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Then it's also not fine for you to leave your house because even if you are vaccinated you can still spread disease. With modern technology, there's no need to leave the home for anything but work and some essentials. So if you have this technological-integrationist view on vaccines then you might as well self-ban from any sort of outside recreation or public gatherings since you would be putting others at risk.



Between the two extremes of not getting vaccinated and self-isolating forever on the off chance you might have a virus is something called reasonable precaution. Getting vaccinated for something like Polio is just such a thing.


Who gets to draw that line? If one has the choice to self-isolate, and they are motivated by social obligation, then they should do so even if they are vaccinated because the morality of the issue doesn't scale with the severity of the virus. To knowingly risk giving others a disease for the sake of frivolity, even when the chances are relatively low, would nevertheless be an immoral act.

This is of course something I don't actually believe. Vaccines should be a personal choice because presumably they are effective enough that the argument for one's responsibility towards other people's health is greatly diminished to a point where we can decide what's a reasonable compromise. I more or less agree with what you're saying in actuality.


Well, the thing about reasonable precautions is that there's a fairly bright-line test: reasoned arguments behind those precautions. As for who should draw that line, I'd say that subject experts should have a very loud voice in the conversation. In this case, that would mean epidemiologists.

It's fine for vaccines to be a personal choice, but if epidemiologists think that an unvaccinated person is an undue risk to the general public, it's reasonable to limit that person's access to the public.

> Vaccines should be a personal choice because presumably they are effective enough that the argument for one's responsibility towards other people's health is greatly diminished to a point where we can decide what's a reasonable compromise.

Emphasis mine. Your presumption does not hold for all vaccines. Different vaccines and different strains of viruses have varying degrees of effectiveness. Epidemiologists take a data-driven approach to that decision where you're just making an assumption. Reasoned arguments must be backed by data, not just assumptions.




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