FYI -- Hillsdale College does not have a public health program and is not an accredited school of public health (SPH). Their document on "Ethical Principles of Public Health" feels more political than oriented around public health. There are people at actual SPHs that work on public health ethics, it might be worth focusing on those instead of amplifying whatever this is.
It just seems worthwhile to note that this isn't coming from an organization with any history of working or studying or caring about public health. The public is free to advocate or believe in these principles, just know where they're coming from. It's kind of like how many engineers get upset when non-technical PMs dictate how they should think about or build systems.
Roger Severino, vice president of the Heritage Foundation.
He's a lawyer with no medical training. I guess his credentials for health is Trump appointed him as an HHS lawyer to undo what Severino called the "radical gender ideology" of Obama.
Assignment: As an exercise in arguing both sides of an issue with equal fervor, construct arguments in favor of coercive measures (for example, without such measures, eradication of smallpox would have failed) and against coercive measures (for example, they created a lasting resentment and distrust of medical experts which led to future problems in public health efforts).
Extra credit: set up two Twitter accounts which marshall the opposing arguments and have a flame war with yourself.
But it's not that damaging if it's not a trust based institution. When Facebook writes next to their ads "recommended for you", I know that's a lie. But it doesn't bother me that much. When government medical leaders say that wearing a mask is worse for you, unless you go through 6 years of medical training to learn how to properly put on a mask, I ignore almost any future advice from them.
>"5. Public health requires public trust. Public health recommendations should present facts as the basis for guidance, and never employ fear or shame to sway or manipulate the public.
6. Medical interventions should not be forced or coerced upon a population, but rather should be voluntary and based on informed consent. Public health officials are advisors, not rule setters, and provide information and resources for individuals to make informed decisions.
7. Public health authorities must be honest and transparent, both with what is known and what is not known. Advice should be evidence-based and explained by data, and authorities must acknowledge errors or changes in evidence as soon as they are made aware of them.
8. Public health scientists and practitioners should avoid conflicts-of-interest, and any unavoidable conflicts-of-interest must be clearly stated.
9. In public health, open civilized debate is profoundly important. It is unacceptable for public health professionals to censor, silence or intimidate members of the public or other public health scientists or practitioners."
There is a many things we can do at home to reduce risk of covid. They get zero visibility. People have been programmed to see everything outside the narrative as quackery.
But it’s deeper than covid, it’s the general modus operandi of modern medicine.
8. Public health scientists and practitioners should avoid conflicts-of-interest, and any unavoidable conflicts-of-interest must be clearly stated.
"Hillsdale [College] is a conservative Christian institution with ties to the Trump administration. And the scholars behind the academy — Scott Atlas, Jay Bhattacharya, and Martin Kulldorff — are connected to right-wing dark money attacking public health measures." (https://www.levernews.com/how-the-koch-network-hijacked-the-...)
I think it's fine to do retrospectives. What I used to call "The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly". What works, what didn't, what would you change. A pandemic is a crisis. Of course mistakes will be made. Learn and do better next time.
Attachment to notions like "herd immunity" wrt to this coronavirus is just nutty. I'm just a noob, but my impression is that this coronavirus mutates so fast that herd immunity isn't likely.
I'm okay with comparing prevalence of mask wearing with outcomes. There are always tradeoffs. Learning from this experience will helps us better model public health responses for future pandemics.
Lastly, with today's charged discourse, I utterly dismiss any missive that does not encourage vaccination as partisan concern trolling, or worse.
You know, we could attack The Declaration Of Independence -- because we don't like any of its writers -- Thomas Jefferson? He owned slaves! John Adams? He was affiliated with that seditious Washington guy! Benjamin Franklin? He wore a stupid hat! <g>
We could attack The Constitution in the same way!
Steps:
1) Choose a random writer or signatory.
2) Find the one unvirtuous act (in a whole lifetime of more-or-less virtuous acts!) -- that the public is most aware of.
3) Use that act to frame that historical writer or signatory -- in the most unvirtuous light possible.
4) Now, because the writer or signatory is framed in this way, that creates (by implication) -- the idea that the document is "bad" in some way -- when in fact it is not!
In fact, we can do the same thing to all the great historic documents of all time -- for that matter!
The Constitution Of The United Kingdom, The Magna Carta, The Universal Declaration Of Human Rights -- the list goes on and on!
Just attack one or more authors -- and you're attacking the document!
Harry Potter? Harry Potter sucks because J.K. Rowling did some small unvirtuous act in her youth, and that makes the book bad!
