Not every anti-mandate person is a anti-vax. Government mandates are a political issue. Depending on the country and its laws, some believe mandates are illegal and constitute government tyranny. They may value rule by law or autonomy over their bodies. They may choose to receive vaccine but don't want to be 'forced to choose'.

Not every anti-covid-vax person is anti-other-vax. The mRNA vaccine is novel. Many believe its long-term safety profile is TBD. They think comparing vaccines with decades of safety data to ones with months is apples to oranges. They may also believe that Covid is not very dangerous to their demographic and don't like the risk/benefit calculation. They may also not trust the pharmaceutical industry and its influence on global health policy. The indemnifications of liability may give them pause to accept all the risk of side-effects. The censorship of contrary opinions on media may also affect their willingness to believe everything they are being told about the safety, efficacy, and necessity of the vaccines.

"Anti-vax" has become a convenient political weapon. It's important to unpack what it means and who is using it and why.

You articulated my sentiments way better than I could, thank you.

Thank you for sharing.

> some believe mandates are illegal and constitute government tyranny

This isn't a vaccine mandate. You are free to choose to be tested or vaccinated. Do you feel being forced to make this choice is tyranny, if so how bad do things have to get before the good of society becomes more important than your personal choice?

I ask you to put your thinking hat on and imagine other scenarios where compulsion is softened by indirection. The 'tested or vaccinated' choice is a temporary choice and unlikely to last. The pressure is firmly in the vaccinate or lose your job direction.

What is the 'good of society' and who decides it? In a pluralistic society there is valid disagreement about which are the goods (plural) of society. It seems you don't agree.

I'm still wondering if the saliva test meets the requirements? Anyone know?

I feel that forcing an uncomfortable nasal swab test is being used as a means of punishment, and not based on science. If it was just saliva I wouldn't feel that way.

Not who you're replying to, but the good of society never becomes more important than your personal choice.

Clearly the good of society is more important than some personal choices.

We don’t allow people to make personal choices to commit murder, or to drive drunk, or even to drive at all without licenses.

Laws against murder and drunk driving are to protect other individuals against having their rights violated by you. Society never comes into the calculation, only the self interest of other individuals.

You can drive without a license.

The agreed-upon surface area of 'the good of society' is smaller than you think. A disease that is %99.99 survivable and likely won't be resolved by non-sterilizing vaccine. is not comparable to the prohibition on murder.

I think it's larger than you think. In some regions ICUs are filled with covid patients and surgeries are being cancelled as a result.

> Not every anti-mandate person is a anti-vax. Government mandates are a political issue. Depending on the country and its laws, some believe mandates are illegal and constitute government tyranny. They may value rule by law or autonomy over their bodies. They may choose to receive vaccine but don't want to be 'forced to choose'.

This makes as much sense as a family member I have who wont wear his seat belt. He admits that seat belts save lives and greatly improve safety, but won't wear his out of spite because "the government shouldn't force me to do it". Imagine deliberately choosing to amplify the danger of driving, every time you drive, purely on principle to "Oppose Tyranny."

To a natural paternalist, the desire for autonomy doesn't make any sense. Regardless of the existential value of 'spite' to your family member, the issue of whether something is legal or not is bigger than 'spite' to those who value rule by law. They are not so ready to trade their legal standing for supposed safety. If you give up your rights so readily it shows how little value they have for you. Don't expect the government to care about them more than you do.

I’m vaccinated, but against this vaccine mandate. My proposed method is this:

1) If you want to get vaccinated, get vaccinated.

2) If you don’t, don’t.

3) If you go to the hospital with a COVID infection, your care is covered by insurance if you are vaccinated. If you are not, your care is not covered by insurance.

This allows people to make decisions about their bodies, while also fending off the two main arguments I see for why everyone should be vaccinated. Those arguments are:

1) Unvaccinated people are hosts for mutations which can break through vaccines. Since we are already going to be doing yearly updates to this vaccine a la flu vaccines, this is not a concern to those who want to be vaccinated as they will get fresh protection each year.

2) Hospital beds are being filled with COVID patients, thus blocking people with e.g. heart attacks, car crash injuries etc. from getting care. With my plan, the unvaccinated will be disincentivized to go to the hospital to get COVID care, thus freeing these beds up. Again, this respects personal choices.

But forcing people to do something to their body? Not cool with me. Also not logically consistent with being pro-choice, which most of my pro-mandate (anti-choice) friends are.

To quote our vice-president, "The right of women to make decisions about their own bodies is not negotiable. The right of women to make decisions about their own bodies is their decision, it is their body."

However, being pregnant does not cause other people to become pregnant against their will.

That doesn't address the core hypocrisy of the statement, which is that bodily autonomy is "non-negotiable" for some and non-existent for others. Either the government has authority over your body or they don't, regardless of justification.

I don't see the hypocrisy. Get vaccinated or get tested for covid weekly. It's your choice.

We need to get back to normal, continuing with our previous approach wasn't working, so we have to do something. This seems like a healthy compromise on personal choice and doing what's right for society. What would be a better balance?

