5 ms·

I don't get the idea of requiring people to take vaccines. If people don't want to catch the thing, then they take the vaccine. However, taking the vaccine do

• jflans 6y ago
  For employers, I think it's mostly a matter of avoiding the lost employee-hours and corresponding lost revenue. For instance (though only an anecdote), a local Starbucks had to close for a few days as enough employees had symptoms to make appropriate staffing impossible.
  • yters 6y ago
    Yes, that logic makes a bit more sense. However, if an employer can control an employee's personal decision to maximize their work hours, why stop at vaccines? Require everyone stop smoking, drinking, drug use, work out consistently, eat healthily, etc. Vaccines, even against covid-19, are the least likely to impact work hours.
    • jonnycomputer 6y ago
      They already do. Also: unlike most of those other things, this virus is clearly infectious, so it isn't individual well-being that is at stake.
    • jflans 6y ago
      Many employers already provide incentives (including cash) to participate in "wellness" programs, and many often will perform drug tests prior to and even during employment. For most of the things you mention, it's possible for the employee to control the impact it has on their work hours. You can drink while ensuring you're not drunk or hungover at work, for example. For COVID, it's not possible to control the impact; if you have COVID, you do not work. Additionally, you can spread COVID to other employees prior to a positive test or symptoms and consequently affect the business outside of your personal availability. That's not really the case with drinking or a refusal to exercise.
      • yters 6y ago
        Sounds like the same restrictions can apply to covid. People die from flu and numerous other diseases, but I've never worked anywhere that has mandated such vaccinations. The only exception I know of is meningitis in Texas, and that is really bad, a person can be infected and dead in hours and it is quite infectious. Not at all comparable to covid.
    • runako 6y ago
      > Require everyone stop smoking, drinking, drug use, work out consistently, eat healthily, etc. Vaccines, even against covid-19, are the least likely to impact work hours. I'm curious, are you not in the US? Many workplaces routinely test employees for drugs, even drugs that are legal in their states. Employment at many places is conditioned specifically on not using drugs. Similarly, employees at many firms must maintain an adequate credit rating or risk termination. So the slippery slope you describe...we've already slid down it.
      • throwaway0a5e 6y ago
        >Many workplaces routinely test employees for drugs, even drugs that are legal in their states. Employment at many places is conditioned specifically on not using drugs. Outside employers who have the federal government as a direct customer and employees who have to deal with DOT rules (truck drivers) drug testing is incredibly rare. Employers aren't dumb enough to voluntarily restrict their talent pool in that manner.
        • runako 6y ago
          Companies I know of that do drug testing: - Walmart (1.5 million US employees) - IBM (352,000 US employees) - Target (350,000 US employees) - Kroger (450,000 US employees) - Home Depot (400,000 US employees) These are just spot checks of the top 10 largest employers. Obviously, sectors such as transportation and finance also have broadly embraced drug screens. Based on my experience in IT, they are not outliers. As a contractor, I've even had to submit to drug testing for contract gigs in the past.
        • vharuck 6y ago
          As a person who has worked a couple low-wage jobs (warehouse, retail), drug tests were the norm. Employers are trying to avoid flaky workers or ones likely to quit.
    • gamblor956 6y ago
      They aren't mandating vaccinations, they're incentivizing them by paying employees for getting them.
• igetspam 6y ago
  Mandating safety is not new or draconian. We do this all the time with regulations and laws because people can't always be trusted to make decisions that aren't selfish. Vaccines fit into a category of things that seem to be personal decisions but negative impacts are communal. I'm all for personal freedoms, until yours damage mine. I know many immuno compromised people and the antivax crowd is their second biggest medical problem, after the diseases themselves. Vaccines aren't to protect you anywhere near as much as they are to protect us from you. I'm 100% in favor of requiring vaccines and keeping the antivax crows in a silo, away from the general population. (That includes my family members who are antivax.)
  • yters 6y ago
    Are unvaccinated individuals the biggest, or even significant, threat to immuno compromised individuals? I think even the common cold is deadly for such unfortunate people.
    • Broken_Hippo 6y ago
      Sometimes a cold is so much worse for this group of people, sure. It can be deadly, but just as often (or more) raises the chance of complications. The diseases we tend to vaccinate against aren't the common cold, though. They are worse. So much worse. As in, they can be deadly or create lifelong complications in healthy folks. It can be a quick death sentence for compromised folks - much worse than the common cold.
      • yters 6y ago
        I can agree it is worth vaccinating the population to protect such people.
  • macspoofing 6y ago
    >Mandating safety is not new or draconian. We do this all the time with regulations and laws because people can't always be trusted to make decisions that aren't selfish. It's not as clear-cut like you make it out to be and there are real ethical questions here. So let's Steelman OP's argument. This vaccine was developed very quickly and there are potential side-effects. And like OP said, the vaccine doesn't necessarily prevent transmission (though in fairness, it must have some effect because it does reduce the viral load). So you're mandating a healthy individual (who may not even be in the at-risk group for COVID either) get inoculated with something that did not follow traditional healthcare protocols for vaccine development, can cause adverse reactions, and doesn't prevent spread. Are we OK with signing off on that kind of policy without some debate? What complicates it for me is that dissenting opinions from credible virologist and epidemiologists and clinicians is routinely suppressed and blocked by social media right now. >I'm 100% in favor of requiring vaccines and keeping the antivax crows in a silo, away from the general population. I know you say that, but you're not because you're never going to fully trust health authorities with your health (remember, health authorities are people and they make mistakes, see what happened in Flint when the State was telling people water was safe to drink when it wasn't). For example, let's say there are reports[1] of clusters of really major adverse reactions - do you fully trust health authority's guarantees that vaccine is perfectly safe? Are you really really sure this wouldn't be a repeat of the 1970s flue vaccine fiasco - another vaccine that was rushed into production? And again, the context here is also important. There is a higher risk factor associated with this specific vaccine than a traditionally developed one. [1] Again, social media has decided to editorialize on this point. That is, even if credible reports come out against the vaccine, they will suppress these reports if it goes against health authority guidelines. Which, paradoxically, leads to reduced trust.
