11 ms·

Canada imposes Covid-19 vaccine mandate on federal workers, transportation

44 points by begoon 5y ago

oogabooga123 5y ago
Yes, the Germans also were for the most part okay with stripping Jews of their rights. I wish people would realize that tyranny of the majority has nothing to do with democracy and rule of law.
- woodruffw 5y ago
  Comparing your failure to do your civic duty to the holocaust is both ridiculous and offensive.
  - Covzire 5y ago
    It's experimental medication, with no proven track record. The media and big tech platforms have been censoring the medical community. Most people under 50 are not at high risk from COVID and the reports of adverse reactions to the vaccines are legion. The people advocating for mandates are themselves offensive and I think history will prove them to be utter monsters.
    - summerlight 5y ago
      > Most people under 50 are not at high risk from COVID And they're still capable of transmitting COVID to other people at high risk, which will eventually happen with reproduction rate higher than 1. Do you have any suggestions for keeping the reproduction rate lower than 1 other than vaccination? I'm interested. > The people advocating for mandates are themselves offensive and I think history will prove them to be utter monsters. Those people are trying to save the community as whole, not just protecting themselves. To give you a data point, Portugal has fully opened the country without any mandates while controlling the disease, thanks to 85% vaccination rate.
      - totesraunch 5y ago
        It's insane we're still talking about this nearly two years into the pandemic. Clearly people can't (or won't) connect their personal choices with the potential external effects of those choices.
      - Covzire 5y ago
        My argument was not against mandates per se or the vaccines per se, but against the Federal Government having the power to take away someone's source of income for their family if they don't take an experimental drug, a drug they have every right to determine if they need it or not. And the vaccines don't stop transmission, there was a massive outbreak at Harvard recently even though it had a 95%+ vaccination rate. Look at Florida, the most recent data shows they have some of the lowest infection/death rate despite never locking down and never forcing state wide mandates.
        ev1 5y ago
        It is not an experimental drug.
        dragonwriter 5y ago
        > the Federal Government having the power to take away someone's source of income for their family if they don't take an experimental drug, Cominarty is fully approved (its true that some products under EUA can also be used.) It is also not, legally, a drug. > Look at Florida, the most recent data shows they have some of the lowest infection/death rate despite never locking down and never forcing state wide mandates. Out of 56 US states and territories, Florida has the seventh highest 7-day per capita death rate, over 1.5× the national rate; hardly “some of the lowest”. It actually has a fairly low per capita newly-identified case rate, but that seems likely to be because the laxity of control measures is also making nonsevere cases less likely to be detected. https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/national/coronavirus-us-cases-deaths/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/national/corona...
        chana_masala 5y ago
  - oogabooga123 5y ago
    It was your “civic duty” to rat out your neighbors, too. Your framing something as the moral position does absolutely nothing to make it so
    - woodruffw 5y ago
      > It was your “civic duty” to rat out your neighbors, too. Your framing something as the moral position does absolutely nothing to make it so I don't think you understood. I wasn't making an argument -- as far as I'm concerned, it's self evident that "getting a vaccine" is the moral position and "ratting on your neighbors for hiding Jews" is not the moral position. You're not being argued with; you're being excoriated for having such a ridiculously warped worldview.
- dang 5y ago
  We've banned this account for breaking the site guidelines. Nazi flamewars are not what this site is for. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28872241 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28872241.
mabbo 5y ago
To be fair, he said he'd do this during the election a couple weeks ago, and got reelected. Still a minority government, but honestly the same result as the last election. Canadians are, for the most part, okay with these restrictions.
- motohagiography 5y ago
  We are not okay with them, but our inability to organize and vote against them appears to show we deserve them. If you wanted to make a generalization about Canadians and our view of our politicians, it's that we can't stop cringing long enough to mobilize an effective movement to change them out. It's a national paralysis of cringe, and at this point it's probably by design.
  - m-p-3 5y ago
    > We are not okay with them > If you wanted to make a generalization You made a generalization. I'm okay with them.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- Kenji 5y ago
  Yes, the Germans also were for the most part okay with stripping Jews of their rights. When will you idiots realize that tyranny of the majority has nothing to do with democracy and rule of law.
- sleepysysadmin 5y ago
  100% this. Trudeau was upfront about doing this and was rewarded with basically no change. Nobody should disapprove of Trudeau doing this, this is the will of Canadians. To be fair, the far left peoples party was the only party who stood up for freedom. This gained them nearly a million more votes. The NDP picked up ~120,000 more votes compared to last election, but otherwise all other parties lost votes. Liberals and Cons lost about half million votes each. Yes, the people party gains were heavy in the hippie anti-vaxxer far-left stoner category, but there's nothing wrong with that. The problem was their stance on defunding the media. It made the media the enemy and the media smeared them with massive lies calling them nazis, white supremacists, and far right. Which is absolutely false but here we are.
