Finding the balance between the common good, personal rights and the ability to freely express an opinion that is devoid of hate and malice.


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"Now, more than ever, you have a responsibility to speak recklessly" - Dave Chappelle to fellow comedians. He's on the money again in my book. And that's a disgrace they sacked this dude over that car

I am not vaxxed, but not an anti-vaxxer. I believe in personal choice and responsibility. But I am anti-mandate. The whole mantra of "No jab-no more job" is a crock of shiatsu. My daughter who is 15 h

What's disturbing to me is the portrayal of people who object to mandates as being "anti-vax". Honestly, the number of people who are truly "anti-vax" is pretty insignificant. I don't know of any. I g

2 hours ago, El Presidente said:

If you are ever in this neck of the woods I will take you to Byron Bay and the general northern New South Wales region that I adore and will retire to one day. 

just on 30% are anti vaccine. Any vaccine. 

In this country the numbers for the pure anti vaccine (any vaccine due to personal belief systems) varies between 5-8% dependent on the study. sss

There is another group who don't trust the govt, believe the vaccine is rushed etc etc. They are around 10%. 

 

A quick search shows the population of Byron Bay at 9,246 people and Northern NSW at 290,271, so a grand total of 1% of the Australian population...not exactly a meaningful sample even if the rate is 30% anti-vax, which I would like to see the poll parameters and questions asked. For example some (possibly all?) Covid vax uses aborted fetal cells, so there would be a reason for an evangelical Christian, for example, to object to this vax as opposed to, say, the Polio vaccine. Am I correct in assuming Byron Bay is rural? Well, another reason why one may not feel the need to get any vaccine but who's opinion would change if they lived in an urban area. Important how the questions are asked. An evangelical Christian may say "I am against all vaccines" speaking for themselves or their children while having no opinion about others. 

I'm seeing poll numbers in the US of about 13-15% of people saying they will not get the Covid vax. Again, many reasons why one may choose that, and a far cry from "anti-vax" as the question pertains to only the Covid vax.

The bottom line is that by any measure--let's agree well under 10%?--these people are not driving the resistance to mandates or responsible for convincing those who don't wish to get the vaccine. The media is putting anyone opposed to mandates in a box labeled "anti-vax" even though very few people who aren't getting the vax are against any and all vaccines irrespective of circumstance.

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8 minutes ago, NSXCIGAR said:

The bottom line is that by any measure--let's agree well under 10%?--these people are not driving the resistance to mandates or responsible for convincing those who don't wish to get the vaccine. The media is putting anyone opposed to mandates in a box labeled "anti-vax" even though very few people who aren't getting the vax are against any and all vaccines irrespective of circumstance.

Logic would dictate that the people opposed to receiving a vaccine because they think it is harmful or unethical are driving resistance to that vaccine and not people who think it is harmless but oppose mandates on mainly philosophical grounds.

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If we are to bring up anecdotes of who one does or doesn't know. I know 3 people who didn't get vaccinated. One classic anti Vax why should I inject myself with toxins. One conspiracy theorist this is all a government media plot and COVID is basically like a bad flu season and one young and couldn't be bothered to take the time off work. That last one wanted to travel and got vaxxed after all. Who do you think among the three is driving resistance to vaccination efforts?

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7 hours ago, NSXCIGAR said:

I again stand by my statement that very few true "anti-vax" people exist,

The major concern, which predates COVID, is not just the numbers, which in most locations are still quite small, but the increasing interest in pseudo-scientific anti-vax material online and the growing numbers of people requesting vaccine exemptions for the children. Outbreaks of the measles are happening after decades of minimal activity, and the cause is always traceable to reduced vaccination rates. The outbreak in the Pacific Northwest in 2019 - an anti-vax hotbeds - was the worst in over two decades. 

COVID-19 taps into much broader fears about governmental control, etc., but it has also put the anti-vax movement (and it's many BS claims) into the spotlight. Now it's not just has-been celebrities pushing these theories, it's people with massive reach and influence like Joe Rogan and Aaron Rodgers. You have athletes risking (or in Kyrie's case throwing away) millions of dollars to avoid getting a friggin vaccine, despite access to top doctors. It's obviously going to add to hesitancy for a portion of the population. 

So people are sounding the alarm not just because it is a problem (and it is) but because the anti-vax movement is stronger than it's been since early smallpox innoculation campaigns - back when most people thought the causes of disease were bad smells or "miasma" in the air. 