Star Wars? Star Wars sucks because I heard that George Lucas stole a piece of candy when he was 12! <g>
Your Math Teacher told you that 2+2=4? Well, that's wrong because that Math Teacher is a bad person because of some small unvirtuous act they may have committed (it's alleged, not proven!) -- 50 or 60 years ago! (I think it involved not thanking a student for an apple, or something like that, at least that's the way it was reported to me by a newspaper who reported it from TV news article who reported it from another newspaper who reported it from a guy who claimed it to be true while buying some donuts in midtown Manhattan...)
It reminds me of that quote from Billy Madison...
(You know, the one that begins with "Congratulations Mr. Madison"... and ends with... "Everyone in the room is now dumber..." <g>)
Anyway, interested parties may wish to read the following:
It seems to me that these sorts of principles are incomplete if they don't engage with the fact that quarantines are a well established part of the social contract of all nations that I'm aware of.
Basically, there's a balance between avoiding coercion and holding people accountable for the externalities of irresponsible behavior. A reasonable tradeoff to me seems to be that people do not have to take precautions like vaccination and masking but if so they can be restricted from public society.
You are totally missing the other side's responsibility with regards to the social contract.
Part of the social contract is the responsible use of that coercive power to actually provide social benefit. Capricious misuse of power is not aligned with the social contract.
So, for example, it would be unethical to coerce vaccination when vaccination does not stop the spread. It also would be unethical to coerce vaccination against a rapidly evolving pathogen when the vaccine is at least 2 variants behind and shows little if any efficacy against current variants. It also would be unethical to have lockdowns for a respiratory virus when there are no RCTs that demonstrate lockdowns stop the spread of such a virus. It would also be unethical to enforce cloth masking when the RCTs demonstrate negative effectiveness of cloth masking for respiratory viruses (more people get sick). All of these are massive violations of the social contract specifically because they would never have been effective. And even if you excuse the first few months under the guise of "We didn't know" the data rolled in very quickly on all those items but the policies remained.
So yes, the social contract might mean I have to be quarantined under certain conditions. But you don't get to toss whatever bullshit you want under the social contract.
By the time the vaccine was widely available we were in full Omicron territory and there was already no risk to hospitals overflowing.
For background, if it matters to you, I believe the vaccine saved many thousands of lives of elderly people. It probably did not save the lives of any meaningful number of young healthy people because those people were statistically not at risk of covid. So I believe the vaccine was safe enough and effective enough to use, particularly for the elderly and people with certain co-morbidities. Lack of risk stratification is ANOTHER violation of the social contract.
The criminally sinister thing about vaccine mandates is that the people at risk of severe covid were already lined up out the door to get a vaccine. You didn't have to mandate it for anyone, much less the people who were at practically no risk of covid since it would not stop the spread.
I saw news articles like that too. There was particular concern about ICU beds. Then I checked the NYT live feed of ICU occupancy and it showed that ICU occupancy was barely higher than the historic average. We converted a stadium into a field hospital in NY that was never used. We sent the Navy medical ship, the Mercy to NY. It was never used.
Also, hospitals were full of people who got covid, had mild or no symptoms, and went to the hospital anyways because the news terrified them.
None of these comments deny the fact that a terribly unfortunate number of people died from Covid.
The very first vaccines came out in July 2021, but were not widely available. Omicron was here by November.
I agree with you, but the social contract argument fails here even if you imagine a fantasy world where it would exist. I try to meet people where they are. Leftists arguments against leftists. Right-wing arguments against the right wing. And social contract arguments against social contractors.
The social contract is just coercion by force with a nice fancy name so you don't murder the people who threaten you with violence and prison rape if you don't give them 40% of your income.
The system you have today is might makes right. If your government was overthrown by a foreign country and replaced, the only difference would be you would temporarily think the new government lacked legitimacy. But pretty soon you'd accept it as the new legitimate authority. This is your cognitive dissonance helping you cope with your submission to this illegitimate authority.
In most cases it is better for the powerful to not take everything from the weak. You want to incentivize them to create more for your to control/take, but never let them keep enough to challenge you.
An actual "social contract" would imply consent and the option to opt-out. But I will literally be thrown in a cage with rapists and murderers if I opt-out. That is the opposite of consent. What you call the social contract is nothing but top-down violent coercion.
Firstly - there is no social contract - you (and I) signed nothing. No contract. Just training.
