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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 p

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.
      - AlexandrB 5y ago
        This is ridiculously black and white thinking. It's like saying "Oh, you support seatbelts? Well how would you like it if the government had a camera in your house to make sure you're wearing PPE every time you use the table saw!" > Get a vaccine, and whether someone else has or hasn't is not anyones business. If only that were true. Unfortunately I don't like lockdowns and new and exciting COVID "variants".
      - downandout 5y ago
        Get a vaccine, and whether someone else has or hasn't is not anyones business. Exactly this. It either works or it doesn’t. If it does, we don’t need to worry about anyone else’s vaccine status. If it doesn’t, then people are taking an unnecessary risk by getting it. I am against the mandates, and I am vaccinated. Whether or not to get it should be a very nuanced decision, based upon the specific adverse reaction and breakthrough infection statistics for a given person’s age and underlying health conditions vs the COVID statistics for the person. If the CDC had any desire to be honest, they would have an online calculator that would ask a few questions about BMI, age, etc., and then it would tell you the your specific odds of being killed/injured by the vaccine (with the odds of dying from COVID despite being vaccinated factored in) vs the odds of catching and then dying from COVID unvaccinated. Instead, it has become a test of wills. Tests of wills have historically not played out well at a national level in “free” countries.
    - downandout 5y ago
      If VAERS is to be believed, the odds of dying from it are about 1 in 11,000. Relative to other vaccines, that is astronomical, and is far worse than a "sore shoulder". I'm not sure it qualifies as "very few, very rare" either. I know all of the issues with VAERS, but the truth is somewhere in between the CDC's official position that no one has died from the vaccine, which is preposterous on its face, and the VAERS numbers, which currently stand at 16,310 deaths [1] out of ~180 million vaccinations. IMO, the reason for the hesitancy is the heavy handedness with which it is being pushed, and the obvious lies of the CDC. When the CDC says that it can't be proven that anyone has died from the vaccine, and then there are multiple credible news reports of healthy, relatively young people dropping dead from it, it calls into question everything else they say. They don't want to admit these things because they don't want to alarm people, but IMO coming out and saying "it kills and injures some people, but the benefits outweigh the risks for many groups" would be the right approach. It's the lying that's the problem. Even reporting adverse events based on the total number of doses administered, and not on the number of people that have received doses, is specifically intended to mislead and cut the real statistics in half. It just all looks terrible, and people assume they are lying about everything when they lie or obfuscate obvious things. [1] https://openvaers.com/ https://openvaers.com/
      - AlexandrB 5y ago
        Ok, forget the CDC. Let's look at health Canada's site[1]: > A total of 56,151,862 vaccine doses have been administered in Canada as of October 1, 2021. Adverse events (side effects) have been reported by 17,982 people. That’s about 3 people out of every 10,000 people vaccinated who have reported 1 or more adverse events. > Of the 17,982 individual reports, 13,307 were considered non-serious (0.024% of all doses administered) and 4,675 were considered serious (0.008% of all doses administered). > Most adverse events are mild and include soreness at the site of injection or a slight fever. > Serious adverse events are rare, but do occur. They include anaphylaxis (a severe allergic reaction), which has been reported 307 times for all COVID-19 vaccines across Canada. That’s why you need to wait for a period of time after you receive a vaccination so that you can receive treatment in case of an allergic reaction. And[2]: > Up to and including October 1, 2021, a total of 195 reports with an outcome of death were reported following vaccination. Although these deaths occurred after being vaccinated with a COVID-19 vaccine, they are not necessarily related to the vaccine. Based on the medical case review using the WHO-UMC causality assessment categories, it has been determined that: > 73 of these deaths are unlikely linked to a COVID-19 vaccine > 75 deaths could not be assessed due to insufficient information > 41 deaths are still under investigation > 6 deaths followed a diagnosis of TTS (refer to the TTS bullet above) So serious side effects in 4,675/55e6 doses. That's something like a 0.01% incidence rate. And 195/55e6 deaths - 1 in 282,000. If you don't want to trust any national health service I think we're at an impasse. Your problem is then fundamentally with the government (or even government as a concept) and not with the COVID vaccine. [1] https://health-infobase.canada.ca/covid-19/vaccine-safety/summary.html https://health-infobase.canada.ca/covid-19/vaccine-safety/su... [2] https://health-infobase.canada.ca/covid-19/vaccine-safety/#detailedSafetySignals https://health-infobase.canada.ca/covid-19/vaccine-safety/#d...
- chana_masala 5y ago
  Isn't this the only mandated vaccine though? All previous allowed religious, medical and in some places even philosophical exemptions
  - AlexandrB 5y ago
    > Historian Michael Willrich was planning to write a book about civil liberties in the aftermath of Sept. 11 when he stumbled across an article from The New York Times archives. It was about a 1901 smallpox vaccination raid in New York — when 250 men arrived at a Little Italy tenement house in the middle of the night and set about vaccinating everyone they could find. [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...
    - chana_masala 5y ago
      Uhm, so what's your point?
cmrdporcupine 5y ago
Under 4% of the population of Canada has tested positive for COVID. So it's not really of much import, frankly.