foxhop 5y ago
lock out culture and cancel culture divides nations. Segregate, divide, and conquer.
- xyzzy_plugh 5y ago
  Yeah but not really the featured nation. The vast majority of Canadians -- >80% of adults -- are in favor. We don't want any more lockdowns and vaccines are proving to be an extremely effective solution to that. This is really a case of a vocal minority putting up a fight. And unfortunately for them, the nation is going to keep moving forward.
  - CheezeIt 5y ago
    You don’t need vaccination to have no lockdowns. And you misspelled backward.
    - xyzzy_plugh 5y ago
      > And you misspelled backward. It's all relative, but I'm not looking in the wrong direction.
  - microdrum 5y ago
    What makes you think the vaccine is an extremely effective solution to lockdowns? There are now many examples of high-vaccination countries with the same rapid case count rises that were the excuse for lockdowns in the first place. The vaccines are somewhat effective therapeutics whose population-level effects weaken quite a bit after 3-6 months. Herd immunity of the (virtually no risk) under 60 group continues to be the only way out. I'm sorry that your "sacrifice" of masks, staying home, and getting the jab were not the heroic things you thought they were. But there weren't heroic at all. They meant nothing. This is all now very obvious from cross-sectional international data.
    - cmrdporcupine 5y ago
      I only intimately know the numbers here in Ontario, and here I can see that the vaccines are extremely effective for the people who take them. All through the last two months, case counts went up to 10, 11, 12 cases / 100k (high for us) for the unvaccinated. For the fully vaccinated they stayed under 2 / 100k. Even clearer for hospitalization and ICU admission. In the middle of September, 4.7/100k hospitalization rate for the unvaccinated. For the fully vaccinated, 0.38/100k. The issue isn't the ineffectiveness of the vaccines. It's the fact that there's still hundreds of thousands, millions, of people unvaccinated. And the virus ran like wildfire through them, despite the rest of us doing our part. Herd immunity from natural exposure is dangerous and isn't going to happen. A year and a half on, only 4% of the population here has tested positive. FWIW my parents in Alberta lost 4 friends/acquaintances to COVID just in the past month. Only 2 of them were over 65. All were unvaccinated, devoutly religious & conservative, and dogmatic about their antivax/anti-mask positions.
xyzzy_plugh 5y ago
I agree with some of the quoted unions/groups: implementation details are too vague. Pilots and aircrew are not federal employees, do they need to be vaccinated? (I know the answer, but it's addressed poorly by this policy. There was talk about very strict medical exemptions, which is great as it is otherwise a path ripe for abuse, but I'm hearing that religious exemptions are still being considered. The unions I've heard about are encouraging religious exemptions and a "take your word for it" proof policy, where your supervisor can ask for evidence but is not required to. It'll be interesting to see how this plays out.
- xxpor 5y ago
  What's the general jurisprudence in Canada on religious exemptions and the Charter of Rights and Freedoms?
- Scoundreller 5y ago
  > Pilots and aircrew are not federal employees Canada has a few industries that are 'federally regulated' (e.g. overtime rules, etc.) and transportation is one of them. https://www.canada.ca/en/services/jobs/workplace/federally-regulated-industries.html https://www.canada.ca/en/services/jobs/workplace/federally-r... Results in some funny situations like truckers not getting provincial holidays. And some holidays are federal only (so you get it if you're a federal employee or in one of those few federally regulated industries).
  - xyzzy_plugh 5y ago
    Yes! This is why the implementation details are so important. It gets even weirder with essential workers, which pilots are. And then they're heavily unionized. Unions are more likely to follow letter of the law than the intent.
- chana_masala 5y ago
  Should there only be medical exemptions for abortions, too?
  - 5y ago
gfodor 5y ago
Your options for being able to exit Canada now are severely restricted if you are unvaccinated, particularly if you cannot enter the US. It appears you will need to charter a private plane or ship to emigrate. I suspect the right to emigrate (a human right according to the UN) will be further restricted by authoritarian regimes around the world such as the one running Canada.
- Scoundreller 5y ago
  > Workers and passengers age 12 and older on trains, planes and marine transport operating domestically - which are federally regulated - must show they have been inoculated by Oct. 30. International flights are still a free-for-all.
  - gfodor 5y ago
    Ah this is good. Hope it stays that way. Thank you for sharing. I’m also glad if seeing this fact helps people form opinions how they would feel if it weren’t the case.
    - maxerickson 5y ago
      You generally have to have a passport and entry visa (or equivalent) to fly internationally. The baseline is not a 'free for all'. ~100 years after arbitrary requirements are imposed on international travel, people freak out about one that is a direct response to exigent circumstances and not likely to be permanent.
      - gfodor 5y ago
        It’s about the right to exit. A situation where people sit by while basic rights are eroded for others is most likely to happen when there is a rationalization for reasonable people to support it. See also: the NSA mass surveillance program after 9/11.
        maxerickson 5y ago
elevenoh 5y ago
Nauseating level of authoritarianism w/ the current Canadian liberal gov't. Power grabbing under the pretence of protecting us from ourselves & our neighbours. Canadians typically don't like to appear disagreeable. They'll soon find out why this isn't sustainable w/o major loss of liberty.
cmrdporcupine 5y ago
