It's easy to ask for sacrifice from the unvaccinated. The sacrifice the rest of us make to live in a free society is to accept that even lunatics have rights.
I just don't get it. I really don't. Why is everybody acting as if there are only two positions here; either you support vaccine mandates or you are an anti-vaxxer who puts everybody's children at risk.
Has nobody actually ever read the vaccine approvals, or the monographs, or understands how science works, or how risk management works, or checked the risk mitigation plan for the vaccines?
By way of comparison, several hundred are killed per year in car accidents and 50-60 die by drowning. Hospitalizations show similar comparison rates.
Or even in adults. What is the probability and size of harm to a vaccinated person from a random unvaccinated person, especially if the unvaccinated person has been screened by other methods? How does it compare to other regular risks we accept?
Heck, the literature strongly suggests that prior COVID-19 patients have much stronger immunity and duration than the vaccines. They are less of a risk, even unvaccinated, than a vaccinated person. Yet we treat them like they are high risk?
OK, but wouldn't it be better to vaccinate them anyway, to eliminate those 10 or so? What's the harm? Read the damn monographs. E.g., Moderna monograph, Section 7.1:
"One limitation of the data at this time is the lack of information on the long-term safety and efficacy of the vaccine. The identified limitations are managed through labelling and the Risk Management Plan. The Phase 3 Study is ongoing and will continue to collect information on the long-term safety and efficacy of the vaccine.”
Labeling means the risk is managed by informed consent of the patient. It diversifies the risk. The Risk Management Plan monitors outcomes after the fact and updates the monographs, so that future vaccinators can make up-to-date informed consent to take the risk.
Trudeau is eliminating all risk mitigation completely. He is confusing absence of evidence of harm with evidence of absence of harm. He is confusing the overall approval risk-benefit tradeoffs so that people *can* take the vaccines with the individual case-by-case risk-benefit calculations in which they decide if they *should* take the vaccines.
These are classic errors in risk management that brought down two space shuttles, heavily contributed to Chernobyl, and caused the Thalidomide tragedy, except in the U.S. where Canadian Frances Kelsey withheld approval because the absence of evidence of harms, and even some evidence of absence of harms in rats, was not enough and she required long-term safety testing. She saved many American babies. Sadly, Canada approved Thalidomide in 1961.
I haven't even touched on rights, or alternative methods for comparison, of which there are many issues. There's also the underlying Trolley problem in moral philosophy of putting younger people at potentially longer risk with less benefit, all to save older people. There's also a game theoretic Prisoners Dilemma social game here that remains undiscussed.
And, I'm double-vaccinate and recommend them to almost everybody. But I also recognize that we're all taking a chance here, and there is significant risk mitigation value in allowing people to decide for themselves.
I don't get why the press doesn't actually read the approvals and monographs, or understand the unknown long-term risks, or the short-term risks, and doesn't do the math or propose alternative solutions.
For example, a young woman with prior COVID infection and immunity, working remotely in an are with low count, may well be better off to go last; meaning wait until everybody else gets vaccinated and wait until more data comes in. There doesn't seem to be any net benefit to her and it's all risk.
So many highly intellectual and professional reasons to object, and yet even critics in the media, like here, just focus on it being stupid people and whether or not they have the right to be stupid.
I'm disappointed in the press as a whole here. And politicians. Do better jobs. Read and understand the materials. Understand how risk works, and how to mitigate it. Do the math. Stop being lazy and single-minded.
For someone so keenly pained and disappointed at having to strenuously point out that the appropriate attention to details is typically absent in media and politics, I'm a little confused that you haven't noticed the tiny little detail that most folks are not.
Simplified binary oppositions are, as you note, the norm, in public conversations and in the media and the politics which the public consumes.
"Has nobody actually ever read the vaccine approvals, or the monographs, or understands how science works, or how risk management works, or checked the risk mitigation plan for the vaccines?"
Very simply answer here. No. They have not.
Most folks do not read medical journals, monographs, philosophy of science or risk management analyses.
Thus the role of metaphors and analogies, simplified binaries, and experts and pundits showing up to explain, interpret and simplify.
Welcome to planet Earth. Welcome to democratic politics addressing large swaths of the general public in a general election.
So, as you have apparently done for your own wise reasons, like most folks, who got the vaccine to reduce (not eliminate) the risk, you can sit back and enjoy the ride at the risk roulette casino. The drinks are always flowin and the boobs be always bouncin, and the drunken crowd never stops jumpin to the music as shredded monographs transformed into confetti flutter all about them like shiny clouds of delight!
You are right, of course. I should have been more precise and less generalised. I'm more frustrated than confused.
I expect it from the mainstream press, whether the politically partisan press outlets or the activist "journalists", which are often one and the same these days.
But the seasoned press know how to ask questions, and The Line here claims to be the sort of outlet that calls out the bullshit.
I'm not even The Press, but my first thought when Trudeau claims the unvaccinated are a threat to children is to actually check the stats on children. Or when he says the science is on his side to actually check what the science says.
And considering how big a deal the rapid approval was, I thought everybody, at least in the press, fully understood that the vaccines were approved for emergency use but still had long-term risks, so maybe go read those approvals and what the state of those risks are, or what the risk mitigation plan is.
To me these are very basic questions, and checking a claim is basic journalism, and The Line claims to be nonconforming journalists unconstrained to toe the line of a narrative.
I'm so frustrated at the lack of any quality journalism by any journalist anywhere on this topic that I can find. Even just basic checking of claims.
Maybe I'm in denial of just how bad journalism has become, even the veterans.
Thanks for the metaphorical " face slap". I still don't get it why even critical journalists don't think or bother to read the approvals and risk mitigation plan, but I accept that there's jusy very few good journalists around.
Well there you go, I think someone may have heard you. At least regarding the need for further discussion on the topic of risk management at any rate...🙃
Thank you for posting this, specifically the part about vaccine mandates. I have now become a paying subscriber on account of it.
While I disagree with you in part (there is pretty compelling evidence that people who have already recovered from Covid do not benefit themselves or society from then getting vaccinated, which would also expose them to risk from non-trivial side effects), this disagreement pales in comparison to the points on which we agree. I see these as being that people have a fundamental right in a free society to non-violently protest; and that these vaccine mandates are in fact a massive infringement on people's freedom and personal autonomy, to which people can legitimately object. I notice that you don't come right out and say that this infringement is actually unjustified, but the way you describe the mandates makes it clear that you don't support them, and that you are uncomfortable with the Liberal campaign's attempts to whip up and benefit from anger or hatred against the unvaccinated.
The most important thing of all is that you see the unvaccinated as fellow humans and fellow Canadians who have some rights and deserve not to be unreasonably vilified and oppressed. That in itself sets you apart from most journalists (and quite possibly Canadians) right now, and is enough to make me want to support you and consider you a friend.
The unvaccinated are putting others at harm - kids who can’t be vaccinated, and the people who need access to health care services that are instead being used to treat preventable cases of COVID. If not for those effects, I really would say to hell with them, it’s on their heads.
These vaccine mandates are being misconstrued as compelling people to take a vaccine. They’re not - it’s shifting the burden of COVID mitigations onto those who’ve taken a completely unreasonable position of refusing a vaccine in the face of overwhelming evidence that it works and is safe. This isn’t novel, nor is it unreasonable. If you had TB, you’d similarly be prevented from participating in public life until you’re treated.
