https://archive.is/fCv5F (National Geographic) https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2021/p0607-mrna-reduce-ri...
That's why states with higher vaccination rates are seeing less spread than states with low vaccination rates.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/highly-vaccinated-states-keep-w...
No, it doesn't absolutely prevent spread, but that's a ridiculous standard (often used to assure a certain rhetorical outcome rather than to shed light on the subject).
The very worst estimates of the vaccines efficacy rate against the Delta variant sit at 30-50% for various measures. People on this forum are ecstatic about improving systems by 2-3% on the regular, and here is a free and easy measure that measurably reduces the mortality rate of yourself and those around you and we are _still_ arguing about it.
I used to think much more highly of the quality of discussion on here.
Became it's not about you, it's about everyone around you as a group. Those who are "comfortable catching the disease" are taking up a non-insignificant portion of available hospital beds, for instance, keeping health workers at their limit and preventing other people from getting treatment for diseases for which there is no accessible, free vaccine to take.
Organizations are expected to do what's best for the majority of those they represent. Sure, some people may not want to wear a helmet all day and would be willing to take the risk. But if one of those people gets impaled and dies it ends up putting a burden in everyone around them, from those picking up the skull pieces and the person's family to the investors.
Healthy, non obese young people do not get hospitalized by this disease at any significant rate at all, most aren't even aware they got it. If you're a healthy young person you have rationality on your side to object to a vaccine. Especially one that is trying to hit a moving target as covid is probably now another mutating flu that will be around indefinitely. Especially because you still pass on the disease vaccinated or not.
Then why are you smoking, or why are you eating fast food, why are you not exercising? These actions also put a burden on the health system. Why do covid and not tobacco? You know the answer already. This is not about anyone s health
Your employment has been terminated. You many apply for unemployment benefits after our records show compliance.
Combating obesity is for the good of society.
The answer was because, healthcare was viewed as a collective good. Doctors did not treat a patient for their own benefit, they treated a patient for society's benefit.
And I see echoes of that here.
[1] - https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/history/articles/fernande...
> The agency now advises that vaccinated people be tested for the virus if they come into contact with someone with Covid-19, even if they have no symptoms... “Our updated guidance recommends vaccinated people get tested upon exposure regardless of symptoms,” Dr. Rochelle P. Walensky, the agency’s director, said in an email to The New York Times. “Testing is widely available.”
It’s really not something you want in your country or state. See what happened to Italy, India, Brazil, or is currently happening in overseas French territories, it’s a horrible situation to be in.
Citation needed. This contradicts the most recent research and information available, and all one must do is a quick search to turn up dozens of published papers on this topic. The vaccine reduces the transmission of COVID, and that is an important public health goal.
However, the vaccine does prevent spread.
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/science/science-br...
Well, it does reduce spread, right?
That said,
> Join the feedlot if you want but I will not, I have been doing just fine as my own master, I need not the yoke of protection, certainly not from the feds.
One of the other motivations policymakers have in promoting vaccination is that in many places hospital capacity is dangerously reduced due to the influx of covid cases.
Why do you think it doesn't prevent spread? While breakthrough infections make all the news, the vaccine does lessen the chance of catching COVID if exposed. Less people catching COVID, less spread.
"Why must I go the speed limit if it doesn't prevent an accident? Why wear a seat belt if it doesn't prevent injury? Why have airbags if they don't prevent death?"
There are no guarantees in life (death and taxes, notwithstanding). The bottom line is that vaccines significantly reduce spread.
> I am comfortable catching the disease and even comfortable dying from it (the numbers are vastly on my side)
The argument being that you have a slim chance of having a severe reaction to COVID?
You have an even slimmer chance of a severe reaction to a vaccine. Why not get vaccinated?
ICUs are full, people are dying from stupid preventable shit because they couldn't get care, and from acquaintances' anecdotes staff are burning out at a ridiculous pace
Would you like to have access to healthcare when you need it?
Preventing spread is not the only reason, it also reduces the severity of the illness if you get it, and in any case vaccines do also reduce spread insofar as a vaccinated carrier's viral load is likely to reach a lower maximum for a shorter period of time
This type of mandate does the opposite. Probably because, if you look at the actual risks and data from other countries, the difference in sickliness between the vaccinated and unvaccinated is sufficiently small in absolute terms, and the level of staffing at hospitals assuming healthcare workers are not forced out of their jobs sufficiently good, that the relative cost increase wouldn't work as a form of coercion. And it's now all about the coercion, not about health.
You have the option of getting tested weekly as long as your employer allows for that option. Getting a vaccine is probably less invasive and less of an annoyance then many things employers already require.