Looking forward to it. I'll feel much more comfortable taking my unvaccinated son to visit family. And taking trips myself.
- mmastrac 5y ago
  With luck we'll have approval for kids soon here in Canada.
  - cblconfederate 5y ago
    You think kids should be vaccinated despite having no danger? why?
    - steve_adams_86 5y ago
      I would guess that it’s to reduce risk of transmission to people who are high risk.
    - xyzzy_plugh 5y ago
      You think there is no Covid-19 risk for kids? Why? Actually, don't tell me. Save your breath -- you never know when you might need it.
    - el_benhameen 5y ago
      I think that kids should be vaccinated despite having a significantly reduced risk profile (not “no danger”). I think this enough that my kids are participants in the Pfizer pediatric trial. I have seen no evidence that the vaccine presents a risk of short or long term sequelae that is greater than (or even close to equal to) the risk of complications from getting covid itself, and I’ve seen no evidence that there is any reason to believe that the vaccine presents risks that infection does not. In both cases, infection has a much greater risk profile than vaccination, even in low-risk populations. Given that calculus, I would rather my children not be immune naive when they eventually encounter the virus. The vaccine also appears to induce strong short-term sterilizing immunity and still lowers the risk of infection over the long term, which means that once vaccinated, my kids can more comfortably visit their high-risk grandparents (they have been, but vaccination makes this a lower-risk interaction going forward).
motohagiography 5y ago
There are a few outs for this in the event of legal challanges. It's likely this goes against the Charter, and it would be absurd for a minority government to invoke the "notwithstanding clause," to force it through, which is a government veto on everything else in the charter. A mandate also means the people subject to it are not giving their consent, sort of like how you "consent" to an invasive search in an airport, which violates privacy laws for health information in most provinces. The policy is contemptible, and even though I can't think of a better cohort for forced medical procedures than the architects of this appalling attack on freedom who work in the permanent state, I would still defend their individual liberty and bodily integrity as much as the next Canadian. Further, you get nothing back for complying. You still wear masks, you still show a vaccine passport to eat indoors, (with slots for 10 or more boosters in some cases), the government still destroys small businesses and forfeits its accountability to "committees" of scientists, who are mostly social scientists, as though letting scientists decide policy was legitimate at all. So called emergency powers that enable random stop and question powers for vague deputized and untrained people remain on the books "just in case." I understand your passport shows the date of your shot that you have to share with whoever demands it, so once you have hesitated, does it really matter how long, comrade? Authoritarianism isn't science. Submission is not a civic duty. I've been predicting this stuff since the beginning and haven't been wrong yet. However, this country is so divided I'm not even angry, as that would be frustration from the assumption these people can be reasoned with. The only thing you can do is hold them to the law.
- phonypc 5y ago
  >Further, you get nothing back for complying. Contributing to the well-being of your friends, family and fellow citizens ain't nothing.
  - cmrdporcupine 5y ago
    You forgot: my own well-being. The way these people talk, I wonder if they also have issues with "complying" with: having to insure their vehicle, wearing a seatbelt, not farting in a crowded elevator, sneezing into their sleeve, wearing clothes in public...
downandout 5y ago
At the very least, I don’t understand why these are vaccine mandates and not antibody mandates. A mandate that does not take natural immunity into account is political policy that ignores science.
- neogodless 5y ago
  I think that's logistical. It's much much straight forward to simply get and produce evidence of getting the necessary vaccines available to us than test every individual for antibodies for each contagious viral threat in existence, past or present.
  - motohagiography 5y ago
    That's the quiet part out loud though. Covid was exceptional, showing proof you have taken injections for arbitrarily "necessary," medications is population management.
    - AlexandrB 5y ago
      I mean... yes. So what? The same thing happened for smallpox[1] and polio. I think we're all constrained by laws that allow society to function. Why is this news or shocking? The only shocking thing is how resistant some have been to taking a vaccine that, at this point, has been administered to millions of people with very few, very rare side effects more serious than a sore shoulder. [1] https://www.npr.org/2011/04/05/135121451/how-the-pox-epidemic-changed-vaccination-rules https://www.npr.org/2011/04/05/135121451/how-the-pox-epidemi...
      - motohagiography 5y ago
        We should mandate that Tinder and other dating sites force people make their current STD test results and last date of testing public on their online dating profiles. Porn performers have to do it in California, and sex workers in Australia, so there's no reason why college students here shouldn't have the same requirement. It's already normal in some places. Then keep a list of anyone who declines, because putting people at risk like that is unethical, surely. That is a poor argument, but one of the same quality as the comment it responds to. We have never had to show a compliance document to eat in restaurants. Even the age of majority for alcohol was a single event, and not an ongoing compliance test. Equating transportation, restaurants, private employment, and cultural venues - to schools kids are forced into, is a false equivalence. Get a vaccine, and whether someone else has or hasn't is not anyones business.

