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| Silverfiddle Rant! |
"'Emergencies' have always been the pretext on which the safeguards of individual liberty have been eroded -- and once they are suspended it is not difficult for anyone who has assumed such emergency powers to see to it that the emergency persists." (Hayek, Law, Legislation and Liberty, Vol. 3, 1979, 124)
Joe Biden, announcing his totalitarian vaccine decree:
"We've been patient, but our patience is wearing thin, and your refusal has cost all of us." (Yahoo News)
There is zero evidence that the unvaccinated are a danger to the vaccinated.
This means that to entrust to science - or to deliberate control according to scientific principles - more than scientific method can achieve may have deplorable effects. (F.A. Hayek)
Another point of fact: Those over 50 are the cohort with the highest rate of vaccination. They are also the cohort that is overwhelmingly filling our hospitals and dying of covid
New Normal?
Hayek also observed (apologies, I cannot find the exact quote) that the problem with government programs of persuasion is that if the people cannot be nudged and cajoled into cooperation, the program will end in dictatorial coercion.
Post 9/11 hysteria spawned the golden age of the panopticon surveillance state and gargantuan bureaucracies--unaccountable to We The People--violating our liberties all in the name of keeping us "safe."
COVID has ushered in an age of Safetyism and Scientism Uber Alles. Can We The People claw back our freedoms?
See Also: Coordination Problem - Peter Boettke
"There is zero evidence that the unvaccinated are a danger to the vaccinated."
ReplyDeleteReally? I presume you aren't arguing that breakthrough cases don't happen. I can see how you might say that if the only acceptable form of evidence is a breakthrough case where the source of infection is unambiguously identified as an unvaccinated individual; but that seems like an unreasonable burdon of proof to me. Meanwhile, it appeals to my "common sense" (always a warning sign) that any behaviour which increases the quantity of infectious material in circulation can potentially lead to more cases, including breakthrough cases.
The unvaxxed are not increasing the quantity of infection material. They are a more hospitable host to the virus.
DeleteZero? OK, there may be cases where an unvaxxed passes the virus to a vaxxed person. I don't think we have good breakthrough percentages yet. The few anecdotes we have suggest 20-40% but I doubt its that high. That would really be news.
But say an unvaxxed passes the virus to a vaxxed person? Based on the data, for the vaxxed population covid is now the flu.
Unvaxxed 0-18 year olds are still not dying of covid at anywhere near the rate of a flu season death rate. Even 0-18 hospitalization, while scary and newsy is one-seventh the rate of the overall hospitalization rate.
Data also points to a paucity of cases where students have infected teachers. Among the traceable outbreaks in schools, it was an adult infecting another adult.
Silver said... "there may be cases where an unvaxxed passes the virus to a vaxxed person... say an unvaxxed passes the virus to a vaxxed person? Based on the data, for the vaxxed population covid is now the flu."
DeleteShort of an Aha! moment, but an important admission nonetheless, of which I am living proof, having had one of those breakthrough infections.
Now I have a generous employer who paid me for the entire month I was off work and mostly laying around in bed, contagious, with a fever and assorted other flu like symptoms.
But not everyone, especially those working in many service jobs, have the same options I had. So I'm guessing, for many, they potentially face unnecessary economic hardship if they, while vaxxed, get infected.
Based on what I've seen throughout the pandemic, conservative leaning ppl have generally dismissed these concerns as generally minimal. Why they ask, should the majority of the general public be burdened by all of these mandates, statutes, laws, shaming and haranguing for such a few cases.
For many the response has been essentially that government is working to solve a problem that either does not really exist or is so small, why bother.
Is that accurate?
Dave, I am certainly not dismissing your case, other cases like yours, or the deaths. What I am saying is, using data, we have to put these cases in proper context and magnitude so we can make educated trade-offs.
DeleteYour other point about people not having sick leave is a valid point of concern. There are various ways this could be solved. I know many on the left would like to see government mandated sick leave for all. Are we comfortable with government issuing such dictats to private businesses? I see this as a legitimate point of debate, and I'm not taking one position or another
Silver... certainly I haven't taken anything you've said as minimizing my case, or others.
DeleteI have struggled with your insistence that vaccinated people have nothing to fear from the unvaxxed among us.
It's simply not true.
I guess my larger question is one Chris Wallace touched on with the Gov of Nebreaska yesterday and we see across the south. Southern state governors and political leaders are in the vanguard of arguing against a mandate for Covid, saying it is a question of liberty and personal freedom.
And yet in those states, we see some of the harshest mandate laws for other vaccines. With no exemption in many southern states for religious reasons.