To put it plainly, problem with COVID-19 is that it makes your own immune system damage your body as it scrambles defenses, confused. With vaccine, much less so.
I'm curious about this. I understand "doesn't prevent all spread", but surely it prevents notable amounts of spread by reducing the amount of people walking around with high viral load, reduced hospitalization, herd immunity, and so on.
If you are in decent health, you will likely be OK. I got it this year, and it was rough for a week at home. I got letter from Dr. which states I have the antibodies and have recovered.
It's not just about whether you're willing to get hit on the head, it's about an employer's duty of care, and (if you just look at it cynically) the disruption to work caused by an incident that could have been prevented if someone took appropriate measures.
If your employer paid you to come in early or stay late to get the vaccine -- why refuse?
Because I make my own decisions and my willingness to do something is inversely proportional to how hard it is being pushed on me.
https://odysee.com/@percep7ioneer:e/Julie-Ponesse-Ethics-Pro...
We really need a new frontier. Hopefully space travel happens before human beings become completely domesticated.
It also conveniently ignores the known and unknown long-haul effects from Covid, which impacts a significant percentage (20%?). I, for one, like staying in relatively good health.
First off, the baseline survival rate is much better than 99%, between 99.8% and 99.9%. That's already an order of magnitude lower, closer to 1/1000 than 1/100. 1% lethality was a bad estimate from early on, before we realized we were undercounting mild cases by a huge multiple.
Second, lethality is highly correlated to comorbidities, including obesity and vitamin D deficiency. 94% of Covid deaths had another condition. If you don't, then your own risk reduces by another factor of 15.
Third, lethality is highly stratified by age. Under age 50 incurs at least 10x fewer deaths than higher age brackets.
Fourth, the vaccines. That also reduces risk by a factor somewhere in the ballpark of 10x again.
Fifth, Delta variant is also less lethal, as seen by the low death rates in India and the UK, although we don't seem to have reliable numbers on that yet.
So if you are young, healthy, not overweight, and vaccinated, multiply all that out and your risk factor really comes to less than one in a million. You take bigger risks every time you drive in your car. You're losing more life-value worrying about Covid than you actually stand to lose from it.
That all said, there is the point to be worried about Covid not for yourself, but for the possibility of spreading it. That's a valid point, but that is a question of politics, of individualism versus collectivism, not of science and statistics.
And until yesterday, that was entirely your choice! Unfortunately, as of today, it isn't any more.
Plus then COMPARE that to other probabilities of death such as car accidents, medical mistakes, etc. which are FAR HIGHER.
then you should avoid any and all cars as you have a 1 in 100 lifetime chance of dying in a car accident. or birth, as babies have 0.6% chance of dying around birth.
covid suffers severely from availability and recency bias because our lives are so exceedingly safe already. it’s hard to die on accident, even via covid.
I agree. Lots of folks afraid to take a shot that's been well-studied and given to millions and is, in all probability, quite safe. ;)
I chalk it up to the youth, who are selfish and only able to think about themselves and their Friendster ranks and how many YouTubes they have on the FaceSpace.
Some of our ancestors were almost completely wiped out from novel disease brought by those that crossed the oceans. They were probably also terrified.
Consider that perhaps the best way to honor those "fearless" risks is to not waste the world they made possible for us by unnecessarily cutting our own lives short. I certainly hope my descendants have even longer lives than I do! But perhaps that's just my selfish genes talking.
> OSHA will issue an Emergency Temporary
> Standard (ETS) to implement this requirement
Well, I guess one should never let a good crisis go to waste...
Low hanging fruit.
One is easy to order, cheap to implement, and cheap to verify, the other would be expensive to implement and even more expensive to verify.
For the COVID ETS from this June, OSHA has been coordinating with the CDC monthly to determine if it is still necessary. See https://www.osha.gov/coronavirus/ets#:~:text=to%20assess%20t...
Although, just like Afghanistan, there's no clear end to COVID afaik ... although I disagree with the implication that there's some great benefit the government / other interests are getting out of this ETS, of the same scale that the military-industrial complex/the executive branch got out of the PATRIOT act/Afghanistan.
Pharma is gonna be making some good money out of COVID, no? The amount of tests that have been produced, plus the amount of vaccines being used are certainly not free.
Given that covid and the subsequent reaction realized one of the largest wealth transfers from poor to rich in modern history and led to great market returns for those in power, how can you honestly say this?
Look.. like most people on hacker news I am in the top 1% of earners and due to my industry benefitted greatly from covid lockdowns. But just because we benefited, we cannot be blind to the mass robbery that has taken place. We've literally robbed the poor to pay the wealthy.
