Individual Measures

In my opinion, measures should not target individuals and accordingly not be based on individual R values. Measures should target risky situations. Risky is mainly dry indoor air (chapter Spread analysis). Dry indoor air can be ventilated, cleaned and humidified (Good air certificate).

Often the vaccines available in 2021, are presumed as effective reducing transmission. The supposedly reduced transmission and susceptibility is taken as a reason to restrict elementary rights and the freedom in varying degrees for those not vaccinated. While those vaccinated - even at high rates of Covid hospitalizations - can do near everything even with symptoms and often without any tests (// Here, for airplane travel and large scale events, testing (e.g. antigen tests) is considered as appropriate when hospitalization rates are high optional measures).

A concise and pointed comment “Covid-19 Vaccine Mandates Are Now Pointless” is by Pierpont (some errata however, see notes at the reference.)

Errāre hūmānum est. What if there are errata with the new technologies used?

Scientific Considerations

It is scientific task to determine the properties/features that predicts whether someone is more or less likely to be infectious, one such feature is being vaccinated. Another scientific question is, whether and which vaccines are safe.

Both infectiousness and vaccine safety are not rigorously discussed on this page. Some notes are available however:

A possible method to determine infectiousness is to determine the number of viruses in exhaled aerosol (Viral Load in exhaled Air). In the chapter individual factors for transmission and susceptibility there are some epidemiological observations on the effects of vaccines on transmission. // As of January 2022 the Omicron variant is prevalent in many regions, considerations on Omicron are in the Omicron chapter.

Some incomplete speculations/open question about the safety of the ‘mRNA’ and ‘Adeno-Vector’ vaccines are in Vaccine Safety Questions.

Moral Considerations

Relevant moral questions are:

Whether there should be restrictions for those being more likely infectious.
The relations between opening the windows / keeping distance / wearing a mask / living healthily or unhealthily / removable chip implant / getting vaccinated / being young or old.
Who can say or has the right to say something is safe, good or useful for somebody.
How and by who, how fast and which risks are estimated and weighted.
On different beliefs and world views.

On this page it is considered a no go to push people to vaccination. Especially if adults are only a tiny bit skeptical for (re)vaccination (‘booster’) due to safety concerns, then it is high time to remove any measures that could push teenagers to vaccinate.

There are valid reasons for young having safety concerns. It is a new technology with few experiences regarding mid and long-term adverse effects. The risk calculation for young, i.e. the protection against adverse events from Covid versus rare and/or speculative adverse effects from vaccination is not that clear. Additionally there are epidemiological risks when many have a very similar immunity (most vaccines induce mainly systemic anti spike antibodies), which is an immunity much more narrow than possible (induced for example by natural infection).

Legal Considerations

Vaccine mandates or rules out-casting people solely (if no medically equivalent options such as testing are permitted) based on their vaccine status (in the following also referred as vaccine mandates), in my opinion violate 4 of the first 5 human rights.

The first 5 Articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

source:https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-human-rights

Article 1 All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.

Article 2 Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status. Furthermore, no distinction shall be made on the basis of the political, jurisdictional or international status of the country or territory to which a person belongs, whether it be independent, trust, non-self-governing or under any other limitation of sovereignty.

Article 3 Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.

Article 4 No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms.

Article 5 No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.

Vaccine Mandates contradict Human Rights

Article 1 violates the right of reason and conscience. When it’s about to reduce transmission pre-testing is an alternative (and much safer). When its about catching a disease, the risks to take in life is an individual decision of reason and conscience.

Article 2 is violated since a distinction is made by the vaccine/antibody status.

Article 3 is violated since:

For some of the currently available vaccines (namely for ‘mRNA’ vaccines and adenovirus vaccines) temporarily associated deaths have been recorded.
Vaccination can have adverse effects and therefor it violates security and liberty of person.

Article 5 is violated since experimental vaccination can be perceived as cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment. Vaccination can be perceived as punishment for following the precaution measures and/or living healthily and therefore not having caught an infection with the associated recovery certificate (only valid if there are recovered certificates, if not, the violations of Article 1 and 2 are emphasized).

To restrict basic human rights of selected people, needs in my opinion, both a very solid scientific foundation and an acute danger for public health. // Models predicting many cases in a few weeks or months is not an acute danger. Numerous modelling predictions published turned out to be wrong.

To my judgement, there is no rigorous scientific foundation to differentiate between vaccinated and unvaccinated persons if not at risk for severe Covid: The science published suggests that intramuscular vaccines don’t provide a protection against transmission for more than a few months. Thus the current restrictions of people opting out of vaccinations can be viewed as out casting people based on attitudes without a medical basis - at least in the case of people not at elevated risk for severe Covid, which includes all people below 30 years of age. For people at risk for severe Covid there is a risk of hospitalization but 1) transmissions of (severe) Covid often happen within residential block and 2) other behaviors which increase the risk of hospitalization need to be banned too. Also the long-term risk of the current vaccines is unknown and time-associated hospitalizations and even deaths are reported (//nevertheless for people with a relevant risk for severe Covid one time vaccination is recommended on this page since severe Covid is severe). Also people can opt out of hospitalization/intense care and then this argument does not hold.// I don’t think, it is nice to neglect (some) treatments (as commented in Controlling>Strategy), but is is a third option to experimental vaccination and to be out-casted from social life for months or more.

Good treatment options would be nice! A promising treatment alternative is early administrated interferon alpha (chapter Interferon Treatment).