Why have those mandates largely escaped criticism as impinging the personal freedom and liberty of people? Why are people who are required by mandates in states such as Nebraska, Florida and Alabama to attend schools not "sheeple" also, the moniker used by many to describe vaccine supporters?
It seems that if vaccines really do represent tyranny, as some who comment here assert, simple consistency would require a view that vaccine mandates for small pox, chicken pox, mumps, measles, rubella, diphtheria, polio and hepatitis b should also represent tyranny.
Otherwise, opposition to Covid vaccines begins to look like it is more about politics than policy and beliefs.
I can't speak for the anti-vaxxers (I got mine in late April), but here are a few factors:
Delete1. I never said vaxxed people have nothing to worry about. I have said that for the vaxxed, covid is now statistically like the flu (a small percentage will get really sick, and an even smaller percentage could die, just as with the flu)
How scared are you of the flu? If you are vaxxed, it is now in your hands. You can mask, you can avoid crowded situations, etc. Granted some people have jobs where they cannot distance, but again, same situation for flu season.
2. The covid vaccines are different than the other ones you cited in an important way: They were developed at record speed, so they have not gone through all the testing the other have, to include longitudinal studies where they track the human guinea pig volunteers for years after administering the dose.
I will be honest, I think most of the holdouts are just downright stubborn. But the increasing torrent of propaganda, abuse and ridicule hasn't helped. It's done the opposite and just made them lock in further.
3. Some opposition is religious. All the vaccines were manufactured or tested with fetal stem cells. Although none contain fetal cells, just the fact that they were used in testing or manufacturing causes some to believe taking the vaccine is complicit with abortion. I am anti-abortion, but I took the J&J, but that's me.
Charity has been drained from social discourse, and all sides are to blame. What we are seeing now is just the latest fallout.
Dave,
DeleteI will add that the fear I see from many of the vaccinated is an irrational fear bordering on hysteria. Now, that is each person's right, but the government is fanning the hysteria and the press is fanning the flames of fear.
"The unvaxxed are not increasing the quantity of infection material. They are a more hospitable host to the virus."
DeleteI don't understand. Surely the unvaxed form a cohort more hospitable hosts => more transmission => more infected hosts in that cohort => increased quantity of infectious material?
"covid is now statistically like the flu ... How scared are you of the flu?"
Background concern is low, but my concern ramps markedly when a big outbreak flares up in my locality. Covid is more infectious than typical 'flus. (NB: I should actually check this later...) The reason my attitude towards covid is different from my attitude towards general 'flu is the greater immediate potential for a large, rapid outbreak.
It's like the extra precautions one takes handing a bag of explosives, despite that bag not currently being on fire. In that sense, it's no different to a bag full of inert material... right now.
"the fear I see from many of the vaccinated is an irrational fear bordering on hysteria"
I don't contest that one bit. Rational responses are in the minority on all sides of this.
"the government is fanning the hysteria and the press is fanning the flames of fear."
I am in violent agreement but I must be in a snarky mood this morning because I simply can't resist reminding you of that time when you told me off for "denying people agency and infantilizing them" when I was worried about the uncertainty and misinformation Trump was spreading last year.
I sympathise with the government who is forced to engage with all these irrational people on all sides. I don't know how to do that effectively, but I think that you're on to something here:
"the increasing torrent of propaganda, abuse and ridicule hasn't helped. It's done the opposite and just made them lock in further."
A very human (though infantile, lol -- you could literally be describing my youngest!) reaction. The line Biden is taking is clearly ineffective.
More hosts != more viral material. There are viruses living in reservoir hosts that humans may never contact, Better stated is more unvaxxed = more human hosts, but I understand your point.
DeleteIf this is now the equivalent of the flu for the vaccinated and less severe than the flu on the 0-18, transmissibility is less of a concern.
Propagandizing, herding and scaring people is "denying people agency and infantilizing them."
But, I appreciate you point (that I think you and I share?) about government communication and public discourse.
Here in the US--especially in the political and ideological arenas--most no longer speak to persuade; they speak to needle, goad and "own" the "other side." Yes, Trump was the king of that, but the left is effective at it too, especially since they hold the high ground of government, academia and the media.
Related to my last point: I have a pet conspiracy hypothesis (Not fleshed out enough to be a theory), that the left, including the press, elected officials and permanent progressive government bureaucrats have been slyly jabbing people on the right for decades, hoping to provoke a violent (and hopefully racist) outburst.
DeleteThey didn't get the large overwhelming response they expected (there just are not that many conservative violent racists). What they have done is activate the neonazi and KKK fringe, and an oddball collection of largely innocuous kooks.
@SF - I see some validity to that, at least recently. But a large part of that stems from being easy marks. Between the 'stolen election' nonsense, Q-anon, and the sad day of January 6th.....the Left has found it insanely easy to tweak the Right.