Not sure if you're aware, but it expired in 2020
To call 20 years 'temporary' is a big stretch.
Just because they can't sneak it back in now doesn't mean they don't want to. The new administration has already made bogeyman out of 'domestic terrorism' that it's own fbi cannot find evidence for.
So it'll only be around for 20 years?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Revolution:_A_Manifesto
Oddly enough, a couple of weeks ago at the local thrift store I picked up "The Secret History of the American Empire" by John Perkins. Even if only half of it is accurate, there's also plenty of reason to believe there are less than noble forces at work given the current changes and the opportunities they create.
https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/the-secret-history-of-the-amer...
Waiting for retailers to announce this as well at some point.
One you qualify though, I don't think they can re-test you.
Edit: oh life insurance, thanks.
The effects of smoking OTOH are extremely clear.
Do you have a source for this comment? One thing is certain, more people are purchasing life insurance so if anything Covid has been a windfall for the carriers, for various reasons not just increased sales.
Life insurance companies - maybe?
But for most demographics, statistics that would concern an actuary have not changed.
So life insurance companies are requiring COVID vaccines? Or health insurance companies, or both?
Seems reasonable to expect people working with many sick and vulnerable patients in a healthcare setting to be vaccinated. That’s one of the highest risk scenarios I can think of for exposure and transmission as well as the most likely place to concentrate vulnerable patients.
Temporarily. I am assuming you had your second shot more than two weeks ago. Soon, the definition of "fully vaccinated" will change to require the third shot and you will be counted among the unvaccinated as it is currently done for people with a single shot or less than two weeks past their second shot when it comes to death/hospitalization stats.
We are close to living in Arcadia[1].
For all the pretend deference to science, we're in the middle of a rapidly unfolding situation. It seems preposterous, even with clear evidence that the vaccines do work (and ignoring government overreach which is itself absurd and illegal imo) to start mandating something that is not likely to hold 6 months from now, and what, just require that everyone tracks whatever current orthodoxy says? I have my two pfizer shots, and if there is a vaccine later that actually cures covid, maybe I'll go back and get it. But I'm giving up on trying to track the flavor of the week and trying to match whatever the new York times wants me to do, I'll wait until there is actually a reasonable consensus
Camp 1: Pro vaccine, pro mask, pro lockdown, pro doing anything and everything the government says.
Camp 2: Anti vaxx, anti mask, anti lockdown, trump supporter, Jan 7th attendee, etc.
And it seems that now more than ever, if you're not 10000% in Camp 1, you're automatically assumed to be in Camp 2
I'm against vaccine mandates in principle, but the ultimate cause of the authoritarianism is mass media. Covid has been a fantastic setup for dog and pony shows - political hucksters rail all day about government overreach while inciting their followers to make bad choices. The large scale effects of those bad choices practically demand government intervention. And after the utilitarian system steps in to mitigate the problem, the hucksters take credit for being right about government overreach all along. It's the perfect con for the post-reality media environment - when reality asserts itself and some low level preacher dies of their own kool aid, they just go silent and are replaced by another ignorant voice on the same channel.
If we had a level of societal trust such that you could expect that most everyone would be taking measures to prevent spreading Covid, then coming together in large groups (eg employment) would be less of an issue. But as it stands, why would anybody want to go back into the office when it's likely that at least a third of your coworkers will blithely get you sick? And hence OSHA et al step in, using the same rationale as when preventing operating heavy equipment while drunk - it creates an unsafe work environment.
Trucking, food production, Oil & Gas, powerplant workers, linemen, water treatment, etc.
In those essential industries, a small percentage of people walking out may wreck havoc on the whole nation. Those are also the same people that I expect are more anti covid vaccine.
The slippery slope argument doesn't hold water here. I think we can look at the facts - 700,000 people dead, hospitals overwhelmed, countless people injured or disabled from COVID, and no end in sight - and decide that a strong mandate makes sense here, and that a mandate won't make sense in future cases.
The "government is always bad, personal choice should always win" mindset runs deep in this country unfortunately, and from what I can see, it's often based in nothing other than veiled conservatism and a preference for division and anti-cooperativeness.
Above all else, this sentiment holds very little water when it's coming from people who speak out against a vaccine mandate but choose to stay quiet on things like abortion rights.
This is by design. We don't want a strong federal government.
