I've said nothing about children other than we've traditionally required them to be vaccinated for school, which they are legally required to attend. Yes if their parents are wealthy enough they have other options but most households don't have private or home schooling options.
What I'm asking is why creating a similar level of requirements for adults for a COVID vaccine?
First off, home school families are demographically similar to public school families on wealth with a greater percentage of home school families at or below 200% of the poverty line. Private school families are vastly in the over the 200% line compared to public and home school. Most states require vaccines for private schools on the same terms as public schools.
But the question you are asking is about a fundamental misconstruction of what the state is doing and why it's allowed to do it in the first place. The rights of the state over children are deliberately greater than the states rights over adults. Parents are considered to be the best proxy for exercising the rights of their children in the ordinary course, but children are not property, and the state can intervene when the parents are acting against the child's interest. When the state does this it is replacing the parent as the proxy of the child's rights, neither the parent or the state is exercising its own rights over the child like a piece of property.
This state is also deliberately very limited, as we do believe that the parent is the best proxy, in the ordinary course, for exercising the child's rights and the best determinant of the child's best interests. Accordingly, the state is permitted to interfere and intervene on behalf of children on a limited set of reasons, virtually all of which are directly tied to the health, safety and best interests of the child. That list is deliberately kept narrow to avoid the risk that the state can justify
anything as for the best interests of a child. It's not the state's interest that justifies the vaccination, its the child's interest.
When you ask to mandate vaccines on an adult, you are actually overruling a citizen who has an inherent right to make their own judgments and has clearly expressed what they view as in their best interests. The state has no authority and no valid interest in protecting an otherwise sane adult from themselves or even the consequences of their decision. It's a fundamental violation of civil rights.
This disease has upended our lives and society for over a year. It has led to 600,000 deaths (0.2% of the US population) in 1.5 years. It has stretched medical resources to the limits and many of the survivors of COVID have symptoms lasting months and there is some worry among researchers that some of the damage done could lead to people developing alzheimer's.
People's fear about this disease is what has uprooted our lives, and in most cases that's been compounded by the intense desire of out leaders to appear to "do something." Many many policies have been of minimal impact on transmission or have even been counterproductive on transmission or treatment, and many of them have had an economic impact that far exceeds the benefit.
I mean, do you remember that early in the pandemic, police officers were arresting people for parking their cars in church parking lots to hear their pastor's sermon? That literally was nothing but posturing and authoritarianism with absolutely no science behind it.
It didn't stretch medical resources to the limits, at least past the early days. In fact, once we got over the hump caused in the North East by the insane and completely insane policies that forced exposure on the most vulnerable people on earth (i.e., nursing home patients) the biggest impact was from the "rules" rather than the disease. The long term impacts of missed appointments, forced isolation, and excessive eating and drinking, are almost certainly going to cause a massive amount of additional harm.
Forcing vaccinations and mandating passports will create an additional and real harm to our society. Encouraging people to get the vaccine creates a real benefit, providing those vaccines so widely and free of charge creates a real benefit. Forcing people may, and I mean may, provide a marginal increase in compliance, but it will also trigger harms from monitoring and enforcing compliance and degrade our institutions. Autocrats want that because they can pretend to be heroes while they permanently undermine our institutions. You'll note they keep fighting when they're forced to give up their powers and many have always considered themselves exempt (because they're smart enough to make their own decisions). That is exactly why we have instance after instance of politicians ordering restrictive regimes for others and then getting caught giving exemptions to family, having fancy dinners or getting maskless haircuts. At a very basic level they believe that everyone is either exactly like themselves (i.e., only follows rules when they'll get caught) or too stupid to be able to make a decision, and therefore they have to be forced to obey. None of which reflects someone who should be making policy in a free country.
How deadly would a disease need to be before you thought "violating someone's body" would be justified?
Wrong question.
You completely dismissed that person's autonomy. Draw the line, how little fear on your part justifies you overruling a decision for someone?
Better question though, is why if a disease is "so deadly" are people refusing a vaccine? In your head, it's so far beyond clear that the threat to you justifies the imposition on them, if it is that clear why don't they see it too? And I can tell you it's really not because of "misinformation" for the vast majority.
