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Google Offices to Mandate Vaccines

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Re: Google Offices to Mandate Vaccines

#351

Post by ericmay »

tome wrote: post #305
ericmay wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You're welcome to. However, I'm curious why your question is relevant. I can't articulate a scientific reason that thalidomide caused birth defects, for example. You're admitting that you don't know or understand the science of either COVID-19 vaccines or thalidomide-caused birth defects (really it's going to be for lots of other medical things too let's face it), so why are you questioning only COVID-19 vaccines a…

Huh? What makes you think I'm questioning COVID-19 vaccines more than other things? My general approach is to be cautious around putting anything in the body that humans haven't been doing for thousands of years, although to live in the modern world makes that difficult, sometimes mere years has to be enough.

But you have no ability to be in a position to judge whether one vaccine is better than another if you don't understand the science behind them.

I'd recommend doing what your doctor says, if you have one. If not you might want to consider speaking with one about vaccine safety and the safety and risks of things like ibuprofen or cough medicine.

Re: Google Offices to Mandate Vaccines

#352

Post by version_five »

It saddens me to see that all the top comments on these posts are just some empty populist yelling, variations on "good, after all, there's a war going on". And counterpoints end up being strawmen about vaccines not working anyway. Whatever your end conclusion about whether this is a good move, it's a complex issue that balances a lot of things and is worthy of serious discussion. Instead we get basically an online newspaper comments section filled with shallow or nonexistent points. It's like covid turns everyone toward the lowest forms of debate. HN probably had the most sensible discussions of any site on the internet, so if this is happening here, I can only guess how others are discussing it.

I do wonder if tech people are more prone to seeing things in black and white and advocating technological "fixes" over societal compromises, but that's just my speculation.

Re: Google Offices to Mandate Vaccines

#353

Post by nomoreplease »

Trasmatta wrote: post #67

The amount of thinly veiled (or actually outright blatant) anti-vax posts here on Hacker News is really disheartening.

Your comment is disheartening. Pretending there are absolutely zero side-effects to vaccines (or any medical practices) is anti-science

Re: Google Offices to Mandate Vaccines

#354

Post by MattGaiser »

TulliusCicero wrote: post #134
MattGaiser wrote: post #69

What form do these mandates take? What kind of proof do they ask for? As I thought that vaccine information was private medical information. Couldn’t someone presumably just lie?

It's private information by default, but here it's relevant for employment. You can refuse to give the information, of course, but they can also refuse to employ you for that.

But what prevents someone from just lying? How is this not just an honour system thing?

Re: Google Offices to Mandate Vaccines

#355

Post by Trasmatta »

nomoreplease wrote: post #353
Trasmatta wrote: post #67

The amount of thinly veiled (or actually outright blatant) anti-vax posts here on Hacker News is really disheartening.

Your comment is disheartening. Pretending there are absolutely zero side-effects to vaccines (or any medical practices) is anti-science

> Pretending there are absolutely zero side-effects to vaccines

I honestly don't know how you got this from my post.

Re: Google Offices to Mandate Vaccines

#356

Post by lossolo »

amrcnimgrnt wrote: post #335
lossolo wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It appears to me that a pandemic of the unvaccinated harms the unvaccinated. I'm vaccinated with two shots but I can't go on holidays because some people do not want to get vaccinated, I need to go out in mask, business of my friend has lower income now because of covid limitations. On next wave hospitals in my country will get overrun again which means a lot of other vaccinated people will die because of untreated…

Those are really just issues with your government and their decision about what are the appropriate responses. It's not the unvaccinated that are hurting you here, but the government response to them. If the unvaccinated are fine dying and not killing those who fear COVID, why have all the restrictions? Imagine if the government told you you can't wear a short skirt because a religious extremist might stab you. In wh…

> Those are really just issues with your government and their decision about what are the appropriate responses.

Well, mandatory vaccinations then should not be a problem too, right? they would also be only issues with your government.

> If the unvaccinated are fine dying and not killing those who fear COVID, why have all the restrictions?

