By now most people have seen the news of the completely expected and predictable correlation between vaccination rates and COVID infections - areas with high vaccination rates have lower infection rates, and vice versa, places with low vaccination rates are experiencing surges and higher infection rates. Lots of data and stories on this topic -
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1...946v1.full.pdf
https://www.washingtonpost.com/healt...ination-rates/
https://coronavirus.jhu.edu
The net result is that 93% of COVID-19 cases in recent days have occurred in counties with vaccination rates of less than 40%, and 99.5% of COVID-19 deaths have occurred in unvaccinated people -
https://www.c-span.org/video/?513253...-team-briefing
It's clear another surge is underway, focused on states and areas with low vaccination rates though resulting in increasing numbers for the country as a whole -
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019...iew/index.html
It's also clear from a number of recent studies that the Delta variant is more transmissible and causes more severe illness than either the original strain, or earlier variants such as Alpha -
https://virological.org/t/viral-infe...-2-variant/724
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/l...358-1/fulltext
As a result, we will soon once again be faced with the dilemma of insufficient healthcare resources (doctors, nurses, hospital beds, medications, ventilators, etc.) to meet increasing demand, and once again having to figure out what to do about it.
I have a rather radical(?) idea: deny healthcare insurance coverage for those who have refused to get vaccinated.
By now almost everyone who has wanted to get vaccinated
in the U.S. has done so (this doesn't apply in many other countries). Most of those who are not yet vaccinated in the U.S. are doing so by their own choice.
I say, fine. No one is going to strap anyone down and force a needle into their arm (though a good case could me made for it). But since healthcare resources are precious and limited, I suggest, deny insurance coverage for anyone voluntarily unvaccinated in the U.S. at this point. They are free to go without vaccination, but if they get infected, they should also be responsible for paying for their own treatment. If they cannot afford to pay, they're on their own.
Those who are unvaccinated are putting the rest of us in moral danger by putting us at risk of getting infected by them. Not only that, but by getting infected, the are turning their bodies into mutation factories.
All viruses mutate. This is the fundamental evolutionary process of nature. Life evolves in ways to promote its own survival. In the case of the coronavirus, this means evolving in ways to become more contagious, cause more serious illness (and thus create more virions), or become resistant to vaccines.
The more people who are infected, the more variants that will be created, and the greater the risk that the virus will continue to evolve in ways that may be increasingly resistant to vaccines.
Each person who chooses to go unvaccinated not only endangers their own health and life and is a risk to others, but is also essentially a mutation factory. An infected person will have between 1 and 100 billion virions in their body -
https://www.pnas.org/content/118/25/e2024815118
Based on how quickly the coronavirus mutates -
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7224694/
this means each infected person could potentially generate (very roughly) 1,000 to 100,000 new mutations. While most mutations are inconsequential or even deleterious to the virus, how many of those might result in a new variant with increased transmissibility, severity of illness, or resistance to vaccines?
Unrestrained by masking or social distancing, one infected person could cause 1,000 infections in one month, and one million infections in two months
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7224694/
“My body my choice” doesn’t apply when a person’s actions can cause harm to or the deaths of many other people. We don't have a 'my car my choice' rule that allows people to drive their cars in the oncoming lane the wrong way on the highway, because that would endanger other people. The same should apply to the pandemic and vaccination.
It seems to me that logic, data, facts, science, and reason will not convince any remaining vaccination holdouts in the U.S. to get vaccinated at this point. So, my suggestion (which of course will
never happen) is to deny them payment for COVID healthcare services, as well as prohibit travel on public transportation or entry into public buildings or indoor spaces. The limited healthcare resources should be reserved for those who are not willfully and intentionally putting the rest of society in moral danger by their actions.
Let the outrage, flame wars, and indignation begin (but this outrageous idea might spark some spirited discussion).