False Analogies???: Drunk Driving vs Vaccine Mandate, Drunk Driving vs Abortions
Would like to establish context first. The analogy of making it illegal to drunk drive after drinking vs vaccine mandates. The drunk driving analogy is used in many political cases such as abortion.
I have a feeling the heart of the issue with the analogy could be forcing someone to do something is not the same as forcing someone not to do something.
I listed the pros and cons of each scenario below. Note the Cons of drunk driving is the same as the benefits of the vaccine. It lowers risks you may impose on others.
Driving Home Drunk:
Benefits: Get home Cons: Puts others at risk
Vaccine:
Benefits: Vaccinated. Helps others and yourself from getting Covid. Cons: Unsure if COVID would cause more harm than vaccine would long term (this may apply to young people)
Let's establish these benefits and cons as true regardless of studies because this is not political.
Can anyone outline for me the reason this analogy falls apart? Or does it?
NOTE: I am looking for a discussion about whether this drunk driving analogy holds up and when it does. I am not looking for whether or not vaccine mandates are needed.
I have a feeling the heart of the issue with the analogy could be forcing someone to do something is not the same as forcing someone not to do something.
I listed the pros and cons of each scenario below. Note the Cons of drunk driving is the same as the benefits of the vaccine. It lowers risks you may impose on others.
Driving Home Drunk:
Benefits: Get home Cons: Puts others at risk
Vaccine:
Benefits: Vaccinated. Helps others and yourself from getting Covid. Cons: Unsure if COVID would cause more harm than vaccine would long term (this may apply to young people)
Let's establish these benefits and cons as true regardless of studies because this is not political.
Can anyone outline for me the reason this analogy falls apart? Or does it?
NOTE: I am looking for a discussion about whether this drunk driving analogy holds up and when it does. I am not looking for whether or not vaccine mandates are needed.
Comments (14)
If you drive drunk, you put vulnerable people in the public at risk without their knowledge or approval. Being drunk is ok. It's going in public that's wrong.
If you go out in public unvaccinated, you put vulnerable people in the public at risk without their knowledge or approval. Not being vaccinated is ok. It's going in public that's wrong.
No, I'm not trying to say that the risk associated with drunk driving is equivalent to that for going in public unvaccinated.
I agree in principle, but in reality, none of us are islands. Never going in public is just not really possible for most of us. Someone visits, delivers food, cleans the floor or whatever. Even our good friend @180 Proof posted that he made fairly extensive efforts to mask and remain isolated but he still got it. I just don't think it's really possible to effectively limit one's exposure. We're social creatures and interdependent, which is why this whole hyper-Libertarianism thing is so maddening. I'm sympathetic toward individualistic views, but the refusal to bend when it could mean suicide or killing others is insanity.
I know I'm preaching to the choir with you, but I just got news my law partner's 56 year old otherwise healthy anti-vax uncle died of Covid, leaving behind a wife, kids, and grandkids. I know what it's like growing up with an empty chair at Thanksgiving every year and knowing that a single injection could have avoided that for this family is so heartbreaking.
An unvaccinated person cannot be a threat if he doesn’t have a virus.
Fixed.
In my case, it seems likely I'd contracted Covid-19 on one of my visits to my doctor in her waiting area at Emory Hospital (near the CDC for those who don't know). As they say "... a congregant setting ... to be avoided" with other sick people before vaccinations had been widely given back in March. The irony is I and others like me are most vulnerable or contagious in hospitals or clinics. Especially now as they are overwhelmed by the latest spike in the pandemic. And every indication is, from my read of public health data trends, that the vaccinated are also asymptomatic spreaders like many of the unvaccinated, though maybe not quite as virulently, because they tend to carry higher viral loads and are more relaxed about masking, distancing, etc.
Anyway, what we have so far are 'effective vaccines with unknown long-term safety risks and which are also mostly useless for preventing transmission or contracting of the virus'. And stupid people (only referring to Americans, particularly here in the southeast) who refuse to comply with simple, prudent public health behaviors long demonstrated to mitigate transmissibility. What a shitshow. :mask:
I thought that I recall you mentioning recently that you got the VID from an impetuous hookup.
