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The Vaccine Mandate: A case for caution (hoover.org)
8 points by verdverm on Jan 7, 2022 | hide | past | favorite | 4 comments


Richard Epstein is a recognized expert in Communication Law, Constitutional Law, Employment Law, Health Law and Policy, Intellectual Property, Law and Economics, Property Rights, and Tort Law

Sadly it appears that he has no expertise in Virology. He gets the medical facts wrong. Perhaps he should spend time listening to TWIV (This Week in Virology). Or perhaps he could listen to Virologists in THEIR area of expertise. I fear the Supreme Court suffers from the same defect.

People seem to be confused about the vaccine. It works like a smoke alarm. It helps your body DETECT and RESPOND to the virus. It does NOT PREVENT a virus attack, just like a smoke alarm does NOT prevent fires. The result of early detection is that your body can reduce the damage caused by the virus.

This is a scientific question. Visit TWIV (https://www.microbe.tv/twiv/). Today (Jan 8, 2022) there is a blog post by Dr. Daniel Griffin (TWiV 850: COVID-19 clinical update #96 with Dr. Daniel Griffin). He comes on once a week and gives details of the science and updates for clinical treatment. This is his 96th weekly update.

Vincent Racaniello (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCyFgCoP4ovsHbt92vM4zN2A) has a free online course on Virology, which I can highly recommend. His 2 volume textbook is also available.

If nothing else, a proper education will enable you to recognize when lawyers are confused about the medical facts.

Whether a mandate is legal is a political question. I have no opinion on that.

Whether a mandate is good virology is a scientific question. From what I've learned over the last few years, I believe it is. Don't take my word for it. Get educated.


How does a mandate address natural immunity? There is a lot of apologizing for the vaccines inability to prevent infection and reminders about how good it is against severe illness. Formerly vaccines were claimed to have been better against transmission than natural immunity and that was the epidemiological claim towards a mandate. What is it today? Natural immunity had no problem clearing South Africa of Omicron. Why would it not be an acceptable alternative to vaccination for those who have already recovered? The good doctor in your films claims vaccine immunity is seen to "mature" against serious illness as its effectiveness against transmission wanes. Wouldn't natural infection also lead to a maturation of the immune system over longer time periods? I don't see you address where you think Mr Epstein gets it wrong.


https://youtu.be/DTysKBBRL_Y?t=2123

Quoting Dr Griffin (Jan 8, 2022):

We are clearly seeing with this Omicron wave vaccines really do work to protect people against severe disease.

(Review of a published paper): Risk Factors for severe outcomes among persons aged greater than 18 years who completed a primary covid vaccination series..

The authors looked at 1,228,664 persons who completed primary vaccination for Covid-19. They defined this as 2 MRNA shots or 1 J&J shot. They reported that severe Covid-19 associated cases were rare and only 0.015%, death occured in only 0.0033%. Risk factors for severe outcomes included age greater than 65, immuno-suppression, and about 6 other underlying conditions.

All persons with severe outcomes had at least 1 risk factor and 78% of them who died had at least 4 risk factors.

So I want to try to put this fear in perspective. Prior to vaccines we were seeing 10-20% of people who got infected ended up in hospital and we had a case fatality rate of about 2%.

So we went from a 1 in 5 chance of hospitalization to about 1 in 10,000 with vaccination. Chance of death from 1 in 50 to about 1 in 30,000 with vaccination.


Context here is the case going before the Supreme Court




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