I support people with active Covid staying home. Staying out of society for a short period of time while recovering from an illness is a reasonable infringement on liberty. This is quite different from suspending people's rights because they might one day get sick.
The problem all along has been that you can be infected and infectious with COVID for a week or more before you notice the symptoms. Even the rapid tests are not totally effective because it takes time for antibodies to build to a detectable level. As the Trump White House discovered when they tried to use that as their primary mitigation.
You can be (unless you have already recovered from Covid), although for perhaps only for a couple of days. But that makes it very very much less likely. Like the difference between "proved guilty beyond a reasonable doubt" and "guilty until proven innocent". The difference between a free society and a tyranny.
I think a mandate does mean compelling people to take a vaccine. It may be an unreasonable position to you and me but they would argue that we are the unreasonable ones. TB and COVID are not really in the same league.
You’re right, but not in the way that you think. There’s both a vaccine and treatment available for TB, and it’s no longer endemic due to a sustained, long term health campaign. It’s just as contagious, but it doesn’t transmit as an aerosol. All of those social distancing measures from early in the pandemic were in fact developed for TB in the 1950s. TB also won’t kill you as quickly.
So 80% of us are vaccinated. What was the point if the 20% can somehow put us all in harms way? How does that change if we are at 90%? Aren't we already at the "herd immunity" rate? If the vaccinated can get and pass on COVID is the vaccine just to lessen the severity? Since I'm vaccinated why should I care if there is a mandate forcing others, passports or other reductions in personal liberties?
Trudeau is proposing similar tactics for his climate alarmism. And just like COVID, no nuanced conversations and solutions.
What I Still don't understand is why no one is paying attention the lethality, or the lack of lethality, this is. It acts like a flu, and in some cases the flu is deadlier to children, but we have lived with it, and the common cold. All of a sudden, we became dysfunctional germaphobes.
This is not about health. It is about control. Do we want government and corporations micromanage our lives?
Vance, the addled politicians and their mandarins can't see the transition from pandemic to endemic. Probably because they are drunk on the control and extra-constitutional use of the acts of public health.
You may not care now, Dan, but when the tyrannical majority comes for you to curtail your freedoms for whatever future minority position you hold very dearly, you will understand, only too late. That's why I am against government-mandated vaccination policies, even though I made the sane decision to get vaccinated.
That sounds noble when you put it like that, but the minority position you’re describing here is more like protesting criminal sanctions for drunk driving than a principled stand for human rights.
George, drunk driving involves intentionally and willingly putting intoxicating substances into your body. It does not follow that intentionally and willingly refusing a vaccine leads to getting a virus that you can pass on to others.
It’s more similar than you think. A disease is prevalent, it’s highly infectious, and you can can catch it and be infectious for several days before noticing your symptoms. “I’ve just had a few drinks, and I feel fine” reflects the same negligence as as ignoring a high probability of getting infected and spreading infection if you continue public interactions without vaccination and without other mitigations.
What would you say that probability actually is? Specifically the added risk of death to someone else that a person creates by not getting vaccinated? One in ten, one in a thousand, one in a million, one in a billion? How much risk is one allowed to impose on others by, say, driving? Can one legitimately impose a similar risk by refusing to be vaccinated? Is one imposing any risk at all, if those other people can stay home to protect themselves?
I thank God I don't live in your country George. A country where refusing a vaccine is a criminal offence. At this point you and I have no common ground on which to even debate.
It’s not a criminal offense, and it wouldn’t be a criminal offense under the proposed mandates. That’s your error: nobody is making you get a vaccine, full stop. However, you are not going to be allowed to expose others to risk because of your decision. Your right to swing your arms stops where it hits someone else’s nose. Your right to refuse mitigations like masks and vaccines stops when it can impact other people. When kids can be vaccinated and the hospitals aren’t being overwhelmed with COViD cases, the calculation changes.
1) the infection rate among that 20% is high enough to overwhelm the limited capacity of our health care system. Hospital ICUs and ERs are normally at capacity without all of these cases handling the usual heart attacks, accidents, accidents, and acute illnesses that can’t be prevented with a vaccine. It also means elective surgeries continue to be postponed (the term is misleading - that includes hip replacements, cancer surgeries, and all sorts of other things.)
2) Kids can’t be vaccinated yet. They may be affected at a lower rate, but that’s still a lot of kids who are getting sick unnecessarily.
And yes, if you’re vaccinated you can still get COViD and pass it on. However, you’re only about 5-10% as likely to get COVID, so it still results in a big decrease in infection rates. And yes, you’re almost certainly not going to get seriously ill - see point 1) for why that’s important.
No, it doesn’t. The bigger problem would be continuing to employ people who put the people in their care at risk by refusing to follow precautions. Perhaps you’d also think it’s unreasonable to fire people for refusing to wash their hands regularly because their hands are getting chapped and inflamed. Because that’s actually a thing, and is associated with outbreaks of c.difficile in health care facilities.
Do unvaccinated health care workers really put other people at risk more than the loss of ICU capacity would? If so, that would imply that a substantial amount of the risk of Covid last year came from cases originating in hospitals, because no health care workers were vaccinated then. Do we believe that is true? Numbers matter in the real world. For example, if 10% of cases last year came from hospitals (do you think it was that high?), and 90% of hospital workers are now vaccinated, firing the unvaccinated ones would reduce Covid cases by 1% and hospital capacity by 10%. That seems to me to be a poor deal, if we believe hospital capacity is constrained.
Well, based on a limited sample (my wife being an emergency nurse who was previously a critical care nurse and is in touch with her colleagues), the number of nurses in those areas who've refused vaccination are zero. The real risk to critical care capacity is the burn-out of nurses who've stopped taking extra shifts or quit after 18 months of dealing with COVID cases. That's something like a quarter of the critical care nurses. They handled wave 1 and wave 2. Wave 3 was the tipping point for most, as it seemed completely unnecessary. Wave 4 is beyond the pale, given that 90% of the cases are people who are unvaccinated.
That's good news too - if 90% of the hospitalized cases are from the 20% of the population who are unvaccinated, then vaccine efficacy is 97% at protecting against hospitalization. One would think that the vaccinated would be satisfied with that and not still want to persecute the unvaccinated.
1. Is that really the case. It doesn't seem to be the case here in Ontario. Are you blaming anti-vaxers for the limitations that have hampered healthcare in Canada long before COVID showed up.
2. My understanding is that COVID provides less of a risk to children than the various strains of the flu that recur annually.
So if the unvaxed get Covid at a high rate, they are de facto being immunized at a high rate.
The limitations in heath care capacity are a fact that has to be dealt with. Woulda, coulda, shoulda, but right now we're dealing with a system that's overloaded and is becoming increasingly unsafe. We can build out the capacity, but that solution takes months or years based on training people and building up facilities.
As far as children, I think you're conflating statistics on how many kids have died of the flu vs. how many have died of COVID. All of the data indicates that COVID results in significantly more serious illness than the flu, even in kids. The difference is that many more kids have been exposed to and contracted the flu than have been exposed to COVID. The data on this isn't great - there's many confounding factors such as the fact that kids were generally more sheltered from COVID exposure over the past 18 months, and that limited COVID testing was aimed mostly at adults and excluded a lot of children.
