Isn't your poll mostly gathering data about what kind of friends people have? You could have asked people directly - will you quit, do you disagree but it's not your hill to die on, do you agree
I think the people who would reply yes are afraid of getting attacked. I have my shots but the few people I know who don’t are getting yelled at everywhere they go (one has a medical reason, the others are citing dubious religious reasons)
I don't think I've seen a single person with a legitimate medical reason get attacked here. At least in my neck of the woods everyone is understanding if you can't get it due to a real reason and not when you're presenting a fake printed card from the "freedom to breathe agency"
I work remotely even before Covid. I am also vaccinated.
I would quit if this was mandated on me. My country already has vaccine 'passports' for certain activities, and while I am fully vaccinated and support vaccines in general, I fully oppose vaccine mandates/passports and refuse to do any activity that requires it. I guess if in the future to go to the supermarket to buy food I might show my passport as the alternative is to starve, I am 100% against this and will as much as I can, remove myself from civilisation if this the path we move towards to.
(ps: also no FB, IG, twitter, bla bla blah before someone says X or Y are tracking me already)
I am not american so not sure why this reply is supposed to mean anything. While highly encouraged, vaccines aren't even mandatory here and you can refuse any vaccine and still legally allowed to do anything (school, university, healthcare worker, etc)
>I am not american so not sure why this reply is supposed to mean anything.
Does not being American affect your ability to read? I'm not Asian but I understand why many cultures have long ago adopted the widespread use of masks to prevent spreading illness.
No, it hasn't, but just posting an article how in the US before there was a vaccine mandate adds nothing to the discussion. Many countries never had them (and the world isn't only the US), and even if the US or other country has done this before, doesn't mean it is right to do so now.
>No, it hasn't, but just posting an article how in the US before there was a vaccine mandate adds nothing to the discussion
Of course it doesn't further the discussion when you refuse to acknowledge it in the first place. I'll just copy and paste what I wrote again because you ignored it the first time.
>Does not being American affect your ability to read? I'm not Asian but I understand why many cultures have long ago adopted the widespread use of masks to prevent spreading illness.
Why? You provided no rationale for this position. Do you have a drivers license in your country? Mandated insurance? Pay taxes? It's the price we pay for having such large populations in societies - we all have to sometimes do things that we might not want for the betterment of the society we live in.
Are you ok with going to a bar and showing you don't have HIV so in case you hook up with someone you won't spread it?
Or to go to a restaurant and prove you have a flu vaccine?
Or tuberculosis exam as it also spreads via the air from an infected person?
What about if you haven't been able to get the vaccine (like my girlfriend which she is stuck in a fucking bureaucratic limbo due to most public services not working due to.. well guess what, COVID lockdowns) and not being able to be part of everyday life?
And I really dislike the 'well we have mandatory things already, so why not this also?' way of thinking. If now to enter a restaurant we required a rectal exam, it should be ok right? you already have a driving license so we should be able to ask anything else based on that alone
The 'well we have mandatory things already, so why not this also?' is what you are using to argue against the vaccine. I think a little nuanced thinking goes a long way when comparing all of the examples you proposed.
Please note I am not arguing against the vaccine. I am fully vaccinated. I am against limiting parts of society to people that haven't been vaccinated no matter the reason why. There is a big difference (I have all my vaccines, my son also has all his vaccines, and he may or may not get the covid vaccine depending on the recommendations for his age group).
> Are you ok with going to a bar and showing you don't have HIV so in case you hook up with someone you won't spread it?
That's an absurd comparison considering HIV doesn't spread by simply being in a room with someone who is infected. Also, I'm guessing that you're unaware that in many countries there are laws against knowingly exposing someone to HIV without disclosing it to them. https://www.aidsmap.com/about-hiv/hiv-criminalisation-laws-a...
A law against spreading infections diseases (HIV, Flu or even covid) exist in many places (my country for example). Hard to prove in court, but the law is there. The principle is, are you ok with having to show a passport for a vaccine to be part of normal society to reduce the risk of catching/spreading a disease.
from CDC:
CDC estimates that the burden of illness during the 2018–2019 season included an estimated 35.5 million people getting sick with influenza, 16.5 million people going to a health care provider for their illness, 490,600 hospitalizations, and 34,200 deaths from influenza (Table 1)
Now, I am not saying that covid is just the flu, but 34k deaths in 2018 from the flu. Does this number also justify having flu shot mandates/passports? Or is it only if it is 340k deaths? 3.4 million deaths? 3k deaths is enough? I heard at a time some people saying 'if it saves only one life, it is worth it' so I wonder how much they will also do for all these other deaths.
