Current Events > Question regarding vaccination requirements

(+) Yeah! (+)

I live in a place where businesses can require a vaccination card or negative Covid test in order to serve the customer. Wouldnt the safest way be to require everyone to show a negative test? When I see the sign, to me its saying: were ok with the risk of a vaccinated person having Covid, but were not ok with an unvaccinated person having Covid. I know my understanding/interpretation of it can be totally off, but thats how it looks to me.

Was wondering what the reasoning or logic might be. Trying to get more understanding and thoughts to help me see it a little more clear. Not trying to debate what is or isnt right, so lets keep this civil. Its more for my information and understanding.

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Bump

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I know my understanding/interpretation of it can be totally off

or in laughably bad faith.

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I kind of see your point. If the purpose was to keep patrons from spreading it, youd want the negative test. If you were concerned about patrons contracting it, youd want to see a vaccination. Requiring both would cover all the bases, but doing an either/or will leave gaps. I guess the idea isnt to go for the most protected scenario, but to cover a good bit of it and still allow the most people possible.

Biden touched on this in his speech when he announced the mandate. Testing has been shown to not be an effective tool to eliminate the odds, even weekly testing.

Cause maybe Joe Blow gets covid that afternoon after the test and goes to work the next day and they don't find out til the following Monday that he's infected 700 people this week


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neither approach is perfect, but both provide a reasonable protection against spreading covid, especially when enacted on a large scale

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Vaccinated people do have lower risk of spreading it, even though it's nonzero. In turn, if the other people there are vaccinated they have a lower risk of catching it, even though this is also nonzero. The nonvaccinated people are getting regularly tested since it becomes a requirement, so this would cut how much spread they're causing.

No amount of measures are ever going to truly cut the risk to zero, and almost every country in the world has long since missed the train - or fallen off the tracks - on outright elimination (Australia's been forced to give up; New Zealand is showing worrying signs of heading in the same direction), except for a few fairly isolated Pacific Island nations - and even some of those, such as Fiji, have had to abandon elimination.

At this point, it's about reducing two things to a manageable level (for many places, it always was about this, and the vaccine is just the latest tool used for it) - firstly, how much spread happens at all, and secondly, how much of that spread reaches people who are especially vulnerable. Vaccination helps reduce both of these, and regular testing at least helps with the first.

Unfortunately, a lot of the people who are opposed to these measures, basically seem to think along the lines that unless / until we have one single magic bullet that's 100% effective, we should just do nothing at all.

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NeoShadowhen posted...

I guess the idea isnt to go for the most protected scenario, but to cover a good bit of it and still allow the most people possible.

Ahh, that makes sense.

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