How liberals are wrong about Covid.

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Political liberals are completely correct on several points about covid. Most political liberals agree.

- Covid is a global viral pandemic.
- Covid has killed about 780 thousand Americans.
- Covid vaccines are safe and effective.
- Getting more people vaccinated will lead to less load on hospitals and fewer deaths.
- There is a risk of mutations.

I am confident that everyone reading this who supported Biden in the last election will agree with all of these points.

Liberals get the following wrong:

- They exaggerate the deadliness of the pandemic (this affect has been well documented).

- They minimize the harm done by vaccine mandates and shutdowns. This harm includes both economic, and psychological harm.

- They support punitive measures over constructive ones. Political attacks make it harder to get people vaccinated. If you are yelling at "magatards" then reaching out to people who need a vaccination, you are part of the problem.

Public health is a complicated thing. Every action has weighed; the costs versus the benefits. We could do another complete shutdown and it would probably cut down on the virus, but the cost to our economy and our society would be very high (and we already paid these costs).

Neither extreme is the answer, and the liberal extreme is not productive. What we need is a constructive public health push that reaches out to minority communities rather than punishing them and relies on cooperation rather than political fighting.

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@maxdancona,

How maxdancona is wrong about liberals being wrong about Covid.

Firstly, I think this is just cherry-picking. maxdancona hears about a few things he doesn't like and immediately lays the blame at the feet of....the scary liberals!!! Besides, he's made these points again and again on other threads and they've been repeatedly shot down.

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- They exaggerate the deadliness of the pandemic (this affect has been well documented).

If it weren't for the modern advanced medical facilities and techniques, the rate of death would be much higher. You do realize that the pandemic has really stressed our medical system and that it is not going away, don't you? Can you point to some prominent liberals who are exaggerating the deadliness (rather than the social impact) of the pandemic?

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- They minimize the harm done by vaccine mandates and shutdowns. This harm includes both economic, and psychological harm.

Again, some examples would make for a stronger case. I haven't heard anyone minimizing the effect of shutdowns – they are always described as a necessary sacrifice, a temporary tool to upset the trajectory of infection. As far as the mandates causing harm, it's generally accepted that vaccines are an important component of public health when dealing with infectious disease. Small pox, polio, MRM vaccines and others have been successfully administered in this country before. For the first time, vaccine reticence is associated with members of one political party and being stoked by elements of the conservative media. It's not "individual freedom" that's under attack, it's the ability of the government to institute public health measures in the face of an emergency.

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- They support punitive measures over constructive ones. Political attacks make it harder to get people vaccinated. If you are yelling at "magatards" then reaching out to people who need a vaccination, you are part of the problem.

Again, just who is "they" here? Name a prominent liberal calling for punishing the unvaccinated or "yelling at magatards" (maxdancona's actual words!) Once again, maxdancona confuses a few informal conversations between a half dozen people on this message board with some sort of national campaign by scary liberals. It isn't. We're just a few people who are discouraged by the effect that reactionary politics has had on what might have been a successful response to the virus.

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What we need is a constructive public health push that reaches out to minority communities rather than punishing them and relies on cooperation rather than political fighting.

Lack of access to vaccination in minority communities is already being addressed by the CDC. The larger problem is the intentional spreading of disinformation by prominent conservative commentators and Republican politicians.

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When all of our sources for medical information have an agenda to spin us, you end up with a badly misinformed population, including on the left. Liberals often mock the Republican misinformation bubble which of course is very real; ask anyone who works at Hillary's pizza parlor.

And we do know conservatives have some loopy ideas about covid...

But what about liberals, you know the high information by the science people. In a recent Gallup survey Democrats did much worse than Republicans in getting the right answer to the fundamental question; "what are the chances that someone who gets covid will need to be hospitalized". The answer is between 1 and 5 percent. 41% of Democrats thought it was over 50%. Another 28% put the chances at 20-49%. So almost 70% of Democrats are wildly off on this key question, and also have a greatly exaggerated danger of covid to and the mortality rate among children.

All of which explains why today the states with the highest share of schools that are still closed are all blue states.

If the right wing media bubble has to own things like climate change denial, shouldn’t liberal media have to answer for: how did your audience wind up believing such a bunch of crap about Covid?