To your last point, the problem is that the raw case fatality rate for COVID is something like 1% for 20-29 year olds. Deaths attributed to COVID vaccines are 0.002%.
This is one of the big problems: many people overstate the risk by a factor of 100 or more, so of course they get scared and advocate draconian measures.
Oh, my mistake. In fact, US CDC data is 3,085 deaths out of 6,973,055 cases in people 18-29, or 1 in 2260. That’s better than 1 in 100, but on par with your chance of dying in a BASE jump (1 in 2500.). The difference, of course, is that exposing yourself to the risk of a BASE jump involves strapping on a parachute, climbing a tower or bridge, and then jumping off. You expose yourself to COVID by failing to get vaccinated and then going out for drinks with friends.
1. But don't blame the unvaxed for a shitty system even if they exacerbate the problem.
2. I've not seem any studies that back you up.
3. So let'em die if that is their choice. If you can choose to kill a baby you should be allowed to decide if you want to take the chance to die from Covid.
I admire your commitment to logic in the face of its apparent absence. As in, pols should "pick a lane". If pols were submitting their public announcements to a university prof as an essay to be evaluated. Yup, bang on.
But if a pol is making public announcements speaking to a highly segmented public seeking to net the biggest catch of fish, then perhaps not so much. If the announcement strategy is based upon the notion that 'folks hear what they want to hear', then double, triple, quadro-speak may serve the purpose. In the din of cross-talking talking points, each voter picks what they want to hear as important to them. Running a multi-lane campaign may net the most fish. Ouch, sorry for the mixed meta-four-lane traffic jam-boree ; )
I realize there is a tension between merely winning an election and putting forth a sound agenda for dealing with reality. Winning an election is a Pyrrhic victory if you lose the negotiation with reality. Chretien, I believe, observed, first, 'you have to win!' Suggesting that winning and governing are significantly different tasks, raising fundamental questions, of course, about democratic societies.
As for freedom in a liberal democratic society.
Absolutes are for demagogues. Liberal democracies are by nature flexible. Voters are free to choose. Free to disagree with themselves the next time around. So for the balance between freedom and restrictions, it's often a moving goal post based on context. Think smoking, seat belts, helmets, alcohol limits, etc.
A pandemic in peacetime is possibly an approximation of wartime with regard to a shifting balance of freedom-vs-restrictions. Furthermore, freedom of speech should not be confused with the freedom to physically threaten others.
So while I would agree Trudeau could have waited until spring to call an election (post-fourth, pre-fifth, waves?) and the Libs came out of the gate looking bewilderingly bewildered for an election campaign they had the freedom to plan and call. Nevertheless, regarding finding public support for where the balance between freedom and restriction should be in the context of a pandemic, an election in a liberal democratic society may be the best way to test the public mood for where that balance point should fall.
So vaccine mandates, passports, restrictions and penalties, seems like just the big ticket liberal democratic ballot question to justify an election. Even if the Libs & other pols only discover it halfway through a campaign based upon the liberal democratic opposition showing up at public rallies and voicing their mood in frantic shrieks of frenzied insanity.
Sometimes it takes a few missteps for a liberal democratic society to find its footing (think the shift from hoarding toilet paper to getting vaccinated), but in the long run, liberal democratic societies remain more sure-footed than their authoritarian alternatives.
So bring on the public performances, the public spectacles, restricted or not, and let the liberal democratic public exercise its will in a free, fair and open election. Amidst, of course, the noise and din of an ever-shifting reality.
The death toll, I suppose. What level of death toll will society accept as 'normal' along with all the other deadly risks folks manage in their daily lives within a less restricted environment. These are not absolute values, but societally and culturally relative.
In wartime, one is negotiating with an enemy. In a pandemic, the enemy doesn't enter into peace negotiations. There will be no white flag, no signed peace agreement, with the pandemic. Although the balance of freedom versus restrictions may be the result of political negotiations.
My point was simply that the balance between freedom and restrictions which in peacetime favours freedom, leans towards restrictions in wartime, and to some degree as well in a pandemic.
FIRST: conflation of two groups that are quite distinct;
Jen is careful to not explicitly state that there are only two groups in conflict, vaxxed/unvaxxed, but she sure implies it by omission. There are, of course, two separate kinds of unvaccinated:
1) Unvaccinated because their parents haven't taken them (lower rates for 12-17);
OR they haven't bothered yet because they feel little personal fear, and are averse to that probable day-o-feeling-crappy (even lower rates, 18-29);
OR because of genuine hesitation, even fear (often from disinformation)
2) Actual ANTI-Vaxxers, are against the whole idea
1) the genuine-fear people deserve the compassion and stuff
2) deserve the ...um...mean comments... that Trudeau dispensed.
So you can "have it both ways" as long as you don't conflate genuine-concerners with anti-vaxxers. (Like this article).
SECOND, Jen makes a huge leap, assuming that the reason for anti-vaxxers screaming truly sick insults is because they are beleagured by the restrictions to their activities. I'm not making a huge leap to assume they have a near 100% overlap with anti-maskers, because in my Facebook feed, it's an exact 100% of the high-school classmates in question. Anti-maskers developed the same level of spitting, crazed-insult anger over wearing a strip of cloth. It's not the degree of restriction, it's any request for unselfish behaviour at all.
It's good of Jen to stick up for Free Speech Rights, of course, but she's assisting with a shuck. If TheLine wants to "reject bullshit", it could reject the bullshit that this is "just free speech". The "speech" uses insults so emotional (fascist/Nazi/tyrant/traitor) that the hearer should have concern that violence may actually break out (as indeed anti-maskers have offered violence to merchants already). That's the old fascist/Trump schtick, to use speech so extreme it borders on "active speech" (we used to call them "Fighting Words") that can cause liability, but then demurely claim to only be defending "speech", when they're defending a right to bully.
The tactic should be criticized, not defended. Readers are invited to listen to restauranteer Jen Agg on Canadaland, she's recorded some of the people harassing and intimidating her customers, until she had to pull celebrity strings on Twitter to get the police to do their damn job and hold them back to a decent distance.
Too late, I just thought of the joke I should have used instead about "two groups": at least Trudeau didn't say the word "deplorables".
Hillary only said half the Trump fans were "deplorables" like sexists and racists, but they repeated and repeated and repeated and repeated that they'd ALL been insulted, conflating the two groups, until the conflation became one of those Truthy truths.
You'd be amazed at how many of those 42-year old Ontario women who vote Liberal and don't want to put anything 'unnnatural' in their bodies use botox. Just sayin'.
Thanks for that. The article contains the stats that I didn't have: hesitant=7% outright-refuse=7%
Man of the "hesitant" will only hesitate; as it becomes millions of people going a year without adverse effects, all their friends vaxed, etc, just over half will accept.
Please don't pretend that a compulsory mandate is a request. And "unselfish behaviour" is in the eye of the beholder. I personally find it rather selfish to force someone else to be vaccinated (or, frankly, even to wear a mask, although that is certainly vastly less intrusive) in order to very slightly reduce a small risk to oneself.
You are welcome to your opinions on what is a request, what is unselfish, and indeed, whether to believe epidemiologists estimating that a lack-of-masks cost 100,000 lives.
But, then, so is every voter, and in a previous reply to your comments, I brought up today's survey results, indicating my notions of these issues have 81% agreement.
