WHY DO REPUBLICAN LAWMAKERS SIDE WITH THE PANDEMIC

You think being the party against giveaways to the masses funded by less than 10% of the people is politically helpful?

Pro-choice isn't very pro-freedom for the child.

Single payer healthcare isn't more freedom, it is shackling the producers to provide even more for the people that are already net takers.

I'm pretty sure they have not proposed any legislation to ban this. A few people personally opposed it, but that is their freedom to do as much as it is the freedom of the kneelers to kneel.

They want companies to have the freedom to hire and fire and negotiate with whoever they want. It is called property rights. The law already unconstitutionally favors unions. The FLSA should be repealed.

They do. It was Democratic controlled school boards pushing things like the 1619 project, which was eviscerated by Democratic historians
Scholars are eviscerating The New York Times' 1619 Project (nypost.com)

Few members of the GOP are libertarian at all. Most are big government totalitarians, like Democrats light, with a slightly more economically right flavor.

Because you don't want to and you are not concerned would be one two reasons.

Most of the politicians are vaccinated, it is mandates they oppose. Me too.

Because they were forced to be vaccinated as babies, they had no agency and didn't even know what was happening. Adults are typically not forced to undergo medical treatments in the United States.

You should be, so long as you are liable for any damages you cause.

 

Sorry to call a 6 week old fetus a child is ridiculous. This is imposing one's religious beliefs onto people who aren't religious, a fundamental unconstitutional act. Just because someone "believes" that a fetus is a god given soul of life doesn't give the right to force a woman to birth a child. How conservatives play mental gymnastics with this one is entertaining. If life is so sacred, you'd all be against the death penalty.

Sorry, I meant public option not single payer.

Conservatives love to get riled up against it and call for these players to be canceled. If that isn't against the spirit of depending individual freedom, than nothing is.

I don't think you understand the concept of a union. Why should a company have the right to negotiate in a way advantageous for itself, but workers are not allowed to group together to negotiate better terms using their collective power? You are saying that it is unconstitutional for people to work together to get a better deal from a company? Seems someone who supports freedom would support the right to unionize.

Sure take an extreme case as your example. But in Florida, teachers are not even allowed to teach that racism exists. You can't possible tell me that's freedom. Conservatives want to indoctrinate a literal whitewashing of history.

What do you mean by mandates? So you are saying companies can't require customers to wear a mask of be vaccinated? Why not? Can airlines mandate masks or vaccination for countries? Can the US mandate that all foreigners traveling to the US be vaccinated? Doesn't that go against your idea of Freedom? Didn't conservatives favor a ban on foreign travel in some cases including Americans as a reaction to COVID? Isn't that a mandate? The contradictions are hilarious.

And yet conservatives had no problem with vaccines before Trump was elected. How does your position shift so much based on one guy?

Than you aren't free to do it if you are held accountable are you? "You're free to murder but you will be punished" Hmmm, sounds like a specious argument.

 

I am against the death penalty.

As long as it isn't subsidized with tax funds, I have no issue with a public option. You don't really even need government for that though, just have a non-profit health insurance company that accepts everyone and you will accomplish the same thing. Then you don't need to worry about opposition, it can be done unilaterally.

Many people are far less absolutist in defense of free speech than I am. Members of both parties and many affiliated with neither want to cancel different people. I am more in favor of letting people say whatever they want (absent things like fraud and slander) and if you disagree, argue against it. I wouldn't say either of the major political parties is great on most issues of freedom, unfortunately.

I am a member of two unions and a lawyer, so I think I have a decent understanding of unions. I don't oppose them. I oppose the laws that favor unions unconstitutionally.

Both should be allowed.

No. I am saying the NLSA is unconstitutional because it interferes with freedom to contract.

I do. As I said, I am a member of two unions. The power of the union should be in collective action. Not in the government getting involved in negotiations between the union and the workers. For example, just as workers should and are allowed to band together and act collectively, the employer should be allowed to fire people for joining a union, or approach them individually. It would be up to the members of the union to act in solidarity with each other, not the government to say you can't fire people for joining a union.

I don't think there is a single school in America that doesn't teach anything about racism.

Laws that say you must take a shot or wear a mask or whatever, under penalty of fine or arrest. Legal, government mandates.

No. Private enterprises should be able to set whatever rules they like.

Not sure I understand the question. I don't think countries are going to allow airlines to set mandates for them. Airlines can set mandates for their own passengers and employees.

I am in favor of open borders, if and only if people are not entitled to any monetary benefits. So, I am more in favor of freedom to travel than most members of both parties. As long as the United States continues to enforce borders, they can have whatever requirements they like I suppose. Certainly the Constitution permits the government to control relations with other countries, that would presumably include requirements for entry. I wouldn't have travel bans were it up to me.

