- "Herd immunity" is only a secondary desired trait for the vaccine. The primary one should be that the individual that gets the vaccine will have a stronger immune system and less likely to be severely sick. I got it for my own benefit, not because I want to be nice to others.

- The vaccine was sold as a one-shot thing. I think that the vaccine is safe enough for its risks to outweighs the benefits if it was only once. If periodic boosters start getting required, the calculus changes.

- Where does it stop? Let's not forget that the whole thing with lockdowns was to flatten the curve and to avoid the health care system to collapse. These should've been seen as temporary measures so that we could improve the healthcare system so that it could respond properly. Instead, it has become a perma-threat with no end in sight.

For example: compulsory vaccination via mandate, coercion, exclusion, or otherwise. While there are compelling motivations to pursue such ends for the greater social good, doing so is a slippery slope fraught with the risk of trampling individual medical freedoms in the process, such as informed consent.

I've seen people on the latter side of that argument treated as if they were analogous to axe murderers for even suggesting anything but 100% compliance, all the while being shouted down by the angry mob.

The fact is, vaccinations carry the risk of very rare but sometimes serious adverse reactions. As long as that remains true, there can be no absolute moral high-ground when demanding compulsory vaccination.

In the current climate however, stating such a position outside of tiny civilized bubbles like HN is tantamount to heresy. I suspect when the autism link was debunked, many people conflated this to mean vaccines were completely safe, when in fact they're simply very safe.

My stance on the necessity of vaccines isn't a belief. Its from understanding the science of vaccines and the exponential mathematic of pandemics.

Why people choose to deviate from a very clear dominating strategy is simply not necessary for me to understand or research. The simplest assumption is they believe something that is not supported in the science, but have too much ego on the line to accept they are incorrect. This accurately classifies most of the concerns I've seen. I can empathize. We've all made mistakes in who we trust or what we conclude. But in the meantime, people like kids, the especially vulnerable, and those who cannot medically take the vaccine are put at risk. Hence why I am absolutely okay with a mandate to ensure the anti-vaccine advocates burden the social costs for their decisions.

100% we need to treat people regardless of anyone's attitude (mine included), and 100% we need to continue to mandate vaccines.

Thank you again for giving me the space to clarify =)

You definitely raise valid points about the side effects of false positives during enforcement and the resulting self-censorship, but the other side of the coin is that we've seen that we unfortunately do have to worry about the wackos too.

May I suggest you be more charitable in interpreting people here? I think you'll find conversations more productive.

I'm not sure someone who has gone so far in rejecting medical knowledge can be convinced by reason - the facts and good arguments are already out there within easy reach and have presumably been discounted.

FYI my comments on tone and bias were drawn from years of seeing people interpret tone to suit themselves online, either knowingly through tone-trolling or simply through bias.

Vaccines offer some personal protection but predominantly become effective by achieving herd immunity. Vaccine hesitancy undermines this goal and weakens the system. Being pro-vaccine is senseless without being in favor of enough people being vaccinated to provide strong immunity, including for those who cannot be vaccinated due to medical complications.

Even if you were to argue on behalf of one who is indifferent to vaccines but is against mandates, so long as those mandates encourage vaccination, they effectively are discouraging vaccination and are thus anti-vax.

It can be hard to recognize all of this without the right perspective. In isolation, it is easy to claim that one is not anti-vax; however actions speak infinitely louder than words.

> But acting like we're in a hysteria because of recommendations to get vaccinated drawn from studies showing it makes sense is itself hysteria.

IMO, the emotional response (or hysteria) stems from the fact that debatable recommendations are currently being used to justify mandates ("SF will soon require everyone 5 and older to show vaccination proof for restaurants, theaters, Warriors games"), therefore prohibiting people from outweighing the risks on their own.

Reading the same studies, health officials could come to the creative conclusion that, due to the "considerable uncertainty regarding the magnitude of the potential harms", all children should be banned from getting a vaccine or be forced to pay higher insurance rates.

I agree its important for public health organizations to be consistent in their messaging. It creates a lot of confusion if they are sending mixed messages about the pros/cons of vaccines, especially if there is some urgency. Where I am, there is information provided about the type and relative frequency of reactions, but it's not the main message and that makes sense.

For governments that are forcing people to be vaccinated (either directly or de-facto through restrictions on what you can otherwise do), it's purely a political thing. How could they admit that the thing they are forcing on you could cause reaction, even if it's rare. So they pretend that anyone who talks about it is a threat to society and whip up anger against them.

People are regularly willing to voluntarily take medicine with higher risks (birth control, travel vaccines, etc) and generally would make the same choice faced with covid. But take the choice away and the government has to carefully control the message about it (plus the whole opportunity to create division and an out-group to improve their political footing)

If the ppl are vaccinated, those ppl should be safe, and in theory those unvaccinated masses dying off from X illness increases the overall fitness of the population.

However, it's not at all about that. This is about forcing those who may not think or believe the same to not only acquiesce, but to actively proclaim they are science deniers and that another group is infallible and correct.

I'm not an anti-vaxxer per-se, i think vaccines for things such as polio, mmr are important. But i don't think others such as flu and possibly hpv are worth the risk.

I don't support forced vaccination however, and the more those who loudly tout forced vaccinations the more it leads me to believe that there may be credibility issues with the vaccine efficacy and the vaccination's research.

My responses:

1: I agree. You really have to dig deep.

2: I agree. But you can at least assess risk vs other vaccines.