BTW, today's poll results are up 6% from the 76% support in the previous Leger poll, just two weeks earlier:
1) The unvaccinated are threats for only 2 reasons: i) infecting others who could be vaccinated but aren't, ii) overloading the healthcare system which impacts others' ability to access treatment, and wastes money
2) The vulnerable who can't be vaccinated are going to be at risk no matter what. Other strategies are needed
3) Extensive data exists on the low probability of severe COVID outcomes in children under 12. This raises the bar very high for vaccine approval in that the probability of severe side-effects needs to be demonstrably lower than the already very low probability of servere symptoms. The prospective benefit of vaccinating children to reduce spread is not a consideration in the approval process
4) The threat of vaccine passports may drive higher vaccination rates, but that is the only benefit they might provide. See point 1 above
5) The ability of government to execute vaccine passports is very low: i)how soon could it provide a secure and transferable (acceptable at least across Canada, and ideally internationally) form of ID akin to a Drivers License, ii) private businesses would need to enforce whether their customers have the right "papers", placing them in line customer wrath and potentially offside with privacy legislation, iii) what expiry would such passport carry given the uncertain length of immunity conferred by vaccination
6) I won't believe that vaccine mandates are real until government fires some of its own employees with cause (aka no severance) for non-compliance. Won't happen
7) Restrictions like mask mandates and lockdowns only level the load of COVID patients on the health care system. They temporarily beat down cases, which reemerge when restrictions lift. Prolonged restrictions might be a gameplan if some new treatment or improved vaccine were on the horizon, but that is certainly not the case
8) Covid is endemic and will never go away. Society needs to accept that the risks can only be minimized
83.5% of the over-12 population is vaccinated, but the non-electoral 12-17 cohort is one of the lowest rates, so it's almost 85% of the electorate that are vaccinated.
I have demonstrated a 0.985 correlation coeffcient between the Canadian vaccination rates by age, and that group's probability of dying if they get covid: http://brander.ca/c19#vaxvsmort
...or, for a less nerdy proof: over 95% of those over 70 are all vaccinated, despite that age-group trending much more conservative, as virtually all anti-vaxxers are politically conservative. This strongly indicates the actual popularity of anti-vax views are under 5% of the population.
According to Macleans: The hesitant are not conspiracy theorists. They aren’t angry at the world. They don’t think COVID-19 is a hoax. They aren’t radicals of the left or the right — 61 percent of them say they are on the centre of the spectrum. Two thirds have post-secondary education. They might be timid, but they’re not stupid.
Almost half of them (46 percent) live in Ontario and well over half of them (59 percent) are women. A quarter were born outside Canada. Their average age is 42 and the plurality are between 30 and 44 years old. If they were voting in a federal election today, 35 percent would vote Liberal, 25 percent Conservative, 17 percent NDP, 9 percent Green — pretty similar to overall voting intentions for the entire population.
However, compared to the vaccinated, they don’t have a lot of trust in government. They also try to avoid prescriptions, dislike putting anything unnatural in their bodies and 83 percent say they are reluctant to take any vaccines. Most worry that COVID-19 vaccines haven’t really been tested for a long time.
Sigh. Now I have to nitpick my own nitpick. The "electorate" may be 15% unvaccinated, but the lowest vaccination levels are found in the 18-29 age cohort, and in persons of colour, who happen to be the least-likely to actually vote. The most-likely, (us old white people) are the ones at 91%-96% vaccination rates.
So while 15% of "the electorate" are unvaccinated, it's more like 12%, or one-eighth, of "probable voters", that are the target of all pollsters. Not a big deal; just sayin'.
Is it possible that some people are vaccinated and yet opposed to forcing other people to be vaccinated? On general moral grounds, or because some of those unvaccinated people are, eg, their young children? I assume that some fraction of the electorate are aware that children essentially never suffer severely from Covid, and certainly everyone knows that an EUA for kids under 12 is coming soon.
Certainly! Quite correct. While 85% of "the electorate" and (an estimated) 90% of "probable voters" are vaccinated, "just" 81% "strongly support" (56%) or "somewhat support" (25%) health pass requirements currently under discussion.
While it is true that idiots do have a certain right to be idiotic, the line draws at endangering the vulnerable. Idiocy is not without its repercussions.
That is where we are at. It is highly anecdotal, yet there is a palpable anger in those of us who are vaccinated. In numerous conversations, unprompted by me, the subject has been raised with bitter condemnation of the antivax movement. The vitriol is being driven in these conversations by the perceived risk of limitations imposed despite doing the things we have been asked.
It may be the wedge issue that works when O'Toole's stance is vaccines are good but a matter of choice.
Similarly the Texas threat is also surfacing with the anti-abortion law passed this week. Despite O'Toole's assurances, over half of sitting CPC MPs have voted against banning conversion therapy and opening the abortion debate in two separate votes. Like it or not, it's now a topic. At least that is what twitter tells me.
As for the mid campaign doldrums, I think I was there the day the writ dropped ... however
- Justin Trudeau's refusal to dump Saini is gob smackingly dumb
- Anime Paul's endorsement of the Liberal environment plan is head-shakingly simple
- Jagmeet Singh's providing a showcase for indigneous leaders to endorse a Liberal at his rally is eyerollingly wtf'ery
- And then Erin O'Toole's balance the budget in 10 years without cutting services or raise taxes eerily reminiscent of someone else's cavelierly shoulder shrugging magic moment
It is true that campaigns matter, it is also try that the are so infinitely trivial.
PS Jenn and Matt, more of the youtube interplay between you, please.
Just an editorial note. If I spot a typo in one of my posts, and no one has replied to it yet, I create a corrected copy, delete the original and submit the corrected version as a new post. Unfortunately Substack does not support editing your own posts.
Great article but you've got to keep up with today's progressive lingo. According to Merriam Webster, anti-vaxxer is someone who not only opposes vaccination, but also laws that mandate vaccination. Now, I am all for vaccinations (got my covid shots so now I'm one of the 'good' people....I'm hoping the sarcasm comes through) but I do NOT believe in forced vaccinations. So, I guess I'm an anti-vaxxer....
I just don't get it. I really don't. Why is everybody acting as if there are only two positions here; either you support vaccine mandates or you are an anti-vaxxer who puts everybody's children at risk.
Has nobody actually ever read the vaccine approvals, or the monographs, or understands how science works, or how risk management works, or checked the risk mitigation plan for the vaccines?
Let's start with the "won't somebody think of the children" aspect. According to GoC Epidemiological Update, as of Aug 27, 2021, page 25, the total number of deaths for people aged 0-19 is 16 people in over 18 months, or about a rate of 10 per year. https://health-infobase.canada.ca/src/data/covidLive/Epidemiological-summary-of-COVID-19-cases-in-Canada-Canada.ca.pdf
By way of comparison, several hundred are killed per year in car accidents and 50-60 die by drowning. Hospitalizations show similar comparison rates.
Or even in adults. What is the probability and size of harm to a vaccinated person from a random unvaccinated person, especially if the unvaccinated person has been screened by other methods? How does it compare to other regular risks we accept?
Heck, the literature strongly suggests that prior COVID-19 patients have much stronger immunity and duration than the vaccines. They are less of a risk, even unvaccinated, than a vaccinated person. Yet we treat them like they are high risk?