I don't think my position has shifted at all. I was never in favor of mandates no matter who the president was. I have always been in favor of vaccines being developed and offered. What shift?

You wouldn't be punished for doing it, you would be required to compensate people for actual damages you cause them. It is a pretty clear distinction. It is the difference between speeding tickets and suing someone that damages your car.

 

As @txtony noted in his post this isn't just one person. This is wider spread problem across several states. That case just happened to be more prominent.
This piece is an Op-Ed but it does cite the extent of this problem.
https://www.politico.com/news/agenda/2021/10/26/lack-hospital-space-crisis-covid-517219
Opinion | How Covid Is Killing People Who Don’t Even Have the Virus
People turned away from overcrowded hospitals have died in places across the country. That’s why adding beds is a key to surviving the next pandemic.

Mark A. Rothstein is Herbert F. Boehl Chair of Law and Medicine and Director of the Institute for Bioethics, Health Policy and Law at the University of Louisville School of Medicine.

In Cullman, Ala., Ray DeMonia was having a cardiac emergency and sought treatment at his local hospital, but he was not admitted because there was no ICU bed available. The local hospital contacted 43 other hospitals in three states, and all were filled beyond capacity. He was eventually transferred to a hospital in Mississippi about 200 miles away, but it was too late to save his life.

In Bellville, Texas, Daniel Wilkinson was diagnosed in his local emergency room with gallstone pancreatitis. He needed immediate surgery, but the hospital was not equipped to perform the procedure. His emergency room physician tried for seven hours to locate another hospital where the surgery could be performed. Finally, a bed became available at the VA hospital in Houston, but by the time he was airlifted to the hospital, it was too late to perform the surgery and he died.

In Alaska, as well as other states with high levels of Covid-19 cases, “crisis standards of care” have been implemented to allocate scarce resources in a state where vast distances between hospitals often makes it infeasible to transfer patients in a medical emergency. Medical staff members were forced to decide which patients got life-saving dialysis, the use of a ventilator or an ICU bed.

1.5 million to 919,000 due to consolidation and the closure of some small and rural hospitals. Excluding neonatal and pediatric ICUs, there were about 80,000 ICU beds in 2021.

Now, in some states hard-hit by Covid, over 90 percent of ICU beds have been filled. Overall, Covid patients made up only about 27 percent of ICU patients, but this surge was enough to overwhelm the system in many places.

Despite recent gains, the country is a long way from the end of the worst pandemic in a century. An analysis of what went wrong in our response to Covid, and the lessons learned, undoubtedly will be difficult and contentious. Nevertheless, it is hard to dispute that the U.S. needs more hospital beds, including ICU beds, to treat patients like Ray DeMonia and Daniel Wilkinson, who had the especially bad fortune to become critically ill during a public health emergency.

They, too, are victims of Covid-19, but also the relentless efforts of both public and private hospitals to avoid the expense of excess capacity resulting in unused equipment and facilities.

The easiest and most likely way to increase surge capacity for public health emergencies is for the federal government to subsidize the construction and maintenance of reserved medical facilities.

By designating and equipping standby hospital floors or ICU units that can be used only when state or federal officials declare a public health emergency, these surge facilities can be placed into immediate operation. Surge planning also requires additional trained staff already in place. Currently, some hospitals have met their extra staffing needs during the pandemic by using medical students, retired providers and military personnel to provide care, but this limited, ad hoc approach has been inadequate.

The surge capacity developed for a future disease outbreak also would be extremely valuable in treating victims of hurricanes, fires, floods, earthquakes, mass accidents or terrorism.

More at link.

 

@StupidMoniker
I understand where you're coming from but don't agree with it. I think others have argued many of the points I have so will not rehash them. What I do want to ask you about though is a few points:
1. in FL and TX the policy that they are putting in say that private businesses cannot put in vaccine, mask or other mandates that they deem necessary for their business. You've made a very absolutist argument on individual freedom but wouldn't individual freedom extend to what a private business owner deems is best for the safety of their own business?

2. Also in FL and TX along with a few other Republican controlled states they are making unemployment benefits available to employees who are fired or quit their jobs over vaccine mandates. Is this not government subsidy of individual behavior?

3. Finally the Biden "mandate" only would cover employers with a 100 or more employees and wouldn't require vaccination as employees could also take increased testing instead. In that sense then no one is actually forced to take the vaccine. WOuld you agree that you have freedom to work but not freedom to any job you want so if you don't want to take the vaccine your freedom to not take that vaccine is still intact. You just can't work at any job you want.

 

Selfishness - want to live in a safe society - don't want to have to pay for it.

Libertarians and Republicans......to a tee.

DD

 

Yes. I disagree with the FL and TX laws. The business owners should be able to make their own determinations. I don't agree with government imposed mandates in either direction.

