What happens in the short-term when there aren’t enough people answering the calls to 911, manning the firetrucks and ambulances, or responding to police calls? That’s not good for residents, either.
Do you think it will lead to a few hundred thousands additional deaths?
Of course not. But do we throw up our hands and say to the residents of Chicago “sucks to be you” when they don’t get the fire/medical/police assistance they need?
It won’t work out that way. Most of the police aren’t as dumb as their Union head and Chicago will survive 10% walking away. As I said, it would probably improve the department.
I do not want to have to carry proof of vaccination around for the rest of my days just to participate in life. I’m just fine with my employer issuing a mandate that all workers much be vaccinated, which is a good thing because I get to enforce that particular policy at work. But I’m not keen on the idea of being asked to present my vaccination records at a restaurant, movie theater, or the next WrestleMania.
Very much in favor of the mandates as they are today - requirements for schools, employment, etc. And I agree that this is turning out to be perhaps the most effective way to get rid of bad cops in a long time, even if that’s a side effect.
If we can hit the magic number in all the states of say 80%* we won’t have to. But right now we still somehow have states below 50%! This is dangerously insanely stupid.
This would be like Idaho aiding and abetting the Nazis.
*It might be lower or it might be higher, I don’t pretend to know it
Chicago has had major problems with violent crime, both pre-covid and since. How is it even possible that getting rid of 10% of the force would improve matters?
Well that’s easy, you’re getting rid of the right 10%. We don’t need idiot cops, just like we don’t need idiot nurses.
Dumb cops coming off the force will help it long term.
And, hopefully, you won’t. Only until this shit actually is down to a dull roar.
And in the short-term, when calls to 911 don’t get a timely response, or aren’t even answered?
What do we do about calls that don’t get a timely response or aren’t even answered because some fucking idiot cop gave his colleagues breakthrough infections or because the fucking idiots, or their unfortunate colleagues, died of CoVID, which is currently the #1 cop killer.
Your making up a scenario that is unlikely to materialize. You also appear to be trying to derail the thread for some reason.
I’m leaving the thread and telling you to take this to a new thread if you want to continue the discussion.
And AIUI, cowpox actually had the effect of immunizing many of its victims against smallpox, which is where Jenner got the idea to inoculate patients with cowpox in the first place. Cowpox reduced the spread and virulence of smallpox rather than increasing it.
Is this post coming from you as a poster, or a moderator? You haven’t made it clear.
Modnote: what exit? and D_anconia, drop the hijack or take it to a new thread.
Absolutely. In fact, there is speculation that the same is true for covid. People who had a recent cold due to a coronavirus may be partially immune to SARS-CoV-2 because their is some cross-reactivity of their antibodies. Give me hope that the combination of vaccines and natural immunity will continue to protect against severe disease from future variants.
Personally, I like long term answers.
From history, vaccine mandates are definitely legal and - in specific cases - necessary. But where we don’t have an answer is what are those cases where it’s necessary?
If we have a disease where, upon catching it, you’ll hiccup a couple times, get over it, and no one’s the worse for wear… Well probably the government shouldn’t have any right to force me to get vaccinated. Whereas if, on the other hand, there is a disease that is completely asymptomatic, but will infect each of the next three people you come within ten feet of and then, after you have successfully infected three people, you will immediately and violently bleed out through every pore until your death… Yeah, we probably should be able to force the issue on that one.
We should be able to do some math, based on the expected impact of the disease on national productivity, life satisfaction, etc., and come up with some course of action that is justifiable in court.
For that math, you’ve got a hard number on one side of the equation: The expected value of a particular human over the remainder of their life, to the rest of society. If the disease only hits retirees then that number is effectively zero. If it takes out any and all infants then that number could be huge.
On the other side of the equation, you have somewhat softer things to consider: If elderly, how much value they add by helping to take care of children, how much society owes it to the earlier generation to not just completely hit the trash button on them once they’re retired, how much wisdom we get out of our elders, etc.
Long term, this shouldn’t be a squishy and unknowable thing that we’re trying to negotiate on the fly with the general public. We should be able to say something like, “This is is a class 3 virus. For class 3, vaccines are optional but you must wear a mask daily until we have herd immunity of 75% if not vaccinated. If this was a class 4, vaccinations would be mandatory or you will be fined $3000. If this was a class 5, vaccinations are mandatory and you will be forcibly restrained, injected, and then charged with reckless endangerment.”
Personally, I’m fine with any answer so long as it’s consistent, logical, and spelled out clearly. And, while I’m not surprised that we didn’t achieve anything like that level of clarity under Trump, it does seem like - over a year later and with what should be a far more organized government - that we would have a hard answer on this. That we don’t and we’re trying to negotiate it on the fly, rather than just math up a defendable system, does say that we probably haven’t elected a President who will go down as one of the best ever.
How in the world did you decide that the value of retirees in terms of national productivity is zero?
The data is not hard to find:
Retiree spending of pension benefits in 2018 generated $1.3 trillion in total economic output, supporting nearly seven million jobs across the nation. Pension spending also added nearly $192 billion to government coffers at the federal, state and local levels.
Also, you apparently don’t realize that over 40% of retirees eventually reenter the workforce.
You might want to give your proposal more thought.