OK, but wouldn't it be better to vaccinate them anyway, to eliminate those 10 or so? What's the harm? Read the damn monographs. E.g., Moderna monograph, Section 7.1:
https://covid-vaccine.canada.ca/info/pdf/covid-19-vaccine-moderna-pm-en.pdf#page=8
"The safety and efficacy of COVID-19 Vaccine Moderna in pregnant women have not yet been
established. ... It is unknown if COVID-19 Vaccine Moderna is excreted in human milk. A risk to the newborns/ infants cannot be excluded."
Or the approvals, e.g., Moderna: https://covid-vaccine.canada.ca/info/regulatory-decision-summary-detailTwo.html?linkID=RDS00736
"One limitation of the data at this time is the lack of information on the long-term safety and efficacy of the vaccine. The identified limitations are managed through labelling and the Risk Management Plan. The Phase 3 Study is ongoing and will continue to collect information on the long-term safety and efficacy of the vaccine.”
Labeling means the risk is managed by informed consent of the patient. It diversifies the risk. The Risk Management Plan monitors outcomes after the fact and updates the monographs, so that future vaccinators can make up-to-date informed consent to take the risk.
Trudeau is eliminating all risk mitigation completely. He is confusing absence of evidence of harm with evidence of absence of harm. He is confusing the overall approval risk-benefit tradeoffs so that people *can* take the vaccines with the individual case-by-case risk-benefit calculations in which they decide if they *should* take the vaccines.
These are classic errors in risk management that brought down two space shuttles, heavily contributed to Chernobyl, and caused the Thalidomide tragedy, except in the U.S. where Canadian Frances Kelsey withheld approval because the absence of evidence of harms, and even some evidence of absence of harms in rats, was not enough and she required long-term safety testing. She saved many American babies. Sadly, Canada approved Thalidomide in 1961.
I haven't even touched on rights, or alternative methods for comparison, of which there are many issues. There's also the underlying Trolley problem in moral philosophy of putting younger people at potentially longer risk with less benefit, all to save older people. There's also a game theoretic Prisoners Dilemma social game here that remains undiscussed.
And, I'm double-vaccinate and recommend them to almost everybody. But I also recognize that we're all taking a chance here, and there is significant risk mitigation value in allowing people to decide for themselves.
I don't get why the press doesn't actually read the approvals and monographs, or understand the unknown long-term risks, or the short-term risks, and doesn't do the math or propose alternative solutions.
For example, a young woman with prior COVID infection and immunity, working remotely in an are with low count, may well be better off to go last; meaning wait until everybody else gets vaccinated and wait until more data comes in. There doesn't seem to be any net benefit to her and it's all risk.
So many highly intellectual and professional reasons to object, and yet even critics in the media, like here, just focus on it being stupid people and whether or not they have the right to be stupid.
I'm disappointed in the press as a whole here. And politicians. Do better jobs. Read and understand the materials. Understand how risk works, and how to mitigate it. Do the math. Stop being lazy and single-minded.
Read more here: https://adnausica.substack.com/p/a-canadian-behavioral-study-of-obedience
I'm a tad bewildered by your bewilderment.
For someone so keenly pained and disappointed at having to strenuously point out that the appropriate attention to details is typically absent in media and politics, I'm a little confused that you haven't noticed the tiny little detail that most folks are not.
Simplified binary oppositions are, as you note, the norm, in public conversations and in the media and the politics which the public consumes.
"Has nobody actually ever read the vaccine approvals, or the monographs, or understands how science works, or how risk management works, or checked the risk mitigation plan for the vaccines?"
Very simply answer here. No. They have not.
Most folks do not read medical journals, monographs, philosophy of science or risk management analyses.
Thus the role of metaphors and analogies, simplified binaries, and experts and pundits showing up to explain, interpret and simplify.
Welcome to planet Earth. Welcome to democratic politics addressing large swaths of the general public in a general election.
So, as you have apparently done for your own wise reasons, like most folks, who got the vaccine to reduce (not eliminate) the risk, you can sit back and enjoy the ride at the risk roulette casino. The drinks are always flowin and the boobs be always bouncin, and the drunken crowd never stops jumpin to the music as shredded monographs transformed into confetti flutter all about them like shiny clouds of delight!
You are right, of course. I should have been more precise and less generalised. I'm more frustrated than confused.
I expect it from the mainstream press, whether the politically partisan press outlets or the activist "journalists", which are often one and the same these days.
But the seasoned press know how to ask questions, and The Line here claims to be the sort of outlet that calls out the bullshit.
I'm not even The Press, but my first thought when Trudeau claims the unvaccinated are a threat to children is to actually check the stats on children. Or when he says the science is on his side to actually check what the science says.
And considering how big a deal the rapid approval was, I thought everybody, at least in the press, fully understood that the vaccines were approved for emergency use but still had long-term risks, so maybe go read those approvals and what the state of those risks are, or what the risk mitigation plan is.
To me these are very basic questions, and checking a claim is basic journalism, and The Line claims to be nonconforming journalists unconstrained to toe the line of a narrative.
I'm so frustrated at the lack of any quality journalism by any journalist anywhere on this topic that I can find. Even just basic checking of claims.
Maybe I'm in denial of just how bad journalism has become, even the veterans.
Thanks for the metaphorical " face slap". I still don't get it why even critical journalists don't think or bother to read the approvals and risk mitigation plan, but I accept that there's jusy very few good journalists around.
Well there you go, I think someone may have heard you. At least regarding the need for further discussion on the topic of risk management at any rate...🙃
https://theline.substack.com/p/sabrina-macpherson-we-need-to-get
I replied to this post with the following email:
Thank you for posting this, specifically the part about vaccine mandates. I have now become a paying subscriber on account of it.
While I disagree with you in part (there is pretty compelling evidence that people who have already recovered from Covid do not benefit themselves or society from then getting vaccinated, which would also expose them to risk from non-trivial side effects), this disagreement pales in comparison to the points on which we agree. I see these as being that people have a fundamental right in a free society to non-violently protest; and that these vaccine mandates are in fact a massive infringement on people's freedom and personal autonomy, to which people can legitimately object. I notice that you don't come right out and say that this infringement is actually unjustified, but the way you describe the mandates makes it clear that you don't support them, and that you are uncomfortable with the Liberal campaign's attempts to whip up and benefit from anger or hatred against the unvaccinated.
The most important thing of all is that you see the unvaccinated as fellow humans and fellow Canadians who have some rights and deserve not to be unreasonably vilified and oppressed. That in itself sets you apart from most journalists (and quite possibly Canadians) right now, and is enough to make me want to support you and consider you a friend.
The unvaccinated are putting others at harm - kids who can’t be vaccinated, and the people who need access to health care services that are instead being used to treat preventable cases of COVID. If not for those effects, I really would say to hell with them, it’s on their heads.
These vaccine mandates are being misconstrued as compelling people to take a vaccine. They’re not - it’s shifting the burden of COVID mitigations onto those who’ve taken a completely unreasonable position of refusing a vaccine in the face of overwhelming evidence that it works and is safe. This isn’t novel, nor is it unreasonable. If you had TB, you’d similarly be prevented from participating in public life until you’re treated.
I support people with active Covid staying home. Staying out of society for a short period of time while recovering from an illness is a reasonable infringement on liberty. This is quite different from suspending people's rights because they might one day get sick.
