[ExI] enough time has passed...

[Stathis Papaioannou]

On Sun, 23 Jan 2022 at 16:40, Rafal Smigrodzki via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

>
>
> On Sat, Jan 22, 2022 at 11:22 PM Stathis Papaioannou <stathisp at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> So what is your position: IF at some future point it could be shown to
>> your satisfaction that masks and vaccinations would save lives, but only if
>> enough people participated, would it be reasonable to mandate these
>> measures if voluntary participation were insufficient?
>>
>>>
>>
> ### Let's posit the following situation:
>
> A new virus created in a PLA lab in China is accidentally released. It
> does not kill men but it kills all women (the PLA was trying to make a
> weapon to sterilize all non-Han people but somebody forgot to clean the air
> filter at the lab, so an intermediate viral construct leaked out). Women
> cannot be vaccinated because the virus is designed to circumvent the immune
> system in women and kills them rapidly no matter what. However, the virus
> becomes partially dormant in men, does not kill them but continues to be
> shed in exhaled air, so any infected man is a walking woman-killer. A
> vaccine can however clear the virus in men, rendering them again safe to be
> around women.
>
> In this world women can claim that men *must* be vaccinated, or else
> almost all women would die, or have to be confined to manless spaces with
> filtered air, which would be a major disruption to their way of life.
>
> Would I support a mandate for all men to be vaccinated, or else be
> banished to a place far away from women? Sure I would, and I would come to
> the vaccination station as soon as possible (just as I got the Covid
> vaccine, in January 2020). A vaccine mandate here would be an efficient way
> of protecting those who cannot efficiently protect themselves in other
> ways. This is the important part - those ingroup members who are *unable to
> protect their own lives*, through no fault of their own, may have a claim
> on other ingroup members to extend protection to them, at least in some
> circumstances.
>
> You notice how different this situation is from the covid hysteria, where
> the vaccine does not protect other people, everybody can be vaccinated, and
> everybody will be infected anyway, rendering them safer than the vaccinated
> ones, so no person can claim that other people *must* be vaccinated or else
> that person's life would be destroyed.
>
> Such details make all the difference.
>
> All of the above is just a verbose way of me saying that the mere claim,
> true or not, that vaccines save lives is not a sufficient justification for
> a mandate.
>
> And don't get me started on masks, these dehumanizing, humiliating pieces
> of medically useless trash.
>

OK, so your objection is a practical one, not a moral one. If masks were
effective, say reducing R0 from 1.1 with voluntary use to 0.9 with mandated
use and thereby potentially ending the epidemic, you would be OK with
mandating them, right?

> --
Stathis Papaioannou
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