Airborne_Again wrote:
Because getting a vaccine shot is dead simple. Changing your lifestyle is not.
I’m sorry, but I disagree.
Just as it is a simple binary decision to get a vaccine shot (or to take an aeroplane into the air, or whatever) it is a simple binary decision whether you choose to eat a healthy diet or something closer to 4000kcals a day of sugar and stodge. It is also a simple binary decision whether to go for a run or to sit on the couch and watch TV. That some individuals may find the ‘right’ decisions difficult to make is no concern of mine – they are still responsible for their own actions.
Are you really arguing that we should hold people fully responsible for the costs of them declining an elective medical procedure, but not for the costs of what they choose to put in their mouth?
On the basis that “only” ~70k civilians died in the UK in WW2 (and of course much bigger numbers in mainland Europe), one could argue that CV19 is a national crisis and should be addressed using corresponding measures.
I would not suggest denying medical treatment to people who choose to trash their health in various ways (partly because a lot of them don’t have much scope for driving their lives; look at obese children for example, whose issue is just stupid parents) but now that we know the main vaccines are incredibly safe, vaccination should be made mandatory.
Especially as the economic cost of CV19 will be borne mainly by today’s young people.
Graham wrote:
it is a simple binary decision whether you choose to eat a healthy diet or something closer to 4000kcals a day of sugar and stodge
It’s not one decision – it is 3-5 (or even more) decisions a day. Taking the vaccine is one decision.
And the huge difference as illustrated so many times before: If you take the decision to to kill yourself by unhealthy diet it is a completely different choice than to kill others by spreading Covid to them. The eating analogy to Covid would be that you walk around the street and force everyone you see to eat a chocolate bar.
And even if you’d answer “yea, but the diet induced heart attack does also occupy ICU capacity” that would be quite ill informed. Average length of stay for a heart attack (AMI) in ICU is 2-3 days (with median of 5-6 day total hospital stay). ALOS in ICU for Covid patient is approx 18 days. So 6-8 times longer. But this still is grossly underestimating the burden for the health system. Covid patients need much more care. On typical ICUs in Germany, one nurse can take care of about 3 cardio patients but the ratio between patients and nurses for Covid is almost 1:1 (1.1-1.2:1 according the last numbers I have seen). This is btw. one of the reason why “empty ICU beds” is an extremely bad proxy for health system burden: At same level of staff (and staff is the limiting factor) 2/3 of the beds of a cardiac ICU stay empty if at capacity with Covid patients.
All in, “ICU blocking burden” of a Covid patient is the same as 20+ patients with heart attack due to obesity. Just talking about choices.
P.S.: As I received some messages. Thanks for thinking about her. My daughter will be fine for the acute Covid episode – she is already getting better. Nobody knows about long Covid yet…
Graham wrote:
Just as it is a simple binary decision to get a vaccine shot (or to take an aeroplane into the air, or whatever) it is a simple binary decision whether you choose to eat a healthy diet or something closer to 4000kcals a day of sugar and stodge. It is also a simple binary decision whether to go for a run or to sit on the couch and watch TV. That some individuals may find the ‘right’ decisions difficult to make is no concern of mine – they are still responsible for their own actions.
But it is not a simple binary decision! It is a decision you have to make over and over again, every time you decide what to eat, whether go go for a run or sit on the couch etc.
Are you really arguing that we should hold people fully responsible for the costs of them declining an elective medical procedure, but not for the costs of what they choose to put in their mouth?
I don’t see where I have argued anything remotely similar to that! In fact I did write (in post #1413) “People have a right to health care even if they are stupid.”
Airborne_Again wrote:
But it is not a simple binary decision! It is a decision you have to make over and over again, every time you decide what to eat, whether go go for a run or sit on the couch etc.
So in that respect it is similar to, e.g. wearing a mask in indoor public spaces? There is a need to make the decision over and over again, and apparently the greater good (and your own health) require that you make the ‘right’ decision each time, or at least most of the time.
I don’t think it’s the repeated nature of the decision you object to, rather the apparent difficulty of making the ‘right’ decision. To get a jab requires sitting still and doing as you’re told for about 30 seconds. To protect public healthcare resources from the consequences of poor lifestyle choices requires willpower and self-control.
