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Google and Facebook mandate vaccines for employees at U.S. offices

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Re: Google and Facebook mandate vaccines for employees at U.S. offices

#161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Condemn us all to death”? COVID has like a 1% fatality rate concentrated entirely in the elderly and the unhealthy (damaged immune system, obese, …) you are overreacting.

Nowhere near entirely. Not to mention diminished brain health issues, quality of life decreases due to loss of smell, fatigue, long covid etc.

Sounds a lot like the obesity epidemic to me. One that kills 1,794 people in the United States DAILY, year… over… fucking… year. Also completely preventable.

And before you call BS here’s the data: https://www.cdc.gov/heartdisease/facts.htm

Re: Google and Facebook mandate vaccines for employees at U.S. offices

#162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"This is as much about calling out heretics as it is about health" No, you're wrong, this is about saving lives. Around 300 people died today from a disease that we can stop. 300 more will die tomorrow. Are there perhaps others sub-agendas that some people are pushing under the cover of the pandemic? Yes, obviously, just like with literally every other catastrophe. But the primary agenda is stopping a preventable dis…

What a boring response. You don't just get to say "this as about saving lives" and not have any real argument. Encouraging vaccination, and getting it to levels consistent with other vaccines, does not automatically mean accepting new powers for employers or anyone else to enquire about people's medical status. Google's move is consistent with wanting to give the appearance of being a progressive company that shares…

> What a boring response.

This is where you lost the argument.

Re: Google and Facebook mandate vaccines for employees at U.S. offices

#163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At which point you will be dismissed if you have not found and secured a remote position within the company. That part of the policy has not changed. Until they announce it has we should assume they are intending to follow though.

It's a choice though. You could just get vaccinated and not worry about getting fired.

That is the dichotomy that is being criticized, yes.

Re: Google and Facebook mandate vaccines for employees at U.S. offices

#164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As of now, everyone, included the vaccinated are still disease spreaders.

they are not same because vaccinated are less likely to be infected and hence less likely to spread disease. every vaccinated person is 40% less likely of getting infected compared to unvaccinated. so if a person goes to office with vaccine mandate, they are 64% less likely of getting infected compared to no vaccine mandate.

That very well could be balanced out somewhat by vaccinated people being less careful than non-vaccinated, and possibly by them being more likely to be asymptomatic (but still spreaders).

Re: Google and Facebook mandate vaccines for employees at U.S. offices

#165

Today the entire state of New York had ZERO covid related deaths. Yet this week we saw NYC and State employees and now major private corporations mandate the vaccine. For the record I will never disclosure my health status so don’t assume one way or another.

And, what is your point? So you are saying would come to the workplace, knowingly not vaccinated, and feeling no problem at all?

Re: Google and Facebook mandate vaccines for employees at U.S. offices

#166

Today the entire state of New York had ZERO covid related deaths. Yet this week we saw NYC and State employees and now major private corporations mandate the vaccine. For the record I will never disclosure my health status so don’t assume one way or another.

And, what is your point? So you are saying would come to the workplace, knowingly not vaccinated, and feeling no problem at all?

[deleted]

Re: Google and Facebook mandate vaccines for employees at U.S. offices

#167
post #77

It's honestly fascinating to me that this is going to be the way we meet Privacy vs Security face to face more broadly. Intrapersonally, they might go hand in hand, but in the group setting, they seem almost at direct odds. Security (or safety) requires some social contracts to be fulfilled. When these social contracts aren't enough we start to see polices and law take up the slack. Our existing privacy laws and regu…

Is this really pushing the envelope though? Routine drug testing by employers, for example, has been considered totally acceptable by society for decades now. I'd consider a one-time proof of vaccination against a deadly pandemic to be far less intrusive than that.

> Is this really pushing the envelope though? Routine drug testing by employers, for example, has been considered totally acceptable by society for decades now.

I don't know what's the experience in the US, but in my home country everyone has a little booklet they carry with them since pretty much birth where we register not only when we took vaccines, such as measles or tetanus or hepatitis, but also when we should take the booster shots.

Oddly enough, the booklet looks a bit like a passport. Well, a passport is also a log, right?

So I'm kind of baffled why some people claim this is a radical turn of events.

Re: Google and Facebook mandate vaccines for employees at U.S. offices

#168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd classify 'get an experimental vaccine with known possibility of side effects or we fire you from your job' as 'element of force', 'duress', and 'coercion'. Am I to understand that you would not?