The problem all along has been that you can be infected and infectious with COVID for a week or more before you notice the symptoms. Even the rapid tests are not totally effective because it takes time for antibodies to build to a detectable level. As the Trump White House discovered when they tried to use that as their primary mitigation.
You can be (unless you have already recovered from Covid), although for perhaps only for a couple of days. But that makes it very very much less likely. Like the difference between "proved guilty beyond a reasonable doubt" and "guilty until proven innocent". The difference between a free society and a tyranny.
I think a mandate does mean compelling people to take a vaccine. It may be an unreasonable position to you and me but they would argue that we are the unreasonable ones. TB and COVID are not really in the same league.
You’re right, but not in the way that you think. There’s both a vaccine and treatment available for TB, and it’s no longer endemic due to a sustained, long term health campaign. It’s just as contagious, but it doesn’t transmit as an aerosol. All of those social distancing measures from early in the pandemic were in fact developed for TB in the 1950s. TB also won’t kill you as quickly.
So 80% of us are vaccinated. What was the point if the 20% can somehow put us all in harms way? How does that change if we are at 90%? Aren't we already at the "herd immunity" rate? If the vaccinated can get and pass on COVID is the vaccine just to lessen the severity? Since I'm vaccinated why should I care if there is a mandate forcing others, passports or other reductions in personal liberties?
Trudeau is proposing similar tactics for his climate alarmism. And just like COVID, no nuanced conversations and solutions.
What I Still don't understand is why no one is paying attention the lethality, or the lack of lethality, this is. It acts like a flu, and in some cases the flu is deadlier to children, but we have lived with it, and the common cold. All of a sudden, we became dysfunctional germaphobes.
This is not about health. It is about control. Do we want government and corporations micromanage our lives?
Vance, the addled politicians and their mandarins can't see the transition from pandemic to endemic. Probably because they are drunk on the control and extra-constitutional use of the acts of public health.
You may not care now, Dan, but when the tyrannical majority comes for you to curtail your freedoms for whatever future minority position you hold very dearly, you will understand, only too late. That's why I am against government-mandated vaccination policies, even though I made the sane decision to get vaccinated.
I think, Allen, we are saying the same thing. My point was there is no point in mandates, passports etc.
Dan, my bad. Thank you for clarifying!
That sounds noble when you put it like that, but the minority position you’re describing here is more like protesting criminal sanctions for drunk driving than a principled stand for human rights.
George, drunk driving involves intentionally and willingly putting intoxicating substances into your body. It does not follow that intentionally and willingly refusing a vaccine leads to getting a virus that you can pass on to others.
It’s more similar than you think. A disease is prevalent, it’s highly infectious, and you can can catch it and be infectious for several days before noticing your symptoms. “I’ve just had a few drinks, and I feel fine” reflects the same negligence as as ignoring a high probability of getting infected and spreading infection if you continue public interactions without vaccination and without other mitigations.
What would you say that probability actually is? Specifically the added risk of death to someone else that a person creates by not getting vaccinated? One in ten, one in a thousand, one in a million, one in a billion? How much risk is one allowed to impose on others by, say, driving? Can one legitimately impose a similar risk by refusing to be vaccinated? Is one imposing any risk at all, if those other people can stay home to protect themselves?
I thank God I don't live in your country George. A country where refusing a vaccine is a criminal offence. At this point you and I have no common ground on which to even debate.
It’s not a criminal offense, and it wouldn’t be a criminal offense under the proposed mandates. That’s your error: nobody is making you get a vaccine, full stop. However, you are not going to be allowed to expose others to risk because of your decision. Your right to swing your arms stops where it hits someone else’s nose. Your right to refuse mitigations like masks and vaccines stops when it can impact other people. When kids can be vaccinated and the hospitals aren’t being overwhelmed with COViD cases, the calculation changes.
There are 2 reasons we care:
1) the infection rate among that 20% is high enough to overwhelm the limited capacity of our health care system. Hospital ICUs and ERs are normally at capacity without all of these cases handling the usual heart attacks, accidents, accidents, and acute illnesses that can’t be prevented with a vaccine. It also means elective surgeries continue to be postponed (the term is misleading - that includes hip replacements, cancer surgeries, and all sorts of other things.)
2) Kids can’t be vaccinated yet. They may be affected at a lower rate, but that’s still a lot of kids who are getting sick unnecessarily.
And yes, if you’re vaccinated you can still get COViD and pass it on. However, you’re only about 5-10% as likely to get COVID, so it still results in a big decrease in infection rates. And yes, you’re almost certainly not going to get seriously ill - see point 1) for why that’s important.
As soon as the health care system starts firing workers for refusing to be vaccinated, it loses all claim to complain about capacity.
No, it doesn’t. The bigger problem would be continuing to employ people who put the people in their care at risk by refusing to follow precautions. Perhaps you’d also think it’s unreasonable to fire people for refusing to wash their hands regularly because their hands are getting chapped and inflamed. Because that’s actually a thing, and is associated with outbreaks of c.difficile in health care facilities.
Do unvaccinated health care workers really put other people at risk more than the loss of ICU capacity would? If so, that would imply that a substantial amount of the risk of Covid last year came from cases originating in hospitals, because no health care workers were vaccinated then. Do we believe that is true? Numbers matter in the real world. For example, if 10% of cases last year came from hospitals (do you think it was that high?), and 90% of hospital workers are now vaccinated, firing the unvaccinated ones would reduce Covid cases by 1% and hospital capacity by 10%. That seems to me to be a poor deal, if we believe hospital capacity is constrained.
Well, based on a limited sample (my wife being an emergency nurse who was previously a critical care nurse and is in touch with her colleagues), the number of nurses in those areas who've refused vaccination are zero. The real risk to critical care capacity is the burn-out of nurses who've stopped taking extra shifts or quit after 18 months of dealing with COVID cases. That's something like a quarter of the critical care nurses. They handled wave 1 and wave 2. Wave 3 was the tipping point for most, as it seemed completely unnecessary. Wave 4 is beyond the pale, given that 90% of the cases are people who are unvaccinated.
That's good news too - if 90% of the hospitalized cases are from the 20% of the population who are unvaccinated, then vaccine efficacy is 97% at protecting against hospitalization. One would think that the vaccinated would be satisfied with that and not still want to persecute the unvaccinated.
If zero workers refuse, then zero will be fired, and all of our comments on this issue are moot.
1. Is that really the case. It doesn't seem to be the case here in Ontario. Are you blaming anti-vaxers for the limitations that have hampered healthcare in Canada long before COVID showed up.
2. My understanding is that COVID provides less of a risk to children than the various strains of the flu that recur annually.
So if the unvaxed get Covid at a high rate, they are de facto being immunized at a high rate.
The limitations in heath care capacity are a fact that has to be dealt with. Woulda, coulda, shoulda, but right now we're dealing with a system that's overloaded and is becoming increasingly unsafe. We can build out the capacity, but that solution takes months or years based on training people and building up facilities.
As far as children, I think you're conflating statistics on how many kids have died of the flu vs. how many have died of COVID. All of the data indicates that COVID results in significantly more serious illness than the flu, even in kids. The difference is that many more kids have been exposed to and contracted the flu than have been exposed to COVID. The data on this isn't great - there's many confounding factors such as the fact that kids were generally more sheltered from COVID exposure over the past 18 months, and that limited COVID testing was aimed mostly at adults and excluded a lot of children.
