Earlier quoted context omitted.
so can employers for instance ask about HIV status and discriminate based on that?
Only if HIV status has a significant relevance to your ability to perform your job duties (including things like the safety of other workers, the public, etc., when your work.) Of course, unless your job involves something unusual like having sex with your coworkers or the public, that's not all that likely.
Google Offices to Mandate Vaccines
321–330 of 442 posts
Re: Google Offices to Mandate Vaccines
#322Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have taken both shots. But I wouldn't call them "safe", as they are young and approved under emergency guidelines. They are probably safe, but nobody knows that right now.
There's been nearly 4 billion shots delivered across the world in the past 8 months. I suspect if they were to cause great harm, we would have known by now.
Known how, exactly. The only way that would be known is via official statistics, but the only sources of such data have serious reliability problems. Additionally any paper that tries to use these stats to do any analysis struggles to get published or gets immediately retracted because some people don't like the conclusions.
One thing that's undeniable though is that earlier vaccines had their approvals pulled after fewer reported deaths than these vaccines have racked up from just single causes of death alone. The same safety standards as before are not being applied. Thus it cannot be said that these vaccines are "safe", compared to earlier vaccines.
Re: Google Offices to Mandate Vaccines
#323Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thus the vaccination requirement. I don't agree with Google on returning to the office (at all, irrespective of COVID), but frankly at this point, almost anything that improves vaccine rates is fine with me. The sooner we're all vaccinated, the sooner we can return to normal life.
That may not be how things play out. Vaccination may facilitate immune escape[1] "Given that therapeutics (vaccines and antibody-based therapies) target mainly the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein, the selection pressures that favour the emergence of new variants carrying immune escape mutations generated in chronic infections24,25,26 will be similar to those selecting for mutations that allow reinfections within the wider p…
Re: Google Offices to Mandate Vaccines
#324Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're literally worrying about the security of them and yet claiming someone else being worried about the security of them is spouting BS. I think there's a major lack of internal consistency. You're hyper-worried about one specific threat that relies on a huge unpublished technological leap to create biological backdoors, yet... you aren't worried about other potential unknown tech (e.g. if the government wants new…
Yeah I agree I'm worrying too much - it's basically ruining my life. I don't want to sign a lease for an apartment because I think I'm fleeing the country or losing my job. So I admit it. I am paranoid about the US government - but I have reason to given the Snowden leaks and how they treat Assange. So let's say they are pure evil, and wanted to do aerosols... well maybe they tried that already, but the chemtrails di…
but this is insanity in part because of Snowden and Assange. If they had some magic reprogramming tech, those (or other similar cases) would be perfect examples for testing it.
Or hell, we could've started to reprogram Trump while he was in the hospital and saved everyone a lot of trouble.
Re: Google Offices to Mandate Vaccines
#325Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm vaccinated and I personally don't care if others choose not to do it.
Why? Aren’t you worried that a patchily vaccinated population still provides a good (possibly even better) breeding ground for new variants?
Firstly, the vaccines seem "effective" against variants, using the current definition of effectiveness of just reducing symptoms.
Secondly, no vaccine in history has come with a disclaimer that it doesn't work unless 100% of the population is vaccinated. That's not the definition of what vaccines do. Vaccines give individual protection. If these vaccines had been advertised as requiring that, would they have been approved? It is hard to see how because believing this raises fundamental questions, questions like: given that people cannot all be vaccinated simultaneously, how quickly is it required to get to 100% vaccination before the vaccine becomes useless? This variable would seem to be critical for any such "vaccine" yet no such time dimension is available, probably because no study would have ever been created to try and discover that - because there's no scientific basis for determining it.
Thirdly, governments were saying very clearly that estimates of herd immunity were in the 60-70% range - very far from everyone. Why are people now claiming that this was wrong? On what basis? And if it was wrong, why should anyone believe any claims about vaccines at all?
Re: Google Offices to Mandate Vaccines
#326Earlier quoted context omitted.
The variants all come from unvaccinated people. With enough time, a vaccine resistant variant could come around and infect vaccinated folks who are forced to be around you.
So if a company wants to take the other side here and say they only want to work with unvaccinated people, would that be ok too? What if an employer decided not to employ anyone who had received a different medical procedure, such as a splenectomy? If unvaccinated employees can just find other jobs, why can't vaccinated employees just find other jobs?
Sure but outside of politically charged reasons, I can’t see why they would care. It doesn’t pose any danger to them. Same for below.
> If unvaccinated employees can just find other jobs, why can't vaccinated employees just find other jobs?
They can, if they find themselves at a company that somehow targets those who get vaccinated. It would then be great to make it well known that such company is hostile towards public health and science in general. Can’t imagine they would last long as a business with the type of staff they retain.
Re: Google Offices to Mandate Vaccines
#327Earlier quoted context omitted.
That may not be how things play out. Vaccination may facilitate immune escape[1] "Given that therapeutics (vaccines and antibody-based therapies) target mainly the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein, the selection pressures that favour the emergence of new variants carrying immune escape mutations generated in chronic infections24,25,26 will be similar to those selecting for mutations that allow reinfections within the wider p…
Wouldn't that more likely apply in the case where we have significant vaccination rates, but NOT yet at the level of herd immunity? IE, if we're vaccinated to the point of herd immunity, this ceases to be a problem? To be otherwise would tend to imply smallpox and other vaccines should already have evolved, no?
The difference is that the smallpox vaccine prevented infection of the vaccinated. That's not the case for existing SARS-CoV-2 vaccines. https://www.verywellhealth.com/covid-19-vaccines-and-sterili... gives an approachable overview of the difference.
Smallpox was eradicated. The likelihood of the same happening to SARS-CoV-2 is lower. At least, it would be the first example of a respiratory infection being eliminated. Influenza hasn't been eradicated and it does continue to evolve.
More broadly, the idea of "immune escape" is hardly something I can lay claim to. You can read about it in existing literature.
Re: Google Offices to Mandate Vaccines
#328Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm vaccinated and I personally don't care if others choose not to do it.
We're about to go through another spike in cases in the US because of the Delta variant spreading through the unvaxed population. This has implications for vaccinated people. We may need to reintroduce some lockdown rules and the Delta variant is still going to kill some vaccinated people (in much lower numbers, but unnecessary).
Note: this makes vaccine passports useless. It also means that unvaccinated people cannot be blamed for anything except, perhaps, hospital load, because even if you hypothesise some sort of 'second order effects', vaccinated people contribute to the evolution of new variants to the same extent.
"We may need to reintroduce some lockdown rules"
Why? Lockdowns have no effect on anything, it is proven beyond doubt these days. Plenty of studies show that now.
Re: Google Offices to Mandate Vaccines
#329Earlier quoted context omitted.
I did not say any job, I said "a" job. Yes vaccinations will protect other people. Banning alcohol would protect many people, but its a violation of a person's rights to ban it.
>its a violation of a person's rights to ban it It's literally not. Have you heard of the Prohibition?
Re: Google Offices to Mandate Vaccines
#330Earlier quoted context omitted.
>its a violation of a person's rights to ban it It's literally not. Have you heard of the Prohibition?
Yes, and it was repealed by the 21st amendment. This was done because it is a violation of peoples' rights.
That’s not why but which rights do you think it violated exactly? There still exist dry counties in the US.