Secondly - the governance structure you have now, does not care about your freedoms. I think I can make a strong case that what we have is domination of everyone by the worst of us. We are being herded into some sort of techno-dystopia, and no one in the governance structure is doing anything apart from waving things through.
Thirdly - morality is real. At family gatherings you do not need the strong arm of the law. The strong arm of the law causes the events that put people in fear, so that it has a valid pretext to step in and assumes control - with people's blessing (as they are ignorant of the true circumstances).
What you have is a large scale protection racket. And you are arguing for it. You have a lack of imagination regards alternative (free) ways to live, and are likely highly indoctrinated into the system you are trying to defend, possibly receiving some of the breadcrumbs.
Certainly when I say "social contract" it's a metaphor. I don't literally mean a legal contract that people sign. Rather, what I mean is that in exchange for the benefits of living in a society (mutual safety, cooperation on tasks, exchange of ideas, etc.) people give up some of their individual rights (e.g. they agree to recognize private property). Part of what is confusing me, is that respect for individual freedom is often one of the primary components of the social contract.
What I'm not understanding is what you are advocating. Are you saying that society should be structured around an absolute morality provided by a religion? Are you advocating some sort of neo-tribalism where society is built around extended family groups? Do you believe in anarchic utopianism where there would be no crime if there was no government?
IMO, you are advocating for the existing system, which creates the terror events, fear, etc and indoctrinates the populace to their way of thinking. This is plainly immoral - we have a society based in widely-believed lies. You can dispute my characterisation - but, if you were to research 'news', history, science, etc more deeply, I think you would find that the explanations are merely expedient devices to get you 'bought in'. The aim is to get the turkeys to vote for Christmas - or more specifically - to vote for their servitude. If you get people to go believe in whatever fresh disempowering horror has been created, despite the lack of any personal evidence, you are able to move them towards greater dependence on external governance. You are supporting enslavement.
The opposite to this, is autonomous, self-guided individuals that don't need external governance. I know what I want to do and don't want guidance. Note this is NOT an allowed option. I don't want to pay protection money (taxes) to others, especially when they use that money against me.
Ask yourself, is it acceptable that I live freely? With the ability to self-govern myself, defend myself against attacks on my freedom - eg against police levying fines, requesting licensing, etc - in order to interact in society? You'd think so.. but what we actually have is slavery that wants to call itself 'freedom'.
What I am advocating is 'anything but slavery', even covert slavery. This is easily achieved IMO, by the application of a simple moral principle - the golden rule - "do not treat others in ways that you would not like to be treated". If someone acts against you, you are free to take responsibility and respond as you see fit.
So, I think you have an idea that 'without the social contract, we would be run by the mafia' while failing to realise that you are already run by the very worst mafia! They are invisible to you. And, worse than that, you are parroting the nonsense beliefs they have taught you at school, fully accepting the slave mentality that they would have all their slaves proclaim, and proclaiming it to others.
> A reasonable tradeoff to me seems to be that people do not have to take precautions like vaccination and masking but if so they can be restricted from public society
If you have this low a bar to holding people accountable for negative externalities, no one would be allowed outside.
I'm missing the arguments for why any of these guidelines are supposedly ethical. The implication of these are that a handful of individual's rights to refuse e.g. vaccines is appropriately balanced against a potentially huge loss of life and societal disruption.
I guess it depends on what system of ethics one goes by. If one believes that you should NEVER force someone to do something against their will and accept the losses as unfortunate but preferable to life under "oppression" this might be defended as ethical. I think that from a principle of least harm, forcing people to get vaccines is not too difficult to justify, however.
A major assumption in the 'principle of least harm' on forcing people to get vaccines is that the vaccines are well-characterized in terms of efficacy and side-effects. In the case of the smallpox vaccine, it was a sterilizing vaccine (i.e. there were zero breakthrough cases post-vaccination as far as I know, so it could be used to effectively eliminate the virus from human populations), and the side-effects, though quite severe in some cases (far more than anything reported with Covid vaccines as far as I know), were well-characterized. For example:
Inoculation with vaccinia virus is highly effective for the prevention of smallpox infection, but it is associated with several known side effects that range from mild and self-limited to severe and life-threatening.
