The Years of Covid – Double Vaccines, Double Standards

The appeal to get vaccinated against Covid always comes with the addendum that by doing so, not only you protect yourself but also others as you're less likely to transmit the disease.

Now that this proved to be false (Israel and Iceland seeing a huge surge in case numbers despite having a very high vaccination rate in their population) the petition needed to change.

It is true, however, that vaccinated people will have less serious symptoms and are less likely to get hospitalized. So unvaccinated people who contract the virus occupy precious, shared health care resources with a higher probability, and might squeeze out other patients who "did everything right".

In this case, however, the problem arises from the combination of the scarcity of resources and people not bearing the cost of the consequences of their actions.

Crowding out other people and transferring costs on them happens in a myriad of ways in everyday life and yet most people either accept it without a second thought or outright consider it a virtue (an obligation) to accept these inflicted costs.

Just staying in the realm of health care, why don't we invoke the same arguments against smokers, people who drink regularly, don't exercise, or eat junk food? They have a much higher chance of using up finite resources of which other people will then have less of. In a socialist system, it's the duty of a good citizen to stay in good shape and not indulge in any activity that damages one's health.

As somebody on Twitter rightly pointed out:

do we want to go here?

normalising shaming of the unvaccinated invites:

diet shaming.
fat shaming.
sedentary lifestyle shaming.
vitamin d deficit shaming.
gut biome shaming.
poor sleep habits shaming.

and so on https://t.co/7WshavIBdZ— bitbutter (@mormo_music) September 14, 2021

This ultimately comes down to a) being adult enough to make your own decisions, and b) being responsible for the consequences of those decisions, and thus bearing its costs.

If medicine wasn't socialized in the overwhelming majority of countries, your insurance premium would be higher if you don't take your health seriously. Building and running hospitals would be a lucrative business and there would be more resources – including beds, nurses and doctors to take care of those that were hospitalized. Unsurprisingly, building new hospitals is  regulated and the permission is handed out by those who have an interest not to have more hospitals built.

As regards to Covid, premiums of the unvaccinated would be higher as their chance of hospitalization (an expensive outcome) seems to also be higher.

And there would be no reason to bully people about their health-related decisions and harass them to get the shots.

A final note: People can always be bullied to act against their interest by invoking "the common good" argument. I'm not saying it's not in most people's interest in this particular case to get the vaccine – it's the plea to do something for the ever elusive common good despite one's will that I have issue with.

(Originally written on 29th September 2021.)