44 points by begoon 5y ago

Yes, the Germans also were for the most part okay with stripping Jews of their rights. I wish people would realize that tyranny of the majority has nothing to do with democracy and rule of law.

woodruffw 5y ago
Comparing your failure to do your civic duty to the holocaust is both ridiculous and offensive.
- Covzire 5y ago
  It's experimental medication, with no proven track record. The media and big tech platforms have been censoring the medical community. Most people under 50 are not at high risk from COVID and the reports of adverse reactions to the vaccines are legion. The people advocating for mandates are themselves offensive and I think history will prove them to be utter monsters.
  - summerlight 5y ago
    > Most people under 50 are not at high risk from COVID And they're still capable of transmitting COVID to other people at high risk, which will eventually happen with reproduction rate higher than 1. Do you have any suggestions for keeping the reproduction rate lower than 1 other than vaccination? I'm interested. > The people advocating for mandates are themselves offensive and I think history will prove them to be utter monsters. Those people are trying to save the community as whole, not just protecting themselves. To give you a data point, Portugal has fully opened the country without any mandates while controlling the disease, thanks to 85% vaccination rate.
    - totesraunch 5y ago
      It's insane we're still talking about this nearly two years into the pandemic. Clearly people can't (or won't) connect their personal choices with the potential external effects of those choices.
    - Covzire 5y ago
      My argument was not against mandates per se or the vaccines per se, but against the Federal Government having the power to take away someone's source of income for their family if they don't take an experimental drug, a drug they have every right to determine if they need it or not. And the vaccines don't stop transmission, there was a massive outbreak at Harvard recently even though it had a 95%+ vaccination rate. Look at Florida, the most recent data shows they have some of the lowest infection/death rate despite never locking down and never forcing state wide mandates.
      - ev1 5y ago
        It is not an experimental drug.
      - dragonwriter 5y ago
        > the Federal Government having the power to take away someone's source of income for their family if they don't take an experimental drug, Cominarty is fully approved (its true that some products under EUA can also be used.) It is also not, legally, a drug. > Look at Florida, the most recent data shows they have some of the lowest infection/death rate despite never locking down and never forcing state wide mandates. Out of 56 US states and territories, Florida has the seventh highest 7-day per capita death rate, over 1.5× the national rate; hardly “some of the lowest”. It actually has a fairly low per capita newly-identified case rate, but that seems likely to be because the laxity of control measures is also making nonsevere cases less likely to be detected. https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/national/coronavirus-us-cases-deaths/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/national/corona...
        chana_masala 5y ago
- oogabooga123 5y ago
  It was your “civic duty” to rat out your neighbors, too. Your framing something as the moral position does absolutely nothing to make it so
  - woodruffw 5y ago
    > It was your “civic duty” to rat out your neighbors, too. Your framing something as the moral position does absolutely nothing to make it so I don't think you understood. I wasn't making an argument -- as far as I'm concerned, it's self evident that "getting a vaccine" is the moral position and "ratting on your neighbors for hiding Jews" is not the moral position. You're not being argued with; you're being excoriated for having such a ridiculously warped worldview.
dang 5y ago
We've banned this account for breaking the site guidelines. Nazi flamewars are not what this site is for. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28872241 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28872241.