Airborne_Again wrote:
I don’t see where I have argued anything remotely similar to that! In fact I did write (in post #1413) “People have a right to health care even if they are stupid.”
You’re correct, you didn’t actually argue that – my apologies. I arrived with that position from what @Malibuflyer and you wrote about Covid-19 patients consuming ICU resources and my subsequent rebuttal that lots of healthcare resources are consumed by people suffering from entirely self-inflicted conditions that they could just as easily have avoided through making better life decisions.
Graham wrote:
just as easily have avoided through making better life decisions.
Nobody is talking about “life decision” but only about health decisions. Taking the vaccination or not is not a life(style) decision. Covid care (in form of the vaccination) has been offered to these people, they declined and this is also true for follow on steps like ICU admission.
This is a completely normal thing in the health system that happens all the time (examples my vary based on the guidelines in different systems): You can not insist on getting opioids for your back pain if you declined to try diclofenac first (ok, at least outside the US ;-)). You can not insist on getting riviroxaban if you decline to try warfarin first. You do not get psychotropic drugs if you decline to do psychotherapy.
Nobody argues that antivaxxers loose their right of healthcare – it is just that they consciously in execution of their right of free choice declined what the health system offered to them. It’s exactly what they say: “I take the risk for myself” – nobody (at least publicly) says: “I take the risk for myself until it realizes but in that case I want others to take it”.
Malibuflyer wrote:
If you take the decision to to kill yourself by unhealthy diet it is a completely different choice than to kill others by spreading Covid to them. The eating analogy to Covid would be that you walk around the street and force everyone you see to eat a chocolate bar.
No-one is “making a choice to kill others by spreading Covid to them”. In making such a statement you’re completely reversing any normal burden of responsibility that any free person would recognise, as well as portraying a non-existent scenario where the unvaccinated spread and the vaccinated don’t. In legislating to protect people from the worst possible excesses of each others behaviour we generally stipulate what you must not do (e.g. spray gunfire at random, drive whilst drunk) rather than requiring that you must do X (e.g. undergo a medical procedure) before being allowed out in public – I cannot think of a precedent for this.
Notwithstanding the idea that Covid-19 may have been released accidentally or deliberately by the Chinese, respiratory diseases are a natural phenomenon. We have excellent mitigation in the form of vaccines, but a risk remains for all of us – some more than others. I would argue that no individual has a right to demand that their own personal risk be reduced through a medical procedure being forced on another individual.
Most countries are approaching 80-90% vaccination rates, but even 100% does not mean that everyone is ‘safe’. If the residual risk is more than you are prepared to take, the remedy available to you is to isolate.
Malibuflyer wrote:
Nobody is talking about “life decision” but only about health decisions. Taking the vaccination or not is not a life(style) decision. Covid care (in form of the vaccination) has been offered to these people, they declined and this is also true for follow on steps like ICU admission.
Ok, change what I said from ‘life decision’ to ‘health decision’. My poor choice of words – it’s all a health decision. Perhaps diet and exercise is also a lifestyle decision, but it’s definitely a health decision too.
I can swap a different example into your wording and it holds true. “Obesity/diabetes/heart disease care (in the form of advice on diet and exercise) has been offered to these people, they declined….”
As with my response to @Airborne_Again, I believe you only treat the two different healthcare interventions (jabs vs diet/exercise) differently because one is easy and the other requires willpower and self-control. We all have choices and are responsible for them.
Graham wrote:
Most countries are approaching 80-90% vaccination rates,
Define “most”: UK and Germany are converging towards 70%, US below 60%. This is a huge (and decisive) difference to “80-90%”
Graham wrote:
If the residual risk is more than you are prepared to take, the remedy available to you is to isolate.
Nobody is talking about the “residual risk”. The problem is, that infection risk is reduced exponentially if vaccination rate is approaching 90%. Therefore we need to get there.
If the ridge has an altitude of 5.500ft, it doesn’t really help that a plane trying to cross it “is approaching 5000ft” …
Graham wrote:
I believe you only treat the two different healthcare interventions (jabs vs diet/exercise) differently because one is easy and the other requires willpower and self-control. We all have choices and are responsible for them.
Why, certainly I expect more people to make the “right” decision when it is easy!