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4 minutes ago, MrBirdman said:

Now it's not just has-been celebrities pushing these theories, it's people with massive reach and influence like Joe Rogan and Aaron Rodgers. You have athletes risking (or in Kyrie's case throwing away) millions of dollars to avoid getting a friggin vaccine, despite access to top doctors. It's obviously going to add to hesitancy for a portion of the population. 

Again, I'm not aware that any of these people are anti-vax nor are they offering opinions on what anyone else should do. Please point me to any statements they've made to the contrary. I'm assuming they are making a decision based on their own analysis of risk using the best data and consultation with their doctors. Quite frankly, it's easier to make a case against a 29-year old pro athlete in peak physical condition to choose not to get the vax than to get it, if one is looking at the best data. 

Again, it seems we have the conflation of people who choose not to get a vaccine for various reasons with anti-vaxxers. I continue to maintain there is no public figure that is anti-vax nor is almost anyone who chooses not to get a vaccine. The tin foil--hat-wearing "government is poisoning us" people are pretty few and far between.  

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14 hours ago, NSXCIGAR said:

A quick search shows the population of Byron Bay at 9,246 people and Northern NSW at 290,271, so a grand total of 1% of the Australian population...not exactly a meaningful sample even if the rate is 30% anti-vax, which I would like to see the poll parameters and questions asked. For example some (possibly all?) Covid vax uses aborted fetal cells, so there would be a reason for an evangelical Christian, for example, to object to this vax as opposed to, say, the Polio vaccine. Am I correct in assuming Byron Bay is rural? Well, another reason why one may not feel the need to get any vaccine but who's opinion would change if they lived in an urban area. Important how the questions are asked. An evangelical Christian may say "I am against all vaccines" speaking for themselves or their children while having no opinion about others. 

I'm seeing poll numbers in the US of about 13-15% of people saying they will not get the Covid vax. Again, many reasons why one may choose that, and a far cry from "anti-vax" as the question pertains to only the Covid vax.

The bottom line is that by any measure--let's agree well under 10%?--these people are not driving the resistance to mandates or responsible for convincing those who don't wish to get the vaccine. The media is putting anyone opposed to mandates in a box labeled "anti-vax" even though very few people who aren't getting the vax are against any and all vaccines irrespective of circumstance.

What vaccines use aborted fetal cells?

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53 minutes ago, cnov said:

What vaccines use aborted fetal cells?

I think fetal cell lines were used in the R&D for mRNA and production of J&J vaccine.  Not fetal cells, but lines taken from fetal tissue years ago and replicated.  Don't know how that fits into the religious objection, but I think that's the basis.   

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30 minutes ago, rcarlson said:

I think fetal cell lines were used in the R&D for mRNA and production of J&J vaccine.  Not fetal cells, but lines taken from fetal tissue years ago and replicated.  Don't know how that fits into the religious objection, but I think that's the basis.   

Do you have any info to back up the claim?

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3 hours ago, cnov said:

Do you have any info to back up the claim?

Google will land you at any number of sources, but here's the one I saw at the top of the list:

 http://publichealth.lacounty.gov/media/Coronavirus/docs/vaccine/VaccineDevelopment_FetalCellLines.pdf

Incidentally, I hadn't heard of the fetal cell issue before it popped up here.  It piqued my curiosity so I thought I'd take a look around.  

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13 hours ago, NSXCIGAR said:

I'm not aware that any of these people are anti-vax

The reality is that there is a small but growing group of Americans who will not vaccinate their children. They aren’t all “tin-foil hatters” or antiestablishment rednecks; many of them are suburban soccer moms and yuppy dads. 

Your definition of being anti-vaxx is also too narrow - it includes vaccine hesitancy and misinformation. One needn’t be a hardcore rejector of all vaccines to contribute to the problem. 

You can bemoan the imprecision of the term if you like, but it’s semantics at that point. The phenomenon as publicly understood is an issue which has gotten worse over the past decade. That isn’t in dispute. More people aren’t vaccinating their children than have in decades. And this trend collided with COVID. It’s really not that complicated. 

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1 hour ago, rcarlson said:

Incidentally, I hadn't heard of the fetal cell issue before it popped up here.  It piqued my curiosity so I thought I'd take a look around.  

That was an interesting read. It's amazing what can be achieved by science.

I guess if a person has that objection they could choose an alternative to J&J, does make you wonder whether these people would accept donated organs if their life depended on it? If they were in hospital, would the ask the doctor whether each and every drug they required was derived from something that they objected to? Would their morals extend to losing their life if it meant avoiding a treatment that was derived from a part of science that they had been persuaded was wrong?