> The slippery slope argument doesn't hold water here. I think we can look at the facts - 700,000 people dead, hospitals overwhelmed, countless people injured or disabled from COVID, and no end in sight - and decide that a strong mandate makes sense here, and that a mandate won't make sense in future cases.
here's some more facts that change the landscape significantly. 5% of COVID deaths were without co-morbidities. On average, a person who died of COVID had 4.0 co-morbidities. (https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid_weekly/index.htm#Co...) The vast majority of those dying are 65+. We don't have a COVID problem, we have a health problem. Has the government been encouraging people to take vitamin D, get fresh air, exercise, and get to a healthy weight? The rhetoric has been sit down and get the jab.
> The "government is always bad, personal choice should always win" mindset runs deep in this country unfortunately, and from what I can see, it's often based in nothing other than veiled conservatism and a preference for division and anti-cooperativeness.
The government polices are extreme overreactions by any measure of the data, and government doesn't give power back once it has it.
> Above all else, this sentiment holds very little water when it's coming from people who speak out against a vaccine mandate but choose to stay quiet on things like abortion rights.
I can almost agree here, except the pro-choice people seem to overlap heavily with the pro-mandate people. I don't think you can logically hold both of those positions
I'm disabled and it's not my fault. I'm a healthy weight, I have a vegetarian diet high in vegetables, I do my rehab exercises every day and see the doctor frequently. And yet my condition is progressing, because that's the nature of it.
My comorbidities aren't a moral failing.
The government has been advocating for exercise and general health for decades. Despite this, we remain one of the least fit countries in the world. If the government cannot convince someone to take a safe, free shot that might save their lives, how can you reasonably expect them to convince someone to exercise?
Well, not from the "governments are either allowed or not allowed to tell people to do things" angle.
From the "what do medical experts suggest we do to minimize unnecessary death and suffering" point of view it's possible to be consistently on the same side though.
Pneumonia, respiratory failure and cardiac arrest are symptoms of COVID. They aren't pre-existing conditions that make COVID worse. They are just more specific explanations about the exact mechanism by which COVID killed the person.
At any given time, someone the population is weak in some way.
Had there not been covid, most of those people would be alive.
Cause of death is covid. That covid killed them more easily is a different matter.
Today, those same people can get a vaccine and are extremely likely to avoid the hospital and death.
I am consistently shocked at just how willing so many of us are to blame others. And that is all.
It’s about how your personal choices impact other people. To be deliberately shocking to help show why these are different:
You can’t cough on me and give me an abortion. I can’t choose to have an abortion and that creates a super spreader event that gives everyone around me an abortion.
You can choose not to get vaccinated, be an asymptomatic spreader, and pass Covid on to other people. Your choice of taking the vaccine or not taking the vaccine can impact lots of people, and even hasten their death.
Societies have various laws that prohibit certain choices you make that can have a negative impact on others. For example see drunk driving, or someones choice to use speech to inflame a riot. Where those lines are drawn, or should be drawn, can certainly be up for debate. Reasonable people can disgree
If you want the pandemic, masking, lockdowns etc to end for good, it seems a vaccine mandate is the only way forward (absent some as-yet-to-be-invented technology). What am I missing here? Is there some other way to 'convince' anti-vaxxers to take it? Is 100k+ Americans dead an 'acceptable loss' to maintain some perception of 'medical freedom?'
Aren't unvaccinated individuals the ones who made this decision? You may disagree with the conclusion of their dubious risk analyses, but if you choose not to get vaccinated then all bets are off.
Or is it that the risk that the unvaccinated pose to the vaccinated are so high that they warrant strong arm solutions?
The more cases, the more the variants. Getting everyone infected might bring about herd immunity to one strain, and create a dozen more.
"Think of the Children!" type arguments aside.
Arguments around hypocrisy cut both ways! Consider how weak pro-choice arguments sound right now to people who don't want to be forced to take a vaccine. I'm assuming we will never ever hear "My body, my choice" as a pro-choice argument ever again, it would be absurd at this point.
Also, I wonder how much of this is a left vs right political debate. Most of the conservatives I personally know are vaccinated. It's possible that there are silent dissenters among the progressives that can't really speak up because they will be ostracized.
Does this mandate incorporate the Sept 2021 CDC definition of vaccine, https://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/coronavirus/article25...
> Before the change, the definition for “vaccination” read, “the act of introducing a vaccine into the body to produce immunity to a specific disease.” Now, the word “immunity” has been switched to “protection.” The term “vaccine” also got a makeover. The CDC’s definition changed from “a product that stimulates a person’s immune system to produce immunity to a specific disease” to the current “a preparation that is used to stimulate the body’s immune response against diseases.”
Last I knew, COVID-19 vaccines weren’t covered, but apparently I missed some news, since it’s the first thing listed on https://www.hrsa.gov/cicp .