3: My point is that people should not be mandated to take that risk. The technology is good and fine but let people choose. This boils down to a collectivist vs individualist argument. Largely western culture is born of prizing the individual over the collective. We have seen the horrors in the past of where collectivism leads.

4: I agree, it has to be an economic solution.

5: This is a complex statement to unwrap. I don't know anyone who isn't maybe a fervent Atheist Hedonist that thinks that unfettered selfishness is a virtue. Only sociopaths think that way by design and will justify it with whatever means necessary, be in intellectual or anti-intellectual. I will say that I don't like the fact that being against a mandate for ethical reasons as I pointed out automatically = anti-vax.

6: I agree. I don't like that fact that my opinion gets lumped in with people who think Bill Gates is a lizard trying to chip everyone. I do however think the "conspiracy" here is that the US public health authorities are going out of their way to squash any answer to this pandemic that is not a vaccine for the sake of reducing "vaccine hesitancy", the magic word. I would not be surprised if this was primary motivator and is admitted to years down the line, and its not necessarily the same as a "conspiracy" if this is the key term behind closed doors. Fauci already did the same with masks, first being anti-mask to protect the supply, then pro-mask once supplies were ample. He admitted to this himself. He also slowly creeped up the herd immunity % from 60% to 85%. When asked about this, he said he did it deliberately because "the American public couldn't handle the truth". That sort of logic is bad for public trust. Vaccine Hesitancy mitigation explains why any discussion of repurposed drugs, natural immunity, etc is shut out of the conversation. Look at how they are treating Mercks announcement of a new drug, with constant reminder that its no replacement for a vaccine. Why? In a "war" situation against a virus, why are not all options on the table? Why would you give a vaccine or even boosters to people with natural immunity when there are still entire countries waiting on theirs? This idea that the pandemic will end when 95% of the USA is vaccinated is ridiculous. You need global immunity. Its why Norway and Denmark have already accepted the disease and endemic, never going away.

7: Adenovirus vector technology (JJ, Astro-Zen shots) has only been recently adapted into a vaccine, same as mRNA. You cannot say there are no long term side effects based solely on a "drug vs immune response" durations. Trials of adenovirus vector based technology have failed in past trails. HIV vaccine based on this was a miserable failure. They tried using adenovirus based gene therapy on children on single gene mutations in in children, 40% got leukemia within 4 years. We dont even have 4 years of data for the current vaccine. I would agree they have somewhat passed the initial stages, albeit with with way worse VAERS profiles then any other vaccine in the last 50 years. Good enough though safety to give to people who want it, not force it on those who don't. The risk calculus is different for everyone especially given age and health.

8: Evidence where? Again, VASER is all we have because they opted to keep it as all we have. Like how they just banned Moderna for under 30 year olds in scandanavian countries and totally banned it in Iceland.

9: EUA has specific rules defined well before Covid. There cannot be any alternative treatments: Monoclonal antibodies, repurposed drugs, etc. Saying it went through "phase 3" trials means nothing when they cut out tons of checks in those trials. Cross-reactivity, Carcinogenic studies, to name a few.

10: Agreed VAERS is bad, but we have no other mechanism is my point. Really no issues identified? Not clots, not mycarditis, not nervous system issues, not GBS, nothing? I dont see how you can make that statement, its not true. Look at what just happen with Moderna in Europe. Go watch the FDA's publicly broadcast meeting regarding booster authorization. Every single doctor on the panel hammers the mycardidits point for boosters, and now we see Moderna getting pulled for it. The data is still trickling in. VAER is only between 1-5% of reported issues they estimate because it takes 30 minutes just to fill out the forms and most doctors wont bother, and its still abysmally bad for these vaccines.

I have a STEM degree in Physics and work in simulation. My wife is an ICU nurse. She also won't take it, along with 50% of the staff including the doctors at each hospital she floats to (more then 5 per week). Why? Because they witness the adverse events first hand, especially the mycarditis and clots. you can't just collectively dismiss their witnessed experience. I have made the point to her that she is at the epicenter aggregator of all those people but once you see it happen first hand you start to realize its not as rare as they say given that in a small enough town, there should only be a handful according to the CDC/FDA.

I think the rights of individuals to make their own choices should be upheld no matter the cost, otherwise we fall into this collectivist mindset that can justify anything it wants for "greater good". What if 5 years in we find out that the mRNA causes arterial and heart damage as some claim to have evidence for, and that some express the pulmonary conditions more immediately then others with mycarditis but everyone has some long term damage that will come back to haunt them. We would all be lamenting at how dumb we were to blindly trust a new technology adapted for a new use just because someone put the word "vaccine" on it and we all unquestionably trusted that. What if the intellectual objectors were the smart ones in the end? Careful that Darwins selection doesn't end up reversed in this case.

As an American, I wish we could all just have an honest conversation about this. Yes, the mRNA vaccines are new technology and I don't begrudge anyone who feels hesitant about them; but I also think there's strong evidence for their safety, and I waited hours in line to get my shot as soon as it was available.

But this business of public health officials trying to shape people's behavior instead of giving them plain facts... I don't think we collectively appreciate how much damage this has done. It necessarily breeds mistrust. It works against the actual goal of ending this pandemic.

I am vaccinated but by some sloppy internet dictionaries an "anti-vaxxer" because I oppose mandatory vaccination. This shifting in policy was predicted by a lot of the more crazier groups, which makes their statements true. You may not want to give people false incentives...