Choices have consequences. Suck it up buttercup.
No, SOME choices have consequences, depending on the way the Mob is facing.
No, ALL choices have consequences .. I'm not just talking COVID here, I'm talking life in general. Some consequences are meaningless, some are significant. Newton's 1st law also applies to life. And also, this is SOP for transplants. This story is a nothing burger. Outrage for the sake of outrage. I don't ever remember reading news about a liver transplant recipient (and their supporters of "FREEDOM!") losing their shit because they refused to stop pounding back a 40 of JD nightly. Or a gastric bypass candidate not getting it cuz they need to maintain their all-natural Jabba the Hutt cosplay look.
Of course, you're right, Chad; I was glibly (perhaps too glibly) making the point that we seem to be, in life in general, very subjective about when we apply the meaningful consequences versus when we apply the meaningless ones. We just had a case here in CT, decided by the State Supreme Court within the last day or so. Two guys, waiting in line for exercise equipment, sued two gyms that had "women's only" sections, saying it was unconstitutional. And, because that's the law as established by hundreds of women looking for "equality", they won easily. There's outrage here. Women are gawked at; women are now more susceptible than ever to sexual harassment and abuse; women are entitled to feel comfortable and "unattacked" when working out. All true, I guess, to some degree or another, but where were these standards when the case law was being developed? And in keeping with the point I made to Hef in another thread, why is ANYONE surprised at this, since it would take only a simple question - "how do you feel about this?" - to the men on the other side of the landmark cases to see how this would turn out. I'm not Channing Tatum, and wasn't even when I was in shape; I was no more comfortable doing benchpresses in front of cute girls in leotards than they were doing their lats in front of me. If we're going to hang our hats on the premise that we all have choice, but we all have to "suck it up buttercup" to the consequences, then they damn well better be reasonably predictable, and reasonably uniform.
I've already said, I have no beef with the hospital here. They are, as you say, following SOP. It IS a nothingburger.
But for them, the experience record of this vaccine is less than 5% of that. Say what you want, the COVID vaccine is a relatively new technology, and some of the innovations that went into it's success are less than a decade old, and with NO real-world experience. It's not as ridiculous as some of you make it out to be. It's CERTAINLY not as simple as the difference between "a needle prick" and "slicing open someone's ribcage" (my quotes, of an idea that several here have put forth).
If this is the argument, then please inform me what we know about the long term effects of COVID. It is by definition a "novel" virus, so it seems counterintuitive that someone is willing to defend their choice because (despite all the expert research disputing it) they have concerns about potential long-term effects of the vaccine - why then aren't those people then concerned about the potential long-term effects of the virus (not to mention the KNOWN short term effects)?
Why do you* get to do the risk/benefit analysis for someone else? That BAFFLES me. We DON'T know about the long term effects of COVID. That's the point. We don't know about the long term effects of mRNA vaccines either. For the traditional model of vaccines, we typically know all we're ever going to know within about six months of wide-spread introduction. We also typically know all we're ever going to know about the effects of the underlying virus after about six months to a year, so if we're going to now say "well, we don't REALLY know the impacts of COVID long term", we can't actually be surprised if some people also say "well, we don't REALLY know the impacts of the COVID vaccine long term." Why do you get to pick your arguments and no one else** does? Why do you get to tell them how to value those relative risks?
I know for me, I can formulate an argument why I take my chances with the virus. Assuming they are all first-impression cases, only about 365 million cases have occurred across the world; that's less than 5% of the population. The odds of me getting COVID then, are both random and rather small. I may never even be exposed to the virus, and if I was (and didn't get infected) I'd likely never know. It's out of my control, largely. If I ELECT to get the vaccine, the odds are 100% in my control that I'm now exposed to the risks. I can't get the impacts from the vaccine if I don't take the vaccine. I have, myself, adopted this logic in my life on several occasions; I was a freshman in college when Len Bias died of a cocaine-induced heart attack, after allegedly only trying the drug one time. That, coupled with what I know to be a fairly addictive personality, I decided then, and have stuck to my guns, that if I never try cocaine, I can't ever have my heart explode because of it, and I can't ever get addicted to it. I'm sure there are many people here that if we substituted "guns" in to the discussion would have no issue with the logic "if you never buy a gun, you can't ever have an accidental shooting occur on your watch".
Look, I'm not asking you to ACCEPT this logic, you adopt any logic you want. I'm just pointing out that a lot of this discussion regarding risk/benefit involves a LOT of projecting.
* I don't mean "you", Chad, but "you" those who are questioning why someone might make a different decision than you
** That is, those that disagree with you.