>Now, I am not saying that covid is just the flu, but 34k deaths in 2018 from the flu. Does this number also justify having flu shot mandates/passports? Or is it only if it is 340k deaths? 3.4 million deaths? 3k deaths is enough? I heard at a time some people saying 'if it saves only one life, it is worth it' so I wonder how much they will also do for all these other deaths.
That's disingenuous and you know it. There wasn't a global effort to contain recent flu strains like there has been with covid. In 2018 working from home was not the norm. People weren't wearing masks and isolating from others. Concerts, movies, restaurants, fairs, etc... weren't shut down. The global economy wasn't halted. Even with all of that being enforced due to covid there were still 375k deaths in the US in 2020, which is 11x greater than the 34k flu deaths in 2018.
If you want to see what happens when you let covid run its course without interference, especially in an area with a low population density, look no further than Sweden. Their (mostly) laissez faire approach resulted in a death rate that was up to 10x greater than neighboring countries. https://www.businessinsider.com/sweden-covid-no-lockdown-str...
Context matters a lot for whatever I will be for or against a vaccine mandate (full disclosure, I'm for covid vaccine mandates for tech workers to return to the office). Here are the points I consider when determining whether I support a given mandate.
- Have mandates been effective in the past? Yes. We eliminated polio and smallpox, in part due to mandates in the US.
- Is the activity required for a reasonable person to be able to live? If so, I'm generally against a mandate. E.g. I wouldn't support mandates for going grocery shopping. I'm ok with them for bars.
- Can I take reasonable precautions as an individual to ensure I don't get infected without a vaccine? For covid, not really. I'm reliant on everyone else either not having it, out properly wearing a mask. For your HIV example, I can easily choose to not have unprotected sex with someone until we are both tested, or I can roll the dice. The decision and consequences are controllable by me as an individual. With covid, I can do everything right and still get sick buying groceries because someone else acted irresponsibly.
- What is the risk of the virus vs. effectiveness of the vaccine? The flu is significantly less infectious and less lethal. The flu vaccine is far less effective than the covid vaccine. Those three facts make a flu vaccine mandate less pressing and less effective. When our hospitals can be easily overrun, then it's pressing. There were days in Oregon where you couldn't get an ICU bed if you got into a bad accident because of the number of COVID-19 patients. That's terrifying and entirely preventable
You're not allowed into certain countries without relevant vaccinations.
There are also many countries where kids aren't allowed into schools without a standard set of vaccinations - because the alternative is literally horrific.
When did so many people become narcissists who just can't even with the very real truth that the public good is vitally important and absolute freedom cannot exist without terrible consequences.
If this attitude had been common when polio vaccination became available there would be literally millions of crippled kids clanking around the country in leg calipers or suffocating slowly in iron lungs.
Poll is irrelevant. Tech workers should get vaccinated regardless of an mandates. And they should lobby their company to install a vaccine mandate if they're under 100 employees (the federal/OSHA mandate will handle 100 or over).
There is no reason whatsoever to not get vaccinated except under very very very limited circumstances and those folks should be working from home.
† Although I think under those limited circumstances, the affected should be able to make their own choices about what is important to them in life, since they are the ones most at risk anyway.
I'm vaccinated now so I have no reason to quit, but I was entirely willing to before I got a dose.
It is not acceptable for anyone to force a medical procedure upon you. To that, some would retort "then surely everybody else should have the option to exclude you?". No, this is coercion.
I don't know how this is even an argument. There is disturbing trend upwards in infringement on people's rights. It feels like almost daily we have a thread on HN about another Big Tech company heinously infringing on privacy. Now some are saying we need to bribe people with keeping their jobs to do something they might not be willing to do? Horrifying.
If you require a visa, you are by definition a guest in another country. It isn't the hosts' responsibility to take care of you if you fall ill. You have the choice to stay or leave.
Citizens on the other hand don't really have any options. Being unemployed isn't an option. Nor is becoming a citizen of another country for most.
When I went overseas from the USA to another country I had to get vaccinated as well. It's required. That's different. I'm neither agreeing or disagreeing with either point here, I'd just like to point out that it is different.