To your last point, the problem is that the raw case fatality rate for COVID is something like 1% for 20-29 year olds. Deaths attributed to COVID vaccines are 0.002%.
More like 1 in 10,000, and of course the infection fatality rate is much lower than the case fatality rate - Ontario data here: https://data.ontario.ca/en/dataset/confirmed-positive-cases-of-covid-19-in-ontario
This is one of the big problems: many people overstate the risk by a factor of 100 or more, so of course they get scared and advocate draconian measures.
Oh, my mistake. In fact, US CDC data is 3,085 deaths out of 6,973,055 cases in people 18-29, or 1 in 2260. That’s better than 1 in 100, but on par with your chance of dying in a BASE jump (1 in 2500.). The difference, of course, is that exposing yourself to the risk of a BASE jump involves strapping on a parachute, climbing a tower or bridge, and then jumping off. You expose yourself to COVID by failing to get vaccinated and then going out for drinks with friends.
But why did you think it was 1% to begin with?
1. But don't blame the unvaxed for a shitty system even if they exacerbate the problem.
2. I've not seem any studies that back you up.
3. So let'em die if that is their choice. If you can choose to kill a baby you should be allowed to decide if you want to take the chance to die from Covid.
Another good read. A couple of things.
I admire your commitment to logic in the face of its apparent absence. As in, pols should "pick a lane". If pols were submitting their public announcements to a university prof as an essay to be evaluated. Yup, bang on.
But if a pol is making public announcements speaking to a highly segmented public seeking to net the biggest catch of fish, then perhaps not so much. If the announcement strategy is based upon the notion that 'folks hear what they want to hear', then double, triple, quadro-speak may serve the purpose. In the din of cross-talking talking points, each voter picks what they want to hear as important to them. Running a multi-lane campaign may net the most fish. Ouch, sorry for the mixed meta-four-lane traffic jam-boree ; )
I realize there is a tension between merely winning an election and putting forth a sound agenda for dealing with reality. Winning an election is a Pyrrhic victory if you lose the negotiation with reality. Chretien, I believe, observed, first, 'you have to win!' Suggesting that winning and governing are significantly different tasks, raising fundamental questions, of course, about democratic societies.
As for freedom in a liberal democratic society.
Absolutes are for demagogues. Liberal democracies are by nature flexible. Voters are free to choose. Free to disagree with themselves the next time around. So for the balance between freedom and restrictions, it's often a moving goal post based on context. Think smoking, seat belts, helmets, alcohol limits, etc.
A pandemic in peacetime is possibly an approximation of wartime with regard to a shifting balance of freedom-vs-restrictions. Furthermore, freedom of speech should not be confused with the freedom to physically threaten others.
So while I would agree Trudeau could have waited until spring to call an election (post-fourth, pre-fifth, waves?) and the Libs came out of the gate looking bewilderingly bewildered for an election campaign they had the freedom to plan and call. Nevertheless, regarding finding public support for where the balance between freedom and restriction should be in the context of a pandemic, an election in a liberal democratic society may be the best way to test the public mood for where that balance point should fall.
So vaccine mandates, passports, restrictions and penalties, seems like just the big ticket liberal democratic ballot question to justify an election. Even if the Libs & other pols only discover it halfway through a campaign based upon the liberal democratic opposition showing up at public rallies and voicing their mood in frantic shrieks of frenzied insanity.
Sometimes it takes a few missteps for a liberal democratic society to find its footing (think the shift from hoarding toilet paper to getting vaccinated), but in the long run, liberal democratic societies remain more sure-footed than their authoritarian alternatives.
So bring on the public performances, the public spectacles, restricted or not, and let the liberal democratic public exercise its will in a free, fair and open election. Amidst, of course, the noise and din of an ever-shifting reality.
Thanks.
If a pandemic in peacetime is an approximation of wartime, what signals will tell us that this pandemic is over?
The death toll, I suppose. What level of death toll will society accept as 'normal' along with all the other deadly risks folks manage in their daily lives within a less restricted environment. These are not absolute values, but societally and culturally relative.
In wartime, one is negotiating with an enemy. In a pandemic, the enemy doesn't enter into peace negotiations. There will be no white flag, no signed peace agreement, with the pandemic. Although the balance of freedom versus restrictions may be the result of political negotiations.
My point was simply that the balance between freedom and restrictions which in peacetime favours freedom, leans towards restrictions in wartime, and to some degree as well in a pandemic.
FIRST: conflation of two groups that are quite distinct;
Jen is careful to not explicitly state that there are only two groups in conflict, vaxxed/unvaxxed, but she sure implies it by omission. There are, of course, two separate kinds of unvaccinated:
1) Unvaccinated because their parents haven't taken them (lower rates for 12-17);
OR they haven't bothered yet because they feel little personal fear, and are averse to that probable day-o-feeling-crappy (even lower rates, 18-29);
OR because of genuine hesitation, even fear (often from disinformation)
2) Actual ANTI-Vaxxers, are against the whole idea
1) the genuine-fear people deserve the compassion and stuff
2) deserve the ...um...mean comments... that Trudeau dispensed.
So you can "have it both ways" as long as you don't conflate genuine-concerners with anti-vaxxers. (Like this article).
SECOND, Jen makes a huge leap, assuming that the reason for anti-vaxxers screaming truly sick insults is because they are beleagured by the restrictions to their activities. I'm not making a huge leap to assume they have a near 100% overlap with anti-maskers, because in my Facebook feed, it's an exact 100% of the high-school classmates in question. Anti-maskers developed the same level of spitting, crazed-insult anger over wearing a strip of cloth. It's not the degree of restriction, it's any request for unselfish behaviour at all.
It's good of Jen to stick up for Free Speech Rights, of course, but she's assisting with a shuck. If TheLine wants to "reject bullshit", it could reject the bullshit that this is "just free speech". The "speech" uses insults so emotional (fascist/Nazi/tyrant/traitor) that the hearer should have concern that violence may actually break out (as indeed anti-maskers have offered violence to merchants already). That's the old fascist/Trump schtick, to use speech so extreme it borders on "active speech" (we used to call them "Fighting Words") that can cause liability, but then demurely claim to only be defending "speech", when they're defending a right to bully.
The tactic should be criticized, not defended. Readers are invited to listen to restauranteer Jen Agg on Canadaland, she's recorded some of the people harassing and intimidating her customers, until she had to pull celebrity strings on Twitter to get the police to do their damn job and hold them back to a decent distance.
Too late, I just thought of the joke I should have used instead about "two groups": at least Trudeau didn't say the word "deplorables".
Hillary only said half the Trump fans were "deplorables" like sexists and racists, but they repeated and repeated and repeated and repeated that they'd ALL been insulted, conflating the two groups, until the conflation became one of those Truthy truths.
see: https://www.macleans.ca/society/typical-vaccine-hesitant-person-is-a-42-year-old-ontario-woman-who-votes-liberal-abacus-polling/
You'd be amazed at how many of those 42-year old Ontario women who vote Liberal and don't want to put anything 'unnnatural' in their bodies use botox. Just sayin'.
do you have any data you'd like to share? Personal anecdotes? :)
Thanks for that. The article contains the stats that I didn't have: hesitant=7% outright-refuse=7%
Man of the "hesitant" will only hesitate; as it becomes millions of people going a year without adverse effects, all their friends vaxed, etc, just over half will accept.
