A reflection on the vaccine mandate era by a friend in New Zealand, who has agreed to let me post it here. It serves as a reminder to anyone wishing to rewrite history.
Perusing your articles after reading 2 or 3 I liked, I found this one strange and disappointing. There's a bit of a lack of critical thinking as it applies to the premise.
I think that there is something to be said for the *messaging* around vaccine requirements and passports being off kilter as it relates to transmission (even though, even here its an issue of specificity of language rather than anything else), and acting as if vaccine requirements were entirely arbitrary.
Consider the following premise:
Assuming that vaccinated individuals are less likely to catch COVID-19, and that people less likely to catch COVID-19 reduces total viral load in the population, then does that not inherently imply that those who are vaccinated are not also less likely to be infectious and able to spread COVID-19?
While the vaccine may not make a person who *is* positive less likely to spread the virus, would a population of only vaccinated people inherently not have a lower incidence/rate of covid positivity? Assuming of course that people remain responsible and rest/recover at home?
Alternatively there is another premise under which the article falls apart:
Let us assume, I think quite rightly, that the objective for any COVID management related policy in 2021 was to reduce transmission of a highly transmissible virus *for the purpose of reducing COVID transmission related impacts on the healthcare system*. In this context, knowing that the vaccines do in fact have a significant impact on COVID related complications that would need direct intervention, then restricting access to particular activities to vaccinated people serves multiple goals in relation to vaccine requirements. In the short term anyway as they would be inadequate over the long term assuming that COVID like many other easily transmissible viruses before it becomes less severe as it becomes endemic.
First, it encourages individuals who are fully capable of getting the vaccine for no reason other than hesitancy to cross the line into getting their vaccines. This helps to protect them from serious complications or severe illness thereby reducing their need to seek the ultimately limited resource of direct medical intervention. In aggregate, this should achieve the policy goal of reducing healthcare system strain so it can more effectively address other health issues.
Second it reduces the avenues for COVID transmission amongst those most likely to require medical intervention because they are more likely to have severe complications without the vaccine than with the vaccine. In the short term, this also achieves the policy objective of reducing impact on the healthcare system. At least here in Canada where I live, statistics late last year and early this year were showing that if every unvaccinated person in hospital and acute care for COVID related illness had been vaccinated, applying the same rate of infection:illness to that population, we'd have had a significant reduction in the number of people taking up ICUs and hospital beds. This had real impacts on the number of surgeries hospitals could perform and emergency room response times for other problems.
I also take issue with the reference to apartheid given just how specific and heinous that is. Here in Canada apartheid was never used but the way Nazi Germany put stars on jewish people's clothing and on their storefronts, even as far as internment and concentration camps were common similar refrains. But setting that aside since someone else described the differences so well, I just think the article really misses the forest for the trees and criticizes the wrong thing. Which was the focus on transmission reduction as a direct result of vaccines rather than indirect one, as an alternative to lockdowns to reduce overall levels of severe illness/serious outcomes of any given infection impacting the health systems in any given country.
Well there's no way to automate a choice. There are many criteria. For instance
* The reputation of the authors of the studies and those doing systematic reviews
* The power and quality of the studies and their data
* One's own 'commonsense' — properly open to challenge and correction by the studies and so on.
Based on that and my brief Googling and so on, it seems to me that most people who seem to be trying — who aren't just arguing a line — believe on the evidence that masks are effective.
But everything must considered in context. Even if my own reading should lean in the other direction, one then tries to compare costs and benefits. One might be against widespread mask mandates but focus them where if there is an effect it can be most useful at least cost (considered broadly to include people's inconvenience and so on). That's why I support mask mandates in the most obvious and targeted cases (I'd be happy with public transport) where it could do a lot of good, can't do any health related harm that I can think of. It's only cost is some temporary inconvenience for travellers.
More to the point, I'm afraid — unless someone can explain to me why this is wrong — it enables me to identify people who are not really trying to weigh things up and instead have joined one of the tribes on either side of the culture war that now rages around this. That's much more than a waste of our time. It's degrading public reason.
The comparison to apartheid is as stupid as it is offensive, and any small shred of credibility that might have existed goes out the window as soon as someone uses it.
