David Weaver
Wiley, I think you sense I have more disagreement than there really is. I think the reasonable course of action is to take the vaccine. If 70% of the population or more takes the vaccine, then the exponential spread doesn't occur.

I don't believe it should be mandatory by law, because I don't think it's necessary for it to do its job. It's also very premature to talk about mandatory when the rollout to the willing has been exceptionally poor, and there is no doubt, death that will be associated with slow political moving (such as claims that we need to go through a legislative process to allocate money to train people to administer the vaccine - come up with the money, figure it out later).

I have an aversion to things that work well when voluntary being made mandatory. I also would be willing to bet that the vaccine non-taker cohort is being overblown by the media because it can make people angry or upset. If uptake of the vaccine is 80% voluntary in 90% of the country and 50% in some small areas, guess which ones we'll hear about.

At the rate that the governments are moving, my suggestion that a complement of the non-takers will be convinced by data isn't necessary by policy -it will occur due to tardiness (that is, there will be enough time to calculate death rates and morbidity before the voluntary takers are even through).

You're right, I"ve got experience with exponential modeling. My limit with this whole thing is and was always when hospitals are overwhelmed. Limiting travel the last two months would've gone far further than making the vaccine mandatory at this point. That's what's causing hospitals to be overwhelmed - my point about the hospitals is simple. When people can't get oxygen or prompt treatment, then there are unnecessary covid deaths. I think if we'd have continued on the track that we took in april through may, many of the hospitals would've had a different issue (I think a lot of community hospitals would've gone out of business and closed. From experience here, when they close, the same building rarely reopens, and it's usually in an underprivileged area - the replacement is built in an affluent area causing the people who lost their local hospital to travel much further for care).

My other point is that people use sweden as an emotional point hoping to convince someone like me that something should be compulsory. At this point, we are calling the masters on the 5th hole. A single vaccine resistant variant has us right back in the soup.

(my comment about not having mandatory vaccines with people who had covid still remains - there's no significant data showing reinfection a second time at the same rate, nor is there any data showing reinfection anywhere close to the same severity. If I'd already had covid, I probably wouldn't opt to get the vaccine because there's no reason to).