Just because that is the definition of co-morbidity does not, of course, mean that people shouldn't be more vigilant about their health. I am a firm believer that everybody should try to be in better shape tomorrow than they were yesterday. They should be concerned about body fat, blood glucose, blood lipids etc. I don't want to diminish that as much as I wanted to make the point that most Americans sadly fall into the category of multiple comorbidities. It is sad, and it is a good lesson that when people talk about that shit, they aren't talking about some fictional American, but about most Americans.
My feeling is slightly different than Dr. Malone's in that I think that people should make their own decisions about vaccination, but that it is worthwhile noting that herd immunity is more costly than vaccinated immunity as far as bad outcomes, and that when dealing with outbreaks we are not dealing with discrete probabilities but contingent ones. In other words, if one person dies in a neighborhood from a car crash, that doesn't raise the probability for others in the neighborhood, but with a disease, as one person dies in an area, the risks do rise, albeit in a small way, for others. So with those things in mind, I think getting vaccinated makes sense, as I have said. But, I don't really care if somebody else makes a different decision, or finds other analyses more convincing. I think I have been pretty consistent on this the whole time.
As to the mandates, I agree with you that they are diminishing of liberty, and that they are bad. I am fortunate in that my state was the first to disallow any mandates, so it is not hard for me to avoid frequenting mandated businesses. I won't travel to states with them, in sympathy, or in annoyance or some mix of the two. You can be sure I will not shame anybody for not being vaccinated. I reserve the right to shame people for saying thing that I think are stupid or harmful.
I note the Bonhoeffer poem, though as somebody who lost a lot of family to the Holocaust, I cannot tell you that I endorse the comparison in any way. I firmly believe that two things can be awful, but not similarly awful, and I prefer to reserve Holocaust comparisons to things like the Holodomor, Pol Pot and other mass genocides. That is a personal stance for me. I don't get too offended by what I see as gratuitous use of the Holocaust, I just don't think it is a great comparison.
