Aren't unvaccinated individuals the ones who made this decision? You may disagree with the conclusion of their dubious risk analyses, but if you choose not to get vaccinated then all bets are off.
Or is it that the risk that the unvaccinated pose to the vaccinated are so high that they warrant strong arm solutions?
This is the crux of it. They've made the decision, but when they fill up ICU beds and prevent sick or injured people from getting the quality of care that hospitals can provide, then their decision affects others (and this is not a hypothetical, it is happening daily).
If unvaccinated people agree to sit home and not go into a hospital when they can't breathe, that would demonstrate that they're living with the consequences of their decision.
What bothers me is the inconsistency. It's opportunistically seizing on the burden that choosing to not get vaccinated places on medical resources, in a way that the typical vaccine mandate supporter would never dream of doing with other high-risk behavior (e.g. men who engage in extensive high-risk intercourse with other men, making them 100X more likely to contract many STDs, including HIV). The political left's backing of the vaccine mandate is thoroughly unprincipled.
If our health safety net (hospitals) were not being affected, then yes, covid promiscuity would be treated identically to any of the above. There's principles here that you don't want to acknowledge.
Now socialization of medical expenses is being used to rationalize institutionalized discrimination against the unvaccinated, because it aligns with a particular political tribe's agenda. A tribe that also advocates the socialization of medical expenses.
Correct, these things are not contagious to others.
Overwhelming the hospitals puts everyone at greater risk.
So any cases means more mutations more quickly. This too is a shared risk.
There just is not any way around all this. The human condition is not an individual affair.
Yes. And personally, as callous as this is, I give zero shits about COVID deaths of people who choose to not vaccinate, though I feel terrible for their family members that got vaccinated and couldn't convince them to vaccinate because right-wing media has poisoned their minds.
> Or is it that the risk that the unvaccinated pose to the vaccinated are so high that they warrant strong arm solutions?
This question is highly subjective.
The vaccines are very effective at preventing spread, hospitalization, and death, but not 100%. Look at the statistics coming from any major hospital, and you'll see the trend that around 95% of the people hospitalized with COVID are unvaccinated.
The more people are vaccinated, the slower the spread, and the lower total number of breakthrough infections and breakthrough disease (Note: There's a difference between the two!).
Back to your question of if the risk is so high to warrant strong-arm solutions...Currently, I'd say no. But how long until Delta evolves into an even worse form that the current vaccines do nothing for?