Because none of them is fine with dying. I guarantee you that 99.9% of the unvaccinated people when confrontend with death will NOT say "oh, I've covid just let me die" which means hospitals will be overrun again = affecting vaccinated people in every way that I mentioned in my previous response.

> Imagine if the government told you you can't wear a short skirt because a religious extremist might stab you.

Ruling by the European Court of Human Rights set the precedent that obligatory vaccinations do not contravene the European Convention on Human Rights. I don't know about the rest of the world, I live in Europe. In your example government would do something ridiculously against common sense and Convention on Human Rights. Maybe you should find better analogy.

EDIT: And let me ask you this as I see you have kids and you are unvaccinated, if you get sick and will be offered place and care in hospital that could save your life, will you choose to accept it? Or based on principles you will deny and let your kids live without father? I think we both know the answer to that question (unless you don't care about your kids). And now you are affecting vaccinated people by taking place in hospital/using hospital staff time that could be used for/on vaccinated people.

Re: Google Offices to Mandate Vaccines

#357

Post by rabidrat »

nevir wrote: post #19
criddell wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are the major COVID-19 vaccines still under FDA emergency use authorization guidelines? What's preventing the FDA from dropping those special rules and treating the vaccine like every other vaccine?

IIRC, they still need to complete the regular review process. Normally that process takes several years

So either the process is overlong or the vaccines are not verifiably safe.

Re: Google Offices to Mandate Vaccines

#358

Post by pseudalopex »

native_samples wrote: post #325
orhmeh09 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? Aren’t you worried that a patchily vaccinated population still provides a good (possibly even better) breeding ground for new variants?

I'm not. This argument is not reasonable and looks suspiciously like working backwards from a desired outcome to something that sounds like a scientific justification. 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 vaccinate…

> Firstly, the vaccines seem "effective" against variants, using the current definition of effectiveness of just reducing symptoms.

Effectiveness against current variants doesn't guarantee effectiveness against future variants. "Just" reducing symptoms keeps people out of hospitals and graves.

> Secondly, no vaccine in history has come with a disclaimer that it doesn't work unless 100% of the population is vaccinated.

Straw man.

> Vaccines give individual protection.

And herd immunity when enough people get them.

> 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?

I very clearly heard up to 90% of the population. And we wouldn't know until people got vaccinated. Governments then set lower targets like 70% of adults. Probably they decided they couldn't persuade 90% of the population. Those weren't herd immunity estimates though.

Some estimates have gone up because the delta variant is more transmissible. Moreover most countries are under 60% vaccinated.

Re: Google Offices to Mandate Vaccines

#359

Post by nomoreplease »

Trasmatta wrote: post #355
nomoreplease wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your comment is disheartening. Pretending there are absolutely zero side-effects to vaccines (or any medical practices) is anti-science

> Pretending there are absolutely zero side-effects to vaccines I honestly don't know how you got this from my post.

You’re claiming people are anti-vax without arguing against their arguments or data, saying they are concealing their intentions

Re: Google Offices to Mandate Vaccines

#360

Post by astura »

amrcnimgrnt wrote: post #240

I don't mean this polemically, or rhetorically. I'm honestly asking because I've given this some thought, and it's not entirely obvious to me. "Who are the unvaccinated hurting, exactly?" It appears to me that a pandemic of the unvaccinated harms the unvaccinated. "Those who cant get the vaccines" Now, some people will point out that some can't get the vaccines. Except that ppl with HIV, GBS, autoimmune etc are all e…

From a purely business perspective a COVID-19 infection is highly disruptive to business operations. If you're following CDC guidelines (and some businesses legally must) then a COVID-19 infection causes you to not only lose the infected employee for the duration of their illness, but you lose every other non-vaccinated employee who has had contact with that employee for two weeks. I know of at least five businesses near me that had to close down for two weeks in the fall/winter due to COVID-19 infection - they didn't have enough non-sick, non-quarantined employees to operate.

That's why an employer might mandate vaccinations for their employees.

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