Needlessly cruel, or justified in the pursuit of herd immunity to end pandemic sooner?

[kenny]

I set up this poll so how you vote is private, so go with your gut.

Families could be denied death benefits if their unvaccinated loved one dies | CNN

These days, workers who refuse to get vaccinated against covid-19 may face financial repercussions, from higher health insurance premiums to loss of their jobs. Now, the financial fallout might follow workers beyond the grave. If they die of covid and weren't vaccinated, their families may not...

www.cnn.com

 

[MamaBee]

If I vote first everyone will know what I voted. I’ll wait..

 

[kenny]

I voted first, and I will state I voted: Justified.

 

[yssie]

Unacceptable and horrifying.

Big difference between incentivizing people to get vaccinated and penalizing their dependents after they die. Holding family members’ welfare hostage to now-deceased individuals’ decisions?

Unless we’re going to grant people the right to bodily drag their loved ones to a vaccination location - we shouldn’t be penalizing them for those loved ones’ decisions.

 

[Tarquin]

Horribly cruel and probably illegal. Are they going to withhold benefits from the families of diabetics that have poor diets? Smokers that die of lung cancer? People with liver disease that continue to drink? It will be thrown out of court unless they treat all these cases the same.

 

[Cerulean]

If someone at this point hasn’t gotten vaccinated, they will not be compelled to save their families from possible financial ruin. It will be fruitlessly punitive

I expect they’d think it implausible that they’d even die from the virus

Passing the debt on to families is ludicrous. It’s not their fault nor within their control - I’m sure we’ve all been unable to convince a close family member to do the right thing at one time or another

 

[kenny]

This may have a Darwinian component.

People who refuse vax (without a legit medical reason) have inferior DNA.

Unacceptable and horrifying.

Big difference between incentivizing people to get vaccinated and penalizing their dependents after they die. Holding family members’ welfare hostage to now-deceased individuals’ decisions?

Unless we’re going to grant people the right to bodily drag their loved ones to a vaccination location - we shouldn’t be penalizing them for those loved ones’ decisions.

I don't see it that way.

I see it this way.
Family members now have a financial incentive to pressure other family members (well the insured ones anyway) to get the vax.
Also, if you really love your family you'll get the vax so they can get the bucks if you do die of COVID.

Besides aren't death benefits not paid if the deceased suicides?
Isn't dying playing the Russian Roulette of declining the vax sort of the same thing?

 

[yssie]

I think we as a nominally civilized society should aim to neither punish children for the sins of their parents nor reward them for their parents’ virtues.

 

[kenny]

I think we as a nominally civilized society should aim to neither punish children for the sins of their parents nor reward them for their parents’ virtues.

I think we as a nominally civilized society should aim to not let the irresponsible unvaxed spread the virus, killing the responsible and vaxed.

COVID is deadly, even to the vaxed.
We must stop it.
The unvaxed are helping the virus spread.

 

[kenny]

I think anyone (without a legit medical reason) who declines the vax is being needlessly cruel.

Which is more cruel: not getting money or dying because of the selfish irresponsible and irrational choice of others?

 

[mellowyellowgirl]

Cruel

I'm in Australia one of the most heavily legislated and strict countries in the world regarding Covid but I don't think the poor people who are still alive should be punished for a decision that some other whackjob in their family made.

It is likely the unvaxed will weed themselves out anyway, why punish their families?

Just because you're family does not mean that you can force people to do what you want them to do. Far from it.

 

[mellowyellowgirl]

If someone at this point hasn’t gotten vaccinated, they will not be compelled to save their families from possible financial ruin. It will be fruitlessly punitive

I expect they’d think it implausible that they’d even die from the virus

Passing the debt on to families is ludicrous. It’s not their fault nor within their control - I’m sure we’ve all been unable to convince a close family member to do the right thing at one time or another

This! I don't think they give a damn what happens to their family. They probably have a bunch of notions that they will cling into their grave. Punishing their families is incredibly cruel. Not only do the people left behind have to deal with an antivaccer family member, they will now get punished for said antivaccers views.

Imagine being brought down for random lousy things your family did, just because you happened to be born into a shady family.

General you, not YOU!

 

[adlgel]

I've always thought it was a slippery slope to start charging smokers more for health insurance. What's to stop them from charging people with other unhealthy or dangerous habits more and where does it end? This to me feels like a more extreme version of that.

