This is absolutely true. Rights are also responsibilities.
Inasmuch as you have a right to authorize or deny medical procedures on your own body, you are responsible for how your own body affects those around you. When you allow your body to become a vector for transmission you bear responsibility for spreading the disease.
Only way to not spread this disease is quarantine and testing. Why aren't vaccinated doing that? Why are they so evil or callous that they take risk of spreading it? Why isn't there talk that anyone who wants to protect others must regularly take the test?
Several universities I have colleagues at have regular testing requirements for all uni community members, on top of vaccine requirements. Maybe it could be a more widespread thing, but I think you make it seem more one sided than it is.
The cruel workaround that's playing counter to this is to diminish the person's life and freedoms until they take it out of desperation, and if they still don't give in; forsake the pretence of choice and mandate it anyway.
I was not disputing that. I was disputing that it’s a “cruel workaround” to eg require that people who work with the public get a vaccination to keep their job. Those who choose not to get to vaccinated are not entitled to force their presence on private individuals and to a certain extent the public.
I encourage everyone eligible to get vaccinated, but vaccinated people are also vectors. The vaccines don't reliably prevent infection or transmission.
Yes but so what? Since the virus is now endemic and can't be eradicated, all of us will be exposed multiple times throughout our lives no matter what we do or how many people are vaccinated. Vaccination provides good protection against severe symptoms, but over the long run it won't prevent others from being exposed.
That's not correct. If it were true then there would not be high case numbers in countries with very high vaccination rates, but there are.
UK data shows that vaccinated people are more likely to get COVID than unvaccinated people at this point. You cannot argue that vaccination makes you less likely to catch it with figures like that - it's just a made up talking point to try and justify deeply unwise and unethical mandates.
"But you can't be a vector of transmissible diseases" what exactly did you not understand about your own statement? Are you allowed to be a vector or not?
Do you want to live in temperature-controlled rooms, monitored by the government to ensure that no transmissible diseases are around?
You may have a knee-jerk reaction to my question, thinking it has no basis in reality. Meanwhile, in Australia:
They're going to force people who quarantine at home (rather than a government-mandated quarantine "hotel" with guards) to install and use an app. Facial recognition, GPS tracking in your own home. And it will randomly ping you, and if you don't respond within 15 minutes it'll send the police to your house to conduct an in-person quarantine check. Source:
It's not far off from your premise that a totalitarian regime would make this control the norm in the name of "don't be a vector of transmissible diseases."
The government could deliver meals to you! And let you out for exercise once a day as long as you stay within a few miles of your box! Does this still sound delusional? Those are effectively the terms that have already been imposed on people in Australia over the last year. They can arbitrarily lock you in your apartment building for up to weeks, no one allowed to leave. Sources:
"For six days, only one person from a household will be allowed to leave home each day, and only for essential reasons, authorities said. Schools, universities, cafes and restaurants are closed, weddings and funerals are banned and mask-wearing is mandatory.
“We want to go hard, go early, but get out of it as quickly as we can,” State Premier Steven Marshall said of the measures."
This is from last year by the way. They went hard but didn't get out of it at all judging by what's still the policy in Australia. And over the last year they still had their requirement about not leaving far from your box (oops I mean house) when exercising. Nobody could leave certain cities, even.
These examples are just scratching the surface of why it's naive to formulate your worldview based on a moral righteousness about "don't be a vector for disease." It's dangerous rhetoric even if it feels good in online posting to be "better" than others this way. Don't buy into the dishonest media narrative about "vaxxed vs unvaxxed."
This is called slippery slope argument. George Washington ordered his troops to be vaccinated. It's been the case for centuries and pretty much why a lot of us are alive now.
There is a mountain of links provided in recent comments I made, showing that it's happening in Australia and that some people are clamoring for a two-tier society. Victoria's premier is straight up saying he wants a "vaccinated economy" through 2023 - effectively banning anyone who doesn't partake, regardless of antibodies, from normal life.
That is not a slippery slope. That is reality staring you in the face. Vaccines are great. These mandates are idiotic for reasons I've thoroughly described and nobody has yet addressed the contentions on their own merit.
I don't care if George Washington in a time of war against the superpower of the time made a desperate gambit against smallpox infection in literal military conflict. None of that changes the reality of things - the vast majority of both countries have antibodies from one source or another. Those antibodies are known to be effective at preventing Delta, with breakthrough cases being rare.
Any mandates that are excluding someone from society or employment (outside of hospitals) are a mistake. We simply don't need them. We have already reached far beyond the 60-70 percent threshold Fauci and other public servants were saying would be required for herd immunity / endemic covid.
Your response is basically just justifying everything in Australia, the tyrannical overreach happening in other countries (including some would say in the USA with the recent Biden mandate on corporations). These things are NOT NECESSARY, on the very terms established by Fauci and co over the entire last year.