Why would employers need legal immunity? Their lawyers may want to look closely at the legal immunity protections of the PREP act, which extend to healthcare professionals who recommend "countermeasures".
Penny wise, pound foolish.
They already did for COVID countermeasures in general. In the first declaration that did that for pharmaceutical companies, public entities managing countermeasure planning and distribution, and others in March of last year.
The definition change is simply to more accurately include this vaccine method.
Israel is already saying 4 shots (and more) will required [0] to participate in that society. Australia, New Zealand, and Canada are quasi-police states [1] and will probably mandate vaccination+boosters soon.
The writing on the wall is that the 'booster' is being repackaged as a 'series' of vaccines. The health authorities and pharma are going to modify and approve vaccines for endless mutations. Will these be independently tested? I don't expect so, despite using the novel mRNA platform. The end game is to treat Covid vaccines like annual (or semi-annual) flu vaccines. Moderna is already packaging both together [2]. Except flu vaccine is not mandated (yet). There is a LOT of money to be made in mandatory vaccine mandates. Think how easy it would be to grow rich if everyone had to use your products, you had no competition, and the government indemnified you against any responsibility for harm. It's hard to see how this stops. The pandemic is a gift for technocratic-authoritarians everywhere.
Here's a prediction. In a few years, if the people don't stand up against this, the pandemic will not be 'over' politically. Nominally 'free' Western governments will have become de facto CCP-style management firms. We will be required to comply with ongoing health directives from the central authorities for vaccination to prevent further restrictions. Our compliance will be monitored via digital passes (or onerous paper-work for the poor). Our employment and freedom of movement will depend on our compliance. Those who disagree and are foolish enough to say something will find themselves censored (for health disinformation) and fined (or imprisoned [3]). Traveling to see grandma without having gotten the latest booster will risk quarantine.
So, if you're pro-mandates, I invite you to come back in a couple of years and ridicule me and this warning if it's wrong (if it hasn't been scrubbed from the internet). I hope you're right! I wonder what you'll say if you're wrong? Maybe post your predictions for posterity.
[0] https://www.timesofisrael.com/virus-czar-calls-to-begin-read... [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/31/world/australia/new-zeala..., https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/jun/01/austr... [2] https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/...
[3] https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/jun/01/austr...
The OSHA requirement will hang around, but people won't be freaking out about it because it will be normal. Within two years there will be a childhood COVID vaccine that is safe and effective and it will be required for school attendance like all the other shots.
All the people freaking out about the vaccine/mask requirements will have matured out of it or will find something else to be outraged about.
If I'm wrong, I will come back and say I was wrong. :-) I may lose an internet point or two.
I've recovered from COVID and stand against vaccine mandates.
Once government gets power, it doesn't give it back.
We're pushing closer to 2 Americas, one with freedom and one with vaccine mandates
And your argument is that by the time the onerous regulation becomes unnecessary everyone will be used to it.
Kind of like how the patriot act was there for so long we all just became numb to the constant surveillance, the nude airport screenings etc.
Maybe think of the healthcare professionals so burnt out and quitting because people are so indignant to get the shot and end up taking valuable hospital space. I’d take forcing these hold outs (and trampling on their fREeDoMs) to get the shot in exchange for a functioning national healthcare system any day.
I see a familiar pattern with sentiments like this: showing lots of hand-wringing over civil liberties, but seemingly no concern over all the people who have died and who have been incapacitated. Those people had a right to not be exposed to a deadly virus.
There is broad consensus that covid will turn into a cold/flu like illness once our bodies have built a strong enough immune response.
Regardless of whatever metric you use to define “freedom” all of those countries rank higher than the US pre-Covid for “freedom”[1][2][3]. If your argument is that those countries are fundamentally “less-free” post-Covid due to public health measures, I don’t see the data to support that. To imply that all those countries will shift from the principles that drive them pre-Covid to a police-state post-Covid is very unlikely given the prior right?
As someone who’s lived in one of those countries and the US, I can say that the tendency of the US to argue over every small issue, even if it is overwhelmingly common sense and beneficial, takes away a lot of focus on the big issues that the country needs to solve.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index
[2] https://rsf.org/en/ranking_table
[3] https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/freedom-i...
I guess I would look at what is actually practically limiting you living your best life; avoid too much extrapolation on the rapid societal changes that are certainly not limited to covid vaccine mandates. Our techno-capitalist-oligarchy social structure is changing everything.
> F**g Somewhere!
Or civil war. Also possible.