But to be honest it's also not that far off from a parent who chooses to let their life insurance lapse or doesn't ever pay for life insurance. They are choosing to leave their family with debts they may not be able to repay or funeral costs that can't be covered.

If someone is making the choice to stay unvaccinated, which data shows increases their risk of death due to the virus, is it really morally wrong from the insurance company to say that choice is on you but I am not going to pay for it?

 

[Matata]

I think it's cruel and necessary. Family members left financially vulnerable are usually of the same philosophy as the deceased so there's a chance, slight as it may be, that reason rather than passion will inform future decisions. I'm not comfortable paying people to be stupid.

 

[Cerulean]

I think we as a nominally civilized society should aim to not let the irresponsible unvaxed spread the virus, killing the responsible and vaxed.

COVID is deadly, even to the vaxed.
We must stop it.
The unvaxed are helping the virus spread.

Using punishment in this way makes no sense

I’d beg the decision makers behind this to pick up a damn psychological journal or two

punishment’s effectiveness is paradoxical in a way…this type of punishment is too abstract and too severe, it will only breed resentment in a group of people who are already more than happy to double down to protect their beliefs and will see this as further evidence to how their opposition has completely gone off the rails and in this instance I must agree with them

 

[yssie]

The problem is that having more people on the dole - which is the most likely outcome - achieves nothing. It just means more government money (inefficiently) going toward more mouths to feed and it means more bureaucrats being paid to shuffle bureaucracy. More people winding up in the ER. More people filling shelters and contracting and passing covid on. More people with more severe mental health issues down the road. All of these things harm the rest of us… The healthier and more self-sufficient everyone is the better off we all are.

This proposal feels kind of like the definition of cutting one’s nose off to spite one’s face.

 

[Asscherhalo_lover]

In the case of this article this particular benefit was only extended to city employees because of COVID and being frontline. This is not their normal death benefit, it is a COVID death bonus basically. If you have refused vaccination you've taken the chance that you might die of COVID and accepted that. Take that for what you will.

ETA: The benefit is set to expire this year anyway.

 

[Matata]

punishment’s effectiveness is paradoxical in a way…this type of punishment is too abstract and too severe, it will only breed resentment in a group of people who are already more than happy to double down to protect their beliefs and will see this as further evidence to how their opposition has completely gone off the rails and in this instance I must agree with them

What would you propose instead? I think viewing one side as the opposition is a factor contributing to the problem. Instead of viewing it as such, we should have viewed it as a communal effort to avoid all of the awful things that happened. We have lost our sense of community and individual responsibility to protect everyone for the common good.

I think the entire pandemic debacle would have had an entirely different response if it hadn't been politicized and had media and social media not spread lies and conspiracy theories. The people who believe those lies and conspiracy theories were unhappy, resentful, and felt disenfranchised way before the pandemic and will continue to feel that way as long as they continue to poison their minds with lies and conspiracies and continue to mothball their intellect. It is the same population segment that has remained unchanged for as long as I can remember. Positive rewards didn't sway their positions -- they refused all the freebies that were offered as enticements to get vaccinated. Watching their loved ones suffocate to death didn't change their minds. Some who died denied having covid with their last gasping breath.

 

[Cerulean]

What would you propose instead? I think viewing one side as the opposition is a factor contributing to the problem. Instead of viewing it as such, we should have viewed it as a communal effort to avoid all of the awful things that happened. We have lost our sense of community and individual responsibility to protect everyone for the common good.

I think the entire pandemic debacle would have had an entirely different response if it hadn't been politicized and had media and social media not spread lies and conspiracy theories. The people who believe those lies and conspiracy theories were unhappy, resentful, and felt disenfranchised way before the pandemic and will continue to feel that way as long as they continue to poison their minds with lies and conspiracies and continue to mothball their intellect. It is the same population segment that has remained unchanged for as long as I can remember. Positive rewards didn't sway their positions -- they refused all the freebies that were offered as enticements to get vaccinated. Watching their loved ones suffocate to death didn't change their minds. Some who died denied having covid with their last gasping breath.

I’m not actually viewing one side as the opposition, but that is certainly how our current discourse is constructed - “us vs them” depending on the context

“The people” that you are referring to in third person while simultaneously pleading for a greater sense of community are just as much a part of our community as those of us who choose to vaccinate. I may not agree with them, and I firmly don’t on this topic, but that doesn’t give me the right to assert power over them unjustly too get them to what I want.