The hypocrisy is quite obvious, you are choosing not to see it. If you argue that abortion is a right by virtue of people's bodies not being subject to government control, then you can't simultaneously argue in favor of government control of peoples bodies for some other reason. Be consistent. Either the government has the right to regulate your body or they don't, you can't have your cake and eat it too. If you're going to argue in favor of abortion then you need to start using a different slogan than "my body my choice", because clearly you don't sincerely believe in bodily autonomy.

However, voluntarily ending pregnancy can cause fathers to-be to lose their child to-be against their will. We've decided that's OK, because the right of an individual over their body supersedes the rights of others with tangential impacts.

The right of woman to make the decision about injecting a substance into their body is apparently negotiable.

I am not aware of any law or order if you live alone in the desert/woods that would make substances being injected into my you.

> With my plan, the unvaccinated will be disincentivized to go to the hospital to get COVID care, thus freeing these beds up. Again, this respects personal choices.

The fact that this sentiment already exists in America (via private insurance and out-of-network costs) is absolutely abhorrent.

Citizenry should never be disincentivized from seeking out healthcare.

Penalizing the unvaccinated is currently proposed to happen through their employer, with loss of employment (loss of being able to provide for one’s family) being the main incentive.

I am proposing a more direct penalty, which is only put into effect if:

1) you don’t get vaccinated

2) you get COVID

3) you get treatment at the hospital for COVID

The current penalty proposal (getting fired) happens at step 1. I do not agree with that.

In a socialized healthcare system, my penalty would be the same. Instead of your insurance company doling out the penalty (withholding payment), it would be your government, but the effect is the same.

I do not want to force people to do something they don’t want to do to their bodies, and I do not want others to suffer for the unvaccinated’s choices. Therefore, if you decide not to get vaccinated, you pay for your own healthcare if you go to the hospital for COVID treatment.

Personal choice comes with personal responsibility. But personal choice should still be allowed.

The problem is that unvaccinated people still take resources up, insurance or no. People who need surgery for cancer or need an ICU bed.

Undocumented immigrants take resources up. (If fact they may be uninsured and unvaccinated, too.) You should favor refusing medical care to them (and education to their children) based on this argument from resources. Do you?

He (or she) isn't saying they're the same thing, they're just demonstrating that the "takes resources up" argument carries no weight whatsoever.

Those vaccines were properly tested. These vaccines were developed hastily. In Europe they are still treated as test vaccines, so you have to sign a paper and take the full responsibility for any side effects. I've gotten this far without infection although I was exposed. I have decided I just don't wan't to risk it. Also I am prepared to give up my access to ICU if that is what it takes for gov to leave me alone, as far as I see, taking up beds is the biggest issue.

There are some other reasons, but those are purely related to political situation in my homeland.

> In Europe they are still treated as test vaccines, so you have to sign a paper and take the full responsibility for any side effects.

This is not true. They got emergency authorization, but had to go through the same test phases as with normal authorization and will eventually get full authorization. This is not really different than in the USA and does not make it a 'test vaccine'.

Also I was vaccinated in the EU and I did not have to sign any papers or 'take full responsibility for any side effects' in any way, nor did anyone else I know that was vaccinated in the EU. This may be the case in your country (I'd be interested to know which country that is), but it is certainly not a EU wide requirement.

I consider myself rational (at least enough to work in software). Here's a copy/paste of a comment I made before why I refuse the RNA vaxx...

- I already had long covid (lasted 14 months), and don't want the vaccine to cause a relapse. It did exactly that to a family member who also had long covid, and she's still not better. It's just anecdotal but I've seen on longcovid forums multiple people claiming the vaccine CAUSED their longcovid.

- I don't believe CDC recommendation that increasing antibody titers through vaccination offers better protection against the virus than convalescent immunity through prior infection. Antibody titers are just one aspect of immunity and BCells make antibodies when exposed to a virus again. Actually I'd be worried about training my immune system with only one part of the virus, it's possible that would hurt my robust immunity against variants, not help it.

- CDC is dishonest with numbers by not tracking mild/non-hospitalized breakthrough cases. There is no reason not to track them. From the UK Gov on Page 12... 37 of 73 deaths from Delta variant are vaccinated: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/... According to the CDC and media such numbers of deaths among vaccinated would be statistically impossible.

- FDA not approving an inactive virus vaccine is BS. It's a monumental failure of the US government if they want a high % of people vaccinated to only offer DNA/RNA vaccines that are nothing like traditional vaccines people receive as children. China's Sinopharm works at preventing death and is just inactive virus. If required to take a vaccine I'd travel to another country to take that. Actually I'd even pay $10k to have an inactive virus vaccine imported if it prevented me from being discriminated against.

- If there was such a thing as "misinformation" then it should be openly mocked, ridiculed and contested with facts. What's happening now with censorship is unprecedented - we even need a dedicated news site to keep track of it: https://reclaimthenet.org/ . Organizations like the EFF should be presenting legal challenges for many of these things but it seems like everyone has gotten on the "misinformation" bandwagon. Doing that will lead to authoritarianism. Health policy should not be political, but opposing forced medical procedures is a fundamental human right, no exceptions.

Also, since you mentioned Polio and chicken pox, I don't consider those the same because they are not RNA vaccines. All my issues with taking a covid vaxx would be solved if only the FDA approved Sinopharm/Sinovac so I could take an inactive virus vaccine. Instead I'm losing my job soon.