So explain in more detail how it's a slippery slope when (per all the links I've shared about Australia). Or explain to me why these public servants are ignoring reality and not making admissions about antibodies.
It's rather strange when someone can see all these links and their only real response is to try to justify it by calling out some rhetorical fallacy even though there wasn't one. What is this, high school debate class? I sourced my claims about what is literally happening down under, and it's not a slippery slope to understand history or to make noise when the alarm bells are going off.
Anyone wanting to do this doesn't need to know someone else's choices except by asking in private. Feel free to distance yourself from anyone not meeting your conditions. Whereas in general public, wear a mask and social distance.
Imposing these "rights" onto the general public is Nanny State hall monitoring on steroids, enacted and enforced by people who...we no longer have any reason to trust. Why can't we trust them? Because their entire schpiel over the last year about getting to herd immunity and endemic covid has gone out the window as of late. They are dragging their feet on acknowledging reality. Here's sources explaining why:
"More than 80% of Americans have coronavirus antibodies acquired through infection or vaccination, according to a new study of over 1.4 million blood donations across the U.S."
Almost all of those can be very bad for children. Covid, not so much. There isn't a reason to take the vaccine if you are under 30. And none of you are under 18
As far as I know, Polio is similar to Covid. I believe it is far less contagious compared to Covid. Can you help me understand why Polio is worse than Covid?
"Unvaccinated Victorians to be banned from venues including bookshops, pubs and football matches until at least 2023, while similar restrictions in NSW lift in December"
Pair that with the totalitarian measures enacted in Australia over the last 1.5 years in general (see my comment history). It's time to stop exaggerating the role that past vaccine requirements had when working in hospitals or in specific settings like that. This is much more than that, entailing a complete subversion of individual rights.
Someone supporting these types of measures has bought into the mass media kool-aid pitting "vaxxed vs unvaxxed" which is now dehumanizing a subset of the population so much so that useful fools are not seeing the writing on the wall when a rich politician is saying on absolutely zero basis who can and cannot be included in normal society.
"More than 80% of Americans have coronavirus antibodies acquired through infection or vaccination, according to a new study of over 1.4 million blood donations across the U.S."
"Previous Covid Prevents Delta Infection Better Than Pfizer Shot"
When all the facts are considered, it's blatantly clear that these mandates serve no real purpose anymore ON THE TERMS THESE VERY PEOPLE WERE ESTABLISHING. Over the last year, we heard about 60 to 70 percent being the marker for herd immunity and endemic covid. We've reached those numbers through antibodies (regardless of source) already. For months now. Where's the admission from Fauci and Daniel Andrews that their newfound limelight and powers are no longer necessary?
> Don't lie or exaggerate. We do not have "vaccine or fuck off." This has never been done.
Here's NY's.
"Children attending day care and pre-K through 12thgrade in New York State must receive all required doses of vaccines on the recommended schedule in order to attend or remain in school. This is true unless they have a valid medical exemption to immunization. This includes all public, private, and religious schools. A medical exemption is allowed when a child has a medical condition that prevents them from receiving a vaccine. There are no nonmedical exemptions to school vaccine requirements in NYS."
You can tell me all about Australia's supposedly totalitarian setup, but I've got a bunch of Australian relatives who wouldn't willingly trade places with me. My grandma hasn't had to wear a mask the whole time; my uncle just had to for a couple days. My American kids are in their second year of masking at school; one of these things looks like a dystopian movie, but it's not Australia.
(I'll take the Aussie per-capita death rate over the US one, too.)
Your anecdotes about your relatives in Australia are duly noted but disregarded as irrelevant, because it's anecdotes. I have family in Australia too, saying the complete opposite to you. Do you accept that? If not, then I have no reason to accept your anecdotes.
And you'd take the Australian per-capita death rate over the US...along with their tyranny? That's not worth the cost, because in the end something much much worse emerges. Have you seen any of these links yet? Here's what's actually happening in Australia.
They're going to force people who quarantine at home (rather than a government-mandated quarantine "hotel" with guards) to install and use an app. Facial recognition, GPS tracking in your own home. And it will randomly ping you, and if you don't respond within 15 minutes it'll send the police to your house to conduct an in-person quarantine check. Source:
“NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian yesterday announced freedoms for fully vaccinated people once 70% of the state’s eligible population are double dosed. These include being able to go to hospitality venues, hairdressers and gyms, and have five people to your home.”