mabbo 5y ago

To be fair, he said he'd do this during the election a couple weeks ago, and got reelected. Still a minority government, but honestly the same result as the last election. Canadians are, for the most part, okay with these restrictions.

motohagiography 5y ago
We are not okay with them, but our inability to organize and vote against them appears to show we deserve them. If you wanted to make a generalization about Canadians and our view of our politicians, it's that we can't stop cringing long enough to mobilize an effective movement to change them out. It's a national paralysis of cringe, and at this point it's probably by design.
- m-p-3 5y ago
  > We are not okay with them > If you wanted to make a generalization You made a generalization. I'm okay with them.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
Kenji 5y ago
Yes, the Germans also were for the most part okay with stripping Jews of their rights. When will you idiots realize that tyranny of the majority has nothing to do with democracy and rule of law.
sleepysysadmin 5y ago
100% this. Trudeau was upfront about doing this and was rewarded with basically no change. Nobody should disapprove of Trudeau doing this, this is the will of Canadians. To be fair, the far left peoples party was the only party who stood up for freedom. This gained them nearly a million more votes. The NDP picked up ~120,000 more votes compared to last election, but otherwise all other parties lost votes. Liberals and Cons lost about half million votes each. Yes, the people party gains were heavy in the hippie anti-vaxxer far-left stoner category, but there's nothing wrong with that. The problem was their stance on defunding the media. It made the media the enemy and the media smeared them with massive lies calling them nazis, white supremacists, and far right. Which is absolutely false but here we are.

foxhop 5y ago

lock out culture and cancel culture divides nations. Segregate, divide, and conquer.

xyzzy_plugh 5y ago
Yeah but not really the featured nation. The vast majority of Canadians -- >80% of adults -- are in favor. We don't want any more lockdowns and vaccines are proving to be an extremely effective solution to that. This is really a case of a vocal minority putting up a fight. And unfortunately for them, the nation is going to keep moving forward.
- CheezeIt 5y ago
  You don’t need vaccination to have no lockdowns. And you misspelled backward.
  - xyzzy_plugh 5y ago
    > And you misspelled backward. It's all relative, but I'm not looking in the wrong direction.
- microdrum 5y ago
  What makes you think the vaccine is an extremely effective solution to lockdowns? There are now many examples of high-vaccination countries with the same rapid case count rises that were the excuse for lockdowns in the first place. The vaccines are somewhat effective therapeutics whose population-level effects weaken quite a bit after 3-6 months. Herd immunity of the (virtually no risk) under 60 group continues to be the only way out. I'm sorry that your "sacrifice" of masks, staying home, and getting the jab were not the heroic things you thought they were. But there weren't heroic at all. They meant nothing. This is all now very obvious from cross-sectional international data.
  - cmrdporcupine 5y ago
    I only intimately know the numbers here in Ontario, and here I can see that the vaccines are extremely effective for the people who take them. All through the last two months, case counts went up to 10, 11, 12 cases / 100k (high for us) for the unvaccinated. For the fully vaccinated they stayed under 2 / 100k. Even clearer for hospitalization and ICU admission. In the middle of September, 4.7/100k hospitalization rate for the unvaccinated. For the fully vaccinated, 0.38/100k. The issue isn't the ineffectiveness of the vaccines. It's the fact that there's still hundreds of thousands, millions, of people unvaccinated. And the virus ran like wildfire through them, despite the rest of us doing our part. Herd immunity from natural exposure is dangerous and isn't going to happen. A year and a half on, only 4% of the population here has tested positive. FWIW my parents in Alberta lost 4 friends/acquaintances to COVID just in the past month. Only 2 of them were over 65. All were unvaccinated, devoutly religious & conservative, and dogmatic about their antivax/anti-mask positions.

