What you wrote and I quoted:
is a red herring, because the price or any consideration of what may be a reasonable price for a vaccine has absolutely nothing to do with how or how much the government is spending on other things. Just because the F35 cost billions and produced very little doesn’t mean we should abolish Social Security.
Now you’re generalizing, which is another kind of fallacy. This government policy is separate from other government policies.
What do you think of people being required to carry some proof of vaccination for access to restaurants, gyms, schools, etc?
I took the point to be that it’s ridiculous to claim they are charging the government an unfair price for the vaccines, when the government is haphazardly throwing so much money at so many things in the name of covid without any care for efficiency. There is zero reason for them to suddenly draw a line at vaccines for not getting enough bang for the buck. The vaccines, at list price, have still been the best bang for the buck to come from any of the 3 covid relief bills.
Regardless of how you feel about all the other spending, it is still irrelevant. For example, If vaccines normally costs $0.50-$1, then charging $50 for something that does not cost much more to make than the $1 vaccine is ridiculous.
Right now I think it’s probably OK as a condition to allow certain businesses that are known super-spreaders, like gyms, to remain open or increase capacity, or as a condition for increased indoor capacity at restaurants. I would not be surprised or opposed if public schools add COVID to the list of required vaccinations once it’s approved and available for those ages.
You say “control us”, I say “protect everyone from you”.
I want to be protected from you. Sorry, I want everyone to be protected from you. Since you might possibly have rabies. Or perhaps the bubonic plague. I dont know if you do or not, so unless you can prove you’ve been vaccinated we just cant be too careful, now can we…
Your desire to protect everyone produces 99 innocent victims on the off chance there might be one actual threat to a small handful of ‘everyones’. And the joke’s on you, because that one threat could just as likely be one of those vaccinated persons you gave a free pass.
Oh, so now you’re in that Q/ anti mask continent that is now saying they need to wear masks around vaccinated people? There’s a school in Florida you can go work for that fired anyone for being vaccinated… they might have an opening.
Schools and other businesses require plenty of other vaccinations. “Not being vaccinated” is NOT a protected class. Businesses should be free to exclude non protected classes. You can choose Russia or China if you want government run businesses instead.
Huh? Having trouble reading beyond the first few words again, I see…
Good job making up an arguement to argue against! Fantastic how you responded to me without even touching on anything I actually wrote.
Sure, businesses are free to exclude nonprotected classes. They are not free to demand individual health information to use as the basis for that exclusion. And they cant, unless, ya’ know, the Chinese or Russian government facilitates a program specifically to make that information available to anyone who wants it. Oh, wait, that’s not China or Russia we’re talking about.
But I digress, that was not the argument I was making.
The comment you replied to was in response to “What do you think of people being required to carry some proof of vaccination for access to restaurants, gyms, schools, etc?”
And you pretend it was an argument that I made up…
Then reply to to that post, not me. Because my post that you replied to was entirely about the effectiveness of plastering a scarlett letter on all unvaccinated people. Not a thing about whether you can or cant do it. So of course, your reply was entirely about whether you can or cant do it.
When you set membership criteria for a club, those who are in love it and those who are out hate it. Everyone thought the “No Homers” club was a good idea…except Homer. That’s a given no matter what club or what criteria. So as far as I’m concerned, there is no reason to argue it, because the argument is entirely based on individual perspective.
My argument is about the reasoning and what’s being accomplished - which I think makes it perfectly clear that creating an exclusive club for the vaccined elite is more about punishing those who dare to disagree than it has anything to do with public safety.
It’s all about chance and risk, is it not? Someone having rabies doesn’t put others at risk, unless that someone is biting everyone til they bleed. Bubonic plague is too rare for me to even know how rare it is. But COVID spreads ridiculously easily to a ridiculously high number of people. It’s not 1 in 100 with a handful impacted – probably more than 1 and those handful will each infect another handful, etc.
But the chances are much lower. Like 95% lower.
