5 ms·

Right. This is a trade-off. 1. Piss off the anti-vaxxers by having a mandate. 2. Piss off everyone else by giving in to a paranoid fringe. They did not solve

Right. This is a trade-off. 1. Piss off the anti-vaxxers by having a mandate. 2. Piss off everyone else by giving in to a paranoid fringe. They did not solve this problem, they just moved it around into a more complicated form. Instead of dealing with people who want to stay remote so they don't have to follow the mandate, it's going to start with someone who has an immunocompromised family member and discovers an unvaccinated person on their team came to work with a cough.

_-david-_ 5y ago
Believe it or not, but there are quite a few people who are very much pro vaccine and have taken the covid vaccine that are opposed to the mandate. The idea that anybody who does not support a mandate is anti vax is ridiculous. The majority of the people I have talked to about the mandate who have taken the vaccine are opposed to it.
- twox2 5y ago
  I'm vaccinated but anti-mandate.
  - bravetraveler 5y ago
    I'm finding myself similarly... Feel free to gloss over this, I'm processing if nothing else. I made my own decision early on that vaccination wasn't significant for me. I had been exposed [and a very mild case] due to forced travel during that window where we knew COVID existed, but acted like it had not yet entered the country. Natural immunity plus the fact that I live alone, never go out, and have been remote since before the pandemic... it wasn't a high priority for me. I felt reasonably safe and unlikely to spread it should it find me again. It was all to comply with federal mandates for contractors - my employer decided that this should apply to all [including remote] employees. It was more than a little inconvenient going out of my way to get vaccinated for arguably little gain. I might even say added risk in my case. The reporting process alone made me miss several deadlines. Asinine things like not being able to confirm my vaccination status until it sat in my veins for two weeks.
    - twox2 5y ago
      In the early days I was all for it, especially when it looked like vaccinated people would not be spreading this thing, but more recently we have devolved completely into irrational hygiene theater. The mandates will not move the needle and serve no purpose at this time.
      - bravetraveler 5y ago
        Same here - I was all for it, encouraged many people at risk to get ahead of it. Your comment combined with mine made me realize... I (and the people I work with) played a big part in this theater. As a federal contractor, when the federal mandate came down... those employees had to be vaccinated. The employer conveniently pushed this policy to the other 200k+ employees. It was all a scheme to boost the vaccination rates and push this cart along faster -- the results never mattered. It facilitated this... 'everything is normal/okay, the unvaccinated are the ones to blame' narrative. Woefully lacking in attention in so many ways
        twox2 5y ago
        The straw that broke the camel's back for me was when we fired all of the unvaccinated nurses amid the Omicron spike, and then CDC lowered the quarantine to 5 days and hospitals made sick workers come to work. So yes, let's fire folks that want to work, but force sick (contagious) people into work. It makes 0 sense.
        aakresearch 5y ago
        >> played a big part in this theater. May I extend a big "Thank you" to you and GP for recognizing and admitting this. You have now contributed to the restoration of trust in society in a great way. At least for me, personally :) To be clear, you were in the full right to choose whatever treatment you wanted for whatever reason. The blame here is squarely on those who threw the wrong reason (threat of force) into the mix - they should have thought more about unintended consequences of their mandates.
- lern_too_spel 5y ago
  These people don't understand public health. The point of the mandate is to make it faster for us to transition to endemic Covid. Once immunity rates are high enough, the healthcare impact of Covid becomes equivalent to the healthcare impact of seasonal flu. Without a mandate, you have to continue to deal with a pandemic until enough people get natural immunity, which is very costly, or until supply of treatments is sufficient, incurring the cost of pandemic measures on the economy the entire time. After the government exhausted its incentive policies for increasing vaccination-based immunity, the only policy left is mandate, the threat of which worked to get us to where we are today.
  - NoPie 5y ago
    Mandates had nothing to do with that. Proper education and information helped the UK to achieve good vaccination update especially among elderly while many countries with strict mandates lagged behind. Vaccine mandates however can caused considerable friction in the society. Just see Canadian convoy protests with hundreds of millions of damages.
    - lern_too_spel 5y ago
      It's far too late to educate people who are 40+ who gobble up misinformation. The "friction" in society comes from this uneducated group. If you have a proposal for educating these people to get them to vaccinate, the world's public health agencies are all ears. Vaccine mandates and the threat of vaccine mandates in the US in particular have successfully driven up vaccination rates and allowed removal of pandemic restrictions earlier than would have been possible otherwise.
      - NoPie 5y ago
        This view is wrong and that is the primary cause of problems with antivax. The studies show that giving better information helps to undecided. Whereas vaccine mandates do not help much for staunch antivax. The real world example (for example, the UK) also shows this in practice. No vaccine mandates are really needed to ensure high vaccination rates. Vaccine mandates may have improved vaccination rates in certain groups but those groups are not most at risk. The total impact on vaccination rates and public health may even be negative as with more elderly have refused vaccine due to mandates than without the mandates.
- coffeefirst 5y ago
  That's good to hear! The best possible endgame is if all the people who oppose the mandate got the vaccine and just oppose the mandate on principle. I've heard from other offices that tried to go that route, have a decent percentage of people who declined vaccination, and are now having these problems.

