One would think that this particular episode would make one rethink your critique of the primacy of individual autonomy. There are no exceptions being made for those demographics where the data shows they have everything to lose and nothing to gain from vaccines. In fact, nearly every college in the country is requiring vaccines for every student, and no there's no "test weekly" option for them, they're being forced to test weekly even after having been vaccinated. Then when the inevitable asympomatic cases pop up, they're being forced to quarantine in their dorm rooms for weeks at a time. And there's no real public debate out it either, it's just accepted as a fact that schools and employers have a right to force people with practically zero risk of severe COVID disease to take a vaccine with a significant risk of causing a heart condition, literally only God knows what the end of it will be.
No, there's no utilitarian calculations going on, where in the costs and benefits are carefully weighed for each individual and for various demographics. No, there are powerful lobbyists with billions of dollars to be made from mandatory use of patented drugs, and an aristocracy composed of self-important idiots who have zero sense of humility, even after having been wrong countless times since the start of this pandemic. The only possible counterbalance to that is a healthy respect for and sense of individual bodily autonomy that rejects the authority of the state to stick a needle in your arm against your will, even if couched in a coercive system wherein the force is applied via private institutions with the power to control whether you have a future or can feed your family.
The way you are reasoning about this makes a lot of sense to me. I think, however, that this style of empirical reasoning is highly problematic today. Your calculations are based on data pulled from several sources. Your conclusions depend on the accuracy of this data. But why do you assume any of these sources are accurate? There was a time when that assumption was reasonable. That time has gone. Our default assumptions must change with the times. Today that means we assume, by default, that the sources are not accurate unless proven otherwise.
We must assume that the data is manipulated, false, or outright fraudulent. The "replication crisis", well-known problems with peer review, politicization, statistical manipulation to achieve "significance", financial pressure and corruption, frequent cases of outright fraud, and so on all add up to one thing: the rational default assumption is one of skepticism.
It turns out that science requires a baseline level of integrity to function. As that integrity diminishes so does the ability of the scientific system. We now have the unenviable task of navigating an environment that is a mix of truth, half-truth, and falsehood. To do so we must develop new tools and habits of mind rather than rely on old ones.
One would think that this particular episode would make one rethink your critique of the primacy of individual autonomy. There are no exceptions being made for those demographics where the data shows they have everything to lose and nothing to gain from vaccines. In fact, nearly every college in the country is requiring vaccines for every student, and no there's no "test weekly" option for them, they're being forced to test weekly even after having been vaccinated. Then when the inevitable asympomatic cases pop up, they're being forced to quarantine in their dorm rooms for weeks at a time. And there's no real public debate out it either, it's just accepted as a fact that schools and employers have a right to force people with practically zero risk of severe COVID disease to take a vaccine with a significant risk of causing a heart condition, literally only God knows what the end of it will be.
No, there's no utilitarian calculations going on, where in the costs and benefits are carefully weighed for each individual and for various demographics. No, there are powerful lobbyists with billions of dollars to be made from mandatory use of patented drugs, and an aristocracy composed of self-important idiots who have zero sense of humility, even after having been wrong countless times since the start of this pandemic. The only possible counterbalance to that is a healthy respect for and sense of individual bodily autonomy that rejects the authority of the state to stick a needle in your arm against your will, even if couched in a coercive system wherein the force is applied via private institutions with the power to control whether you have a future or can feed your family.
The way you are reasoning about this makes a lot of sense to me. I think, however, that this style of empirical reasoning is highly problematic today. Your calculations are based on data pulled from several sources. Your conclusions depend on the accuracy of this data. But why do you assume any of these sources are accurate? There was a time when that assumption was reasonable. That time has gone. Our default assumptions must change with the times. Today that means we assume, by default, that the sources are not accurate unless proven otherwise.
We must assume that the data is manipulated, false, or outright fraudulent. The "replication crisis", well-known problems with peer review, politicization, statistical manipulation to achieve "significance", financial pressure and corruption, frequent cases of outright fraud, and so on all add up to one thing: the rational default assumption is one of skepticism.
It turns out that science requires a baseline level of integrity to function. As that integrity diminishes so does the ability of the scientific system. We now have the unenviable task of navigating an environment that is a mix of truth, half-truth, and falsehood. To do so we must develop new tools and habits of mind rather than rely on old ones.