re: Florida Surgeon General Seeks to End ALL Vaccine Mandates

quote:

---

The cost of the shot has nothing to do with my point. My point is that just because something saves us money, that's not automatically a good reason to mandate personal behavior. That has a cost all its own

---

Yes, there are some things you can mandate and some things you can’t. And principally, infectious disease is something you can mandate because of the fact that infectious disease is infectious. You can’t mandate good behavior, even if that behavior might lead to worse outcomes (such as the HIV epidemic in the US).

And what is the cost of a mandate? Be specific here.

quote:

---

The loss of freedom and the willingness of politicians to erode them further when they see it can be done.

---

With vaccine mandates? What?

quote:

---

Have you honestly forgotten some of the "elite's" behavior during all that craziness? Rule for thee, not for me.

---

That is the entire orientation of our political economy. Getting upset about vaccine mandates is definitely easy fodder for doing nothing about pharmaceutical capture of regulatory and academic institutions, and other things that are more important and we could possibly do something about.

quote:

---

Not just measles. Buy your healthcare sector stocks everybody - insurance premiums, clinical and public health costs gonna go to the moon if this goes down.

---

hopefully insurance companies wont cover these kinds of illnesses that could have easily been prevented by vaccines. If your parents are too stupid to vaccinate you then you are too stupid to save.

quote:

---

hopefully insurance companies wont cover these kinds of illnesses that could have easily been prevented by vaccines. If your parents are too stupid to vaccinate you then you are too stupid to save.

---

You can easily apply this to obesity and obesity related disease.

Also to Substance Use Disorder (drug addicts).

Also to Persons with alcohol use disorder (AUD).

Also to people with a history of inhaling combustable tobacco or marijuana.

Also to thrill seekers and their related, avoidable injuries.

If we nullified insurance coverage for poor life choices, it would certainly save money!

quote:

---

People get flu vaccines every year. A lot of people choose not to, and that will cost health care money. Why shouldn't it be mandatory?

---

I already told you why it wouldn’t be effective. We don’t have control of the transmission vectors either.

quote:

---

ETA And why stop there? A lot of people don't even get annual bloodwork or checkups. Mandate that stuff so we can save money.

---

I mean, you are supposed to.

With this nonsense fatalism, what should we attempt to control in terms of infectious disease?

quote:

---

Why is the medical community giving millions of people a flu vaccine every year if it’s not effective?

---

For me, it provides protection but its efficacy is too variable from season to season, again, for the reasons I’ve already stated. The same is true of COVID vaccines. It is generally a good idea to get vaccinated for specific patient groups though.

quote:

---

That's a poor attempt at a deflection. Nobody taking SNAP is forced to accept it.

---

"Mandatory" vaccination is something of a misnomer. People are likewise not forced to accept it. Most “vaccine mandates” are really eligibility requirements for participation in communal settings. E.g. you can refuse vaccination and be barred from enrolling in school and people can and do home school kids over such refusals.

We used to have compulsory vaccination in the country when smallpox running wild because you were even more dangerous to others with a disease that had a10-30% chance of killing you. The penalty was a fine, and technically they could jail you, but realistically this only happened if you were poor.

If there was a health condition that was contagious and had comparably bad outcomes to smallpox that compulsory diets or exercise could prevent, I would at least mandate it and definitely consider making it compulsory.

But I'm not opposed to some better solution with incentives than mandatory vaccination schemes to keep community immunity up at high enough levels for herd immunity. Any ideas for this?

quote:

---

I’m not talking about whether or not it’s a good idea, I’m asking why it shouldn’t be mandatory if saving money is the metric.

---

And I am talking about what specific pathogens we can reasonably mandate. I literally described the scenario a few posts up. I’ve already answered which pathogens fall into the category where mandated vaccinations would save money in the long-run.

No, I'm saying a vaccine mandate for school eligibility is analogous to dietary coverage of SNAP. You don't have to participate in either, but have to abide by the requirements if you do.