Who is tracking me on my devices?

[Ken]

There hasn't been an endpoint to any vaccination program except for smallpox which ended in 1972 I think, after the disease was completely eradicated in the US and most of the rest of the world. We still have mandatory vaccinations for many diseases that are now very rare like polio. I'm pretty sure my kids needed to get a polio vaccine to attend school. Why would Covid be any different?

[Falco Underhill]

There hasn't been an endpoint to any vaccination program except for smallpox which ended in 1972 I think, after the disease was completely eradicated in the US and most of the rest of the world. We still have mandatory vaccinations for many diseases that are now very rare like polio. I'm pretty sure my kids needed to get a polio vaccine to attend school. Why would Covid be any different?

Only she says this one is every six months and if you don't go back to get it, they're coming to you! Yeah sure, that sounds perfectly normal.

[Ken]

There hasn't been an endpoint to any vaccination program except for smallpox which ended in 1972 I think, after the disease was completely eradicated in the US and most of the rest of the world. We still have mandatory vaccinations for many diseases that are now very rare like polio. I'm pretty sure my kids needed to get a polio vaccine to attend school. Why would Covid be any different?

Only she says this one is every six months and if you don't go back to get it, they're coming to you! Yeah sure, that sounds perfectly normal.

So if you are a New Zealander get the shot then and get on with your life. It is trivial. I've had dozens of shots over the years as have most residents of every modern country on the planet.

[Falco Underhill]

There hasn't been an endpoint to any vaccination program except for smallpox which ended in 1972 I think, after the disease was completely eradicated in the US and most of the rest of the world. We still have mandatory vaccinations for many diseases that are now very rare like polio. I'm pretty sure my kids needed to get a polio vaccine to attend school. Why would Covid be any different?

Only she says this one is every six months and if you don't go back to get it, they're coming to you! Yeah sure, that sounds perfectly normal.

So if you are a New Zealander get the shot then and get on with your life. It is trivial. I've had dozens of shots over the years as have most residents of every modern country on the planet.

Thankfully, I don't live in New Zealand. (Although I did kind of want to visit Hobbiton.)

[Ken]

I dunno. Since my family and I are vaccinated, I think I'd prefer to live somewhere that has actually controlled Covid and kept their population safe. Like New Zealand.

Just for the sake of comparison here is the US and New Zealand. New Zealand has had a total of 44 Covid deaths since the pandemic began for a population of 5 million. Compared to about 800,000 deaths for the US. You have to look hard to see New Zealand on this chart, they barely break above zero. And this is per 1 million population so apples to apples comparison.



Just for the sake of contrast to New Zealand, the most concentrated Conservative Anabaptist population centers in the US are Holmes County Ohio and Mifflin County PA in terms of the percentage of the county population. Holmes County has has had 143 Covid deaths with a population of 43,000. Mifflin County has fared somewhat worse with 228 Covid deaths out of a population of 46,000. You can do the math. That is many hundreds of times worse.

[Falco Underhill]

There hasn't been an endpoint to any vaccination program except for smallpox which ended in 1972 I think, after the disease was completely eradicated in the US and most of the rest of the world.

That's hardly more reassuring than the argument that "the system has already mostly been in place for years so why are you yapping about it now" argument.

We still have mandatory vaccinations for many diseases that are now very rare like polio. I'm pretty sure my kids needed to get a polio vaccine to attend school. Why would Covid be any different?

Well, I don't recall that the government ever shut down the economy or rounded up people to lock them up if they didn't take the vaccines for the chicken pox or the measles.

[Ken]

There hasn't been an endpoint to any vaccination program except for smallpox which ended in 1972 I think, after the disease was completely eradicated in the US and most of the rest of the world.

That's hardly more reassuring than the argument that "the system has already mostly been in place for years so why are you yapping about it now" argument.

We still have mandatory vaccinations for many diseases that are now very rare like polio. I'm pretty sure my kids needed to get a polio vaccine to attend school. Why would Covid be any different?

Well, I don't recall that the government ever shut down the economy or rounded up people to lock them up if they didn't take the vaccines for the chicken pox or the measles.

I don't recall that happening for Covid either. Can you point me where the CDC prisons are that are locking up vaccine resisters?

[Falco Underhill]

There hasn't been an endpoint to any vaccination program except for smallpox which ended in 1972 I think, after the disease was completely eradicated in the US and most of the rest of the world.

That's hardly more reassuring than the argument that "the system has already mostly been in place for years so why are you yapping about it now" argument.

We still have mandatory vaccinations for many diseases that are now very rare like polio. I'm pretty sure my kids needed to get a polio vaccine to attend school. Why would Covid be any different?

Well, I don't recall that the government ever shut down the economy or rounded up people to lock them up if they didn't take the vaccines for the chicken pox or the measles.

I don't recall that happening for Covid either. Can you point me where the CDC prisons are that are locking up vaccine resisters?

I didn't claim it was the CDC but this is as you know a global phenomenon so we're taking foreign trends into account too. Austria and Germany are setting fines and prison sentences for jab refusers and the EU is discussing it. It's been in all the papers.