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2 hours ago, rcarlson said:

I think fetal cell lines were used in the R&D for mRNA and production of J&J vaccine.  Not fetal cells, but lines taken from fetal tissue years ago and replicated.  Don't know how that fits into the religious objection, but I think that's the basis.  

All correct. The line of stem cells used in most modern vaccinology derives from a single aborted fetus from decades ago. 

In the US this is primarily of concern to Catholics and other opponents of abortion for obvious reasons. The Church’s stance is nuanced - vaccines derived from these stem cells are, in its view, morally acceptable when there are no alternative vaccines which don’t use them and where forgoing vaccination creates significant risk to the public’s health. 

The Church has presumably giving its blessing to the COVID vaccines because they meet both criteria. 

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12 minutes ago, cnov said:

That was an interesting read. It's amazing what can be achieved by science.

I guess if a person has that objection they could choose an alternative to J&J, does make you wonder whether these people would accept donated organs if their life depended on it? If they were in hospital, would the ask the doctor whether each and every drug they required was derived from something that they objected to? Would their morals extend to losing their life if it meant avoiding a treatment that was derived from a part of science that they had been persuaded was wrong?

I think the embryonic stem cell research debate touched off in the late 70's early 80's (I believe) ran through the litany of religious/ethical quandaries this all poses, and really, really deep dive could be had if you wanted to invest the time.  As fascinating as it all might be, I'm far too busy trying to resolve whether dress box BBFs are inferior to the SLBs and what the philosophical implications are if so.    

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5 hours ago, MrBirdman said:

You can bemoan the imprecision of the term if you like, but it’s semantics at that point. The phenomenon as publicly understood is an issue which has gotten worse over the past decade. That isn’t in dispute. More people aren’t vaccinating their children than have in decades. And this trend collided with COVID. It’s really not that complicated. 

And there hasn't been a vaccine of this nature for a pandemic or otherwise broadly infectious disease targeted at adults, where society would care about uptake, so it's not fair to say that hesitancy to vaccinate children existed but it didn't exist for adults since there were no vaccines to hesitate about. So we can't know from that perspective.

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1 minute ago, Bijan said:

And there hasn't been a vaccine of this nature for a pandemic or otherwise broadly infectious disease targeted at adults, where society would care about uptake, so it's not fair to say that hesitancy to vaccinate children existed but it didn't exist for adults since there were no vaccines to hesitate about. So we can't know from that perspective.

Correct - we have very comprehensive data on child vaccination because all schools must keep records of it for their students. 

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4 minutes ago, clint said:

Are you equating donated organs to cells taken from a murdered baby?

I think the idea is one does not know the cause/source of the death which made the organs available.

If one holds that the the choice to donate the organs makes it moral, then what does one say about the case of organs from a suicide (medically assisted or otherwise), where the person donating the organs is the one potentially murdering or asking to be murdered. And how does that compare to the case of the aborted fetus, where the parents aborts the fetus and donates the cells. And the myriad combination thereof.

And many organs will come from children who can no more consent or choose to donate than can fetuses. It all gets very complicated.

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10 hours ago, MrBirdman said:

Your definition of being anti-vaxx is also too narrow - it includes vaccine hesitancy

What's wrong with vaccine hesitancy? How is that even defined? Technically anyone who hasn't gotten it yet is hesitant and again, there are many logical reasons why someone would choose not to vaccinate themselves or their children. 

Ostensibly a mandate is focused primarily on those who are vaccine hesitant as there are many more of those people than true "anti-vaxers" out there. 

Your argument is that vaccine hesitant people are driving vaccine hesitancy? Where's the data for that? Maybe people are looking at the best data and making their own decisions? Again, there's a better scientific case to be made for a healthy 30 year old not to get the vaccine than to get it. What about those who've had COVID? Why on earth would anyone who had COVID already get a vaccine? Are they "vaccine hesitant" as well? 

As far as the "vaccines-cause-autism-in-children" crowd, I would also not necessarily label them as anti-vax. COVID vaccination for healthy children is simply is flat-out unsupported by any scientific evidence or data and perhaps one could accept that looking at the best data they could get on board with a COVID vaccine for an overweight diabetic 75 year old. 

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36 minutes ago, NSXCIGAR said:

What's wrong with vaccine hesitancy? How is that even defined? Technically anyone who hasn't gotten it yet is hesitant and again, there are many logical reasons why someone would choose not to vaccinate themselves or their children. 

