Do people only live because they are afraid to die

 

Philosophy 

Reflection Question: What do you value?

I value vacations and playing video games. I put forward the idea these are valuable things to me. However, playing video games is only an instrumental value. In other words, young students play video games because they receive joy and satisfaction from playing video games. Do you agree?

Question 1: Is traveling the world (vacations abroad) desirable because it is instrumentally valuable, i.e., only valuable because it will help you achieve or acquire other things you desire? Is this because you think it is bad (unpleasant) in itself or just neutral (neither desirable nor undesirable)? Or is traveling the world also intrinsically valuable, i.e. valuable for its own sake? If so, why?

Question 2: Is playing video games (Xbox, Playstation, Nintendo Switch) desirable because it is instrumentally valuable, i.e., only valuable because it will help you achieve or acquire other things you desire? Is this because you think it is bad (unpleasant) in itself or just neutral (neither desirable nor undesirable)? Or is playing video games also intrinsically valuable, i.e. valuable for its own sake? If so, why?

Plato claims in the Republic that the guardian class must live collectively and communally. This entails that no one would have private property, and that women and men should be treated equally and given the same responsibilities. What are his arguments for this, and do you think they are plausible? Assume for the sake of this topic that the guardian class includes rulers and armed auxiliaries but not the third class of artisans, farmers etc.

Answer the following questions on the text below:

Text to evaluate:
OPINION: No, COVID-19 vaccine passports and mandatory vaccination should not be instated to 'protect the health and safety of Canadians'

New Democratic Party Leader Jagmeet Singh was quoted last week with the suggestion that public servants who refuse the COVID-19 vaccine could be disciplined and ultimately fired using existing collective agreement clauses.
The leader of Canada's most labor-friendly party recommends these worker dismissals in order to "protect the health and safety of Canadians." This logic is so blatantly flawed that it calls Singh's leadership, and that of other Canadian politicians supporting this view, into question. It's so bad that it makes me suspect that these politicians are in the pocket of big pharma. Conflict of interest in government is rife, as well all know.
 

These charlatans want to prevent the unvaccinated from having basic rights like the right to travel, work, and live normal lives. They think we should stab vaccines even into the people that can't be vaccinated according to their own doctors - if they are immunocompromised or have an allergy. What is to become of these people?
It's unclear if the vaccines work, anyway. The trials conducted by the vaccine manufacturers have only recorded whether vaccinated people were less likely to get symptomatic COVID than the unvaccinated. The trials did not check for a reduction in "cases" as measured by positive SARS-CoV-2 tests without symptoms, nor in COVID-19 hospitalizations or deaths.
 

They also did not attempt to understand the impact of the vaccines on transmission. The interim authorization of the vaccines was based on their efficacy in reducing what amounts to cold symptoms in the vaccinated person.
Since the start of the mass vaccinations, researchers worldwide have examined whether vaccination does reduce the spread of COVID as a positive side effect. While it seems plausible that such an effect might occur, the results are meager. Some studies found modest reductions in the spread of the original SARS-CoV-2 variant, a far cry from "stopping" transmission. Those rogue scientists who call the vaccines a miracle cure are certainly not the smartest ones.
With the Delta variant, the effect has further shrunk and in a CDC-funded study, vaccinated individuals carried similar viral loads as the unvaccinated. According to the CDC, people who are double vaccinated can still spread the delta variant. According to recent research, hundreds of people who have been hospitalized with covid have had at least one vaccination. This shows that the vaccine does not prevent the transmission of the virus.
 

Countries like Israel and Iceland that have achieved high vaccination rates in the population are currently seeing their "case" counts rise dramatically. In the last two weeks, Israel's COVID-19 death count is now also following this concerning trajectory. This could have happened only if the vaccine was ineffective. It's clear what we should make of this.
Meanwhile, the province of Ontario with over 70% twice-vaccinated people is preparing for a fourth wave and already has significantly more cases, hospitalizations, and deaths than one year ago, when nobody was vaccinated. Perhaps being vaccinated is making people more willing to engage in risky behavior, so it in fact increases the danger rather than decreasing it.
 

So, what is a vaccine passport supposed to prove? What are vaccination mandates meant to achieve? Before Delta, vaccinated individuals may have been slightly less contagious than the unvaccinated. But with Delta, there does not appear to be a difference in spreading the virus. If anything, the vaccine works to protect the recipient only.
It is therefore nobody's business to know whether another person is vaccinated or not. And there is no reason to expect, pressure, or require another person to "take the jab." The campaign to vaccinate children and young adults is particularly offensive since they bear all the risks from short- and long-term adverse events and obtain no measurable benefits from the shot. Because there is a little protective effect, the advantages for individuals' safety are outweighed by the infringements on individuals' privacy. Expecting people to reveal their vaccine status before going on a plane to prevent covid is like asking people to reveal their financial status before entering a store to prevent thievery. There is no reason to think it would work, it infringes on people's privacy, and it's discriminatory. If this "financial status" policy was suggested by stores no one would accept it. And neither should we accept vaccine passports.
 

Requiring vaccine passports is definitely a step in the wrong direction. Some people have good reasons not to take the vaccine. I can't even pronounce most of the ingredients that go into these medications. Forcing people to be injected with something so unnatural can't be justified. Results from the Canadian Community Health Survey (CCHS) for the period of September 1 to December 12, 2020 show that over 23% of Canadians (excluding residents of the territories) aged 12 and older reported being unwilling to receive the COVID-19 vaccine. Since nearly a quarter of Canadians are hesitant, we must respect the will of the people.

When we let the government chip away at our freedoms, who knows where it will end. Will the flu vaccine have similar mandates? If so, will our vaccine status also be made public? And if we allow this, what will stop them making all our private health information public, for anyone to see? We need to think carefully, or we could end up with no privacy at all.

Questions:

-Do a broad standardization of the main text below.

-Then evaluate the arguments in the article. You can structure this evaluation any way you prefer, for example, in order of when things are mentioned in the article or by theme (e.g., all fallacies in one section, all rhetorical devices in one section). Ensure that you discuss:
-Use of rhetoric/language in the article.
-Evaluate any particular argument types that you recognize(e.g., conditional arguments, categorical arguments, generalizations, causal argument, analogical, that you find in the main text (if there are relevant arguments in supplementary texts that are used to back up the claims in the main text, you can evaluate these too).
-Comment on and evaluate any fallacies you find in the text
-Comment on the strength of any remaining inferences and plausibility of any unsupported premises (may require research)
-Give an overall conclusion of whether the argument is good or bad, weighing up the evidence you have previously evaluated.