The problem is people refusing to get vaccinated doesn't only impact themselves. They spread the disease to others and provide the virus opportunities to mutate.
The people choosing to violate others rights don't only impact themselves either. They harm the rights of everyone in the country and create new structures that respect our rights even less. From such pathways are serfs and slaves made.
Well you're reflecting a mixed up view of how these vaccines work there. The cat is completely out of the bag on eliminating COVID. It's going to be with us either in a mildly symptomatic form, or in a series of mutated forms of varying danger until science can discover how to make cures.
I do agree though, the unvaccinated provide an easy accelerator for infections. But even spread among the vaccinated is going to be enough to for Delta to continue to spread globally.
What limitations are reasonable for someone refusing to get vaccinated? Airline travel? Mass transit? Public indoor venues? Forced to wear a mask indoors at all times in public?
What does "indoors in public" mean, and how would you "force" the unvaccinated to wear a mask? Let's be real, for enforcement in your new world order there are only two choices, force everyone to comply whether or not vaccinated or essentially arrest the unvaccinated. You have to be authoritarian to have a workable policy that uses force. Which means your fear is going to push you to be more and more authoritarian.
Funny how many on the left can rant about Trump being "authoritarian" for doing things like enforcing the law on the border, but don't see true authoritarianism when its on their team.
As to your specifics, the science already answered several of those questions. Airlines have touted their safety record from before the vaccine was available. Mass transit is not going to be safe no matter what until the trains and buses are adequately ventilated and not overcrowded (both of which will not be fixed because it will run straight into budgetary restrictions). Restaurants have been a mixed bag, but it's unclear how much of that is the patrons' fault. Packed indoor bars have been a problem.
A really common solution appears to be to require COVID tests if you're not vaccinated. As those tests get to be more and more rapid, its hard to explain how that wouldn't provide a virtually complete solution to your fear.
If 6,000,000 people had died in the US in the last year would your opinion change? What about at 60,000,000 people?
I got vaccinated, my opinion wouldn't change if more people had died. A bunch of unvaccinated peoples' opinions would have changed.
So if 60M had died, and a 100% effective vaccine had been found with a 90% blindness side effect, would your opinion have changed? Or would you still be entitled to force it on others?
The fact is that vaccines are a risk balancing decision, and others are not required to weigh the scale of your personal fear (which seems great) into their decision. But you do know, you are perfectly capable of yourself staying out of public if you're that afraid. If your fear is so paralyzing you'd rather live in a totalitarian society, maybe you should in fact consider staying home before you consider imposing your will on others.
Is your position absolute? Or is there a level of seriousness where you think requiring a vaccine to participate in normal society makes sense?
Look at Jennifer Anniston, she literally said she ended friendships with people that won't get vaccinated. Convince them, put pressure on them, ostracize them go right ahead, arrest them, strap them down and inject them, legally bar them from existing in society you've gone too far. There's a difference between effectively requiring a vaccine to be part of society and mandating a vaccine to be part of society.
I mean honestly, what does it mean to have an absolute position? You seem to want to posit a disease so dangerous that we "have" to act, but yet don't acknowledge that virtually no one would refuse a vaccine in those circumstances.
Its too early to calculate the life time risk of dying from COVID, and there are so many things that will occur that will change that calculus over time. The distribution of deaths by age makes it clear that for the old COVID was essentially as big as or bigger a risk than heart disease (life time risk about 1 in 6), while for the healthy young (under 40 and no comorbidities for example), the risk was well below other every day risks (e.g, dying in a car crash or dying from a fall -each about 1 in 105 lifetime). For healthy children? More like on the scale of less likely than dying from a lightening strike.
How would it be irrational on their part to choose to wait to get vaccinated until their older, or to do so only if they have a comorbidity? It wouldn't be at all.
Honestly, for the immediate future they are far more likely to die in a car crash than COVID, and reckless driving and speeding are endemic in that population. In fact, I'm wiling to bet many of you engage in reckless driving and speeding despite the death rate (which is also imposed on those into whom you crash).
It would be terrible for the country if everyone made that selfish decision, and there are certainly reasons the young do car about older and at risk people they would be protecting. But the idea that they would be stupid to do so? Just not true, no more than someone's stupid for following a doctor's advice about getting certain exams after they're 45 or 55. Risks change.
