Quote (Sioux @ Dec 12 2021 03:18pm)
Right but beating back obesity is a lot more complicated than getting a free vaccine. If there was a shot that prevented obesity, I wouldn't be surprised if the government-mandated it given the drain it has on public health. Vaccines have been mandated as a public health matter for 200 years. Polio, small pox, measles, whooping cough all either dont exist or barely exist due to vaccination campaigns and mandates.
This isn't new, the feigned outrage is new.
Obesity is a far more deadly pandemic than Covid-19 and there
are effective medical procedures we have developed to mitigate obesity. If the disease is that much more of a societal issue, doesn't it merit taking more invasive action than just a shot? Malabsorptive operations, gastric bypasses and adjustable bypass bands are a thing. Obesity is the leading root cause of death and bariatric surgery can lead to a 60% or more reduction in all-cause mortality and 10+ year average extended lifetime. LAGB has something like a 0.05% or less lethal complication rate and a ~52% reduced mortality rate. If we were mandating procedures that would keep people healthier and reduce the overall burden on our healthcare sector, there would be a better argument for strapping piggies to a table and cuffing their stomachs.
The law of the land is still set in the supreme court precedent of Buck v Bell, which established that the overall benefit of society could use the same arguments of mandatory vaccination and apply them to invasive, destructive surgeries- namely, mandatory sterilization of retarded women so they'd stop having little retard babies. As Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr put it;
Quote
We have seen more than once that the public welfare may call upon the best citizens for their lives. It would be strange if it could not call upon those who already sap the strength of the State for these lesser sacrifices, often not felt to be such by those concerned, to prevent our being swamped with incompetence. It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind. The principle that sustains compulsory vaccination is broad enough to cover cutting the Fallopian tubes. Three generations of imbeciles are enough.
If not for arguments of red blooded American libertarianism and hostility towards centralized, oppressive authority- why not?