My apologies. I wasn’t clear in my first post. I wasn’t referring to government spending in general. I meant government spending on things the gov’t claimed were needed for the pandemic. Our gov’t could increase its spending on payments for vaccines to big pharma by a factor of 10 and it would still be more efficient than the vast majority of the spending they passed specifically for the pandemic. If the claim of “we need your IP because it costs too much if we don’t take it” is to be believed, then the government wouldn’t be able to throw hundreds of billions away on things that have no where near as big an effect on getting us out of the pandemic as vaccines do. The vaccines are either too expensive or they aren’t. Considering the government is giving schools hundreds of billions for new air conditioners, I don’t believe them when they claim they have to take big pharma’s IP in order to afford vaccines. It’s not a red herring to bring that up. They are very much interconnected.
Just wait. Next week the nutters will be demanding the “freedom” and responsibility to lick the doorknobs, phones, and keyboards of all their coworkers since the CDC has severely curtailed the indoor masking recommendations for fully vaccinated individuals (well, assuming their workplaces remove mask requirements by next week as well, which few will immediately do since few have been requiring proof of vaccination). They need a new way to “protest” nonexistent restrictions on their “freedumb.”
I know what you meant. But I don’t think my point is getting through. Just because the government threw a trillion into business grants and another trillion at tax credits (or however much it was), doesn’t mean they have to pay or allow the companies to charge others $50 per shot of something that actually costs $1 (for example).
They’re already producing as quickly as they can in their own factories. Doesn’t it seem more likely the IP push is more about pressuring them into entering into licensing arrangements to get them produced even faster (utilizing other companies’ factories, too)?
The faster the rest of the world is vaccinated, the better it is for everyone. And that’s the only way to really slow down variants. (It’d take eradication to completely prevent new variants, which is very unlikely)
I’m generally opposed to price ceilings and price floors. The government should need a damn good reason in order to enact either (and even then, they probably shouldn’t). I haven’t seen any evidence that a price ceiling is needed in this case, let alone the theft of big pharma’s intellectual property. We have more than one vaccine manufacturer. There is competition. You may believe that my point that the gov’t is throwing good money after bad on useless policy in order to fight COVID is not a compelling reason to not steal big pharma’s intellectual property. Fine. What evidence is there that IP theft IS necessary? Let’s start from that point and see if we even get to the stage of the argument where I have to point out how reckless they’re being with all our (grandkids’) money.
It isn’t theft – the government provided the funds and included their rights in the contract!
Note that I never said if I thought it was necessary. It may not be. I was only saying that if it was necessary, then they could do it, and it’s in the contract, and it wouldn’t set a legal precedent, and the companies (and shareholders) would have still been rewarded for their part, etc. No big crisis!
But you’re arguing with me when I say it’s not necessary because of XYZ. You made no effort to combat the point of XYZ. You just claimed it was a red herring that didn’t need to be addressed. All the while, not even claiming the argument I created the “red herring” to argue against is an argument you support. Can you see why I might be a little frustrated with your red herring claim?
Anyway, here’s an argument against it by someone who knows more than me:
You are right, it’s much less than 1 in 100. 30 million cases, 400 days, 10 day infection cycles, that’s 750,000 infected persons at any one time. So at any given time over the last year, 99.75% of the people out in public posed absolutely no covid threat to you even if they drooled directly into your mouth. And it’s only that low if everyone ignored their positive test and continued about their daily lives. Sure there have been “hot spots” at times in certain locations, but that just lowers the standard risk even further.
And it’s not a handful impacted, it’s a handful potentially impacted. The probabity of a faux-vaccinated person being infected by one of your faux threats to humanity from casual contact in a public space is much closer to needle-in-haystack odds than certain-death odds.
Well that’s simply not true. When a vaccine doesnt take, that person is as much of a potential risk as anyone who is unvaccinated. Sorry, I mean they’re as much of a potential risk as anyone who has not previously had covid and remains unvaccinated (since a significant portion of previous covid patients are as immune as a vaccinated person). You’re just giving them a free pass because you agree with their decision.