Even a casual skim of the Apartheid Wikipedia page is all it takes:
* Systemic race-based discrimination and segregation, lasting for generations.
* Imposed by an authoritarian minority
* Millions forcibly relocated from homes into ethnic communities (with the long-run objective of creating distinct ethno-states).
* Disenfranchisement
* Separation of Government services based on race, much lower quality for non-whites
* Criminalised inter-racial relationships
* The Sharpeville massacre
* Mass arrests
I could understand why an incurious 20-something for whom Apartheid is not really much more than a vague idea they remember from high school modern history, might think the comparison workable from the selective quoting of "two classes of people" (a description that can be applied equally to an 18+ card). But that person ain't you.
CS, I believe the apartheid comparison is just a warning, it just means these were/are slippery slope policies, hence the comparison. The epistemic paragraph is the most important part. The science should drive the policy, not the other way around.
Come on mate, even if that were the intent - and it’s clearly not - it would be no less absurd. There is no similarity in history, actors, timeframe, intent, objectives, justification, execution, reception or outcomes. There is no “warning” because there is no logical progression to anything remotely like Apartheid.
It’s not a hill any rational person should even be standing near, let alone setting foot on.
My reading is the author is drawing an analogy, as per the word "akin" and the explanation that it's "discrimination based on an arbitrary characteristic". I don't think they're claiming "it was as bad as apartheid".
I guess it's like saying "the Rwandan massacre was genocide, like the Holocaust", but not making any claims on a simplistic better/worse scale. If we conflate analogy of situation with assessment of moral better/worse we probably lose the ability to use analogy, because we rarely agree on moral better/worse.
That's how I see this anyway. Does that make sense?
The headline is "Happy first anniversary to New Zealand's brutal, pointless, COVID apartheid."
And the whole point of trying to draw an analogy to Apartheid is to pretend people were being victimised for something immutable and irrelevant they had no influence over. It's just not the same. In _any_ way. Having to be over 18 to drink alcohol, has more in common with Apartheid than this.
Both Rwanda and the Holocaust actually *were* genocides. Ie: comparable in material ways.
"Moral better/worse" is not even on the table here. This is "Moral apples/sausages".
I think there is a similarity in intent, objectives, justification, execution, reception, outcomes, etc. We can agree to disagree. I think there was a logical progression to an Apartheid like situation. Just because it didn't happen, it doesn't it wouldn't have happened or it can't happen in the future.
Question for you: I don't know whats going on on the ground in China, but say its true, how do you describe that?
On doing a search, this was the first reference that came up — among many others — supporting the commonsensical notion that if they're properly worn, masks can lower spread
There are studies going both ways, and my browsing of the literature suggests a broad consensus lining up with commonsense — that masks help suppress spread. Quoting someone frothing at the mouth at a campaigning website doesn't seem like the best way to get a balanced view of what's out there.
My strongest point is that even if you're not sure which way the best opinion goes you do very little harm mandating masks in the most crowded closed and temporary situations — which means public transport.
You could do a lot of good, the costs are minuscule — including some inconvenience.
I tend to agree on principle that we as citizens in Australia also failed to hold government and other citizens to account on what principles we should hold as a priority.
My question is, is there something fundamentally human about doing what we can to protect lives now, that when combined with emotion, leads to decisions like this? And if so, how can we resist the collective conclusion of our emotional brains to act differently.
If we acted ‘rationally’ during this time, I think those people who were emotionally engaged would have become increasingly alarmed. We saw the lives vs lives (economy) debate happen real time at the start of the pandemic.
But I really have no idea. It is truly a fascinating event from a behavioural point of view.
For me the main reason is that they don't work to stop transmission of respiratory viruses. So there is no benefit, but all cost (discomfort, litter, collecting bacteria, etc)
Perusing your articles after reading 2 or 3 I liked, I found this one strange and disappointing. There's a bit of a lack of critical thinking as it applies to the premise.
I think that there is something to be said for the *messaging* around vaccine requirements and passports being off kilter as it relates to transmission (even though, even here its an issue of specificity of language rather than anything else), and acting as if vaccine requirements were entirely arbitrary.