Please don't pretend that a compulsory mandate is a request. And "unselfish behaviour" is in the eye of the beholder. I personally find it rather selfish to force someone else to be vaccinated (or, frankly, even to wear a mask, although that is certainly vastly less intrusive) in order to very slightly reduce a small risk to oneself.
You are welcome to your opinions on what is a request, what is unselfish, and indeed, whether to believe epidemiologists estimating that a lack-of-masks cost 100,000 lives.
But, then, so is every voter, and in a previous reply to your comments, I brought up today's survey results, indicating my notions of these issues have 81% agreement.
BTW, today's poll results are up 6% from the 76% support in the previous Leger poll, just two weeks earlier:
https://montreal.ctvnews.ca/most-canadians-in-favour-of-vaccine-passports-for-non-essential-activities-poll-1.5556167
..projecting forward two weeks, it might hit 87% by Election Day. Frankly, I doubt it, but I'd put money on 84%, a 3:2 odds.
A few ramblings:
1) The unvaccinated are threats for only 2 reasons: i) infecting others who could be vaccinated but aren't, ii) overloading the healthcare system which impacts others' ability to access treatment, and wastes money
2) The vulnerable who can't be vaccinated are going to be at risk no matter what. Other strategies are needed
3) Extensive data exists on the low probability of severe COVID outcomes in children under 12. This raises the bar very high for vaccine approval in that the probability of severe side-effects needs to be demonstrably lower than the already very low probability of servere symptoms. The prospective benefit of vaccinating children to reduce spread is not a consideration in the approval process
4) The threat of vaccine passports may drive higher vaccination rates, but that is the only benefit they might provide. See point 1 above
5) The ability of government to execute vaccine passports is very low: i)how soon could it provide a secure and transferable (acceptable at least across Canada, and ideally internationally) form of ID akin to a Drivers License, ii) private businesses would need to enforce whether their customers have the right "papers", placing them in line customer wrath and potentially offside with privacy legislation, iii) what expiry would such passport carry given the uncertain length of immunity conferred by vaccination
6) I won't believe that vaccine mandates are real until government fires some of its own employees with cause (aka no severance) for non-compliance. Won't happen
7) Restrictions like mask mandates and lockdowns only level the load of COVID patients on the health care system. They temporarily beat down cases, which reemerge when restrictions lift. Prolonged restrictions might be a gameplan if some new treatment or improved vaccine were on the horizon, but that is certainly not the case
8) Covid is endemic and will never go away. Society needs to accept that the risks can only be minimized
Quick Numerical Nitpick:
83.5% of the over-12 population is vaccinated, but the non-electoral 12-17 cohort is one of the lowest rates, so it's almost 85% of the electorate that are vaccinated.
I have demonstrated a 0.985 correlation coeffcient between the Canadian vaccination rates by age, and that group's probability of dying if they get covid: http://brander.ca/c19#vaxvsmort
...or, for a less nerdy proof: over 95% of those over 70 are all vaccinated, despite that age-group trending much more conservative, as virtually all anti-vaxxers are politically conservative. This strongly indicates the actual popularity of anti-vax views are under 5% of the population.
According to Macleans: The hesitant are not conspiracy theorists. They aren’t angry at the world. They don’t think COVID-19 is a hoax. They aren’t radicals of the left or the right — 61 percent of them say they are on the centre of the spectrum. Two thirds have post-secondary education. They might be timid, but they’re not stupid.
Almost half of them (46 percent) live in Ontario and well over half of them (59 percent) are women. A quarter were born outside Canada. Their average age is 42 and the plurality are between 30 and 44 years old. If they were voting in a federal election today, 35 percent would vote Liberal, 25 percent Conservative, 17 percent NDP, 9 percent Green — pretty similar to overall voting intentions for the entire population.
However, compared to the vaccinated, they don’t have a lot of trust in government. They also try to avoid prescriptions, dislike putting anything unnatural in their bodies and 83 percent say they are reluctant to take any vaccines. Most worry that COVID-19 vaccines haven’t really been tested for a long time.
Sigh. Now I have to nitpick my own nitpick. The "electorate" may be 15% unvaccinated, but the lowest vaccination levels are found in the 18-29 age cohort, and in persons of colour, who happen to be the least-likely to actually vote. The most-likely, (us old white people) are the ones at 91%-96% vaccination rates.
So while 15% of "the electorate" are unvaccinated, it's more like 12%, or one-eighth, of "probable voters", that are the target of all pollsters. Not a big deal; just sayin'.
Is it possible that some people are vaccinated and yet opposed to forcing other people to be vaccinated? On general moral grounds, or because some of those unvaccinated people are, eg, their young children? I assume that some fraction of the electorate are aware that children essentially never suffer severely from Covid, and certainly everyone knows that an EUA for kids under 12 is coming soon.
Certainly! Quite correct. While 85% of "the electorate" and (an estimated) 90% of "probable voters" are vaccinated, "just" 81% "strongly support" (56%) or "somewhat support" (25%) health pass requirements currently under discussion.
https://rdnewsnow.com/2021/09/03/poll-majority-of-canadians-favour-vaccine-passport-for-non-essential-places/
While it is true that idiots do have a certain right to be idiotic, the line draws at endangering the vulnerable. Idiocy is not without its repercussions.
That is where we are at. It is highly anecdotal, yet there is a palpable anger in those of us who are vaccinated. In numerous conversations, unprompted by me, the subject has been raised with bitter condemnation of the antivax movement. The vitriol is being driven in these conversations by the perceived risk of limitations imposed despite doing the things we have been asked.
It may be the wedge issue that works when O'Toole's stance is vaccines are good but a matter of choice.
Similarly the Texas threat is also surfacing with the anti-abortion law passed this week. Despite O'Toole's assurances, over half of sitting CPC MPs have voted against banning conversion therapy and opening the abortion debate in two separate votes. Like it or not, it's now a topic. At least that is what twitter tells me.
As for the mid campaign doldrums, I think I was there the day the writ dropped ... however
- Justin Trudeau's refusal to dump Saini is gob smackingly dumb
- Anime Paul's endorsement of the Liberal environment plan is head-shakingly simple
- Jagmeet Singh's providing a showcase for indigneous leaders to endorse a Liberal at his rally is eyerollingly wtf'ery
- And then Erin O'Toole's balance the budget in 10 years without cutting services or raise taxes eerily reminiscent of someone else's cavelierly shoulder shrugging magic moment
It is true that campaigns matter, it is also try that the are so infinitely trivial.
PS Jenn and Matt, more of the youtube interplay between you, please.
_
oops true not try .. a warped Yoda moment
Just an editorial note. If I spot a typo in one of my posts, and no one has replied to it yet, I create a corrected copy, delete the original and submit the corrected version as a new post. Unfortunately Substack does not support editing your own posts.
Great article but you've got to keep up with today's progressive lingo. According to Merriam Webster, anti-vaxxer is someone who not only opposes vaccination, but also laws that mandate vaccination. Now, I am all for vaccinations (got my covid shots so now I'm one of the 'good' people....I'm hoping the sarcasm comes through) but I do NOT believe in forced vaccinations. So, I guess I'm an anti-vaxxer....
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/anti-vaxxer