Just because there haven’t been new vaccine mandates in your lifetime doesn’t mean they’re a new or unprecedented idea. I say new because anyone who attended a school has very likely already been subject to vaccine mandates for diseases we don’t see as much anymore, so it’s only the introduction of a new mandate that presumably may seem unprecedented.
> Vaccines offered through the national immunisation programme in the UK are not mandatory.
Which is probably why measles is not/no longer eradicated in the UK:
> In August 2019, the WHO’s European Regional Verification Commission for Measles and Rubella Elimination (RVC) determined the UK had lost its measles elimination status.
But still useful to get a non-US perspective. (It's easy to forget how policies differ, worldwide)
Polio is actually a very good analogy. Only in about 0.5% of cases does it affect the nervous system. Only in at most 30% of that 0.5% is it fatal. In 70% of infections it is asymptomatic. COVID is actually very much like polio.
And the vaccines aren’t deadly - this is just misinformation.
Just because you haven't been to jail for abortion in your lifetime, doesn't mean it is new or unprecedented idea. So let the Texas law run free and expand to other states. Before Roe vs Wade it was illegal, so there is a precedent to make it so again right? Is this the logic? Same with slaves, it used to be ok and legal, so no worries about me keeping some haitians working at home and whip them if they misbehave. Remember, there is precedence after all.
How is a requirement that children get vaccinated to go to school anything like what you listed? Are you arguing that those vaccines are crap and that polio would be awesome to have back?
vaccinated people can still spread it to their family (kids still can’t get vaccinated), also note breakthrough infections. I live with an immunocompromised person so I won’t take the risk, if the vaccine isn’t mandated I wont go.
It's funny if you step back from it and imagine the same conversation 10 years ago:
A: I don't want to go anywhere that someone might not be vaccinated against Covid-09
B: why dont you just get the vaccine?
A: well it's not a "vaccine" vaccine, you can still get it and spread it if you get vaccinated. So everybody should get vaccinated, and shouldn't be allowed near me if they're not.
B: ?
---
I know and understand the counterpoints to this, I'm just pointing out how it might sound to someone whose capacity for reason hasn't been short-circuited yet
I’ll quit but I’m waiting to be asked I’m not announcing it to my teammates. Only one knows I’m not vaccinated because I keep political things to myself (which is beginning to look like a mistake.)
After our traitor of a president gave us the finger on Thursday I wouldn’t submit proof even if I were vaccinated on principle alone.
How do you feel about requiring children to get vaccinations for stuff like polio in order for them to attend school? Is a mandate for a covid vaccine similar or different in your eyes? And if different, why?
But I wouldn't be surprised if some did; polio infection is far more serious than COVID-19, polio vaccine had proven efficacy for many years before becoming required. It's hard to even find the #s for COVID-19 vaccine efficacy. (What are they?)
Why no option for I don't stick my nose into my co-worker's medical decisions? We're all remote and have been for years before the pandemic. For people like us, our co-worker's vaccination status is not relevant.
I have a friend who is both high risk and also severely allergic to the current vaccines. When he gets told to go back to his non tech job, I don’t know what he’s going to do. He’s pretty stressed
Your friend would qualify for an exemption. Rare groups that are "not able" (or not recommended) to take the vaccine can file paperwork for an exemption. That's been the requirement for the law / guidance since the beginning.
Well, he’s not allowed to travel to several places already that don’t offer exceptions. I can find a dozen news stories where agencies and companies brag about their zero exception policies
I believe that the bragging about "no exceptions" means no exceptions on the basis of "I prefer not to" (including "I prefer not to submit proof of vaccination").
Given that even Fox News has articles about making sure the exemptions aren't abused [1] (instead of claiming they aren't exemptions), he should be fine at his employer.
It's not clear what the rules are for travel and so on, but this thread is about mandates for employment.
Your friend is the perfect example of why vaccines should be mandatory (with fundamented health exceptions if he is allergic to all kinds of existing vaccines). He is risking his life if any of their coworkers (or other people that he may be close enough in other environments) is not vaccinated. Should he quit of some of them decided to not get vaccinated?
As Lord Farqaad said "Some of you may die, but it is a risk I'm willing to take?". Your freedoms stops where the rights (and lives) of others starts.
When they come for me, I plan to quit. I WFH, live in the middle of nowhere, grow most of my own food, and go weeks without interacting with someone not in the household.
I don't need the money so quitting's not a big deal for me, but I do feel sorry for those not in a position to take a principled stand for personal choice and autonomy over their own bodies.