DeleteAnd I think a similar theme would be occurring were the roles reversed.
Silver... many of them are stubborn. As I've heard some ppl say, forcing me is not making it easy. There are always some who are born, live and will always be contrarian.
DeleteI just wish they'd say that. Be honest. Man up and quit trying to wrap that stubbornness in patriotism and a belief that government has no right or authority to mandate vaccines.
Because it's poppycock. The SCOTUS has affirmed the ability of the Fed in a health crisis to mandate vaccines. We've mandated vaccines from the feds for years. GOP governors across the country support and defend their mandates of vaccines.
You are 100% right. It's stubbornness.
BTW guys... I agree, the hectoring from Biden is not helping. Perhaps he should have just kept quiet and pushed the levers behind the scenes [for example, a Vax card to fly and other policies].
Just because there's a microphone in front of you does not mean you have to use it.
Dave, the Scottish case is not as clear-cut as you think. The danger must be big enough to justify government action. This isn't smallpox, this isn't the Spanish flu, this isn't polio. The mortality rate is less than 1%.
DeleteScotus case. Damn voice to text!
DeleteCI, I would love to know who started QAnon. That was a brilliant master stroke. It could not have been Americans, we don't have anybody that smart at info ops.
DeleteGood point SF; I have my theories.....it is likely an entity who has been prolific in a strategy of sowing dissension and distrust in our instruments and institutions of government. But I won't name names, Comrade.
DeleteThe Q-Anon numbers are likely less than the Left would surmise, and more than the Right wants to admit. And it's not as widespread as the creator would have hoped.....but it's masterful nonetheless.
@SF: I don't even consider it a theory, it's common knowledge surely? Divide and conquer is the oldest trick in the book.
DeleteSilver... the Scottish case! I like it better like that.
DeleteBut on that case, it was deemed a national emergency. Pres Trump declared a such an emergency on Mar 1, 2020 and Pres Biden reupped that determination on Mar 1, 2021.
I guess we can quarrel with the reasons, but if we are saying the pres does not have that power, where does it rest?
The courts? Congress? I may not like who is in office, but I would affirm the right of our pres to make such a determination.
I think a lot of polio cases are/were temporary or symptomless, not sure it would be as many as 1% of cases that left long-lasting effects.
DeleteJez... I'm not much of a math guy but in 1952, there were approx 58K polio cases and 3100 deaths. Mostly children. Also, I think comes comes out to about 5% of the people getting polio dying that year in the US.
DeleteUp until the mid 1950's when vaccines became available and widely mandated by state and local governments, about 35K kids and adults a year were disabled by polio. Those were some pretty long lasting effects, claiming both eventual president FDR and even my mom.
If we just look at raw numbers, the polio totals pale in comparison to both infections and deaths from Covid here in the US. Yet Americans by and large, even after tainted polio vaccine killed numerous ppl, still signed up and got vaccinated in numbers so high that we essentially eradicated the disease not only in the US but mostly around the globe.
Dave,
DeleteI don't have time to compare the numbers, I'll take your word (or at least not argue :-)
Here is a link to a data analysis. Polio was not trivial, and the very real lasting physical disability that people could see contributed to people's fears.
https://www.aier.org/article/no-lockdowns-the-terrifying-polio-pandemic-of-1949-52/
I'm not arguing that polio is/was trivial. I'm saying that the 1% mortality rate doesn't disqualify cv19 from being a big deal.
DeleteI think Dave's right, except we're comparing polio cases as in hospitalisations, with covid "cases" as in infections, many of which are not serious or even symptomless.
From https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/poliomyelitis "1 in 200 infections leads to irreversible paralysis. Among those paralysed, 5% to 10% die when their breathing muscles become immobilized." If we're comparing apples to apples, we could say the case (as in infection) mortality of polio is 5 to 10% of 0.5% (less the .05%). Or we could compare oranges to oranges and say the case (as in hospitalisations) rate of covid is in the 10% ballpark. (We should probably include some non-permanent cases with polio's hospitalisation tally).
The fact remains that the probability of a vaccinated person contracting a covid case severe enough to cause hospitalization or death is infinitesimal, according to the CDC, although they admit they do not have a complete data picture.
DeleteThey hysteria among the vaxxed is irrational.
In the UK we're at 1000 hospital admissions per day, around half of them are double jabbed, I wouldn't call that infinitesimal. And remember this bag of explosives is not currently on fire.
DeleteHalf of daily cases are people who are fully vaccinated???
DeleteThat is remarkable in a scary way. Do you know the age and health profile?