You know, you make a good point. I think the problem with your argument is equating the covid vaccine to medical experimentation as considered in the Nuremberg Code. That code was written as the result of the Nazi experimentation of human subjects. The covid vaccine is technically experimental under the FDA definition only because it hasn't received full approval yet, but it has already gone through trials that (to s…

Totally right.

Absolutely all human medicine is experimental in the same way the person is using "experimental vaccine". Anything else would not be science. The only question is usually how many experiments have been run and on who and what do we extrapolate from them.

But make no mistake - nothing could possibly be proven safe to a given person without having been tested on that person. You are unique. This is precisely why this is not the standard used for safety, and can't be.

Maybe some century we will have that capability, but it does not exist right now.

If you go buy an orange from the grocery store, that's experimental in the same way - i guarantee you it's mutated at least a little from the other oranges you've eaten. How can you be sure the mutations will not have a harmful effect?

(This isn't even a joke - mutation is quite common in citrus, and thing like the cara cara came from natural orange tree mutations)

As far as testing goes - in the history of vaccines that were deployed quickly (polio, smallpox, etc), the covid vaccines are very well tested.

The space of things we don't continuously test and track for safety is basically infinite, and the likelihood of harm coming from that infinite space of untested things is much greater (overall) than "a thing we've given to hundreds of millions of people and explicitly kept track of the side effects"

This is proven to be true again and again - eventually we notice the effect of things we weren't looking at, take some of them, test them, and say "well crap, actually, this is really harmful".

Meanwhile, outside of intentional fraud/malice, it's much more rare that the things we are testing and tracking continuously on large groups of people turn out that way. When they do, it's often because of long term effects you couldn't discover without time anyway.

Re: Google and Facebook mandate vaccines for employees at U.S. offices

#169
post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HIPPA is absolutely not too strict, it has many fundamental holes which need to be plugged. I am vaccinated but the only place I am willing to prove it is at an airport or a medical facility. There is a developing liberty/security divide which is going very much in the direction of far too far. Going along with the irrational ways so many people talk about vaccination I am not willing to give up an inch of liberty to…

> No “papers please” to allow me to participate in normal society where the group in power gets to decide if I’m acceptable. What are your thoughts on individuals contracting and spreading a disease that has killed millions already due to their refusal to comply with the most basic health and safety precautions? Do you believe that someone's refusal to comply with basic sanitary precautions should take precedence ove…

One has to believe at some point that liberty is worth a certain amount of risk.

>Do you believe that someone's refusal to comply with basic sanitary precautions should take precedence over my and my family and loved one's desire to not die of a preventable disease?

Did you and your family get vaccinated? What unvaccinated people do does not affect your risk profile in any meaningful way. Are your kids too young to get vaccinated? The last flu season pre covid killed more under 18s than COVID-19 has.

Do we need government mandated vaccinations and mask mandates for every flu season now?

>And where do you draw the line in that refusal to comply with basic health and safety precautions? Do you also extend it to other viral diseases that are preventable by vaccination such as measles, or do you single out covid?

Do you get asked if you've had a measles vaccine before you get seated at a restaurant? Are you suggesting this is a reasonable action?

You draw the line where there is a real serious threat which passes a certain threshold.

But with COVID-19 like so many things, the people speaking loudly about promoting their cause in protecting us from it (not the professionals) have absolutely no conditions for victory and will endlessly move goalposts forward and endlessly try to do more regardless if risks change by orders of magnitude.

If you're vaccinated or too young to be vaccinated, COVID-19 is over for you. The risk went from 1 in 1000 people dying to no worse than the risk in any flu season, unless that very mild risk makes you think that we should reinvent what personal freedoms in society means, stop turning and ending pandemic into a catastrophe.

Re: Google and Facebook mandate vaccines for employees at U.S. offices

#170
post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vaccination is not a "this is a cultural decision at the society level". It has saved millions and millions of lives. Maybe change your employer if you are so pissed at them?

Is there a coherent thought here? I don't disagree the vaccine has saved lives or even that you shouldn't get it. I can enjoy my job and what I do and disapprove of decisions made by leadership at the same time. It's easily the best place and people I've ever worked with.

You don’t think that it’s the employer’s place to mandate something that makes the work environment at their company considerably safer?
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