They can arbitrarily lock you in your apartment building for up to weeks, no one allowed to leave. Source:
Also to address the original point more specifically and directly:
Your links to justify "vaccine or fuck off" as a historical precedent are weak. Nobody is really opposed to requirements for certain schools or working in a hospital with sick people near by. That is a wild departure from what we are seeing in Australia and the USA with the Biden administration attempting to force this onto corporations across the board and Victoria Australia straight up banning "unvaccinated" people from normal life regardless of antibodies. What we see now is people creating a new religion out of their zeal for enforcing conformity when the evidence shows that it's pointless to have that expectation. Look at the links I gave you previously: The antibodies the vast majority of these populations have are effective regardless of where they came from. Both populations have antibodies in far excess to what Fauci and other public servants deemed necessary for ending covid.
If you cannot participate in normal life because of the covid vaccination,, that is a complete departure from what we've done in the USA. And for travel too - I've traveled abroad before and was never expected to provide vaccination records at all. If it was about health, it'd be about antibodies and suspending these mandates immediately once the threshold has been reached. That threshold has been reached since this summer.
Please do not take HN threads further into flamewar hell. A reply like this is arguably worse than the original post, since the flames would die out on their own if not fed. That's why we have this in the guidelines: "Don't feed egregious comments by replying; flag them instead." a.k.a. please don't feed the trolls
If HN users follow that rule and do both (i.e. both not reply and also flag), not only will the flames not be fed, they'll be put out. That's the culture we want here.
It does though. The election fraud narrative and covid anti-vaxx efforts are being driven by many of the same forces. One public point of nexus is "Faith and Freedom" and "Health and Freedom" Conferences which overlap each other and "Stop the Steal"/Jan6.
If you have a better solution, there are literally billions of dollars up for grabs.
While parts of the pharma industry have definitely done shady things, the real reason we don't have a durable "cure" for many conditions is actually because the underlying biology is absurdly complex.
A few billion isn't going to have any impact on inflation that is worth worrying about if there is real headway made on COVID. It's the trillions that are probably worth worrying about.
They are vaccines in the sense they stimulate the immune system to fight the virus, but are weaker than traditional vaccines. It is pretty clear by now that VE against infection rapidly fades over time (6-12 months), say goodbye to herd immunity. There are encouraging epi and B cell studies that indicate VE against severe infection holds, but it's still relatively early in the pandemic. We lack long term data plus virus mutations are a risk factor. Hope for the best, but be cautious of premature victory proclamations.
If we didn't build and charge for our app then we can't continue working on it and improving. We enable many people to get support they wouldn't be able to otherwise and significantly broaden accessibility compared to medication and in-person therapy. We're not a non-profit but we do need to improve our model.
Linux is free and somehow that has gotten decades of support.
Most of the top contributors to Linux and other big FOSS projects do that work as a part of their salaried jobs at various corporations.
It's shocking that the myth of Linux being created and maintained by a bunch of dedicated outlaw nerds, typing away in their basements for free in their spare time (while presumably also working 50 hour weeks at their tech jobs, to pay the bills?) persists to any degree whatsoever in 2021.
Countless huge companies rely upon Linux in major ways, and therefore fund its development and maintenance.
My point is about the unbelievably privileged attitude of "you should make products for me free of charge, or else you're the greedy one". Not whether this specific product should exist, which is a different point from how it should be funded.
I never proposed they make it free of charge. I said the best model for their community is free and open source. The point of saying that is to make a contrast with their current predatory model.
And thats why I don't want you quoting me or paraphrasing me. You're putting words into my mouth that I never said or even implied. And once again, I find it extremely insulting.
I'm going to make it clear so you don't do it again. I want then to make an honest business model and to stop this predatory one
I'm at an absolute loss here. You started off by saying that the company should adopt a free model. You've since spent several comments vaguely insinuating that you were saying something else, without explaining what that is. What's the point of this?
Also, if you're not trolling with your absurd histrionics about people quoting you, then, well, I wish you luck in the world.
Billing an entire annual subscription up front, as opposed to monthly, seems especially questionable. What if the therapy doesn't work? What if it's so badly implemented that it can't work? You're still out a hundred bucks just the same, and that's just in the first year.
edit: There is also a monthly subscription option, in the Apple app store at least. It's $22 a month - so over twice as much as the annual. This does not give me to think the product here is less sketchy. And the Psy.D founder, Sachs, is a pretty blatant self-promoter of the sort endemic to the ADD/ADHD "coaching" space, if unusually well qualified by that standard: https://sachscenter.com/adult-child-psychiatrist-psychologis...
Perhaps it's less of a surprise than I initially found it that the account posting this Launch HN has thus far had nothing further to say.
also edit: Sachs is a Psy.D, not an MD. Granted, this does entitle him to "Dr." as a term of address, just as would a doctorate in physics, ancient history, or underwater basket-weaving. But, just as with any of those, it doesn't qualify him as a doctor in the generally understood sense. Again, this gives one reasonably to question, and the questions thus raised are ones for which well-prepared founders may reasonably be expected to provide compelling answers.