I'll consider coming back to work when/if something close to the old normal returns some day.
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[ 5.6 ms ] story [ 129 ms ] threadSo can we at least get to "I know someone" ?
I would quit if this was mandated on me. My country already has vaccine 'passports' for certain activities, and while I am fully vaccinated and support vaccines in general, I fully oppose vaccine mandates/passports and refuse to do any activity that requires it. I guess if in the future to go to the supermarket to buy food I might show my passport as the alternative is to starve, I am 100% against this and will as much as I can, remove myself from civilisation if this the path we move towards to.
(ps: also no FB, IG, twitter, bla bla blah before someone says X or Y are tracking me already)
Does not being American affect your ability to read? I'm not Asian but I understand why many cultures have long ago adopted the widespread use of masks to prevent spreading illness.
Of course it doesn't further the discussion when you refuse to acknowledge it in the first place. I'll just copy and paste what I wrote again because you ignored it the first time.
>Does not being American affect your ability to read? I'm not Asian but I understand why many cultures have long ago adopted the widespread use of masks to prevent spreading illness.
Or to go to a restaurant and prove you have a flu vaccine?
Or tuberculosis exam as it also spreads via the air from an infected person?
What about if you haven't been able to get the vaccine (like my girlfriend which she is stuck in a fucking bureaucratic limbo due to most public services not working due to.. well guess what, COVID lockdowns) and not being able to be part of everyday life?
And I really dislike the 'well we have mandatory things already, so why not this also?' way of thinking. If now to enter a restaurant we required a rectal exam, it should be ok right? you already have a driving license so we should be able to ask anything else based on that alone
You've literally employed that thinking in your rebuttal.
"We don't have to do X, Y, Z. So why this also?"
Whether you're vaccinated matters to you.
Whether everyone is vaccinated matters to everyone.
That's an absurd comparison considering HIV doesn't spread by simply being in a room with someone who is infected. Also, I'm guessing that you're unaware that in many countries there are laws against knowingly exposing someone to HIV without disclosing it to them. https://www.aidsmap.com/about-hiv/hiv-criminalisation-laws-a...
from CDC:
CDC estimates that the burden of illness during the 2018–2019 season included an estimated 35.5 million people getting sick with influenza, 16.5 million people going to a health care provider for their illness, 490,600 hospitalizations, and 34,200 deaths from influenza (Table 1)
Now, I am not saying that covid is just the flu, but 34k deaths in 2018 from the flu. Does this number also justify having flu shot mandates/passports? Or is it only if it is 340k deaths? 3.4 million deaths? 3k deaths is enough? I heard at a time some people saying 'if it saves only one life, it is worth it' so I wonder how much they will also do for all these other deaths.
That's disingenuous and you know it. There wasn't a global effort to contain recent flu strains like there has been with covid. In 2018 working from home was not the norm. People weren't wearing masks and isolating from others. Concerts, movies, restaurants, fairs, etc... weren't shut down. The global economy wasn't halted. Even with all of that being enforced due to covid there were still 375k deaths in the US in 2020, which is 11x greater than the 34k flu deaths in 2018.
If you want to see what happens when you let covid run its course without interference, especially in an area with a low population density, look no further than Sweden. Their (mostly) laissez faire approach resulted in a death rate that was up to 10x greater than neighboring countries. https://www.businessinsider.com/sweden-covid-no-lockdown-str...
- Have mandates been effective in the past? Yes. We eliminated polio and smallpox, in part due to mandates in the US. - Is the activity required for a reasonable person to be able to live? If so, I'm generally against a mandate. E.g. I wouldn't support mandates for going grocery shopping. I'm ok with them for bars. - Can I take reasonable precautions as an individual to ensure I don't get infected without a vaccine? For covid, not really. I'm reliant on everyone else either not having it, out properly wearing a mask. For your HIV example, I can easily choose to not have unprotected sex with someone until we are both tested, or I can roll the dice. The decision and consequences are controllable by me as an individual. With covid, I can do everything right and still get sick buying groceries because someone else acted irresponsibly. - What is the risk of the virus vs. effectiveness of the vaccine? The flu is significantly less infectious and less lethal. The flu vaccine is far less effective than the covid vaccine. Those three facts make a flu vaccine mandate less pressing and less effective. When our hospitals can be easily overrun, then it's pressing. There were days in Oregon where you couldn't get an ICU bed if you got into a bad accident because of the number of COVID-19 patients. That's terrifying and entirely preventable
There are also many countries where kids aren't allowed into schools without a standard set of vaccinations - because the alternative is literally horrific.
