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Reminder that before their hard left turn away from civil liberties and towards partisanship, the ACLU was against vaccine mandates: https://www.michigancapitol

Reminder that before their hard left turn away from civil liberties and towards partisanship, the ACLU was against vaccine mandates: https://www.michigancapitolconfidential.com/aclu-flip-flops-on-vaccine-mandates https://www.michigancapitolconfidential.com/aclu-flip-flops-... Another interesting piece of the public conversation around mandates is the redefinition of the term vaccine (https://www.miamiherald.com/news/coronavirus/article254111268.html https://www.miamiherald.com/news/coronavirus/article25411126...). The CDC claims they redefined it away from the word “immunity” towards the word “protection” because no vaccine grants perfect immunity. Personally I find that to be a bad answer. By taking a weighty word like “vaccine” and redefining it, the expectations of risks and benefits the public holds were exploited. For the majority of the public, those who are under 50 and healthy, COVID poses little risk - it’s not much different from a typical seasonal flu. Personally I think getting an mRNA vaccine is a reasonable low-risk action but the risk of undergoing any medical intervention is nonzero, and it is higher for a novel technology. I bet that if the COVID vaccines were not called a vaccine, people would evaluate the risk reward trade off differently.

maxerickson 5y ago
People under 50 and healthy probably aren't a majority of the population. You can probably get away with 'mostly healthy', but there's enough people under 50 that are overweight to make it so that more than half the country is either over 50 or has a co-morbidity. And then there's lots of other things that are impacting people's health. If you called the mRNA vaccines something else, the risk reward trade off wouldn't change, and there is nice clear evidence that they reduce overall risk for adults, even relatively health adults. The trade off is tighter for younger males, but it also slightly favors vaccination (the number of serious adverse events due to vaccination is smaller than the number of infections requiring hospitalization).
nerdponx 5y ago
> I bet that if the COVID vaccines were not called a vaccine, people would evaluate the risk reward trade off differently Interestingly, one of the entry-level Covid denialist talking points is that the vaccine is "classified as experimental gene therapy, and not a vaccine". It's probably not worth spending too much energy seeking logic in illogic. I just thought it was interesting and kind of ironic in this context.
dillondoyle 5y ago
I think mandate is too heavy a frame in news reports and here. The regulation requires a vaccine OR a set weekly testing structure. Seems reasonable to me though perhaps a bit broadly targeted. Usually I think OSHA has specific regulations by specific industries. There is a different risk between super tightly packed meat plants and Google work from home. https://www.nj.com/coronavirus/2021/11/what-is-the-osha-vaccine-mandate-and-testing-requirement-for-businesses.html https://www.nj.com/coronavirus/2021/11/what-is-the-osha-vacc...
- spookthesunset 5y ago
  > The regulation requires a vaccine OR a set weekly testing structure. Seems reasonable to me though perhaps a bit broadly targeted. Why? Who do these measures protect? What problem is being solved and what metrics are being used to determine when we get there? So far, I have yet to hear any politician state any of this.
  - dillondoyle 5y ago
    I think it's very obvious that vaccines protect against covid. Like that's not even worth a comment. There are many many studies and sources showing this. An argument worth having could be whether or not that is tied enough to workplace to fall under OSHA.
    - gfodor 5y ago
      It’s also very obvious now that it’s debatable if a 20 something kid who hasn’t taken the vaccine but is healthy and has good vitamin D levels presents more risk to others and is at more risk from COVID as a fully vaccinated 60 year old obese person.
    - spookthesunset 5y ago
      If it is obvious why are so many people concerned with others vaccination status? If you are vaccinated you have no reason to care about anybody else. People continuing to wear masks post vaccine clearly don’t think the vaccine works.
joshuamorton 5y ago
> The CDC claims they redefined it away from the word “immunity” towards the word “protection” because no vaccine grants perfect immunity. Personally I find that to be a bad answer. By taking a weighty word like “vaccine” and redefining it, the expectations of risks and benefits the public holds were exploited. This isn't anything new though. Vaccines have always had varied amounts of effectiveness. While some, like the polio vaccine are essentially 100% effective, other common ones like the MMR vaccine (components range from 30-90% effectiveness) and flu vaccine (40-60% effective based on year) are about as effective as the covid vaccines, and its never been controversial to call them vaccines.
- StanislavPetrov 5y ago
  >and its never been controversial to call them vaccines. They've never been mandated by law before (let alone a unilateral executive order). That it was done by executive fiat rather than legislation makes it especially troubling. If the president can unilaterally mandate a forced medical procedure, what can't they do? This isn't a question about vaccines or vaccine effectiveness, its a question about law, Constitutional rights and executive power.
  - joshuamorton 5y ago
    You're making a different argument than the one I was replying to, which was precisely about vaccine effectiveness and semantics related to that. But you're also wrong. The mmr vaccine is mandated if you want to attend k-12 public schools or federally funded public universities, and the ability to do that is uncontroversially in executive purview (for universities). Also note that this EO has a testing option, so calling it a vaccine "mandate" is a stretch, unlike the EO that applies to federal contractors which is a mandate and is uncontroversially constitutional.
    - gfodor 5y ago
      It’s fairly obvious that a mandate connected to taxpayer funded schools is a totally different thing than one governing all employers in the US. That’s not to defend the former so much as to point out that the set of arguments justifying it are on a whole different level of sanity than these executive fiats governing the entire labor market.