If you couldn’t tell already, I wholeheartedly agree that we’ve lost our sense of community- but something tells me that stopping to potentially unethical means to bully the other “side” to agree with “our” view will bring no one closer together, in fact I’d argue that it makes whoever side that is no better than other authoritarian parties who assert power except that…somehow today “we” seem to believe we are doing it for what is objectively right and good.

 

[Cerulean]

In the case of this article this particular benefit was only extended to city employees because of COVID and being frontline. This is not their normal death benefit, it is a COVID death bonus basically. If you have refused vaccination you've taken the chance that you might die of COVID and accepted that. Take that for what you will.

ETA: The benefit is set to expire this year anyway.

Thanks for this. The article seems…vague

 

[kenny]

Using punishment in this way makes no sense

I’d beg the decision makers behind this to pick up a damn psychological journal or two

punishment’s effectiveness is paradoxical in a way…this type of punishment is too abstract and too severe, it will only breed resentment in a group of people who are already more than happy to double down to protect their beliefs and will see this as further evidence to how their opposition has completely gone off the rails and in this instance I must agree with them

But people choosing to not vax are punishing everyone else on the planet.

 

[kenny]

I think it's cruel and necessary.

Well put.

I think people not vaxing is cruel and not necessary.

 

[Matata]

If you couldn’t tell already, I wholeheartedly agree that we’ve lost our sense of community- but something tells me that stopping to potentially unethical means to bully the other “side” to agree with “our” view will bring no one closer together, in fact I’d argue that it makes whoever side that is no better than other authoritarian parties who assert power except that…somehow today “we” seem to believe we are doing it for what is objectively right and good.

This is certainly a widely held sentiment. I think it's babble akin to opposition of critical race theory because it might make a kid feel bad. It is not a matter of getting a side to agree with "our" view, it is a matter of saving lives, protecting the functionality of the health care system, keeping the economy moving as best it can in the circumstance, and ending as quickly as possible a disease that has weakened all of our systems, some to the point of shutdown.

At some point someone has to exert power when an issue that has the capacity to harm a country arises. There are times, imo, when personal freedom should take a backseat. Is that a slippery slope -- maybe, maybe not. We have lost the ability to accept that some things are righter than others even if the righter things appear unfair.

The evidence of the limit of government's power to force vaccinations to force mask wearing, to force social distancing on everyone is all around us.

 

[kenny]

...

It is likely the unvaxed will weed themselves out anyway ...

The unvaxed aren't just "weeding" themselves out.
They're weeding out others, innocents, the vaxed.

That's the elephant in this thread that many are overlooking.

Kenny's not the hard-heareted meanie.
The unvaxed are.

 

[Lookinagain]

I'm not sure that I have an opinion on this....yet. So I'm interested to hear opinions on how the refusal to vax is differentiated from suicide, which is generally excluded from recovery in a life insurance policy ( I don't know what pensions do). Is it because suicide is generally a "done deal" and an unvaccinated person "might not" die from Covid if infected? I don't know and am really interested to hear the rationale. Also, what about the person who has say $5million in the bank and $2million in some kind of death benefit, is unvaxed and dies from Covid? Their family wouldn't be left on the "dole". So should it only be people without other assets who can stay unvaxed and die, and have their family keep benefits? I'm just trying to figure out how all of his is reconciled. I certainly don't know and am trying to form my own opinion and as so many seem to feel strongly about one stance or another, I'm interested to hear how they came to their conclusions considering my questions above.

 

[Cerulean]

This is certainly a widely held sentiment. I think it's babble akin to opposition of critical race theory because it might make a kid feel bad. It is not a matter of getting a side to agree with "our" view, it is a matter of saving lives, protecting the functionality of the health care system, keeping the economy moving as best it can in the circumstance, and ending as quickly as possible a disease that has weakened all of our systems, some to the point of shutdown.

At some point someone has to exert power when an issue that has the capacity to harm a country arises. There are times, imo, when personal freedom should take a backseat. Is that a slippery slope -- maybe, maybe not. We have lost the ability to accept that some things are righter than others even if the righter things appear unfair.

The evidence of the limit of government's power to force vaccinations to force mask wearing, to force social distancing on everyone is all around us.

I think you are misunderstanding me. I don't think it is babble at all and nor do I think it has anything in common with the opposition of critical race theory. I am not even an individualist, quite the opposite, I'd consider myself more of a collectivist ideologically. You'd have no way of knowing that, but I am sharing it to provide context.