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.
    - AlexandrB 5y ago
      This is ridiculously black and white thinking. It's like saying "Oh, you support seatbelts? Well how would you like it if the government had a camera in your house to make sure you're wearing PPE every time you use the table saw!" > Get a vaccine, and whether someone else has or hasn't is not anyones business. If only that were true. Unfortunately I don't like lockdowns and new and exciting COVID "variants".
    - downandout 5y ago
      Get a vaccine, and whether someone else has or hasn't is not anyones business. Exactly this. It either works or it doesn’t. If it does, we don’t need to worry about anyone else’s vaccine status. If it doesn’t, then people are taking an unnecessary risk by getting it. I am against the mandates, and I am vaccinated. Whether or not to get it should be a very nuanced decision, based upon the specific adverse reaction and breakthrough infection statistics for a given person’s age and underlying health conditions vs the COVID statistics for the person. If the CDC had any desire to be honest, they would have an online calculator that would ask a few questions about BMI, age, etc., and then it would tell you the your specific odds of being killed/injured by the vaccine (with the odds of dying from COVID despite being vaccinated factored in) vs the odds of catching and then dying from COVID unvaccinated. Instead, it has become a test of wills. Tests of wills have historically not played out well at a national level in “free” countries.
  - downandout 5y ago
    If VAERS is to be believed, the odds of dying from it are about 1 in 11,000. Relative to other vaccines, that is astronomical, and is far worse than a "sore shoulder". I'm not sure it qualifies as "very few, very rare" either. I know all of the issues with VAERS, but the truth is somewhere in between the CDC's official position that no one has died from the vaccine, which is preposterous on its face, and the VAERS numbers, which currently stand at 16,310 deaths [1] out of ~180 million vaccinations. IMO, the reason for the hesitancy is the heavy handedness with which it is being pushed, and the obvious lies of the CDC. When the CDC says that it can't be proven that anyone has died from the vaccine, and then there are multiple credible news reports of healthy, relatively young people dropping dead from it, it calls into question everything else they say. They don't want to admit these things because they don't want to alarm people, but IMO coming out and saying "it kills and injures some people, but the benefits outweigh the risks for many groups" would be the right approach. It's the lying that's the problem. Even reporting adverse events based on the total number of doses administered, and not on the number of people that have received doses, is specifically intended to mislead and cut the real statistics in half. It just all looks terrible, and people assume they are lying about everything when they lie or obfuscate obvious things. [1] https://openvaers.com/ https://openvaers.com/
    - AlexandrB 5y ago
      Ok, forget the CDC. Let's look at health Canada's site[1]: > A total of 56,151,862 vaccine doses have been administered in Canada as of October 1, 2021. Adverse events (side effects) have been reported by 17,982 people. That’s about 3 people out of every 10,000 people vaccinated who have reported 1 or more adverse events. > Of the 17,982 individual reports, 13,307 were considered non-serious (0.024% of all doses administered) and 4,675 were considered serious (0.008% of all doses administered). > Most adverse events are mild and include soreness at the site of injection or a slight fever. > Serious adverse events are rare, but do occur. They include anaphylaxis (a severe allergic reaction), which has been reported 307 times for all COVID-19 vaccines across Canada. That’s why you need to wait for a period of time after you receive a vaccination so that you can receive treatment in case of an allergic reaction. And[2]: > Up to and including October 1, 2021, a total of 195 reports with an outcome of death were reported following vaccination. Although these deaths occurred after being vaccinated with a COVID-19 vaccine, they are not necessarily related to the vaccine. Based on the medical case review using the WHO-UMC causality assessment categories, it has been determined that: > 73 of these deaths are unlikely linked to a COVID-19 vaccine > 75 deaths could not be assessed due to insufficient information > 41 deaths are still under investigation > 6 deaths followed a diagnosis of TTS (refer to the TTS bullet above) So serious side effects in 4,675/55e6 doses. That's something like a 0.01% incidence rate. And 195/55e6 deaths - 1 in 282,000. If you don't want to trust any national health service I think we're at an impasse. Your problem is then fundamentally with the government (or even government as a concept) and not with the COVID vaccine. [1] https://health-infobase.canada.ca/covid-19/vaccine-safety/summary.html https://health-infobase.canada.ca/covid-19/vaccine-safety/su... [2] https://health-infobase.canada.ca/covid-19/vaccine-safety/#detailedSafetySignals https://health-infobase.canada.ca/covid-19/vaccine-safety/#d...
chana_masala 5y ago
Isn't this the only mandated vaccine though? All previous allowed religious, medical and in some places even philosophical exemptions
- AlexandrB 5y ago
  > Historian Michael Willrich was planning to write a book about civil liberties in the aftermath of Sept. 11 when he stumbled across an article from The New York Times archives. It was about a 1901 smallpox vaccination raid in New York — when 250 men arrived at a Little Italy tenement house in the middle of the night and set about vaccinating everyone they could find. [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...
  - chana_masala 5y ago
    Uhm, so what's your point?

cmrdporcupine 5y ago

Under 4% of the population of Canada has tested positive for COVID. So it's not really of much import, frankly.