xyzzy_plugh 5y ago

I agree with some of the quoted unions/groups: implementation details are too vague. Pilots and aircrew are not federal employees, do they need to be vaccinated? (I know the answer, but it's addressed poorly by this policy. There was talk about very strict medical exemptions, which is great as it is otherwise a path ripe for abuse, but I'm hearing that religious exemptions are still being considered. The unions I've heard about are encouraging religious exemptions and a "take your word for it" proof policy, where your supervisor can ask for evidence but is not required to. It'll be interesting to see how this plays out.

xxpor 5y ago
What's the general jurisprudence in Canada on religious exemptions and the Charter of Rights and Freedoms?
Scoundreller 5y ago
> Pilots and aircrew are not federal employees Canada has a few industries that are 'federally regulated' (e.g. overtime rules, etc.) and transportation is one of them. https://www.canada.ca/en/services/jobs/workplace/federally-regulated-industries.html https://www.canada.ca/en/services/jobs/workplace/federally-r... Results in some funny situations like truckers not getting provincial holidays. And some holidays are federal only (so you get it if you're a federal employee or in one of those few federally regulated industries).
- xyzzy_plugh 5y ago
  Yes! This is why the implementation details are so important. It gets even weirder with essential workers, which pilots are. And then they're heavily unionized. Unions are more likely to follow letter of the law than the intent.
chana_masala 5y ago
Should there only be medical exemptions for abortions, too?
- 5y ago

gfodor 5y ago

Your options for being able to exit Canada now are severely restricted if you are unvaccinated, particularly if you cannot enter the US. It appears you will need to charter a private plane or ship to emigrate. I suspect the right to emigrate (a human right according to the UN) will be further restricted by authoritarian regimes around the world such as the one running Canada.

Scoundreller 5y ago
> Workers and passengers age 12 and older on trains, planes and marine transport operating domestically - which are federally regulated - must show they have been inoculated by Oct. 30. International flights are still a free-for-all.
- gfodor 5y ago
  Ah this is good. Hope it stays that way. Thank you for sharing. I’m also glad if seeing this fact helps people form opinions how they would feel if it weren’t the case.
  - maxerickson 5y ago
    You generally have to have a passport and entry visa (or equivalent) to fly internationally. The baseline is not a 'free for all'. ~100 years after arbitrary requirements are imposed on international travel, people freak out about one that is a direct response to exigent circumstances and not likely to be permanent.
    - gfodor 5y ago
      It’s about the right to exit. A situation where people sit by while basic rights are eroded for others is most likely to happen when there is a rationalization for reasonable people to support it. See also: the NSA mass surveillance program after 9/11.
      - maxerickson 5y ago

elevenoh 5y ago

Nauseating level of authoritarianism w/ the current Canadian liberal gov't. Power grabbing under the pretence of protecting us from ourselves & our neighbours. Canadians typically don't like to appear disagreeable. They'll soon find out why this isn't sustainable w/o major loss of liberty.

cmrdporcupine 5y ago

Looking forward to it. I'll feel much more comfortable taking my unvaccinated son to visit family. And taking trips myself.

