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by kristjansson·4y ago·view on hn ↗
The social costs of forgoing the vaccine are unique in that they arrive all at once. Smoking, drinking, obesity, etc. increase lifetime healthcare costs, but realize those costs over a long period of time. Hospitals are sized appropriately, more can be built if projections indicate more need, doctors can be trained, etc.

A policy that accepts infection-recovery as equivalent to vaccination unconditionally and removes most/all other restrictions could result in lots of those social costs over a very short period of time, much shorter than the timescale on which resources can adjust. So much so that resources become exhausted, and the costs compound from merely high to truly awful. Personal choice resulting in an impaired standard of care for unrelated people in need for unrelated reasons should probably be discouraged or proscribed.

Once the risk of resource exhaustion is eliminated, a policy that's less than a full-court press for vaccination might be reasonable. But that risk is primarily determined by the size of the covid-naive population, which can only be reduced by vaccination or infection...