650,000 people have died and that's with taking some pretty extreme precautions (for what we consider extreme anyway). It's not just the old or the infirm. Healthy people in their 20s and 30s. Toddlers. We have gone to war over much less.
We have a ton of safety regulations that govern how we build homes and infrastructure, how we plan for fires and natural disasters, how you live your daily life, and pretty much anything else because they are effective and do save lives. This one seems reasonable (mandatory COVID vaccination - influenza vaccines are significantly less effective and in general the people that die from it society seems to be ok with).
I'm never sure how to take objections like yours, because there are certainly a few different things to discuss. Is your objection to the government's role in this (such that you'd be fine with private employers enforcing whatever mandates they wish)? Or are you objecting to the mandatory vaccination (in which case, what do you have against spitting into a vial once a week)?
Or are you more of a technocrat, concerned that the ROI (in terms of, say, QUALYs, as economists like to put it) gained through these policies isn't worth the cost?
All strike me as viable arguments, but it's always hard to tell which one is being put forward.
I can't help but think like your comment is more intended provoke heated responses than encourage constructive discussion.
Heart disease kills 650,000 per year, but there is still a McDonalds and Taco Bell on every corner.
You never know what goes through someone's head or whether a previous injury will lead to an accident.
I'm only half joking, this could actually help me :D
This is the issue with technocratic government: zero understanding of anything deeper than “if it works, do it!”
people who talk about succession and splitting off have no idea what they are talking about, it wouldn't be clean at all
Given my previous work in digital identity, I was getting inquiries from vaccine passport companies in the summer of last year. This was always about the passport.
We should go into business together. :-)
I'm currently in the hospital in the "red" part of my purple state. I had an acute appendicitis, and had to wait in a temporary, crowded, understaffed holding area in the ER for over 18 hours before getting admitted for treatment. My roommate in the hospital has an infected foot, and waited over 24 hours to be admitted. He may now loose his foot. The nurses on this non-COVID floor are on a skeleton staff to shift resources to care for COVID patients, the majority of which are unvaccinated. Around the country, some hospitals are pausing "elective" treatments, like cancer surgeries due to the flood of unvaccinated critically ill COVID patients.
I almost wish that the anti-vaxxers would just stick to their science-rejecting principles and reject all health care, not just the vaccine. If they were to just die at home instead of clogging up the health care system unnecessarily, the vaccine would not be such a big deal.
Please don't post in the flamewar style to HN. Arguing that the other side should die is beyond the pale—I realize people on the internet are going there with alacrity, but it's exactly the kind of thing we don't want here, regardless of how right you are or feel you are. Please don't post like this to HN.
I can certainly understand why you feel strongly under the circumstances and hope you get excellent care and get well soon.
https://people.com/health/u-s-army-veteran-dies-of-treatable...
https://www.ky3.com/2021/08/27/man-dies-waiting-icu-bed-fami...
These are all things that everybody should be encouraged to do, but the government has not been putting in almost any concentrated effort to encourage people to do these things at all. Then when Covid starts spreading and mostly killing unhealthy people I should be the one risking my health, taking a vaccine that is way less tested than any other FDA approved vaccine, to help the people who practice unhealthy lives and are the ones most at risk of dying from Covid?
I am 19 years old and had to stay inside for the last 1.5 years for a virus that I am not afraid of and almost certainly would not kill me if I were to contract it. My mental health has been deteriorating for the whole quarantine, years of my youth are being taken away because of something that simply doesn't affect me. Unhealthy old people have screwed my life up and taken years away from me so if they expect me to take a knee to help them then they can go to hell. You lock people in doors for years of their life make them wear masks everywhere in public and now are gonna make me stick a needle up my arm so I can keep my job? Go to hell, I rather die than be yanked around like this to appease people who don't care about me and a government who treats me like shit and insults me. And their is still no timeframe for when this bullshit will be over.
And yes thay are "full" now because operational capacity has been significantly reduced.
>>"I almost wish that the anti-vaxxers would just stick to their science-rejecting principles and reject all health care, not just the vaccine. If they were to just die at home instead of clogging up the health care system unnecessarily, the vaccine would not be such a big deal."
Comments like this are just pure disgraceful and disgusting. What sort of degenerate would wish this upon others blows my mind.
While you might not be affected personally, because you've been successful, it's better for the government to have your back than it is to entrust it to the free market. There's a hell of a lot of misery because the gov. doesn't step in enough, doesn't take care of its citizens.
This was learned the hard way in 1929 and, for whatever reason, was quickly forgotten.
That said, I can see why it's undesirable to some.
The US legislature has the right to regulate commerce in the US according to the US Constitution. Healthcare of workers and the overall impact of covid are two things directly affecting the economy.