Consider the following premise:
Assuming that vaccinated individuals are less likely to catch COVID-19, and that people less likely to catch COVID-19 reduces total viral load in the population, then does that not inherently imply that those who are vaccinated are not also less likely to be infectious and able to spread COVID-19?
While the vaccine may not make a person who *is* positive less likely to spread the virus, would a population of only vaccinated people inherently not have a lower incidence/rate of covid positivity? Assuming of course that people remain responsible and rest/recover at home?
Alternatively there is another premise under which the article falls apart:
Let us assume, I think quite rightly, that the objective for any COVID management related policy in 2021 was to reduce transmission of a highly transmissible virus *for the purpose of reducing COVID transmission related impacts on the healthcare system*. In this context, knowing that the vaccines do in fact have a significant impact on COVID related complications that would need direct intervention, then restricting access to particular activities to vaccinated people serves multiple goals in relation to vaccine requirements. In the short term anyway as they would be inadequate over the long term assuming that COVID like many other easily transmissible viruses before it becomes less severe as it becomes endemic.
First, it encourages individuals who are fully capable of getting the vaccine for no reason other than hesitancy to cross the line into getting their vaccines. This helps to protect them from serious complications or severe illness thereby reducing their need to seek the ultimately limited resource of direct medical intervention. In aggregate, this should achieve the policy goal of reducing healthcare system strain so it can more effectively address other health issues.
Second it reduces the avenues for COVID transmission amongst those most likely to require medical intervention because they are more likely to have severe complications without the vaccine than with the vaccine. In the short term, this also achieves the policy objective of reducing impact on the healthcare system. At least here in Canada where I live, statistics late last year and early this year were showing that if every unvaccinated person in hospital and acute care for COVID related illness had been vaccinated, applying the same rate of infection:illness to that population, we'd have had a significant reduction in the number of people taking up ICUs and hospital beds. This had real impacts on the number of surgeries hospitals could perform and emergency room response times for other problems.
I also take issue with the reference to apartheid given just how specific and heinous that is. Here in Canada apartheid was never used but the way Nazi Germany put stars on jewish people's clothing and on their storefronts, even as far as internment and concentration camps were common similar refrains. But setting that aside since someone else described the differences so well, I just think the article really misses the forest for the trees and criticizes the wrong thing. Which was the focus on transmission reduction as a direct result of vaccines rather than indirect one, as an alternative to lockdowns to reduce overall levels of severe illness/serious outcomes of any given infection impacting the health systems in any given country.
Well there's no way to automate a choice. There are many criteria. For instance
* The reputation of the authors of the studies and those doing systematic reviews
* The power and quality of the studies and their data
* One's own 'commonsense' — properly open to challenge and correction by the studies and so on.
Based on that and my brief Googling and so on, it seems to me that most people who seem to be trying — who aren't just arguing a line — believe on the evidence that masks are effective.
But everything must considered in context. Even if my own reading should lean in the other direction, one then tries to compare costs and benefits. One might be against widespread mask mandates but focus them where if there is an effect it can be most useful at least cost (considered broadly to include people's inconvenience and so on). That's why I support mask mandates in the most obvious and targeted cases (I'd be happy with public transport) where it could do a lot of good, can't do any health related harm that I can think of. It's only cost is some temporary inconvenience for travellers.
More to the point, I'm afraid — unless someone can explain to me why this is wrong — it enables me to identify people who are not really trying to weigh things up and instead have joined one of the tribes on either side of the culture war that now rages around this. That's much more than a waste of our time. It's degrading public reason.
The comparison to apartheid is as stupid as it is offensive, and any small shred of credibility that might have existed goes out the window as soon as someone uses it.
Why?
Not sure if serious.
Even a casual skim of the Apartheid Wikipedia page is all it takes:
* Systemic race-based discrimination and segregation, lasting for generations.
* Imposed by an authoritarian minority
* Millions forcibly relocated from homes into ethnic communities (with the long-run objective of creating distinct ethno-states).
* Disenfranchisement
* Separation of Government services based on race, much lower quality for non-whites
* Criminalised inter-racial relationships
* The Sharpeville massacre
* Mass arrests
I could understand why an incurious 20-something for whom Apartheid is not really much more than a vague idea they remember from high school modern history, might think the comparison workable from the selective quoting of "two classes of people" (a description that can be applied equally to an 18+ card). But that person ain't you.