• jonnycomputer 6y ago
  Because businesses don't want to deal with the hassle of having outbreaks in their workforce causing business operations to halt, slow down, or fail? And don't want to be vulnerable to lawsuits claiming they spread the disease to their customers, or didn't adequately protect their employees safety?
  • yters 6y ago
    They can mandate face masks, hand washing, etc. just like they do now. If employees vaccinate, they can forego the rituals.
• neogodless 6y ago
  Disclaimer: Not a pandemic response team member. I would imagine that if you look at the current state of the COVID-19 pandemic... we have a vaccine and we've been able to give first doses to maybe 5% of the U.S. right now. It is estimated that herd immunity, or basically infection frequency / transmission dropping low enough that you are unlikely to get COVID-19 requires about 75% of everyone to be fully vaccinated (both doses for the two leading vaccines). So to have the vaccine or not have the vaccine is not a binary choice for every person at this time. Lots of 64 year olds could walk into a grocery store, wishing they had a vaccine, but they don't. Ideally, every store employee at such a store is low or no risk for that 64 year old, just in case. Masks help but are not 100%. Catching it from surfaces is, I believe, presumed to be low on incidence, but I would not assume it is 0% either. So the best bet for 64 year olds that are not yet eligible for the vaccine is that employees at places people have to go contain largely vaccinated employees as soon as possible. Also don't know the numbers, but there are probably a lot less grocery store workers than say all people between 50 and 64 years of age. (I'm also not 100% clear on when a 64 year old with no underlying conditions and no front-line worker qualification will otherwise be eligible.)
  • ghaff 6y ago
    >(I'm also not 100% clear on when a 64 year old with no underlying conditions and no front-line worker qualification will otherwise be eligible.) It depends on the state. But in Massachusetts, that 64 year old is part of the general pool, i.e. they're eligible at the same time a healthy 20 year old is. It depends on how many people are willing to get vaccinated and whether vaccinations can be tamped up above 1 million per day (so 2 million jabs for the 2 dose vaccines). But it could easily be 6 months out, though hopefully closer to early summer. Added: Though Biden is only promising to get 50 million people vaccinated in the next 100 days.
• notagoodidea 6y ago
  Besides the impact on business (from sick workers, contamination or even fines¹), herd immunity can be leveraged by vaccination. Nobody really want to talk anymore about herd immunity because of how to concept was used during the first wave earlier this year. Herd immunity is not a magic bullet and will not make those who decided not to be vaccinate immune. It is just with a higher threshold, you reduce the probability of infection inside the not immune population. The concept was distorted during the first believing on the self immuninity response to the virus and that the immunity will be a "once for all" scenario. The damage is done in the public view about how the concept is perceived and tossed away. However, the main logic about massive vaccination is mostly about herd immunity (and the hypothesises that the vaccine will have a lifetime/long enough action and no mutation of the virus will change it enough to render the vaccine useless). So to answer, > taking the vaccine does little to prevent others for catching the [virus] Yes, with a high enough threshold, herd immunity will reduce the probability of others in your environment to get the virus. You can see it like a network effect where nodes that could be infected finish by being surrounded by nodes preventing infected nodes to reach high-risk ones modulo the hypotheses stipulated above.² Besides that they are also social, economic, politic reasons to push to massive vaccination programs. But for me, herd immunity reasons are the why, I tend to be in favour of a nation-scale vaccination program. ¹ For example in the Netherlands if a worker is contaminated at his workplace, the company have to close their offices during two weeks and pay a fine.
• loufe 6y ago
  IF you catch COVID non-vaccinated I'm fairly sure you remain sick and contagious for a far longer duration. In the case (like most) where you're asymptomatic, you are thus risking other people catch it more than you would be if you got vaccinated. That's enough justification in my mind.
• recursive 6y ago
  Being vaccinated does not provide any guarantees. You may remember the headlines about "95% effective". What more is there to understand? If I am infected, I'm a risk to you, whether you're vaccinated or not.
  • Broken_Hippo 6y ago
    You speak like the risks are the same. They aren't. Your statements don't talk about how the risk change with vaccination - and change even more when more folks are vaccinated. If you are vaccinated, you are vastly less likely to get the infection you are vaccinated against. It is kind of like car accidents - you are vastly less likely to be in any sort of car accident if you are walking (vaccinated) than if you are driving a car (unvaccinated). Most folks will be protected. Since most folks will be protected and won't get the disease, it means that - with enough vaccinations - the risk for those who don't get the vaccine or who are unlucky enough not to have full effectiveness are more protected as well. This situation is more akin to most folks taking public transport instead of driving cars: Since there are fewer cars on the roads, everyone's risk of getting into a car accident drops significantly.
    • recursive 6y ago
      I didn't mean to imply that the risks are the same. The 95% number is in my comment. I'm not sure how, exactly that's measured. I'm just explaining the logic. It's ok if you don't agree, but the parent legitimately seemed to not understand the argument.
      • pabs3 6y ago
        The number was measured by giving a placebo to X number of people and the vaccine to X number of people. Then you find out that Y number of people with the placebo got COVID, and Z number of people with the vaccine got COVID. Compare Y and Z to get the effectiveness. I think X was like 10,000 or more.