[quote ImmyMc]@OMG12
I suspect that you would talk theoretically about this until you or a loved one are being denied cancer treatment because the unvaxxed are taking up hospital space and resources. But let's give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that you would feel the same if you were in that situation.
This isn't about eradicating disease. It's about getting it to the stage that we are able to "just live with it", as you say (i.e. the endemic stage where hospitals are no longer overwhelmed and there is enough collective immunity to protect the clinically vulnerable). The whole point about any of this is that we cannot "just live with it" until we reach that stage and we can't reach that stage until people are vaccinated. The vaccinations you mention from the past have got us to that stage now with other diseases! Measles still exists, for example, and so does Polio, but outbreaks are very rare.
You are being hyperbolic. Losing the individual freedom to refuse a vaccine does not inevitably lead to dictatorship. And this is the problem with your argument. Maybe it might do, but it is unlikely to be this slippery slope that you imagine it to be. Vaccines have been mandated many times in the past and have not led to dictatorships! Yes, it is possible that losing one individual liberty could result in losing more, but it is, as I have said, a "might". History tells us it hasn't led to that in the past so it probably won't now. The possible threat of a dictatorship in the future (which, again, is imo hyperbolic considering historically vaccine mandates have never led to this before) is not enough to justify overwhelming the health system, allowing the vulnerable to die, and bringing doctors and nurses to their knees with exhaustion.
Of course the problems in the NHS have been propelled by chronic underfunding, but 12-hour waits for ambulances are the result of Covid, and postponed operations largely the result of the unvaxxed in this wave. Chronic underfunding is also not the sole issue - even well funded health systems around the world are unable to cope with the weight of the pandemic. Vaccines vastly reduce hospitalisations. Vaccines will relieve the pressure on the health system and save lives.
As to the objections you raise, rules have existed for certain groups to opt out of mandated vaccines in the past, and they undoubtedly would again.
Human life is precious. I repeat: the freedom to refuse a vaccine is not more important than the freedom to live.[/quote]
Thanks for your response. It’s interesting about the initial point you raise being a “theoretical” argument, long before covid I have been in a very non-theoretical situation of being denied help from the NHS for ptsd because there were not enough resources in the NHS, presumably there would have been sufficient resources in the nhs had people not been selfish enough to be obese, smoke, drunk alcohol etc etc. the NHS has been overwhelmed seasonally for years. Every year it’s hit the headlines but people appear to be forgetting this.
Yes tge erosion of individual freedoms might not lead to a dictatorship, just as mandatory vaccination might lead to the NHS not being overwhelmed but the latter is just as uncertain as the former.there’s such a backlog built up within the nhs now that was built up both before vaccination and,yes, before covid that there is probably no chance of the nhs going back to how people want it to be (it it was ever there before) as I mentioned before, treatment being curtailed through lack of resources is not something which as appeared because of unvaccinated people.
Even with mandatory vaccinations not everyone will be vaccinated. What are you going to do to those with those people? Find them? Imprison them? Hold them down and forcibly inject them?
All the problems which existed in the nhs for years have been highlighted by covid. Not to put too finer point on things, those who would potentially have been in hospital beds with flu this year have probably been greatly reduced by the deaths last year.
Although the is undoubtedly some additional pressure on the nhs, it’s become easy to say “because of covid” for so many things and blame a small group of people for the failures of a system already in collapse. People like somewhere to focus their anger.
So whilst we wait for a brain scan for my son, I’m not blaming those exercising person freedom, I’m looking at the long established failures of the system. I realise that establishing the causative effect (rather than correlative effect) of adult people being unvaccinated against a respiratory illness the availability of paediatric scanning services will be a perpetual state of “might”, “what ifs?” Society is always going to be too complicated for over simplified cause and effect. What you can do is look at historical patterns, where you have state sanctioned limitation of personal freedoms, media (and its historical counterpart, the Church) whipping up popularist scapegoating and linked ostracisation it has very rarely worked out well. This significantly leans the might into the probably.