(09-17-2021, 10:04 PM)ijmorlan Wrote: Bottom line, the cure for Covid is vaccination, period.
By not getting vaccinated, people are choosing not to be treated for Covid. People don’t have the right to choose the most expensive treatment on the taxpayers’ dime. They especially don’t have the right to reject doctors and science when it comes to choosing whether or not to be vaccinated, then suddenly trust in doctors and science when they become infected. Maybe if they’re paying for their own health care.
If there happens to be spare capacity then fine, don’t deny care. But it’s totally absurd to prioritize fixing someone’s bad decision that they made on their own over the needs of someone else who isn’t responsible for their own trouble.
As to why this same logic doesn’t apply to other behaviours, the fact that we’re in a pandemic is the real difference. People will always do foolish things and we are a sufficiently wealthy society that we can and should afford to maintain a health care system which can clean up a certain amount of these messes. But we can’t suddenly expand capacity enough to clean up after all the anti-vaxxers.
One thing, we need a better vaccine, before we can call it a cure. That said, there is plenty wrong here.
1) People have the right to choose or not to choose medical procedure (which a vaccine shot is). This is constitutional.
2) As I explained in another post, we never have had 'spare capacity' so that we don't deny care to those lower in the 'triage' list. I know this all to well with my dad dying at 61, because triage was fixing smokers and fat people first, with same condition.
3) Therefore, the logic does apply to other behaviours. Our healthcare system is always strained. People are bumped down constantly on the priority list due to others who are either reckless or don't take care of themselves (like smokers, alcoholics, gluttons, etc). Any many times these people who are bumped down end up with life altering issues, including death (something that can't be undone). If we had a 'wealthy society' we could afford expensive Rx/treatments for children born with certain conditions rather than deny. Where is this money tied up? Certainly enough is being used on people that make poor decisions when it comes to their health.
Anyway, here is some light reading:
https://www.fraserinstitute.org/sites/de...canada.pdf
On the bright side, we're not as bad as the USA. But we could do a lot better.
While it is 100% true that the vaccine is significantly safer than the potential of getting very sick with Covid-19, and dying from it -- would anyone here take be willing to take the fall if someone got the vaccine and died?
When it comes to covid-19, I know of 2 people that have gotten sick with it. My employer has close to 2,500 employees, and zero covid-19 cases so far (because we've been told so many times -- social distance, masking, wash hands, etc, that we do it away from work as well) I know of one person (family friend) that died from the Astra-Zeneca shot. He was in his 70's and probably would have died anyway had he gotten Covid. But my thinking of forcing people to take the shot is wrong, because it's still not zero risk.