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@hightor,

Ok Hightor, I am criticizing "liberals" for taking what I see as an extreme view on covid. I accept your point that I am taking the most extreme statements.

I am curious on whether you agree with my main points.

- Do you accept that someone can be pro-vaccine and anti-vaccine mandate?

- Do you accept the point that vaccine mandates, forcing someone to get a vaccine against their will, infringes on a personal autonomy?

- Do you accept that there is a line to be drawn between two sets of values... on one side is public safety and on the other side is autonomy and privacy. And that where this line should be drawn is uncertain, different intelligent, well-meaning people will have different opinion.

I am not really arguing against liberals. I am arguing against extremism. I suppose the real question is whether you can be a liberal without being an extremist. I believe you can.

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@maxdancona,

Quote:

- Do you accept that there is a line to be drawn between two sets of values... on one side is public safety and on the other side is autonomy and privacy. And that where this line should be drawn is uncertain, different intelligent, well-meaning people will have different opinion.

I am not really arguing against liberals. I am arguing against extremism.

1. Are you arguing that supporters of vaccine mandates are not intelligent well-meaning people
who have a different opinion?

2. By the way, I have not voiced any particular stance or position on this specific issue.

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@hightor,

I am getting the strong feeling that maxdancona is auditioning for a job on the Fox network.

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Shouldn't the public good come before individual rights especially during a (hopefully) temporary pandemic? What about evacuation orders in the case of fires and floods? How is this any different? And people are not being FORCED to get the jab. They have been encouraged, strongly encouraged, to get it. But I have not seen one person being held down and jabbed. The mandates are to protect society. 780,000 people have died in the US alone - how stupid does one have to be to deny the effects COVID is having on you people? The ICUs contain predominantly stupid deniers, not only stressing the health care system, but inhibiting the health care of thousands on wait lists. How selfish is that? The public good should always come before individual rights and freedoms. Get over it.

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@Mame,

Mame wrote:

Shouldn't the public good come before individual rights especially during a (hopefully) temporary pandemic?

The common good is understood as the opposite of mere individual or group interests within a community.
In German law (in addition to the term "Gemeinwohl" [common good] as a constitutional principle), the other terms "public interest" or "welfare or interest of the general public" are also used synonymously in case law or statutes.

I suppose, we'll get mandatory vaccination shortly afterwards, because even the liberal Free Democrats (who will provide the new Federal Minister of Justice) now seem to be in favour.

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@Mame,

Quote:

Shouldn't the public good come before individual rights especially during a (hopefully) temporary pandemic?

No Mame! It is not that simple.

If you always put "public good before individual rights" then you have no individual rights. Every time we defend individual rights we do so at the cost of a public good (rights that don't hurt everyone don't need to be given).

- Police aren't allowed to search your house without probable cause and a warrant, this make it easier for pedophiles to avoid getting caught.

- The right to free speech means that people will get offended.

- The right to bear arms means that we have to deal with gun violence.

Every right that we are guaranteed is guaranteed because someone feels harmed by it.

There is a balance here.... it may be that vaccine mandates are warranted by the risk posed by the pandemic. As I pointed out, liberals tend to exaggerate this risk, but even so... the balance might tilt in favor of forcing people to get vaccinated against their will. My opinion is that the good of forced vaccinations does not outweigh the cost to the loss of freedom and the increased public disruption.

But the simplistic view; that we must always choose public good over personal freedom means that no one has any personal freedom.

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@Mame,

Quote:

...how stupid does one have to be to deny the effects COVID is having on you people?

The effect on healthcare workers, who are quitting in exhaustion and frustration, has been devastating. And what happens if some new, more dangerous, pandemic breaks out (or should I say "when") and a large number of our citizens smugly refuse to comply with public health officials, trotting out the "personal freedom" argument? This argument is simply being used by conservatives to increase an already destructive level of anti-government paranoia, which they can harness to resist measures to limit climate change or any other efforts by the federal government to address longstanding problems.

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@hightor,

I am not sure this is the point you wanted to make, but you make a good point nonetheless.

If the government uses its power for force people to get vaccinated against their will from covid, it will make it that much harder to force people to get vaccinated when a more dangerous pandemic comes.

If everything from covid to climate change is being portrayed as so serious it warrants taking away individual rights, eventually people will see a pattern.