The legislature already has the former of these covered by the creation of OSHA in the 1970s. OSHA is a regulatory agency under the Department of Labor, which is part of the executive cabinet.
The executive is now using these powers granted by the legislature to ensure workers are protected in their work environments.
This is certainly the best way to keep workers safe during a pandemic and given the information we have on the Pfizer vaccine — billions of doses given, 1.5 years of watching for adverse long term effects, full FDA approval — this move strikes me as appropriate for OSHA. OSHA requirements are supposed to be aggressively protective of the worker.
Please, please, please: I'm the most provax person out there, but limiting the contrary voices won't lead this conversation anywhere constructive.
The comment was saying the the policies against Covid so far were aimed at the distruction of normal.
Here's what I would have replied:
I can see part of your point. But how do we deal with the fact that the resistance to what you call "the destruction of normal" is mostly made by people that refuse science, fall victim to conspiracy theory, and have in general a tendency to apply magical thinking to policy making?
I'm fully vaccinated and highly critical of how the crisis was handled. But here in Germany the no-vaxxers and the anti-maskers are a crowd of strongly individualistic people that span from tree-hugging spiritual healers to neonazis. There is no logical thinking in their thesis, and every critique is based on the rebuttal of statistics, numbers, and data-based decision making.
The connection between data and policy is mostly fictional, other than it is used to support chosen narratives, and not to illuminate truth. I look at the resistance as a human instinct, where some can convert it to articulated objections and clearly, and others have limited tools, but what they have in common is a clear and united desire.
Anyone who knows anything about data (let alone govt) knows that data at very best only loosely informs policy decisions, it does not make them. Leaders may hide behind it, but they ignore it just as often if not moreso, and that these people reject data as censored, cherry picked, fudged, fabricated, is consistent with how policymakers handle it.
The worst part is that the data on almost every part of the pandemic is freely available online and updated daily.
For instance, the odds of getting myocarditis from the Pfizer vaccine is something like 1:125000. This is significantly less than the risk of child having a seizure from the MMR vaccine at 1:30000.
This is exactly what every person following the religion of scientism was saying when we were spraying kids with DDT, while those in touch with their intuition and insticts knew better.
Biden to mandate coronavirus vaccine for federal workers - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28472856 - Sept 2021 (262 comments)
The titles are emphasizing two different things, but it's the same announcement.
The original title of the page is: "Path out of the Pandemic, President Biden's COVID-19 Action Plan", shouldn't that, or a derivative have been used instead?
I'm 29 and in good health. I know I'm much more likely to die from activities I enjoy like rock climbing, farm work, skydiving, driving my car, but I don't wan't my employer mandating I can't do those things. I have weighed the risks. I want to get covid eventually if I haven't already for better protection against future variants that could have worse survival rates for my age range (https://www.science.org/content/article/having-sars-cov-2-on...) If I were older, I would choose to get the vaccine.
Also, people will say that I'm going to spread it to others. Well the CDC states that "preliminary evidence suggests that fully vaccinated people who do become infected with the delta variant can spread the virus to others" and recommends they wear masks! (https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/fully-vac...) I suspect that if I get covid and quarantine, I'll be less likely to spread the delta variant than someone who is vaccinated after I recover (people who have had been vaccinated are 13 times more likely to get infected than unvaccinated people who were previously infected with covid according to the science.org article I linked above)
The CDC dataset you cite above only reflects death, not the serious illness and disability ~30% of people end up with.
Yes, vaccinated individuals can spread COVID, but this is dramatically less likely if you are vaccinated.
You assume you’ll be less likely to spread delta because you’ll quarantine, but you ignore the fact that much of the transmission we see is from asymptomatic spread, before people even know they are sick.
All of the mental gymnastics, for what? Getting vaccinated is barely even an inconvenience and we have real proof from hundreds of millions of doses that it’s safe and effective.
The selfishness and unwillingness to cooperate for the greater good is mind blowing.
Stop thinking with your ego.
>if I get covid and quarantine
will you indeed quarantine yourself per CDC recommendations if you find out you have been exposed?
how will you know you've been INFECTED?
will you indeed ISOLATE yourself per CDC recommendations if you find out you have been infected?
These mandates appear to completely neglect entire aspects of scientific consensus.
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7032e1.htm?s_cid=mm...
Vaccine antibodies bind more broadly to cover new variants, vs. antibodies from previous infection.
https://www.science.org/doi/pdf/10.1126/scitranslmed.abi9915
So why is "accommodation" necessary?