If you are fired, you get the unemployment benefits that you have paid into. Generally you don't get unemployment benefits if you resign, so I wouldn't create a special exception for that.

Testing is still a mandate and the number of employees is a non-issue. It doesn't matter to me if it is 1 or 10 or 100 or 1000 or 1000000. The government has no business mandating that people get injections they don't want. Would you be in favor of a government mandate that limited people to 1800 calories per day, and you cannot exceed the recommmended daily allowance of sugar, fat, salt, etc.? That would save a lot more lives than a vaccine mandate, and it wouldn't even require injections.

I don't want the government to bother me and I don't want to pay them to do it. I also don't want the government to take money from me and give it to other people. I don't much care what the government does or doesn't do to make a safe society, I will look after myself.

I think it is a timing issue. The sources I was looking at cut off earlier in the year before so many people were vaccinated. As the percentage of people vaccinated increases, the percentage of people who die that are vaccinated will naturally increase, as there are fewer unvaccinated people available to get the virus and die. I am fully willing to accept your numbers. I posted what I could find, if there are better sources I accept them.

The death rate among the vaccinated is 0.55 per 100,000 people through October second using the website posted by @txtony which means if your are vaccinated in America you have a 0.00055 percent chance of dying of COVID-19. For this you want to take away people's freedom?

 

Fair enough and appreciate your consistency.

Is that the way it works in your state? In most states if you're fired, not laid off, you don't get to collect unemployment benefits. That is why FL, TX and IA have created a special exemption.

I think your hypothetical would be hard to enforce but I don't think it in principle would be a problem. There are already many laws on the books where enforcement is dependent on business size. For example a business has to have more than 20 or more employees for age discrimination to apply.

Let me ask you if you're against testing mandates then should government quit requiring airlines to drug test pilots?

 

Here is what I said:

"At the peak of Delta in the US, there was 24.6 covid death per 100k. Of those, 18.44 were unvaccinated and 6.15 were vaccinated. That's 75% vs 25%.

Take a more recent point (Oct 2, 2021), there was 9.78 covid death per 100k. Of those, 7.29 were unvaccinated and 2.49 were vaccinated. That is again 75% vs 25%."​

The raw # changes with time. If you want to use cumulative data since covid vaccines have been made generally available, ~400k has died of covid and ~20% of that (80k) were vaccinated.

As a comparison, Chickenpox killed ~150 people per year in the 1990s. A decade after vaccination requirements, it has dropped to under ~20 per year. Kids aren't required to be vaccinated for chickenpox, but if not by their parent's choice, the kid's freedom to attend school is taken away.

Yes, people's freedom should be restricted for public health. If they choose to not be covid vaccinated, they should be excluded from all indoor public gathering (or must go through regular testing or some other means to reduce risk) until we are at a point where covid is no longer a major public health risk. At that point, some of the restrictions should be lifted for those that choose not to be vaccinated.

 

Danke.

It depends. If it is considered an infraction, they you still qualify for unemployment benefits. If it is considered good cause for termination, then you won't.

We are very far apart if you think it is okay for the government to control what you are allowed to eat.

Yes there are, to me that is preposterous.

Yes. The airline could certainly chose to test their own pilots. No cause drug testing mandated by the government seems like an unreasonable search to me.

We have very different priorities. Fortunately for you, people like you have much more political power in the United States than people like me. I would prefer a much less intrusive government, even if it resulted in a little less safety. I'll roll the dice on my 0.00055% chance of COVID death.

 

It's a clever argument, and a premise I've resigned to out of apathy and exhaustion, but it's not iron clad.

Vaccinated people can still get infected and sick. If their surroundings lets them accumulate a viral load beyond their immune system's capacity, then they're more likely to get "crazy sick".

On the corollary, there's also the issue of personal guilt.

Say a vaccinated person has 10 to 100x fighting capacity for this viral load (I don't have actual numbers but I would so love to see them) compared to a unvaccinated. And say a vaccinated person gives off "5 covid particles" (again #s pulled out of my butt to make the point more digestable) per restaurant or unmasked encounter.

Those who are not vaccinated will have to deal with those 5 covid per vaccinated person as their viral load begins to build up. Unvaccinated carriers will definitely have a probability of more than 5 covid in the event they're infects. (maths and more maths).

My sense of viral load is pretty much like carrying a milk carton and the amount of virus you can handle. Unvaccinated can hold a pint, whereas vaccinated can hold a gallon.

In the meanwhile, it's give and take so I'm contributing 1/2 ounces of virus everytime I breathe out something misty (masking and other measures reduces these numbers), but the overall point is that when an unvaccinated does get sick, it could be a community of vaccinated contributing to that person's viral load that got him to get deathly ill.

I guess you're okay with that kind of impact if you're dismissing second hand smoke or commons related health externalities as a precursor for regulation, but other people aren't and as a communal based society, it should be talked about.