maxerickson 5y ago

People under 50 and healthy probably aren't a majority of the population. You can probably get away with 'mostly healthy', but there's enough people under 50 that are overweight to make it so that more than half the country is either over 50 or has a co-morbidity. And then there's lots of other things that are impacting people's health. If you called the mRNA vaccines something else, the risk reward trade off wouldn't change, and there is nice clear evidence that they reduce overall risk for adults, even relatively health adults. The trade off is tighter for younger males, but it also slightly favors vaccination (the number of serious adverse events due to vaccination is smaller than the number of infections requiring hospitalization).

nerdponx 5y ago

> I bet that if the COVID vaccines were not called a vaccine, people would evaluate the risk reward trade off differently Interestingly, one of the entry-level Covid denialist talking points is that the vaccine is "classified as experimental gene therapy, and not a vaccine". It's probably not worth spending too much energy seeking logic in illogic. I just thought it was interesting and kind of ironic in this context.

dillondoyle 5y ago

I think mandate is too heavy a frame in news reports and here. The regulation requires a vaccine OR a set weekly testing structure. Seems reasonable to me though perhaps a bit broadly targeted. Usually I think OSHA has specific regulations by specific industries. There is a different risk between super tightly packed meat plants and Google work from home. https://www.nj.com/coronavirus/2021/11/what-is-the-osha-vaccine-mandate-and-testing-requirement-for-businesses.html https://www.nj.com/coronavirus/2021/11/what-is-the-osha-vacc...

spookthesunset 5y ago
> The regulation requires a vaccine OR a set weekly testing structure. Seems reasonable to me though perhaps a bit broadly targeted. Why? Who do these measures protect? What problem is being solved and what metrics are being used to determine when we get there? So far, I have yet to hear any politician state any of this.
- dillondoyle 5y ago
  I think it's very obvious that vaccines protect against covid. Like that's not even worth a comment. There are many many studies and sources showing this. An argument worth having could be whether or not that is tied enough to workplace to fall under OSHA.
  - gfodor 5y ago
    It’s also very obvious now that it’s debatable if a 20 something kid who hasn’t taken the vaccine but is healthy and has good vitamin D levels presents more risk to others and is at more risk from COVID as a fully vaccinated 60 year old obese person.
  - spookthesunset 5y ago
    If it is obvious why are so many people concerned with others vaccination status? If you are vaccinated you have no reason to care about anybody else. People continuing to wear masks post vaccine clearly don’t think the vaccine works.

joshuamorton 5y ago

> The CDC claims they redefined it away from the word “immunity” towards the word “protection” because no vaccine grants perfect immunity. Personally I find that to be a bad answer. By taking a weighty word like “vaccine” and redefining it, the expectations of risks and benefits the public holds were exploited. This isn't anything new though. Vaccines have always had varied amounts of effectiveness. While some, like the polio vaccine are essentially 100% effective, other common ones like the MMR vaccine (components range from 30-90% effectiveness) and flu vaccine (40-60% effective based on year) are about as effective as the covid vaccines, and its never been controversial to call them vaccines.

StanislavPetrov 5y ago
>and its never been controversial to call them vaccines. They've never been mandated by law before (let alone a unilateral executive order). That it was done by executive fiat rather than legislation makes it especially troubling. If the president can unilaterally mandate a forced medical procedure, what can't they do? This isn't a question about vaccines or vaccine effectiveness, its a question about law, Constitutional rights and executive power.
- joshuamorton 5y ago
  You're making a different argument than the one I was replying to, which was precisely about vaccine effectiveness and semantics related to that. But you're also wrong. The mmr vaccine is mandated if you want to attend k-12 public schools or federally funded public universities, and the ability to do that is uncontroversially in executive purview (for universities). Also note that this EO has a testing option, so calling it a vaccine "mandate" is a stretch, unlike the EO that applies to federal contractors which is a mandate and is uncontroversially constitutional.
  - gfodor 5y ago
    It’s fairly obvious that a mandate connected to taxpayer funded schools is a totally different thing than one governing all employers in the US. That’s not to defend the former so much as to point out that the set of arguments justifying it are on a whole different level of sanity than these executive fiats governing the entire labor market.