mmastrac 5y ago
With luck we'll have approval for kids soon here in Canada.
- cblconfederate 5y ago
  You think kids should be vaccinated despite having no danger? why?
  - steve_adams_86 5y ago
    I would guess that it’s to reduce risk of transmission to people who are high risk.
  - xyzzy_plugh 5y ago
    You think there is no Covid-19 risk for kids? Why? Actually, don't tell me. Save your breath -- you never know when you might need it.
  - el_benhameen 5y ago
    I think that kids should be vaccinated despite having a significantly reduced risk profile (not “no danger”). I think this enough that my kids are participants in the Pfizer pediatric trial. I have seen no evidence that the vaccine presents a risk of short or long term sequelae that is greater than (or even close to equal to) the risk of complications from getting covid itself, and I’ve seen no evidence that there is any reason to believe that the vaccine presents risks that infection does not. In both cases, infection has a much greater risk profile than vaccination, even in low-risk populations. Given that calculus, I would rather my children not be immune naive when they eventually encounter the virus. The vaccine also appears to induce strong short-term sterilizing immunity and still lowers the risk of infection over the long term, which means that once vaccinated, my kids can more comfortably visit their high-risk grandparents (they have been, but vaccination makes this a lower-risk interaction going forward).

motohagiography 5y ago

There are a few outs for this in the event of legal challanges. It's likely this goes against the Charter, and it would be absurd for a minority government to invoke the "notwithstanding clause," to force it through, which is a government veto on everything else in the charter. A mandate also means the people subject to it are not giving their consent, sort of like how you "consent" to an invasive search in an airport, which violates privacy laws for health information in most provinces. The policy is contemptible, and even though I can't think of a better cohort for forced medical procedures than the architects of this appalling attack on freedom who work in the permanent state, I would still defend their individual liberty and bodily integrity as much as the next Canadian. Further, you get nothing back for complying. You still wear masks, you still show a vaccine passport to eat indoors, (with slots for 10 or more boosters in some cases), the government still destroys small businesses and forfeits its accountability to "committees" of scientists, who are mostly social scientists, as though letting scientists decide policy was legitimate at all. So called emergency powers that enable random stop and question powers for vague deputized and untrained people remain on the books "just in case." I understand your passport shows the date of your shot that you have to share with whoever demands it, so once you have hesitated, does it really matter how long, comrade? Authoritarianism isn't science. Submission is not a civic duty. I've been predicting this stuff since the beginning and haven't been wrong yet. However, this country is so divided I'm not even angry, as that would be frustration from the assumption these people can be reasoned with. The only thing you can do is hold them to the law.

phonypc 5y ago
>Further, you get nothing back for complying. Contributing to the well-being of your friends, family and fellow citizens ain't nothing.
- cmrdporcupine 5y ago
  You forgot: my own well-being. The way these people talk, I wonder if they also have issues with "complying" with: having to insure their vehicle, wearing a seatbelt, not farting in a crowded elevator, sneezing into their sleeve, wearing clothes in public...

downandout 5y ago

At the very least, I don’t understand why these are vaccine mandates and not antibody mandates. A mandate that does not take natural immunity into account is political policy that ignores science.

neogodless 5y ago
I think that's logistical. It's much much straight forward to simply get and produce evidence of getting the necessary vaccines available to us than test every individual for antibodies for each contagious viral threat in existence, past or present.
- motohagiography 5y ago
  That's the quiet part out loud though. Covid was exceptional, showing proof you have taken injections for arbitrarily "necessary," medications is population management.
  - AlexandrB 5y ago
    I mean... yes. So what? The same thing happened for smallpox[1] and polio. I think we're all constrained by laws that allow society to function. Why is this news or shocking? The only shocking thing is how resistant some have been to taking a vaccine that, at this point, has been administered to millions of people with very few, very rare side effects more serious than a sore shoulder. [1] https://www.npr.org/2011/04/05/135121451/how-the-pox-epidemic-changed-vaccination-rules https://www.npr.org/2011/04/05/135121451/how-the-pox-epidemi...
    - motohagiography 5y ago
      We should mandate that Tinder and other dating sites force people make their current STD test results and last date of testing public on their online dating profiles. Porn performers have to do it in California, and sex workers in Australia, so there's no reason why college students here shouldn't have the same requirement. It's already normal in some places. Then keep a list of anyone who declines, because putting people at risk like that is unethical, surely. That is a poor argument, but one of the same quality as the comment it responds to. We have never had to show a compliance document to eat in restaurants. Even the age of majority for alcohol was a single event, and not an ongoing compliance test. Equating transportation, restaurants, private employment, and cultural venues - to schools kids are forced into, is a false equivalence. Get a vaccine, and whether someone else has or hasn't is not anyones business.