Can you show me where the government ever shut down the economy and put restrictions on buying and selling before for the measles or the chicken pox? Or made getting a vaccination a condition for employment, as Biden is pushing for and what's going on in New York?

[Ken]

Can you show me where the government ever shut down the economy and put restrictions on buying and selling before for the measles or the chicken pox? Or made getting a vaccination a condition for employment, as Biden is pushing for and what's going on in New York?

I did post this story earlier about Mifflin County PA being completely shut down during Christmas 1941. My mother lived through this in Belleville PA when she was a small child and I found the article on the NYT archives. Notice that they completely shut down commerce and canceled all church services? My mother told me about all the dairy farms being forced to dump their milk because no milk trucks were allowed in and out of the valley for weeks.

As for getting vaccinated as a condition of employment? Several years ago when there was a mumps outbreak in this region I was required to show proof of having the mumps vaccine before returning to work. I had to dig out my old shot records. So I assume that sort of thing is not uncommon. My wife works in the medical field and has had various job-required vaccines over the years. It was never any big deal until this whole Covid thing got utterly politicized.

[Bootstrap]

There hasn't been an endpoint to any vaccination program except for smallpox which ended in 1972 I think, after the disease was completely eradicated in the US and most of the rest of the world.

That's hardly more reassuring than the argument that "the system has already mostly been in place for years so why are you yapping about it now" argument.

Why would you want to stop making vaccines available?

Well, I don't recall that the government ever shut down the economy or rounded up people to lock them up if they didn't take the vaccines for the chicken pox or the measles.

Time for a quick history lesson - I recommend the entire article, not just these quotes. This is hardly the first time law was used to enforce public health. And the history of these measures did not lead to the kind of long-term authoritarian government some people seem to fear, democracy went chugging on when normalcy was restored.

The Long History of Coercive Health Responses in American Law

Third, Supreme Court precedent makes clear that the Constitution allows nonconsensual measures to stop an epidemic.

In a 1905 case, Jacobson v. Massachusetts, the Supreme Court upheld compulsory vaccination during a smallpox outbreak. It explained that “the liberty secured by the Constitution of the United States to every person within its jurisdiction does not import an absolute right in each person to be, at all times and in all circumstances, wholly freed from restraint. There are manifold restraints to which every person is necessarily subject for the common good…. Upon the principle of self-defense, of paramount necessity, a community has the right to protect itself against an epidemic of disease which threatens the safety of its members.”

Of course, sometimes it went badly overboard. But in the long term, democracy survived even then.

Colonies and, later, states have imposed such measures since the beginning of American history, though they have become less frequent as modern hygiene and medicine have reduced the prevalence of infectious disease.

Parliament, which legislated for the American colonies until independence, passed its first statute to regulate the practice of quarantine in 1604, likely in response to a severe outbreak of plague the year before. The law, known as King James’s Act, gave local officials draconian powers to impose and enforce isolation and quarantine of potential plague carriers. Any person infected, residing in an infected house or even being present in one could be “shut-up” in that house until the authorities chose to lift the quarantine, a tactic reportedly used by China to contain COVID-19 in Hubei province.

The earliest recorded quarantines in the colonies were against smallpox, dating back at least to the 1620s. The first formal quarantine law enacted by one of the American colonies followed in 1647, in Massachusetts. By the early 18th century, Massachusetts added a law permitting local authorities to isolate ill people in separate houses.

After independence, coastal states commonly enacted quarantine laws requiring ships’ crews and passengers to remain aboard for a specified period before disembarking. In 1855, Louisiana authorized the Board of Health to establish a quarantine station 75 miles downriver from New Orleans, inspect incoming ships there and quarantine incoming passengers there as necessary.

Epidemics were a grim feature of life in crowded, unsanitary 19th century American cities. States instituted numerous quarantines in response to smallpox, typhoid, cholera, plague, yellow fever, diphtheria and other diseases.

New York City, with its crammed downtown streets, overcrowded tenement housing, and constant ship traffic, had a particularly dire record of epidemic disease. As a result, inbound immigrants arriving at its maritime entry stations were frequently sent to quarantine or isolation—often en masse.

The year 1892, when a cholera outbreak struck New York, provides two vivid examples. In the first instance, the city quarantined, under unsanitary conditions and with no judicial review, 1,200 Russian Jewish and Italian immigrants, 1,150 of whom were initially asymptomatic. Many died, likely as a result of infection acquired during the quarantine.

Later that summer, panic broke out in the city over fears that Asiatic cholera, then present in European ports, would reach the city by sea. When three ships arrived from Hamburg after reporting deaths at sea from cholera, the city began quarantining all incoming steerage passengers on harbor islands. Cabin passengers were quarantined in their staterooms.

Some upper-class passengers protested their detention in the media and to politicians, but no passenger filed a lawsuit challenging the detention. In fact, no constitutional challenge was brought against any New York quarantine confinement until 1895.