When did so many people become narcissists who just can't even with the very real truth that the public good is vitally important and absolute freedom cannot exist without terrible consequences.
If this attitude had been common when polio vaccination became available there would be literally millions of crippled kids clanking around the country in leg calipers or suffocating slowly in iron lungs.
There is no reason whatsoever to not get vaccinated except under very very very limited circumstances and those folks should be working from home.
Said in the forum where half of it boycotts Google because they don't like something or other it's done.
If you think Google has done something boycott-worthy, oh boy will you be interested in drug manufacturers.
† Although I think under those limited circumstances, the affected should be able to make their own choices about what is important to them in life, since they are the ones most at risk anyway.
Do those limited circumstances include:
1) individuals with immunity acquired through previous infection?
2) the need to prioritize other individuals who have not been vaccinated once already?
3) vaccine resistance - i.e. in populations with dominant variants that to continue to evolve substantial resistance to current formulations?
4) vulnerable sub-populations (ie children & pregnant women) that have not yet participated in any long-term or large-scale clinical trials?
What does this statement have to do with mandating that one provides personal medical information as a condition of participation in society?
Please don't pretend that agreeing with vaccination is the same as agreeing with invasion of privacy and government and employer overreach
It is not acceptable for anyone to force a medical procedure upon you. To that, some would retort "then surely everybody else should have the option to exclude you?". No, this is coercion.
I don't know how this is even an argument. There is disturbing trend upwards in infringement on people's rights. It feels like almost daily we have a thread on HN about another Big Tech company heinously infringing on privacy. Now some are saying we need to bribe people with keeping their jobs to do something they might not be willing to do? Horrifying.
My last two Visas had multiple vaccine requirements. Prove I'm vaccinated, get vaccinated, or lose my job.
This isn't anything new for a lot of people.
If you require a visa, you are by definition a guest in another country. It isn't the hosts' responsibility to take care of you if you fall ill. You have the choice to stay or leave.
Citizens on the other hand don't really have any options. Being unemployed isn't an option. Nor is becoming a citizen of another country for most.
> Vaccines offered through the national immunisation programme in the UK are not mandatory.
Which is probably why measles is not/no longer eradicated in the UK:
> In August 2019, the WHO’s European Regional Verification Commission for Measles and Rubella Elimination (RVC) determined the UK had lost its measles elimination status.
But still useful to get a non-US perspective. (It's easy to forget how policies differ, worldwide)
[1] https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-...
Not to mention the vaccines are orders of magnitude more deadly than all the previous ones combined.
And the vaccines aren’t deadly - this is just misinformation.
Mandate or not, if I'm going into an office, I don't want to work with people who are willing to expose me and my family to unnecessary risk.
It just means that you probably won't need to go to the hospital when you catch it.
A: I don't want to go anywhere that someone might not be vaccinated against Covid-09
B: why dont you just get the vaccine?
A: well it's not a "vaccine" vaccine, you can still get it and spread it if you get vaccinated. So everybody should get vaccinated, and shouldn't be allowed near me if they're not.
B: ?
---
I know and understand the counterpoints to this, I'm just pointing out how it might sound to someone whose capacity for reason hasn't been short-circuited yet
After our traitor of a president gave us the finger on Thursday I wouldn’t submit proof even if I were vaccinated on principle alone.
But I wouldn't be surprised if some did; polio infection is far more serious than COVID-19, polio vaccine had proven efficacy for many years before becoming required. It's hard to even find the #s for COVID-19 vaccine efficacy. (What are they?)
Given that even Fox News has articles about making sure the exemptions aren't abused [1] (instead of claiming they aren't exemptions), he should be fine at his employer.
It's not clear what the rules are for travel and so on, but this thread is about mandates for employment.
[1] https://www.foxnews.com/health/surgeon-general-monitor-vacci...
As Lord Farqaad said "Some of you may die, but it is a risk I'm willing to take?". Your freedoms stops where the rights (and lives) of others starts.
I don't need the money so quitting's not a big deal for me, but I do feel sorry for those not in a position to take a principled stand for personal choice and autonomy over their own bodies.
I'll consider coming back to work when/if something close to the old normal returns some day.