I think this goes back to the 3 types of people I encountered and their reasons for not getting vaccinated.

There are those who are biased against vaccines regardless of actual benefits and disadvantages. This includes the vaccines cause autism crowd. These are like the many people who eat gluten free but have no sensitivity or allergy to wheat, except their choice has consequences beyond merely themselves in this case.

There are those biased against the COVID vaccine specifically as a conspiracy or plot. This includes but is in no way limited to the 5g chips and vaccinated people are shedding harmful vaccine particles crowd.

Then there are those who just don't want to get vaccinated based on cost benefit. Which is where you think the vast majority of unvaccinated people lie.

The purpose of mandates or incentives/disencentives is to get people to get vaccinated for the benefit of others or society as a whole (decreasing transmission and cases in society as a whole through a larger percentage of the population being immune thanks to vaccination) even though it may not benefit them directly.

Those who view this only in terms of costs and benefits are more likely to be swayed than the other two groups.

Edit: and of course there's the case of the first two groups where people would need incentives/coercion to get vaccinated even when it is clearly a net benefit to them. I simply don't think that applies because we don't require other vaccines in adults that have only individual benefit like shingles, tetanus, etc.

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1 hour ago, Bijan said:

There are those biased against the COVID vaccine specifically as a conspiracy or plot. This includes but is in no way limited to the 5g chips and vaccinated people are shedding harmful vaccine particles crowd.

Yes, those are people I would classify as "anti-vax". As that position isn't grounded in science, data or cost-benefit it's clearly an extreme position that I've not heard anyone that would be in a position to influence others espouse, nor would a reasonable person be overly swayed by the argument if encountered. Have fears of 5G been increasing because of a relative handful of vocal crackpots? Not that I'm aware. 

1 hour ago, Bijan said:

The purpose of mandates or incentives/disencentives is to get people to get vaccinated for the benefit of others or society as a whole (decreasing transmission and cases in society as a whole through a larger percentage of the population being immune thanks to vaccination) even though it may not benefit them directly.

That's technically correct, but in this case I think we're specifically discussing the COVID vaccines. We can speculate about what people's positions may be in regards to a different illness and vaccine but in this case the data clearly shows that getting vaccinated doesn't prevent transmission, so it's very reasonable to question the basis for mandating the vaccine.

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2 minutes ago, NSXCIGAR said:

That's technically correct, but in this case I think we're specifically discussing the COVID vaccines. We can speculate about what people's positions may be in regards to a different illness and vaccine but in this case the data clearly shows that getting vaccinated doesn't prevent transmission, so it's very reasonable to question the basis for mandating the vaccine.

Smallpox vaccine didn't prevent transmission or totally elminate the risk of getting sick from smallpox. It was 95% effective. But it eradicated the disease. Not sure the covid vaccine rises to that level, but I am pretty sure it decreases transmission. and it might be pretty close to that level.

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1 minute ago, Bijan said:

Smallpox vaccine didn't prevent transmission or totally elminate the risk of getting sick from smallpox. It was 95% effective. But it eradicated the disease. Not sure the covid vaccine rises to that level, but I am pretty sure it decreases transmission. and it might be pretty close to that level.

True, but with a 30% fatality rate few needed to be told to get that vaccine. The majority of people who are choosing not to get the COVID vaccine are obviously assuming they'll get it (if they haven't already had it) and are ok with that. I don't think anyone would be ok with getting smallpox. 

 

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33 minutes ago, NSXCIGAR said:

True, but with a 30% fatality rate few needed to be told to get that vaccine. The majority of people who are choosing not to get the COVID vaccine are obviously assuming they'll get it (if they haven't already had it) and are ok with that. I don't think anyone would be ok with getting smallpox. 

 

Yes that is definitely true. I'm not entirely sure covid is the make or break society issue that it is made out to be.

But if there is an argument to be made for mandates for the covid vaccines it is the desire or need to reduce the number of cases by reducing infections and thus transmissions.

I'm not sure how effective the measles vaccine is but that had a much lower mortality though still higher than covid, and highly infectious, maybe a better example, though of course not totally eradicated but nearly absent in most parts of the world (save for flare ups due to anti-vax).

I gave smallpox as an example of how a vaccine can eradicate a diseases even though it is not 100% effective.

Edit: Seems measles vaccine is 97% effective after two doses:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7847598/

Edit 2: Also I believe chickenpox vaccine might be mandated for kids. Even though I think the US had about 50 adult deaths and 50 child deaths per year before vaccinaiton.

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