I just downloaded the Android app to check, and it's a similar ratio as you describe for the Apple app store: £19.99 per month if paid monthly, but £7.17 per month (as £85.99 per year) if paid annually.
And on my phone at least, the monthly payment option is also hidden behind a scroll down action: https://i.imgur.com/rV0bMTH.jpg, with the yearly subscription already selected by default.
It would seem they're pushing quite strongly this annual payment option.
> £19.99 per month if paid monthly, but £7.17 per month (as £85.99 per year) if paid annually.
As someone who's worked on pricing models, this speaks either to very little thought to pricing or a monumental churn issue.
A hefty discount for an annual subscription is generally something like 20%, and companies with good retention only offer ~10%.
Discounting over 50% if someone chooses annual either tells me (1) this company is low on funding and desperately needs the immediate cash flow, or (2) this company can't retain customers and is really lacking product-market fit.
Old YC would have absolutely helped the founders straighten this out, but it seems YC is now just a big cash grab and rolodex in the form of Bookface.
I'm not too proud to admit that I spent a long time not really taking ADD/ADHD all that seriously. That was before I fell in love with someone who has ADD. Seeing on a daily basis the effect it has on him, and the extent to which, even with effective treatment, it remains a serious obstacle in terms of executive function and followthrough even for things he plainly cares a lot about - to say nothing of subscription fees, which even people without these disorders find easy enough to forget that tools for managing them constitute an entire genre in their own right...
Well, I'm really looking forward to seeing what the founders have to say for themselves here, if anything, and wondering what reasons they could give me not to warn my boyfriend off their product in the strongest of terms.
Hey, as an adhd person that really gets frustrated when people don't take adhd seriously -- thanks for changing your stance.
it generally only gets portrayed in the media based on how other people experience people with adhd -- never the actual experience of the person with adhd.
i hope that changes in the future, so more people can have a similar exposure to it that you've had as a loved one.
Thanks for the feedback - this is due to screen size on Android and we're current working on fixing issues impacting smaller screen sizes at the moment.
You agree to a MAXIMUM of $100/year as WELL AS a max per month that may be charged (== to $100/12 max) -- but the idea is that if you skip a month or some amount of time you are not charged....
The usage is based on certain amount of time-in-app or somesuch....
you get the idea.
---
Anyway, as someone who has debilitating ADHD I really want to use this... but whilst not working, I can't pre-commit $100 to something that I may have too bad a case of ADHD to adopt on a regular.
I think that's a good insight, not least in that a model like that incentivizes real utility in the product. Granted, it could also incentivize dark-pattern stickiness, but there's still the seed of something worth considering here.
Granted IAP isn't that flexible, or not to my knowledge, at least. But Stripe is right there, too.
This is a good idea but we do also have limitations from the App/Play Store - definitely something we'd been keen to explore though. In the meantime, we've refunded everybody who has requested one.
That reminds me of a quip by Rachael in an episode of Friends when her and Ross [Ph.D] are at the hospital - "Now remember Ross, there are real doctors here"
> Sachs is a Psy.D, not an MD. Granted, this does entitle him to "Dr." as a term of address, just as would a doctorate in physics, ancient history, or underwater basket-weaving. But, just as with any of those, it doesn't qualify him as a doctor in the generally understood sense.
Indeed, I've had better help from a LCSW than a Psy.D, and I never called the social worker "Dr."
Also, as someone without ADHD, I can also say this model is predatory. Nobody should have to remember to put in a request to not be charged after a trial.
You're not wrong - but it's maybe not great to distract from the predatory nature of targeting people that are at high risk of being exploited from this model.
It's bad all around, but it's extra bad for people with adhd -- and considering it's an adhd app, it really puts it on a different level of predatory that's worth focusing on.
Canceling a credit card does not cancel your obligation to pay a vendor unless you also terminate your plan with them. Some of them will try to collect, especially if you had a contract.
I tried this to get out of my gym membership and they sent the bill to collections. Luckily I called them and they didn't make me pay it. They did ban me from the gym however
If you aren't doing so already, you should look into if your card has virtual cards. Capital One for example does. I think it would make your current process easier.
It looks like Capital One does this via a Chrome extension, which you have to install (and which can presumably look over your shoulder to see all of the shopping websites you visit). I might consider installing this, deactivating it by default, and then only enabling it when I want to make a purchase. But I was hoping there would be a simple number generator in the mobile app. I guess that would be too easy!
I use Privacy[1] for this and would highly recommend the service to anybody using a bank that doesn't have an easy and convenient way to issue disposable card numbers (most US banks).
There are nowadays plenty of e-banking solutions which provide you with virtual cards, which you can create and destroy on the fly and at 0 cost. It is really wonderful for this kind of scenario. Vivid is the one I've been using, I couldnt be happier with it. Theres also N26 allowing this, and Im not sure but, Skrill, Transferwise, Revolut,...