I don't disagree with the distinctions you are making, but I was trying to keep focused on the specific question @Tuckwilliger asked - whether or not the analogy between drunk driving and vaccination is valid.
Say we have a hypothetical that this vaccine causes bald hair. I have updated my pros and cons list of both events:
Driving Home Drunk:
Benefits: Get home Cons: Puts others at risk
Vaccine:
Benefits: Vaccinated. Helps others and yourself from getting Covid. Cons: Bald Hair
Now is the analogy not the same? Because wouldn't forcing someone to get the vaccine and accept the cons of the vaccine be different from forcing someone to not take the benefits of driving home. I feel like this is different but can't verbally explain why. Hopefully this makes sense.
Quoting Tuckwilliger
Quoting Tuckwilliger
What you're saying makes sense, but it seems weird to point out. There are a lot of non-analogies between these two things; you're just pointing out a particular one.
For example, drunk driving is already illegal. But making drunk driving illegal is not really forcing people not to drive drunk; rather, you're "threatening" people with legal consequences not to drive drunk. Likewise, it's not a given that vaccination mandates are equivalent to force-vaccinating people; maybe it is, maybe it isn't, but it depends on what you do to mandate vaccination.
If I drive drunk, a cop might see me swerving all over the road. They could pull me over and make me take a breathalyzer. If I'm over a legal limit I could face consequences, from a ticket to license suspension to jail time. If I'm not vaccinated, it's kind of undefined how I'm detected by the authorities, or what happens. Without outlining this it's kind of hard to compare, but I think jumping straight to forced vaccinations is premature.
There are also different risks and concerns between the two. A drunk driver primarily is feared at higher risk of getting into an accident. Generally, after an accident, your car quickly comes to a stop; whatever damage is done in coming to the stop is the concern, and that might be severe, but you have one vehicle doing that damage. With COVID there are at least two concerns... spreading it per se, and saturating hospitals.
I don't see how any of this changes my first response. I'll summarize - are the two situations, i.e. driving drunk and going in public without vaccination; analogous? My answer - yes. Are they identical? No.
Drive drunk, more likely to injure the innocent, and increased risk to you.
Don't drive drunk, less likely to injure the innocent and no potential increased risk to you.
Get vaccine, maybe decreased risk of covid (you don't know if you were susceptable or goingvto catch it), maybe less transmission to others if you catch covid (although we din't know how much less transmission) and absolutely increased risks of side effects (immediate, short term, medium term, long term and potentially to offspring. We don't have any data in this area, just theory)
No vaccine, maybe increased risk of catching covid (you don't know if you are susceptable), maybe decreased symptoms if you catch covid (80% of people are asymptomatic so they weren't going to notice anyway), maybe more chance of transmission (we din't know how much vaccine decreases transmission, we think ot does) and absolutely zero chance of any side effects from the vaccine you did not get. Not today, or next year, or two decades from now, and nothing extra for future generations.
Because there is negilible negative consequences to not driving drunk but a very real potential of negative consequences from getting vaccinated; the analogy does not hold up.
1. You do something: Drink alcohol.
2. 3. Rights: You don't have the right to drink drive.
3. Consequences: Menace to society.
Anti-vaccination
1. You don't do something: Refuse vaccine.
2. Rights: You have the right to refuse vaccination.
3. Consequences: Menace to society.
If you look at whether you're doing something/not doing something, the analogy breaks down as action means you caused something (bad) to happen and inaction simply means you allowed something (bad) to happen. People will hold it against you that you committed murder but will let it slide that you didn't raise a finger to stop a murder. I'm not as sure as I'd like to be on this.
If you consider rights, DUI is an offense but refusing vaccines isn't. Should we make vaccines mandatory? I dunno!
In terms of consequences, DUI and anti-vaccination are indistinguishable. Anti-vaxxers and drunk drivers both put the lives of other people at (high) risk.