(2003) "Smallpox Vaccine: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly"
The Covid vaccines are uniformly non-sterilizing, i.e. breakthrough cases are common, even apparently the norm (this may be due to rapid evolution of new virus strains relative to older clinical trials) and the side effects seem to be relatively poorly characterized (heart issues with young adults? fact or fiction?). Hence, glowing stories like this Nov 2020 report on the Moderna vaccine might need some reconsideration:
One could argue, at this point, that a Covid vaccination is really only net beneficial to the elderly, obese and immunocompromised (comparable arguments have been made for the influenza vaccine). One could also argue that for-profit pharmaceutical corporations (who have refused to release patent rights to other manufacturers, which would drive down costs) have large conflicts of interest relative to their desire to maximize profits by pushing vaccination on those for whom it serves no beneficial purpose.
There's two general reasons for a person to get a vaccine. One is that it makes them healthier, and the other is that it makes society healthier.
If the person gets to choose, then there's a natural counterbalance against things that are harmful to the person but good for society. Only an idiot would turn down a vaccine that has a 90% chance of saving their life.
If society gets to choose, then forcibly sterilizing poor single mothers/disabled people
/those of poor breeding/etc might be on the table again. (It's a health intervention that is bad for the individual but also leads to a healthier next generation)
Vaccines generally don't make you healthier, they protect you from potential illness (so you keep a baseline in the future rather than increasing).
Forcible vaccination is bad, but I think it's hard to start from freedom of association and then argue that a vaccinated majority can't choose to exclude unvaccinated people from things. This is society choosing, but the consequence isn't forced vaccination, it's telling the unvaccinated "good luck, stay away from here".
>One could argue, at this point, that a Covid vaccination is really only net beneficial to the elderly, obese and immunocompromised
Maybe, maybe not
"The Incidence and Effect of Adverse Events Due to COVID-19 Vaccines on Breakthrough Infections: Decentralized Observational Study With Underrepresented Groups"
This is getting close to the core inflection point. The question is, where do these ethics systems come from? Why do some people value collectivism over individualism and vice versa? These beliefs seem to be deeply held and very hard to change.
What if instead we had a therapeutic which shortened an individuals infectious period, would you also feel comfortable forcing that?
What if the disease in question disproportionately affected group A but not group B, would you also feel comfortable forcing that vaccine upon group B?
I think by now most of us know that in the most recent pandemic, the public has been repeatedly deceived if not straightup lied to regarding efficacy and side-effects of the vaccines as well as the origin of the virus, and public individuals shamed and silenced for stating things that half a year later became mainstream news, over and over again.
Coronavirus hit New Zealand in 2020, and by May 2nd twenty people had died. New Zealand implemented lockdowns and ordered vaccines, although they took a while to come. By the end of October 2021, 28 people had died of Covid in New Zealand. They had massively attended sporting events at the height of the world pandemic as coronavirus was undetectable in the country. Once pretty much any one who wanted to be vaccinated got vaccinated, they loosened the rules.
Whereas in the US you have immediate resistance from these Christian fundamentalists (Hillsdale is Christian fundamentalist). Over one million Americans are dead of Covid, lots of people have long Covid, and anecdotally hospitals were full and all hospital patients saw delays in care, so I am sure people who could not get cancer treatments died due to these nuts.
That statement immediately exposes you as a crank.
Millions of excess deaths happened, deaths that would not have happened without COVID infections. I had otherwise perfectly healthy friends and family either die or be stuck with long term conditions from it.
There’s value in debating the best measures taken to handle the pandemic, there’s none whatsoever in denying it was even a thing.
No, its important to be accurate about what numbers are representing. OP is misquoting an important statistic and for whatever reason you see fit to back that up with no cited sources and unverifiable anecdotes. My anecdote is that Covid did not kill anyone I know.
Nope. There’s nothing new in the way COVID deaths are reported, and in fact making the distinction you’re demanding is what would be the break from standard practice. Death certificates have for decades had contributory causes listed with the main one being the most proximate cause.
For instance if someone has severe hypertension and then has a heart attack both are usually listed but the heart attack is the cause of death.
I don’t see any need to debunk it further because the claim is patent nonsense and I’m surprised to see anyone still repeating it after all this time.
Not sure how to respond, those are deaths w/ covid, which depends entirely on the jurisdiction from where they are counted. PCR test within 60 days of death, good enough to call it a covid death.
6. Public health emergencies like a deadly, highly infectious pandemic require emergency measures. Quarantine the infection to reduce the spread. Spend public funds to create and deliver vaccines. Prohibit access to public resources like schools without proof of vaccination.
6. There are no silver bullets. People have the right to assess their personal risks & do not have the right to coerce others. During the time of pandemics, irrational fear is high. Solutions offered as silver bullets should be viewed with increased scrutiny.
