This. It's literally what OP's coworker thought, and is exactly how they acted.Yeah I think this is a good time to repost this article from a few months back. These people don't care if you die, they just don't think they'll die and so they don't care if they get covid.
COVID Anti-Vaxxers Aren’t a MAGA Death Cult — It’s Worse Than That
Deathbed regrets from vaccine resisters speak volumes about the brokenness of conservatismtimjwise.medium.com
That's why I get so sick of hearing NFL quarterbacks and others keep saying it's a "personal choice" to get vaccinated. Fuck that, it's a responsibility everyone has to protect others. Personal choice goes out the window because of that.
Right? If you ever listen to these people bitch about their freedom or personal choice, you'd think they have never heard of laws before. They aren't walking around the neighborhood in the nude for example. Where is the outrage over the freedom to be nude? Like that is how we are born. Why should anybody have to wear clothes?
Yep - I never caught a drug addiction by sitting next to someone on a bus. And there's no vaccine I can take to prevent it. For some reason Covid attracts the dumbest analogies.
I would argue that, and I do think they're deserving of life, and I am very sad that the state of that person's mind...whether through idiocy, ignorance, or brainwashing...somehow caused them to think catapulting themselves 50 feet into the air was a good idea.
COVID Anti-Vaxxers Aren’t a MAGA Death Cult — It’s Worse Than That
Deathbed regrets from vaccine resisters speak volumes about the brokenness of conservatism
Your position is a fair one to have. I am coming more from the utilitarian/consequentialist belief that their death will result in less death overall like other posters have posited. I take no joy in their demise, but I sure am glad that they are unable to continue to wantonly go contribute to more deaths because of how contagious Covid has been especially the delta and now reported omicron turn out to be.
Numerically I don't think that's true. There's no way one anti-vaxxer's death equates to one saved pro-vax life. You could try weighting pro-vax lives as worth more, but that's problematic as well.
Strictly speaking in the case in the OP, I'd say yes the numbers would add up that his demise is a net positive in the world. The coworker doesn't appear to have thought out the consequences of his actions, leading to his own death, and potentially many others because the wedding is a super-spreader event.
It might be a net positive to all others on the planet, but only if you *don't count the death of the person in question as a negative*.
I am counting the person who dies because of COVID as a negative. What makes you think that had they lived, especially the cowoker of the OP, would not host other super spreader events. What makes you think he hasn't already hosted many in the past and somehow avoided the analogical bullet?
These are outsized examples (Trump, Hitler) that have incredibly far reaching effects, and also are clearly rooted in pure hatred, enmity, and evil. Trump *knows* the vaccine is effective, he got it immediately. He isn't ignorant of its effects. But he and his ilk (Hannity, etc.) have stirred up incredible anti-vax sentiment. The average anti-vaxxer is basically just a susceptible rube, and it isn't the same calculation.
Because it simply doesn't make sense. Far fewer people die, have died, and almost certainly will die in sum total than there are anti-vaxxers in the world. So their deaths cannot be saving one life each, on average. It doesn't make sense. And that's assuming literally every single COVID death can be traced back to an anti-vaxxer, which wasn't the case minimum for at least the first ten months of COVID.
I mean, that's fine. No one said you had to feel sympathy.
It makes me smile whenever I read about one dying.
I don't understand this suggestion that more people that have died and continue to die are not anti-vaxxers. If we define what anti-vaxxers are loosely, it is the people who refuses to get vaccinated despite how easy and available it is. We are literally having 95+% of people that have died since the vaccine is freely available and will continue to die from COVID are people who refuse to get vaccinated against it. You don't hear too many cases of vaccinated people dying. Sure there are some fringe cases, but that is like 1 out of 100 thousands or 1 per million (for fully vaccinated individuals with moderna or pfizer).
I don't see what's so unethical about it. I do agree that the death penalty is unnecessarily cruel and indignant to human life, but this isn't human beings killing each other here. These people did it to themselves.