I am surprised that is not making bigger news. I don't think we're seeing that here, the CDC continues to say such cases are rare
Well, getting towards 90% of us are vaccinated now, so those cases are coming from a cohort that is 8 to 9 times larger than the unvaccinated cohort; also the vaccinated cohort includes pretty much all the vulnerable oldies etc. You know how the math be.
DeleteSome age breakdowns from the office of national statistics.
Infections are more common in the under-25s, but hospitalizations and deaths still skew to the elderly.
(If the CDC is saying that, I disbelieve them)
Jez,
DeleteThanks for the follow-up.
The CDC uses weasel words, but I've seen little evidence they skew their data. A more common this is for them to omit a slice-and-dice the data category that would reveal an inconvenient truth. In that vein, if they have data on hospitalizations and deaths among the vaccinated, they are not displaying it prominently.
It occurs to me that a number of us unshot risk health issues because of a reluctance to revisit a doctor who harangues us to get shot.
ReplyDelete++
DeleteAnd Biden's latest divide, blame and shame speech makes it even worse.
Or because doctors are no longer available. I had been being seen by my neurologist every eight months for my Parkinson's Disease. Last saw him in Sept 2019, so have now not been seen in two full years. No indication as to when he will resume seeing patients.
DeleteThe road to serfdom mentions "Planning leads to dictatorship because dictatorship is the most effective instrument of coercion and, as such, essential if central planning on a large scale is to be possible." But in that context, he's talking about the scale of planning necessary for executing a planned economy, not making a case against persuading the public in general.
ReplyDeleteHe also deals with it extensively in "The Constitution of Liberty," and I'm confident I've summed it up accurately.
DeleteHayek was not a hard, anarcho-libertarian. He was from the Chicago School, which causes the hard cores to view him with suspicion.
He was a supporter of government-provided infrastructure, for example. Much of his work dealt with that vast frontier where government action stopped and personal liberty began, always on guard against government infringement.
Hayek's point, in the idea I paraphrase, was that government can put a smiley face on it and ask, but if the people behind the policy are serious, they must end up implementing it by the point of a gun.
So, reasonable and prudent people in government would begin by asking themselves, how important is this? Do we really want to go down this road?
We've been cajoled, jollied along, censored and propagandized by government and their willing toadies in the press for a year and a half now. The dictatorial urge was behind it all, and many of us are sick of it.
DeleteThe latest is progressive TV blatherers smirking and snarking about how the unvaxxed should be denied a hospital bed.
That gives us a chilling look at what the left means when they invoke "Health Care for All."
You can see what the left meant by health care for all in Britain, because we have it.
DeletePeople say all sorts -- eg. folks have been arguing casually for the denial of treatment to smokers for ages, despite it never being clear to me that smokers' deaths and old-age care costs more then non-smokers', quite aside from all the extra duty they pay.
Not everything people say is serious, even on TV.
In the worst-case scenario where another wave threatens to overwhelm ICU capacity somewhere, that might be a thing, but not otherwise.
I was speaking of the American left. There are many on that side who would completely choke off everyone to their right if they could. The hatred is visceral.
DeleteCan We The People claw back our freedoms?
ReplyDeleteNope. Not under the current system. We stood by while the Executive usurped power from the Legislative. We stood by while the Legislative usurped power from the states. And we stood by while both usurped power from the People.
The system is designed, with media complicity, to distract us with 'ever so important' issues....all the while the usurpation continues.
We're collectively being played....and we just don't care. As long as we have comforts and facades of 'freedom', the game will go on.
I have to remind myself that I come from a different generation. One third of the first ship I served on were men who served on war patrols and were depth charged in WW2. My submarine lost control of a dive and bottomed in Long Island Sound 200 feet below its test depth. I continued to serve on that ship for another two years. My best friend was a member of an entire submarine crew lost when USS Thresher was lost in 1963.
ReplyDeleteI am a member of a generation that does not believe that length of time is the most important measure of life. Quality of life matters, and life lived in fear is poor quality life. Life lived controlled by fear is hardly life at all.
Tom's life was cut short at age 24, but it was a very good life. We served together for four years and he lived fearlessly and with an enthusiasm that brightened all who knew him. He loved being a submariner and I would wish no better end for him than to go down with his ship.
Life is a journey. The journey is joy and the destination of that journey is death.
Jayhawk,
DeleteWell stated, sir. My hat is off to you into those you served with.
While vaccinated myself, I can understand the concerns of those who feel that it's been rushed into use without being fully tested and don't wish to be part of the largest test population in history. Perhaps they should come up with some catchy slogan that states their position in simple terms that the Neo-fascists can comprehend. Something along the lines of "My body My choice" ;-)
ReplyDeletelol - Nice to see you back! Don't be a stranger.
Delete