Hot take but we should let reality deal the blow. There's so many things that people think is redundant and unnecessary but actually have an army of people and machination that are working tirelessly to curb it. Only to called bloat and the deep state.

Vaccines should not be given automatically, because that causes people to not think about why they need it. They think that it is something is imposed on them. But if they always have to request it (and the request is quick and always given, or super cheap at the shop) then people would have to know to get vaccinated. Parents will talk to each other about which vaccine is necessary (and its going to be all of them because they will know someone that died from it)

This is true for any crisis really. For example, lets say that you are managing someone's finances or health, you found out that they are in a horrible situation. But then, you discovered a solution that does not require their attention. So you work tirelessly behind the scene to fix their finances or develop new cure. Voila! Problem solved. Or is it? You have not fixed the fundamental problem that they are an obese with obese lifestyle.

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annzabelle 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

If millions more people are obese than were obese 50 years ago, clearly something has changed systemically that has made people more sedentary and eating more. People 50 years ago were not paying more conscious attention to their health than people today, but the background environment of available food and sedentary jobs/entertainment were different.

The personal responsibility model of obesity works for individuals (including myself), but falls flat when discussing how to lower the weight of millions.

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buu700 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

What changed 50 years ago is the US government decided saturated fats were bad and complex carbohydrates were good, and began setting policy to rebuild the food supply and culture around that worldview. We're now living in the result of that population-wide experiment.

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Arodex 2 days ago | parent [-]

Nothing has changed. Fat and sugar are appetizing, always have. The free market gave it to all of you by the truckload at the lowest price.

Try to assume your choices instead of blaming "the US government" and telling yourself fairytales.

	▲	buu700 a day ago \| parent [-]
		No, it was literally government policy. The free market didn't give us the McGovern committee or the following half-century of subsidies, regulations, and guidelines to promote low-fat diets. Markets don't exist in a vacuum. In this case, it was substantially shaped by state-driven incentives. If nothing had changed, we wouldn't be having this conversation. It's a historical fact that something did change: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obesity_in_the_United_States#/....

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hammock 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

“Freedom works for me but I want to also control millions of other people, for the good of me and their own good since they don’t know any better”

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ligne 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

"Well you need to exercise more and eat more vegetables" is true, but it's only practicable advice if people have access to exercise facilities and healthy food, and the time to make use of them. Otherwise you may as well be blaming fire victims for not being incombustible.

	▲	hammock a day ago \| parent [-]
		“You need to x” is still the (apparently flawed?) personal responsibility model. Replace “you” with “we will do x to you whether you like it or not” and now we’re talking

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bjustin 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

“Finding and halting the boot stomping on your friends and neighbors is a violation of your friends’ and neighbors’ freedoms”

	▲	hammock a day ago \| parent [-]
		Sounds nice but is that what you really mean? The government created Covid, let it leak from a lab and now people want to give them power to force millions of innocent people take the medicine they also created. “Finding and halting the boot” would look a little different from that in my mind

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jghn 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The problem with this thinking on something like vaccines is that vaccines literally rely on a certain percentage of the population having received the vaccine. It's not actually possible to allow a personal choice policy if you want a vaccine to be effective.

	▲	ndsipa_pomu a day ago \| parent [-]
		I wouldn't necessarily declare that vaccines rely on sufficient population vaccination, but there's always going to be people who cannot take the vaccine (e.g. immune-compromised individuals) and their protection comes from the population having a high percentage of immunity due to the vaccines. Of course, having the majority being immune means that any outbreak tends to finish quickly as the virus runs out of people/vectors to infect.

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ndsipa_pomu 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

That seems like the opposite of using intelligence to deal with issues.

Throughout history, human civilisations have tried to deal with problems (e.g. droughts, floods, famines etc) by proactively taking measures to increase their chance of survival. Simple things like storing grain to be used during the winter is an effective strategy, whereas letting people starve to death so that they can learn about storing grain seems like a really stupid idea for stupid people.

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Arodex 2 days ago | parent [-]

Also, throughout history, human civilization used to get rid of those who didn't play nice with others. Ostracism was common and there was no recourse.

	▲	ndsipa_pomu 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		Indeed - it was far more obvious to people that participating in society was not only desirable but often necessary (except for maybe the hermits). I'd argue that it's even more necessary these days in terms of global agriculture and production, but all the interconnected systems aren't as visible to people who are not involved in those industries.