In the school district where I work all employees are now required to be vaccinated or take a weekly test.
Our district hired a nurse to do weekly testing in the district main office to any employees that were not vaccinated.
The day before we were to begin testing the state informed us we are not allowed to test on our own premises.
Employees must schedule their own covid test on their own time. It also must be the full long nasal test (not the outer swap or spit test).
So now we have lots of bus drivers, food service workers, and maintenance staff who will resign since they don’t have the time, money or transportation to get their own weekly tests.
Something is amiss in the world right now. It really seems like plans, expectations, regulations are constantly shifting ….almost like by design to cause systems/organizations to fail.
Sorry for long comment just frustrated on the shifting protocols and shifting narratives.
The brilliant thing about this strategy is you have a bunch of unvaccinated people who probably aren't infected and a bunch of vaccinated people who have a larger likelihood of being infected
> It really seems like plans, expectations, regulations are constantly shifting ….almost like by design to cause systems/organizations to fail.
James Lindsay - of the hoax grievance studies [0] fame - talks about this in a lengthy series of netcasts [1] based around Herbert Marcuse's "An essay on liberation" [2]. According to his explanation these irrational and often counterproductive policies are part of an attempt to provide the conditions which would enable the creation of a new society based on "stakeholder capitalism" along the lines of Schwab's "Fourth Industrial Revolution" [3].
Read the essay - it is quite dense - and listen to Lindsay's thoughts on what Marcuse means to current affairs. Do it in that order to make sure you know what he is talking about, he sometimes stumbles over sentences and does not really know the German language at all while the original is written in that language and this translation still contains a number of German words. Form your own conclusion as to whether Lindsay is right in seeing Marcuse's take on the future of Marxist ideology reflected in current affairs.
Thanks for sharing, very thought provoking. In short yes “ Form your own conclusion as to whether Lindsay is right in seeing Marcuse's take on the future of Marxist ideology reflected in current affairs.”
From the sentiment on display so far; I'm wondering how long before we get advocates for involuntary vaccinations among the "essential workers" without whom our society will not function.
If half the Post Office quits over this, that system isn't going to restart quickly or easily. Multiply that by many others.
Six months ago "no one" was arguing for coerced vaccinations, either, and people like you mocked us for suggesting it was going to happen. Who's the absurdum here exactly?
Slippery slope fallacy. Also, six months ago, there were plenty of people advocating for vaccine mandates for healthcare workers/etc... myself included.
Sure, why not? With our first kid, we were frequently confused and frustrated by the goofy baggage that various ob-gyns had. Covid vaccine hesitancy wouldn't make my top 10 concerns.
Aside from the risk they're introducing to the delivery ward, the newborns, and the recovering mothers, it also represents a lack of intelligence - which can impact other aspects of care.
I have dealt with a large number of poor quality nurses (there's a nurse shortage to the bar is low for admission), and I have a strong feeling that the bad nurses are also the anti-vax nurses.
For the people who answer "yes", this is the same as asking if you would let a builder that doesn't believe that asbestos is dangerous to build your house. Professionals that go by beliefs when the facts are readily available are not behaving like professionals.
Let their personal beliefs decide which m&m flavor they like, not medical procedures.
Do you have an asbestos litmus-test for the guy who tightens your shower taps or trims your hedges? I think you'll find yourself rapidly very short of professionals if you actually put this into practice.
I would prefer my child to be delivered by someone who knows how to deliver babies. I would not care about their gender, their race, their sexual proclivities. I would not who they voted for, what music they listen to, where our not they believe we land on the moon. I would not care if the hate the measles vaccine. Or are against taking a brand new vaccine.
Why would I? Are you afraid what the nurse thinks will someone get absorbed by the child?
I would only care that they know what they are doing, and perhaps the method they chose to do it
Gender, race, sex preferences, or political beliefs are very different from being anti-vax.
Being anti-vax is evidence of low intelligence. So no, I would not want someone with low intelligence to handle or assist my baby's delivery.
But the most obvious reason is that they directly endanger mothers and babies in the delivery ward because unvaccinated people are more contagious and carry higher viral loads.
Having discussed with nurses dealing with vaccination, some are quite sceptical about the vaccine, due to the great amount of secondary effects they witness after the shot.
The remark about "low intelligence" is quite wrong anyway: most people get vaccinated because the news told them so, not because they read through the peer-reviewed studies and concluded that it's safe.
Anyway, for a pregnant women of 30 years old with no comorbidity, the risk is very low. A mother giving birth is much more at risk of medical malpractice or general risk due to the various treatments, such as epidurals, ocytocin, episiotomy and so on, that are often not really useful but applied anyway.
> unvaccinated people are more contagious and carry higher viral loads
Unless they've already had covid of course. In which case the situation is flipped on its head. How many nurses do you think may have already encountered covid prior to vaccines even becoming available?
"Yes, you should be vaccinated regardless of whether you already had COVID-19 because:
* Research has not yet shown how long you are protected from getting COVID-19 again after you recover from COVID-19.
* Vaccination helps protect you even if you’ve already had COVID-19.