- You aren't required to get the vaccine, you can undergo weekly testing instead
Here is their BS response:
"The FDA is undergoing a process now to evaluate a vaccine for children under the age of 12, and under the President’s plan, the Administration will do whatever it takes to support those efforts, while continuing to respect and defer to the scientific decision-making of the agency."
I feel like our entire society has been held hostage by the FDA. I think a bold plan to completely get rid of the FDA would have been more appropriate. Just dismantle the whole organization. It's too broken to fix.
Figuring out if the vaccine is safe for children under 12 takes a maximum of 8 weeks (1 week to administer, 6 weeks to watch, 1 week to organize results).
It's been 4 weeks since the association of pediatric doctors reviewed the data and begged the FDA to lift the ban.
It has been well over a year now since phase II safety results were in from adults. It's been many months.
I don't understand why there isn't a wide, bipartisan push to remove the FDA from our lives. Multiple presidents, multiple heads, all a complete and total catastrophe.
Don't understand, or feel contempt based on ideology without understanding? Even if you disagree with how the FDA has handled COVID vaccines - largely in the face of pressure and infiltration by an administration sharply opposed to any regulatory mission - there are many other things that it does. Would you forego all FDA oversight of food, drugs (not just vaccines), medical devices, and radiation-emitting products? Throw that all into the courts, which can never address a harm until after the fact and even in those cases is even less equipped to handle the issues under FDA's mandate?
People who've done at least minimal diligence can certainly disagree with some of the things FDA does. There's plenty of room for that, but "fail to understand" why others don't share your spitting hatred of the agency as a whole? Sorry, but that's not even a position that deserves to be taken seriously.
Additionally, there is evidence that a prior covid infection grants stronger immunity than at least the J&J vaccine, and 40%+ percent of the US population has had COVID. Unless an exemption is made for that 40%, this is unscientific.
It would have been chilling a year ago, now? Meh.
As for giving exemptions for prior infection, there's no real reason to. Prior infection gives decent immunity, but a vaccination on top of it gives great immunity. It's a small net positive, but anything helps.
They say it’s 2021 but I ain’t too sure,
it feels like 1984.Italian Fascism promoted a corporatist economic system whereby employer and employee syndicates are linked together in associations to collectively represent the nation's economic producers and work alongside the state to set national economic policy.[0]
[0] Andrew Vincent. Modern Political Ideologies. Third edition. Malden, Massaschussetts, USA; Oxford, England, UK; West Sussex, England, UK: Blackwell Publishers Ltd., 2010. Pp. 160. URL: https://books.google.com/books/about/Modern_Political_Ideolo...
It's also a dupe of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28472856.
Emailing hn@ycombinator.com might help. This topic affects 10's of millions of Americans.
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.24.21262415v...
https://www.dw.com/en/germany-bosses-cant-ask-about-employee...
The same is true for most EU member states.
What about measles vaccine requirements? Have you complained about those recently? Believe it or not, there was a time when measles wasn’t a thing and very few question the need for a measles vaccine now.
What about the broad polio vaccine rollout?
Vaccine hesitancy has been a thing, but never this strongly along party lines
Right now, you have zero recourse if your employer, or your co-workers are creating a dangerous environment. You have no legal standing if your employer's policies are the reason that you catch COVID, which can be financially ruinous - or lethal. Your employer is explicitly protected from any liability their action or inaction creates in this space.
We either need the tools to hold employers liable for creating a dangerous work environment - because they are not taking basic precautions against the spread of a deadly disease...
Or we can shield them from this liability, and mandate that they take those precautions.
It seems we are taking the less litigious option.
I think the same but with a different tack. If you get an infectious disease from another person, and that person didn’t want the disease either and wouldn’t want to spread it, then why are they?
How do people not know they have Covid and are giving it to their friends, coworkers, etc?
These policies are absurd and unfairly punish people like me.
(Especially since such policies often have as an explicit goal to provide protection for people who can't get vaccinated.)
They'll be fighting this out in the courts for years.
/s
(This presumes that the point is to slow the spread of COVID, not to annoy the unvaccinated.)
Also Biden, in the same speech: We're gonna force everyone we can get away with forcing to take a shot still under emergency use authorization that is only supposed to be valid if there is NO other viable treatment.
And no one is being strapped down and vaccinated, some consequences are being imposed for some choices. For instance, for workers at larger companies that don't get vaccinated, there is an expectation that the employer will check weekly for negative test results.
So is this a no-op for people who work from home exclusively? that seems like a pretty major thing to just gloss over
I can completely understand the risk analysis of someone who has already had Covid not wanting to get the vaccine based on the available data.