CS, I believe the apartheid comparison is just a warning, it just means these were/are slippery slope policies, hence the comparison. The epistemic paragraph is the most important part. The science should drive the policy, not the other way around.
Come on mate, even if that were the intent - and it’s clearly not - it would be no less absurd. There is no similarity in history, actors, timeframe, intent, objectives, justification, execution, reception or outcomes. There is no “warning” because there is no logical progression to anything remotely like Apartheid.
It’s not a hill any rational person should even be standing near, let alone setting foot on.
CS, interesting questions.
My reading is the author is drawing an analogy, as per the word "akin" and the explanation that it's "discrimination based on an arbitrary characteristic". I don't think they're claiming "it was as bad as apartheid".
I guess it's like saying "the Rwandan massacre was genocide, like the Holocaust", but not making any claims on a simplistic better/worse scale. If we conflate analogy of situation with assessment of moral better/worse we probably lose the ability to use analogy, because we rarely agree on moral better/worse.
That's how I see this anyway. Does that make sense?
It wasn't arbitrary though.
The headline is "Happy first anniversary to New Zealand's brutal, pointless, COVID apartheid."
And the whole point of trying to draw an analogy to Apartheid is to pretend people were being victimised for something immutable and irrelevant they had no influence over. It's just not the same. In _any_ way. Having to be over 18 to drink alcohol, has more in common with Apartheid than this.
Both Rwanda and the Holocaust actually *were* genocides. Ie: comparable in material ways.
"Moral better/worse" is not even on the table here. This is "Moral apples/sausages".
Fair enough.
I think there is a similarity in intent, objectives, justification, execution, reception, outcomes, etc. We can agree to disagree. I think there was a logical progression to an Apartheid like situation. Just because it didn't happen, it doesn't it wouldn't have happened or it can't happen in the future.
Question for you: I don't know whats going on on the ground in China, but say its true, how do you describe that?
How was it similar ? What was the progression ?
On doing a search, this was the first reference that came up — among many others — supporting the commonsensical notion that if they're properly worn, masks can lower spread
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2014564118
How about https://brownstone.org/articles/not-even-n95-masks-work-to-stop-covid/
There are studies going both ways, and my browsing of the literature suggests a broad consensus lining up with commonsense — that masks help suppress spread. Quoting someone frothing at the mouth at a campaigning website doesn't seem like the best way to get a balanced view of what's out there.
You are correct, the studies are both ways. What do you suggest? The broad consensus is not a correct consensus just because it is broad.
1. How do we enable science to run double-blind studies?
2. Having an actual physical barrier (a mask) seems logical but does it work?
3. What about masks for other (more lethal) illnesses?
4. Where is humanity going with this approach?
I responded to this at length. It turned up on the site but is now no longer there. :(
FYI, I added the word "correct"
Bummer ... I'd love to discuss, hear some ideas, etc. Something akin the black hat commission :)
My strongest point is that even if you're not sure which way the best opinion goes you do very little harm mandating masks in the most crowded closed and temporary situations — which means public transport.
You could do a lot of good, the costs are minuscule — including some inconvenience.
One has to show some sensitivity to context here.
I tend to agree on principle that we as citizens in Australia also failed to hold government and other citizens to account on what principles we should hold as a priority.
My question is, is there something fundamentally human about doing what we can to protect lives now, that when combined with emotion, leads to decisions like this? And if so, how can we resist the collective conclusion of our emotional brains to act differently.
If we acted ‘rationally’ during this time, I think those people who were emotionally engaged would have become increasingly alarmed. We saw the lives vs lives (economy) debate happen real time at the start of the pandemic.
But I really have no idea. It is truly a fascinating event from a behavioural point of view.
Why should I not support mask mandates on public transport?
For me the main reason is that they don't work to stop transmission of respiratory viruses. So there is no benefit, but all cost (discomfort, litter, collecting bacteria, etc)
Surgeons should stop wearing masks in theatre based on your findings (theatre, how appropriate !!)