Evidence is emerging that people get better protection by being fully vaccinated compared with having had COVID-19. One study showed that unvaccinated people who already had COVID-19 are more than 2 times as likely than fully vaccinated people to get COVID-19 again."
There are so many confounding variables that they can't make that statement without sounding like they're selling something.
Does it matter when people were infected? Does it matter if you got the shot after being infected? Hint: it probably does because you probably have more antibodies right after getting the shot.
In fact, they should do a study of uninfected vaccinated people who get infected. Do they have higher antibody counts after getting infected? They probably would. Does that mean that every vaccinated person should get infected too?
To be fair, that's the same CDC that only 5 months ago was saying getting vaccinated meant "getting back to normal" -- no masks, distancing rules, etc. Their reputation as being authoritative on this topic is understandably tarnished.
I’ve heard that many (most?) hospitals require that staff either wears a mask or gets the flu shot every year. Do these hospitals waive that requirement for people if they come down with the flu?
My previous employer was a healthcare system. Despite my role as a software developer working in an office nowhere near patients, I was required to get the flu vaccine (which was fine with me). These sorts of mandates are nothing new for healthcare workers.
Influenza is special when it comes to mutations, so I wouldn't expect them to waive the flu vaccinations but I also don't think it directly relates to sars-cov2.
So, somebody who has little to no understanding of COVID, its ability to reinfect, the higher contagiousness of Delta variant, and thinks their Facebook feed has better scientific knowledge than experts in the field? Got it.
Polio: no, across the world there are less than 100 cases a year.
TB: we require teachers to take a TB test, why not health care?
Pertussis: yes, that’s part of the TdAP vaccine and I was required to get that as an employee of a health system.
Chicken pox: usually most people have antibodies for this either from vaccination or illness.
I feel like if they tested positive for covid-19 antibodies, that might be a valid exemption - because it's a bit much to require vaccinations for them if we still don't even know that it makes much difference.
The common cold is caused by dozens of different viruses (including at least 4 coronaviruses). Gaining immunity to one of those cold viruses doesn't do much to protect against the others.
Cold only very rarely kills babies. If we're going to do analogies then let's go all the way.
Here on HN there was an article about how people who got through Covid were much more resistant to catching it again, compared to those who got a vaccine. It's almost as if their immune systems actually work!
I despair for the people who got surprised by this, as if our immune systems became a thing only during the last 2 years. And this forum is supposed to be full of educated people.
All this virtue signaling around having to take experimental vaccines is becoming very tiring.
What is tiring is the insistence of folks like you completely ignoring that fully 94% of those deaths came with comorbidities, far and away dominated by 1. Old age, and 2. Obesity.
We've already vaccinated nearly 90% of group #1, and continuing to gain ground.
We've heard nothing but crickets about group #2. Why? I don't know. Maybe letting people die of hypoxia is better than hurting their feelings. What I do know is that "folks like you" have absolutely no interest in actually solving problems or saving lives, because if you were, you'd actually look at the god damned reality of who is dying once in a while.
That sensationalism, my friend, is why the world is divided.
People keep screaming about climbing deaths but I am still not seeing it anywhere around me. At the entrance of the mall, everybody just sighs annoyed and puts on their mask, that's all that I observe and that's all that most of the populace observes as well.
I have seen barely any disruption except, of course, some local businesses closing down forever. The normal folk just kept going.
That's the problem with this pandemic: it became a religious war above anything else. Everyone just chose to believe a camp and went on to happily scream at the "other team" afterwards.
We need an actually informed and neutral party on these matters. A lot of the agents of this system have a vested economical interest for the lockdowns to continue -- and for people to get subjected multiple times to an experimental vaccine.
I got through Covid twice -- before the news even broke out (Dec 2019 and Jan 2020). And I wore a mask ever since and still do. But I have some heart problems and reading the same sources that you do -- about how almost healthy people died in a lot of pain after taking the vaccine -- I think I'll wait for a little bit, thank you very much.
I am not endangering anyone and I am tired of hearing that I do. No. I really don't endanger anyone. I just don't want to be an experimental lab rat and hold on to my life for a while longer.
Same goes for many others.
(And btw calling people anti-vax is super flamey. This is not what's happening here at all.)
One who understands that those “informed” strangers are making a decision that puts others at risk. Frankly, I do not understand why someone who presumably understands why second hand smoking and drunk driving are bad cannot transfer the same logic to being unvaccinated in the midst of a deadly and contagious plague.
Contagious? Yes. Deadly? Not really, especially for a novel virus.
That's the difference.
If we had a plague as bad as the Black Death, then yes, it would be deadly.
People will use the death numbers as counter-arguments, yet most deaths (94%-ish last I heard) are from people who had comorbidities, like obesity and such.
Until there is the same logic being applied to obese people as to the unvaccinated, as well as counting previous infections, especially for healthcare workers, I personally will not apply the same logic of smoking and drunk driving either.
Obese people do not directly affect your health. I get that you’re trolling and don’t really believe what you say, but at least show some creativity here, rather than repeating nostrums that grew tired 250k dead ago.
You are right that obese people do not directly affect my health. Neither does my vaccination status directly affect yours because vaccinated people spread the virus too.