Yes, there are emergencies that are so serious that the warrant the government taking away individual rights. In my opinion these should be rare. In most cases, individual rights should be preserved.

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@maxdancona,

There are laws on the books designed specifically to protect the public good which curtail individual freedom. Drunk driving, for one. Are you suggesting you should have the right to get drunk then get behind the wheel of a car?

I think the public good should come before individual rights and freedoms in certain circumstances and should be limited to those circumstances, i.e. fire and flood evacuations. That doesn't extend to over-reaching by police searching your car or home. It just deals with the emergency at hand.

The vaccine mandates are protecting the public good by preventing unvaccinated people from entering buildings and potentially infecting others, especially those who may be immuno-compromised or live with someone who is. No one is being FORCED to get the shot. If your job requires it, you have some decisions to make but you won't go to jail or be confined to your home. It's really quite simple.

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@Mame,

I am saying that in every case, it involves a balance. You have to balance the urgency of the crisis with the importance of the right.

Drunk driving is easy. Driving Drunk is not an important right and the cost of drunk driving is high. I don't think anyone disagrees with this.

The right to privacy, and the right to control your own body, are far more important rights. And that is what we are talking about giving up here.

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@maxdancona,

Women don't have the right to control their own bodies in Texas. Do you think that's okay? Somehow that is allowed. I was reading this morning of a woman who died from an ectopic pregnancy because the doctors were too afraid to help her. She didn't have the right to control her own body, did she?

You can't have it both ways. Either you're a society who values and upholds individual freedoms and rights or you aren't. She wouldn't harm anyone yet unvaccinated people could.

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@Mame,

In a community, which is what a state is, the completely free, unrestricted use of fundamental rights by each individual would lead to another in turn being impaired in his or her fundamental rights.
After all, the goals of individual people differ.
That is why restrictions are imperative, even without a pandemic.

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@maxdancona,

Quote:

If you always put "public good before individual rights" then you have no individual rights.

No. You might have particular freedoms temporarily curtailed depending on the nature of the threat. A curfew that might restrict your "freedom" to walk down a street at night can be lifted. A law banning outdoor burning can be suspended after a drought has ended. Rules and regulations already curb many types of potentially destructive or dangerous behavior – it's difficult to see why getting a jab in the arm is so objectionable when our freedom to do anything we wish is already curtailed in numerous examples. Why not argue that vaccination increases an individual's freedom? There was a palpable feeling of relief during the initial rollout of the vaccines as people returned to public spaces. Refuseniks aren't defending the ideal of individual freedom; they are prolonging the loss of freedom by allowing the pandemic to control our behavior..

Quote:

But the simplistic view; that we must always choose public good over personal freedom means that no one has any personal freedom.

That's your simplistic view. Even mandatory vaccination would still allow individuals plenty of freedom in other areas of their lives.

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@Walter Hinteler,

I agree.

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@Mame,

Mame wrote:

Women don't have the right to control their own bodies in Texas. Do you think that's okay? Somehow that is allowed. I was reading this morning of a woman who died from an ectopic pregnancy because the doctors were too afraid to help her. She didn't have the right to control her own body, did she?

You can't have it both ways. Either you're a society who values and upholds individual freedoms and rights or you aren't. She wouldn't harm anyone yet unvaccinated people could.

Mame, you seem to be agreeing with me here. Not that I have any problem with that.

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@hightor,

hightor wrote:

Even mandatory vaccination would still allow individuals plenty of freedom in other areas of their lives.

There have been many vaccination mandates in place, even in the USA, quietly saving lives, largely unopposed. Until ...
Well, until something changed/changes, like with new requirements for vaccination against e.g. hepatitis B, anthrax and of course now Covid-19.

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@Walter Hinteler,

Walter Hinteler wrote:

In a community, which is what a state is, the completely free, unrestricted use of fundamental rights by each individual would lead to another in turn being impaired in his or her fundamental rights.
After all, the goals of individual people differ.
That is why restrictions are imperative, even without a pandemic.

We agree.

The point I am making is balance. A society that protects individual rights still acknowledges that sometimes they need to be restricted. I have no problem with that.

The problem is when the left refuses to accept that there is a balance. There is not even an acknowledgement that individual rights are important or threatened by forced vaccines.

The reason the political left is extreme is because it is one-sided, refusing to accept that there is any cost to their ideological position.

1 Reply

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