_-david-_ 5y ago

Believe it or not, but there are quite a few people who are very much pro vaccine and have taken the covid vaccine that are opposed to the mandate. The idea that anybody who does not support a mandate is anti vax is ridiculous. The majority of the people I have talked to about the mandate who have taken the vaccine are opposed to it.

twox2 5y ago
I'm vaccinated but anti-mandate.
- bravetraveler 5y ago
  I'm finding myself similarly... Feel free to gloss over this, I'm processing if nothing else. I made my own decision early on that vaccination wasn't significant for me. I had been exposed [and a very mild case] due to forced travel during that window where we knew COVID existed, but acted like it had not yet entered the country. Natural immunity plus the fact that I live alone, never go out, and have been remote since before the pandemic... it wasn't a high priority for me. I felt reasonably safe and unlikely to spread it should it find me again. It was all to comply with federal mandates for contractors - my employer decided that this should apply to all [including remote] employees. It was more than a little inconvenient going out of my way to get vaccinated for arguably little gain. I might even say added risk in my case. The reporting process alone made me miss several deadlines. Asinine things like not being able to confirm my vaccination status until it sat in my veins for two weeks.
  - twox2 5y ago
    In the early days I was all for it, especially when it looked like vaccinated people would not be spreading this thing, but more recently we have devolved completely into irrational hygiene theater. The mandates will not move the needle and serve no purpose at this time.
    - bravetraveler 5y ago
      Same here - I was all for it, encouraged many people at risk to get ahead of it. Your comment combined with mine made me realize... I (and the people I work with) played a big part in this theater. As a federal contractor, when the federal mandate came down... those employees had to be vaccinated. The employer conveniently pushed this policy to the other 200k+ employees. It was all a scheme to boost the vaccination rates and push this cart along faster -- the results never mattered. It facilitated this... 'everything is normal/okay, the unvaccinated are the ones to blame' narrative. Woefully lacking in attention in so many ways
      - twox2 5y ago
        The straw that broke the camel's back for me was when we fired all of the unvaccinated nurses amid the Omicron spike, and then CDC lowered the quarantine to 5 days and hospitals made sick workers come to work. So yes, let's fire folks that want to work, but force sick (contagious) people into work. It makes 0 sense.
      - aakresearch 5y ago
        >> played a big part in this theater. May I extend a big "Thank you" to you and GP for recognizing and admitting this. You have now contributed to the restoration of trust in society in a great way. At least for me, personally :) To be clear, you were in the full right to choose whatever treatment you wanted for whatever reason. The blame here is squarely on those who threw the wrong reason (threat of force) into the mix - they should have thought more about unintended consequences of their mandates.
lern_too_spel 5y ago
These people don't understand public health. The point of the mandate is to make it faster for us to transition to endemic Covid. Once immunity rates are high enough, the healthcare impact of Covid becomes equivalent to the healthcare impact of seasonal flu. Without a mandate, you have to continue to deal with a pandemic until enough people get natural immunity, which is very costly, or until supply of treatments is sufficient, incurring the cost of pandemic measures on the economy the entire time. After the government exhausted its incentive policies for increasing vaccination-based immunity, the only policy left is mandate, the threat of which worked to get us to where we are today.
- NoPie 5y ago
  Mandates had nothing to do with that. Proper education and information helped the UK to achieve good vaccination update especially among elderly while many countries with strict mandates lagged behind. Vaccine mandates however can caused considerable friction in the society. Just see Canadian convoy protests with hundreds of millions of damages.
  - lern_too_spel 5y ago
    It's far too late to educate people who are 40+ who gobble up misinformation. The "friction" in society comes from this uneducated group. If you have a proposal for educating these people to get them to vaccinate, the world's public health agencies are all ears. Vaccine mandates and the threat of vaccine mandates in the US in particular have successfully driven up vaccination rates and allowed removal of pandemic restrictions earlier than would have been possible otherwise.
    - NoPie 5y ago
      This view is wrong and that is the primary cause of problems with antivax. The studies show that giving better information helps to undecided. Whereas vaccine mandates do not help much for staunch antivax. The real world example (for example, the UK) also shows this in practice. No vaccine mandates are really needed to ensure high vaccination rates. Vaccine mandates may have improved vaccination rates in certain groups but those groups are not most at risk. The total impact on vaccination rates and public health may even be negative as with more elderly have refused vaccine due to mandates than without the mandates.
coffeefirst 5y ago
That's good to hear! The best possible endgame is if all the people who oppose the mandate got the vaccine and just oppose the mandate on principle. I've heard from other offices that tried to go that route, have a decent percentage of people who declined vaccination, and are now having these problems.