cpt_om_sky wrote:
is not the whole system of modern democracies
also a system to protect minorities against majorities and vice versa?!
That for sure is the case. But even though a modern democracy also has to protect minorities, the majority still is the majority. Therefore protection of minorities has its limits – especially the a minority starts to hold the entire country as hostage.
In Germany (and probably also in Austria) we will technically not introduce mandatory vaccination (which is hard to enforce) but basically a strict lockdown for all non vaccinated. That has a very similar effect. The core argument of the non-vaxxers against such rules is (really!): “It is completely unfair if only the non vaccinated are treated like you have to treat non vaccinated – it would only be fair if you also treated all vaccinated peoples as if they weren’t!”
Non vaccinated refuse to do their share to contribute to society – therefore they have no right to demand something from society. It is them who have unilaterally terminated the social contract and decided to live “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short”. And as with every contract: Once you terminated it you can’t get the benefits any longer.
well. i tend to be on the side of strong motivation for non vaxxers to get vaccinated.
i tend to be very cautious when i comes to enforcements.
( the discourses here are very complex but so very important.)
probably you followed the debate after jürgen habermas solid but very
controversial statements in germany on this topic.
your last paragraph of contractual thought is very problematik in my view. the principle of law is the principle of law also for people who break the law.
following your conclusion of possible termination of the contract of the civil society for people who break its rules could lead to the conclusion: non vaxxers would loose their basic rights to get treated equally to the vaxxers by our health system.
would you really go this far??!!
Malibuflyer wrote:
Non vaccinated refuse to do their share to contribute to society – therefore they have no right to demand something from society. It is them who have unilaterally terminated the social contract and decided to live “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short”. And as with every contract: Once you terminated it you can’t get the benefits any longer.
Astounding. Would you wish to retrieve their citizenship ? Or maybe lock up some of them pour encourager les autres ?
They didn’t do anything illegal as of now.
Our DDHC says
Article V – The law has the right to forbid only actions harmful to society. Anything which is not forbidden by the law cannot be impeded, and no one can be constrained to do what it does not order.
if we come from two hypotheses
which we for now assume as empirically proven:
1. the vaccination by an approved vaccine
factually and significantly reduces the risk of
dying, developping a heavy symdrom AND infecting other people with the virus.
2.
the risk of dying or developping serious side effects after being vaccinated by an approved vaccine is factually and significantly lower than the risks to your health when you contrive the virus without being vaccinated.
then you are there: people could be forbidden NOT to get vaccinated, because nonvaccination is harmul to the society.
I think the whole discussion about “Democracy” is missing the point. Democracy means freely elected representatives as well as a legislative process which is freely done by the elected representatives or, in the case of Switzerland, by the people.
What has happened within the Covid crisis has pretty much followed that process or rather has not gone against it. Several countries have had elections since, they were held normally. Most countries had their Covid laws approved by either parliament or by referendum (we are waiting for one of those on the 28th, but the basic law has been in place since 2020) and the underlaying pandemic laws also have been previously installed and approved by elected parliaments.
In many cases, emergency decisions have been challenged to courts and have either been won or lost.
So the democratic process has always been working, there has been no restriction or actual transgression against democracy as a form of state.
Additional to that, it has been more than clear from the outset that almost in all countries in Europe and most elsewhere, a huge majority of people stood behind both the measures and vaccination, with some exceptions in Southeastern Europe.
If you were to hold a referendum today in most countries, whether to mandate vaccinations or not, you’d get a majority almost everywhere for vaccination.
In any society where people live in proximity, personal freedom has to end where it interferes with the personal freedom of others. That is why our societies function within legal frameworks rather than anarchy. In crisis, the good of the many outweighs the good of the few, or the one, with the clear premis that the latter should be preserved as much as possible. But not beyond that. Covid has pushed society at the brink of catastrophic failure, as too many have chosen personal egoism over the common goal and cause to control the pandemic and have rather chosen to impose their “freedom” upon those who wish to follow that common goal, thereby sabotaging the whole effort.
Austria will only be the first of many who will be forced to pull a stop to further spreading of the Covid plague by locking down yet again. The situation is no better in most of Europe. And while many have been seeing this coming very clearly and warned of recurring waves, one more terrible than the next, it is obvious that without it actually happening, way too many put their heads in the sand and simply wish it away. Well, it doesn’t work that way.
very well spoken!
to put it in the framework of civil societies.
(meant as societies where people deliberately
decided to live in a democracy)
personal freedom of one person ends
where the justified rights of another person beginn.
or as good old mao put it:
the freedom of a smoker to poison his body
ends where the right of a nonesmoker to fresh air beginns.
(do we debate enforced nonsmoking rules any more?!)
Aaaaand and someone said Jehova: Compulsory vaccination in Austria from the beginning of next February!
The reason this is so difficult is that the unvaccinated do not bear the “cost” of their (in-)action. if they get sick in large numbers (and that is the main issue, we now know that the vaccines are much more a tool to prevent severe illness, less so to prevent spread), they overload hospitals or force countermeasures to prevent that from happening.
And the obvious one – no hospital treatment for the wilfully unvaccinated – is so far much against medical ethics that it is unlikely this path will be taken.
So societies will resort to compulsion and / or harassment of unvaccinated. For example, travel bans for unvaccinated are not really justified by science, but exist primarily to provide an incentive (or because “something must be done”)
cpt_om_sky wrote:
the freedom of a smoker to poison his body
ends where the right of a nonesmoker to fresh air beginns.
Cobalt wrote:
The reason this is so difficult is that the unvaccinated do not bear the “cost” of their (in-)action.
I think these are great points. Perhaps at some point in the future we will see exhaled air or droplets or mist from peoples mouths and noses like we do the things that come from the other end of the body.
One of the major problems with our society is that Negative Externalities exist everywhere, and we only seem to take action in the most egregious situations. If we were in the habit of addressing negative externalities, then we could treat people spreading illness the same way, instead we just accept them.
Instead of shamelessly coercing or forcing people to inject foreign substances into their bodies without choice, how about letting them buy their own medical care, and thereby expanding supply to match demand? What a radical concept 
Freedom from tyranny is not free, but it is priceless.