Obese people do affect my health if they take a hospital bed that I could have used when I need it. Isn't that one of the same arguments applied to the unvaccinated?
If we didn't have so many obese people, would the hospitals be overloaded? Would we have a shortage of healthcare workers?
I am repeating them because repeating works. See the Parable of the Widow and the Unjust Judge. It is also what the others are doing, by repeating the same "tired" lines over and over about how the unvaccinated are killing grandmas.
By the way, I'm not trolling. I'm serious. HN guidelines ask that you assume good faith.
Nope, I'm not obese. I exercise everyday and eat right. I am a very bad competitor for it, especially since the survivability of COVID is so high. I may not even be eligible; I'd have to check.
I don't know what to tell you if I look like a good competitor to you.
Case fatality rates are meaningless because the majority of infections are never counted as official "cases". The CDC estimates the fatality rates at 0.6% for the general population. Vaccination cuts that fatality risk way down.
I already had covid 2 times. It was like a milder flu, with less fever. Second time, I was sick for one day only. I don't consider unvaccinated people threats.
Anyway, if the vaccines protects you, then you're not threatened about the unvaccinated. I don't really understand the fuss about it.
I encourage everyone to get vaccinated if they can, but vaccinated people are also potential walking threats to all those around them. There appears to be some reduction in the risk of transmission but the magnitude is unclear.
> They are people who are in constant contact with very vulnerable group. Personal liberty ends where other person's liberty begins.
The problem with that argument is that it's disingenuous.
Sure, unvaccinated workers could spread the virus, but so can vaccinated workers. "It's less likely!" How much so? Where do we draw the line? Also, unvaccinated workers are more likely to know they are sick and stay home, which could very well make it less likely that they spread the virus. There are too many variables.
Also, there are many cases where the liberty of others is only taken into account if it is proven that someone's actions affected others. If an action that someone takes does not affect others in an appreciable way, we tend to ignore it. Say, for example, if someone buys almost all of an item from a store, preventing others from doing so. Or banks lending out more money than they have. Or a parent getting distracted by kids while driving.
In all of those cases, we ignore the potential that doing those things may infringe on others' rights, such as the parent causing an accident or the bank being unable to cover all of the withdrawals they have one day because inflation is rising, which causes a run on the bank.
So why don't we do that here? Why is it so important to prevent something that might happen rather than being okay with fixing what does happen?
Say that some people at a hospital get sick of COVID. The hospital has both vaccinated and unvaccinated workers. The hospital decides that it's going to hold the unvaccinated workers responsible for it. The workers complain and ask for proof they were responsible. So the hospital tests everyone, and the only people with COVID at the time were vaccinated. What does the hospital do then?
tl;dr: Personal liberty does end where another's begins, but what people forget is that the victim needs to prove that their rights were infringed before they get relief.
1. Not sure about this particular case but it's on the horizon if not.
2. According to the article, 20 of the 30 were employed in "clinical positions like nurses, therapists and technicians". These are literally healthcare professionals.
3. I agree: mandatory (including coerced) vaccinations are hideously immoral.
By that logic, we could also argue—with the same degree of certainty—that the virus itself causes fertility issues, and therefore the vaccine prevents them.
True, except that there's a 100% chance of risk with taking the vaccine and a much less chance than that of actually getting COVID before it mutates into something less deadly and serious, as all plagues have done.
> there's a 100% chance of risk with taking the vaccine ...
Probability doesn't work that way. That's like saying I should buy lottery tickets instead of index funds, because with lottery there's a 100% chance of getting a chance of getting the first prize.
No, I'm saying that electing to not take the vaccine means I have to multiply the probabilities of complications from COVID by the chance I'll get COVID, while if I take the vaccine, I multiply the probabilities of complications from the vaccine by 100%.
By that same math, there is 0% chance of complications from COVID.
There is not a 0% chance of complications from vaccines. If you believe that, you need to look at the CDC's own data, as well as data from other countries.
It doesn't bring transmission to zero, but it significantly reduces it. It also sharply reduces the chance of infection, the severity of symptoms if infection does occur, and the chance of hospitalization or death. The head of a local hospital system called this vaccine among the most effective medical interventions—of any type—he's seen in his career.
That might be the fear going around - but it has zero basis in fact or science.
It would be like saying all women have stopped eating pineapple because there's a viral Facebook post going around telling people that pineapples cause infertility.
In the school district where I work all employees are now required to be vaccinated or take a weekly test.
Our district hired a nurse to do weekly testing in the district main office to any employees that were not vaccinated.
The day before we were to begin testing the state informed us we are not allowed to test on our own premises.
Employees must schedule their own covid test on their own time. It also must be the full long nasal test (not the outer swap or spit test).
So now we have lots of bus drivers, food service workers, and maintenance staff who will resign since they don’t have the time, money or transportation to get their own weekly tests.
Something is amiss in the world right now. It really seems like plans, expectations, regulations are constantly shifting ….almost like by design to cause systems/organizations to fail.
Sorry for long comment just frustrated on the shifting protocols and shifting narratives.