That’s fine. But where’s the light at the end of the tunnel for the core group of socially conscious well behaving adults? I think technocrats really underestimate how many of those people they will lose if they just keep bending over backwards to accommodate anti vaxxers. We’ve thrown health care workers, critical workers that can’t work from home, school age children, parents, etc etc etc under the bus so that anti vaxxers can do their marches and go to church and generally make life worse for everyone else. Enough is enough.
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Like when we taxed the shit out of cigarettes and the number of smokers went way down? Look man I know that government coercion is a last resort but uh this is a global crisis and the Freedom Train is running over thousands of innocent people. There are precedents for the government steering behaviour on matters that are way less critical than this.
Same thing is playing out with climate change, right? Enough is enough, sure, but it doesn’t mean “punishing the anti-vaxxers” is feasible or that the attempt won’t backfire.
Ok, but on the one hand taxing cigarettes is not the same thing. It’s a much softer use of power. Another, I’m not sure that was a big part of decreasing smoking rates.
I don’t think he is talking about how bad your side effects were after getting vaccinated. I think he is talking about people who aren’t able to have an immune response because of some existing medical condition?
This is the key. Before vaccinations were widely available it was reasonable to tell people to rally up their reserves of discipline and make sacrifices for the greater good. But at this point the benefit of our sacrifices accrues disproportionately to the most selfish people. This is just a public policy disaster and it all turns on letting the anti vaxxers bully everyone else.
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Backfire what way? They are going to get more unvaxxed? There are degrees of punishment to, but the anti vaxxers drew a line in the sand at " you shall do absolutely nothing to inconvenience us" and politicians said “ok”.
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Yeah, looking into it I think that’s what he meant but it’s badly worded. Lots of people in the comments interpreted it the same way I first did.
OK, so we tax the shit out of the unvaccinated.
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That’s what I was just about to type. Toss in a “Vaccinated Tax Credit” and add it on to the child tax credit. Give a monthly payment of $300 or whatever if you’re vaccinated.
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As a 50+ who had AZ that’s cheered me up no end 
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I’m in the same club.
But the IFR is very low now. If you mask up in public chances are you’ll be totally fine. Even if people our age get it we’re strong odds on to experience it as no worse than a cold.
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Not exactly true. I live in a blue part of a blue state and most people have wanted some restrictions, but a fair number want to protest any restrictions at all. When and how kids go back to school in the fall is very much still up in the air. There’s still plenty of room for reactionary steps backwards.
This is all wishcasting; there’s no political will for any serious vaccine enforcement in red state USA. Maybe in Euro-land that would work.
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One of the most powerful learnings of this century so far is that social cohesion has a TON of value. There’s a big cost to punishing people who did the best they could over the past year+ to deal with this shit thinking about the needs of others while cowering to the slightest pushback from the people that latched on to most obviously self serving lies they could find.
Paying people to get vaccinated is a solid idea and could easily be pennies on the dollar.
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It seems to me that at some point you just have to choose between “let unvaccinated people sicken and die” and “the government takes coercive measures to protect the unvaccinated.” Either you let it happen or you stop it. And lockdowns are vastly more oppressive than soft-coercion of vaccination.
“at some point” should be “in some ways”
This assumes you can just stop it. It’s not actually possible. If you could do mind control on everyone sure, but it’s certainly not necessarily possible to stop it.
Maybe, but some would strongly disagree. It’s a matter of opinion.
With apologies to China, the US Federal government remains the single most powerful enterprise in the world for the time being.
Even try something like another round of stimulus checks where you get $2,000 if you got vaccinated before July 4 (“Patriot Payments!”) $1,000 if you get vaxxed before Labour Day. And look forward to the 2021 Xmas Vax Bonuses - more payments on the way for vaccinated Patriots! The sooner you get vaxxed the more you receive!
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Fuck it. Let’s get it all done. Vaccinated? Welcome to the UBI experiment!
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