Thread by @Neoavatara

Anyone want to defend vaccine mandates?

Mandates made sense when:
1. Vaccines obviously save lives, which is still true today.
2. Vaccines virtually stopped transmission...WHICH IS NOT TRUE TODAY.

Point #2 really is important, and Fauci/Walensky don't want to answer it.

Lets stipulate point #1. There is no question that vaccines save lives, and everyone should choose to get vaccinated for their own sake.

Agreed?

Here is the problem: the real benefit of mandates, as stated by Biden himself, is to protect SOCIETY.

But in the age of Omicron, that isn't really the major benefit of vaccines. Vaccinated individuals were only marginally less likely to get infected and transmit the virus.

Now, to be fair, unvaccinated individuals were still more likely to get symptomatic disease than vaccinated. There is no real doubt of this.

aha.org/news/headline/…

But the societal benefit has plummeted in recent months. The real benefit is to keep those individuals healthy...they are not really a greater threat to society in transmission than vaccinated individuals. Slightly? Yes. But not completely.

We can also argue about impact on hospitals. But we know, considering recommendations on boosters, that even those without boosters, that are fully vaccinated, were getting serious disease.

So the margin between vaccinated and unvaccinated has narrowed. Not gone, but smaller.

With the Trucker boycott: Is maintaining this mandate really worth this effort?

I would side on the answer of 'No'.

This is proven to be only a marginal benefit for societal impact. Those individuals are taking a higher risk of disease, and SERIOUS disease, to be sure.

We are expending massive amounts of energy, money, etc for little to no benefit. Its a waste of our resources.

Would I prefer for everyone to be vaccinated? ABSOLUTELY. But we live in a world where people still have free choice.

This is simply not worth the cost and effort. The cost is too high right now. Better to use our time elsewhere. There are so many other places we can improve things, and this isn't the best use of our time.