So, to be clear, I am not suggesting that we do not impose regulation around things like public health, or anything of the sort. My point is that this type of bargaining for public stability without being cautious of other democratic rights is an exceptionally slippery slope. To me, it is analogous to the past few presidents using executive orders to circumvent the systems and processes we have in place to maintain equilibrium. Whether I agree with the outcome is irrelevant. It is the wrong way to go about it and it opens the floodgates for abuse.

In this instance, I don't understand why employees who refuse to get vaccinated aren't simply fired for not complying with the employer's policies. There is no reason to infringe on the rights/put family members at risk when they should not be held responsible for someone else's actions in the first place. It is draconian, retributive justice that serves no other purpose beyond providing a sense of smug satisfaction that someone paid in full for what you and I may deem irresponsible behavior, and no one can hurt someone beyond the grave, now can they? So let's pick the next best thing...their blood!

 

[AllAboardTheBlingTrain]

As per my understanding, workers in dangerous jobs who receive death benefits (not COVID related, like workplace accidental death etc) can be denied benefits if they don’t take adequate measures to protect themselves (wearing vests, hard hats, harnesses etc). Life insurance policies don’t pay out for suicides (and I would expect if you make an attempt but don’t succeed, your premiums go way, way up).

I personally think that withholding this death benefit from unvaccinated people is in line with this policy that already exists for other such schemes that people don’t get up in arms over. If a company refuses death benefit to a construction worker who climbs up a seventeen storey building without a safety harness or a helmet despite being urged not to and then falls off, would that be unreasonable? Especially if the worker is aware that by not wearing safety gear they are both likely to die if an accident happens and the company will not pay out in such an incident? The only exemption I would make is if someone is medically unable to get vaccinated (and has a doctor’s certificate attesting such). Especially because they are receiving these benefits because they are front-line, dealing with the public, which will include the immunocompromised, the unvaccinated-by-medical-necessity, and small children.

Signed, someone who lost more than one member of my family to a social call from an unvaccinated individual (though, to be fair there weren’t any vaccines freely available back then) and who had a baby in the family go to the ICU for multiple weeks because of COVID complications though thankfully survived. Children are not immune. Old, immunocompromised people are not immune. I have no sympathy for those who set out to kill through ignorance (this does not apply to those who cannot be vaccinated medically) especially when the means to prevent those deaths are available at every street corner.

 

[yssie]

How many of the people who are choosing to not get vaccinated are doing so because they don’t have access to a longtime trusted GP to whom they can voice their individual fears and concerns and get personal reassurance that taking this vaccine is the best path for their unique situations?

All of us on this forum - we have medical privilege at our fingertips. A whole lotta people don’t. All they’ve got to go on is (still) a massively-politicized public health hackjob.

I’m not anti-vax. I’m just also not pro-hang-the-worried-and/or-their-families.

Instead of worrying about who’s going to get payouts after people die - if we directed all that energy toward making masks a legal requirement - the situation would resolve itself almost entirely, and it would do so far more expediently than waiting for herd immunity from mass vaccination.

 

[peacechick]

My position is this. Personal insurance (whether under employer or self) should pay death benefits if the insured dies for any reason, excluding suicide. However, dying of Covid when you refused vaccination is not eligible for accidental death coverage because as pointed out before, it’s like refusing to wear a hard hat at a construction side.

The complicated thing is when all of your insurance is from work and bundled together. I can see a scenario where a family ends up with nothing. For us, we have work insurance through my husband, and both of us have life policies as well as term policies.

 

[Missy]

We have lost our sense of community and individual responsibility to protect everyone for the common good.

We have indeed. Though I cannot help wonder if as a community we truly ever owned this responsibility to help and protect others. This pandemic has demonstrated, IMO, how many do not care about the well being of others. In a way it seems that there are more than a small amount of people who feel it is every man, woman and child for themselves. Very disappointing and in fact, tragic on many levels.

It is up to each individual to make an educated decision. Once we are adults that responsibility is ours. No one else's. I am so tired of hearing the excuses time after time. No, take responsibility. Take ownership for your actions. For better or worse. Stop blaming others for your (in)action. Do the right thing. Do the responsible thing. Accurate info is out there. It is your responsibility to get that info and stop listening to those who try to convince you otherwise. So many ridiculous myths are being spread. You (the general you) are an adult and it is up to you to read the facts and do the right thing. The facts are out there for everyone.

And 100% masks (and vaccines) should be mandated. The general population cannot be trusted to do the right thing. This has been demonstrated over and over and over.