RNA vaccines. All my issues with taking a covid vaxx would be solved if only the FDA approved Sinopharm/Sinovac so I could take an inactive virus vaccine. Instead I'm losing my job soon.
