COVID Vaccine !

[Punkawallah]

And which freedom is that, the freedom to be a danger to everyone else?

We already have that one :-)

I think in this case the Feminists said it best with their 'its my body' campaign. Institutional compulsory medical procedures are a slippery slope - see the historical American compulsory lobotomies in California, and the ECT regime in this country.

Once the 'we know best' genie is out of the bottle, it's difficult to put it back again.

 

[C R]

We already have that one :-)

I think in this case the Feminists said it best with their 'its my body' campaign. Institutional compulsory medical procedures are a slippery slope - see the historical American compulsory lobotomies in California, and the ECT regime in this country.

Once the 'we know best' genie is out of the bottle, it's difficult to put it back again.

Allowing "personal freedom" arguments of the sort bandied about by antivaxxer types is also a rather dangerous slippery slope, that in time could see things we thought we had left behind like children disabled by polio making a come back.

 

[Punkawallah]

Or, indeed, lobotomised people that the medical fraternity consider 'make good house pets'.

Think we can agree to disagree on this one.

 

[Mo1959]

We already have that one :-)

I think in this case the Feminists said it best with their 'its my body' campaign. Institutional compulsory medical procedures are a slippery slope - see the historical American compulsory lobotomies in California, and the ECT regime in this country.

Once the 'we know best' genie is out of the bottle, it's difficult to put it back again.

Don’t know why people get so worried about a minority not wanting it if they’re so confident they are protected themselves. I hate the thought of being forced into taking any medical treatment.

 

[KnittyNorah]

Mandating certain health requirements - which may include vaccination - for healthcare staff (and for staff in some other sectors, too) is nothing new, terrifying or revolutionary. I can totally understand, though, why Germany as a federal government would not wish to mandate healthcare procedures, or legislate for sanctions against those who refuse, or who are unable, to comply with recommendations.

Those healthcare workers who are unable, through no fault of their own, to fulfil recommendations or requirements for infectious disease protocols are - at least in my personal experience - assisted in finding a different direction still within or close to their field of expertise but which has health requirements more appropriate to whatever the issue might be.

Finding different and appropriate posts for healthcare workers who cannot, for good reason, have a C-19 vaccination, will be a lot more difficult than finding an appropriate post for someone like me who was merely a rubella vaccine non-responder, and I believe those individuals who cannot for good reason fulfil the requirements deserve more consideration - and IMO 'first dibs' at the (probably few) suitable jobs - than those who merely choose not to have the vaccination for no good scientific or medical reason.

 

[Andy in Germany]

Allowing "personal freedom" arguments of the sort bandied about by antivaxxer types is also a rather dangerous slippery slope, that in time could see things we thought we had left behind like children disabled by polio making a come back.

That isn't the question being asked though: the only question before the courts will be "Is this legislation permitted by the constitution?"

 

[mjr]

Don’t know why people get so worried about a minority not wanting it if they’re so confident they are protected themselves. I hate the thought of being forced into taking any medical treatment.

Some are betting on herd immunity as a way out of this. Each refuser is a problem to them.

 

[PK99]

Some are betting on herd immunity as a way out of this.

What are you betting on the get us out of this?

 

[roubaixtuesday]

Some are betting on herd immunity as a way out of this. Each refuser is a problem to them.

Not so much a way out as an epidemiological inevitability, surely?

The only question is how we get there.

 

[C R]

Not so much a way out as an epidemiological inevitability, surely?

The only question is how we get there.

The inescapable fact is that we have only ever acquired herd immunity through immunisation, it has never happened naturally.

 

[KnittyNorah]

Allowing "personal freedom" arguments of the sort bandied about by antivaxxer types is also a rather dangerous slippery slope

It's interesting to note that the WHO's Smallpox Eradication Campaign which ran from 1966 to 1980, never used compulsory vaccination or even attempted 100% vaccination coverage as any part of its campaign (although certainly methods which would now be considered unethical were used at times in some places). Improvements were made in vaccination techniques, means of using less of the (always in restricted supply) vaccine and increasing the percentage of vaccinations that 'took'. But more was needed.

WHO developed the E2 principle - eradication escalation - which as a basic principle, used both vaccination and highly-effective methods of tracing cases., hand-in-hand. The first trial was in Sierra Leone, then the country with the highest rate of smallpox in the world. Sierra Leone was declared pox-free less than a year after E2 was started in October 1967. Of course smallpox and C-19 are so very different that direct comparisons of their eradication are invalid, and the world fifty-plus years ago was very different to the world today - but the desire to eradicate is just the same, and requires the same sort of original thinking that came up with E2.

 

[C R]

It's interesting to note that the WHO's Smallpox Eradication Campaign which ran from 1966 to 1980, never used compulsory vaccination or even attempted 100% vaccination coverage as any part of its campaign (although certainly methods which would now be considered unethical were used at times in some places). Improvements were made in vaccination techniques, means of using less of the (always in restricted supply) vaccine and increasing the percentage of vaccinations that 'took'. But more was needed.

WHO developed the E2 principle - eradication escalation - which as a basic principle, used both vaccination and highly-effective methods of tracing cases., hand-in-hand. The first trial was in Sierra Leone, then the country with the highest rate of smallpox in the world. Sierra Leone was declared pox-free less than a year after E2 was started in October 1967. Of course smallpox and C-19 are so very different that direct comparisons of their eradication are invalid, and the world fifty-plus years ago was very different to the world today - but the desire to eradicate is just the same, and requires the same sort of original thinking that came up with E2.

I agree with all you wrote, but I would point out that -to the best of my knowledge- there never was a widespread effort to convince people to refuse the smallpox vaccine.

 

[icowden]

Find the actual written advice from named experts provided to the government and then we can discuss it. Until then I remain of the view that this is a political decision by Johnson.

#

From the FT:

View: https://twitter.com/SebastianEPayne/status/1415017181348253698?s=20

 

[classic33]

We already have that one :-)

I think in this case the Feminists said it best with their 'its my body' campaign. Institutional compulsory medical procedures are a slippery slope - see the historical American compulsory lobotomies in California, and the ECT regime in this country.

Once the 'we know best' genie is out of the bottle, it's difficult to put it back again.

You ever had that treatment?

A few years ago it was the in thing for treatment for siezures. Six years ago it was removal of the hippocampus for the same condition.

 

[mjr]

What are you betting on the get us out of this?

I have no country to stake, so it's a different question.

Personally, I'm betting on avoiding catching it long enough for some combination of vaccination, treatments and probability to mean I don't get any more chronic illnesses as a consequence. If someone develops those plus testing and tracing into a workable elimination strategy first, so much the better!

Not so much a way out as an epidemiological inevitability, surely?

Aren't there plenty of viruses that we either don't have lasting herd immunity to or keep evolving to reinfect us, depending on how you view them?