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Google Offices to Mandate Vaccines

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Re: Google Offices to Mandate Vaccines

#401

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…

I want to thank all those who answered my questions politely. I'm pleased to say you appear to have been the majority. Unfortunately, I'm still unconvinced that the unvaccinated are harming anyone other than themselves. This opens a good topic on the role of paternalism to force people to better themselves. But that'll be for another day.

unvaccinated people are two to three times more contagious than vaccinated people.

therefore they are spreaders.

please note I'm only repeating what I heard from the cbc.

the other arguments are mostly economics and logistics. e.g delaying surgeries

Re: Google Offices to Mandate Vaccines

#403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vaccinated people catch and spread COVID just like the unvaccinated. The vaccines don't seem to affect transmission at all. Consider Iceland. It has a highly vaccinated population (>70%, supposedly the herd immunity threshold), yet is now seeing a third wave of the same magnitude as prior waves anyway. It seems the cause may be that the vaccines don't create mucosal immunity like natural infection would. The vaccines…

>Why? Lockdowns have no effect on anything, it is proven beyond doubt these days. Plenty of studies show that now. What? https://www.journalofinfection.com/article/S0163-4453(21)003... >Twenty-seven studies analysed the relation between lockdown and the reproduction number, case growth rates and cases, and 18 out them (67%) found an association with their reduction. Five studies found lockdowns to be the most effecti…

Academics have been churning out bad studies that claim lockdowns work from the start. Spend time reading them and you'll see that they aren't valid. The most famous, with over 1300 citations, starts by building a fancy model that assumes only government restrictions can end epidemics. Then it takes the output and presents it as proof that lockdowns saved 3 million lives. Meaningless but got published in Nature anyway.

This particular meta-study isn't even only using published studies!

"34 studies were included in the review, from which 27 have been published, one of them in a journal without peer review, and seven were preprints."

This has no more validity than an HN post linking to a bunch of blogs. They were probably forced to rely on such papers to try and get their desired result.

You can see lockdowns don't work by just looking at the data with your own eyes. Look at the UK. Cases have been dropping for more than a week even though restrictions were mostly ended on "freedom day". Epidemiologists had been predicting a huge surge because they're all in denial about the ineffectiveness of their NPIs: their restrictions had no impact at all and they don't understand why.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/27/world/new-virus-cases-are...

Re: Google Offices to Mandate Vaccines

#404
post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This one is different. In my country in 2018, deaths caused by the flu was more than 50% of all registered Corona deaths. Just that season alone. Now some wants to mandate Corona vaccines, but then what about flu vaccines ?

Interesting. Which country?

Denmark.

Table 2 states 1,644 deaths due to the flu.

https://www.ssi.dk/sygdomme-beredskab-og-forskning/sygdomsov...

English article:

https://cphpost.dk/?p=101073

Deaths caused by Corona is currently at 2,547. And out of 5.8M people there is currently 10 in serious or critical condition.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/denmark/

Re: Google Offices to Mandate Vaccines

#405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My only objection to your original post was your tone. Specifically dismissing my question as blase. Otherwise I thought your father's condition was the only good objection I've read so far. In fact, my wife being temporarily immunocompromised herself is why I signed up to a vaccine trial. But then you go off and swear at me on your subsequent post. As to your italized "because of the vaccinated" your kids are at ris…

Mandate all pool areas be closed to children under the age of 12. It would also save far more <12 year old lives than vaccinating everyone.

Swimming and texting serve valid purposes which make life's quality better (communication/economics, RnR, preserving good physical condition etc). It can also indirectly save lives; the math of it would be hard to conduct on HN, but I guess no one will argue that it's an unreasonable argument.

While not getting vaccinated doesn't seem to serve any valid purpose - assuming loss of time, or v. small risk of adverse reactions are not big obstacles - then it has only benefits, both for you and others.

To sum up: closing swimming pools for <12 will save some lives and will cause loss of life (b/c poorer quality of life) - in the end it's a political decision based on what science can provide at the moment in terms of data. The vaccinating gain/loss equation is obvious.

Re: Google Offices to Mandate Vaccines

#406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

How is it a straw man? Are you sure you know what this term means? We're discussing a policy in which all Google employees who come into the office are being forced to vaccinate on the grounds that if any do not, it might be dangerous. That's exactly what we're discussing.

Your herd immunity numbers are just made up. I saw many estimates last year and none were even close to 90%.

Re: Google Offices to Mandate Vaccines

#407

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 n…

It's not actually very complex, and in fact for public schools was already a settled issue. It's only become controversial because of rising anti-vaxx sentiment and conspiratorial thinking. Just because something has become a flashpoint issue doesn't mean it's complex. Gay marriage was also controversial for a long time, despite being quite straightforward.

How did almost every human in all sorts of varying societies fail to understand something quite straightforward for almost the entire duration of human existence?

Re: Google Offices to Mandate Vaccines

#408

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 n…

It's not actually very complex, and in fact for public schools was already a settled issue. It's only become controversial because of rising anti-vaxx sentiment and conspiratorial thinking. Just because something has become a flashpoint issue doesn't mean it's complex. Gay marriage was also controversial for a long time, despite being quite straightforward.

Homosexual marriage is not straight forward: https://www.kirkdurston.com/blog/unwin

Re: Google Offices to Mandate Vaccines

#409
post #405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mandate all pool areas be closed to children under the age of 12. It would also save far more <12 year old lives than vaccinating everyone.

Swimming and texting serve valid purposes which make life's quality better (communication/economics, RnR, preserving good physical condition etc). It can also indirectly save lives; the math of it would be hard to conduct on HN, but I guess no one will argue that it's an unreasonable argument. While not getting vaccinated doesn't seem to serve any valid purpose - assuming loss of time, or v. small risk of adverse rea…

"While not getting vaccinated doesn't seem to serve any valid purpose"

Well the "doesn't seem" is crux of the matter, isn't it? For whatever reason for those who don't want the vaccine, the vaccine does take something real away from them. Something they value more than the statistical benefit of getting jabbed. They might not be able to elucidate it well, but it's very real for them.

Re: Google Offices to Mandate Vaccines

#410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Why? Lockdowns have no effect on anything, it is proven beyond doubt these days. Plenty of studies show that now. What? https://www.journalofinfection.com/article/S0163-4453(21)003... >Twenty-seven studies analysed the relation between lockdown and the reproduction number, case growth rates and cases, and 18 out them (67%) found an association with their reduction. Five studies found lockdowns to be the most effecti…

Academics have been churning out bad studies that claim lockdowns work from the start. Spend time reading them and you'll see that they aren't valid. The most famous, with over 1300 citations, starts by building a fancy model that assumes only government restrictions can end epidemics. Then it takes the output and presents it as proof that lockdowns saved 3 million lives. Meaningless but got published in Nature anywa…

So you disregard the Nature study because being peer reviewed does not imply quality, you disregard the non-peer-reviewed studies because they aren’t peer reviewed and therefore are low quality, and you cite an article about how ‘scientists are baffled’ at data showing lockdown might not have had an effect despite your assertion that there ample scientific studies showing that lockdowns have no effect already and that it is already ‘proven beyond doubt’.

> This has no more validity than an HN post linking to a bunch of blogs. They were probably forced to rely on such papers to try and get their desired result.

How is this different to you linking to a news article with about the same level of analysis as a blog post, that specifically says no conclusions can be drawn from the reported observations. One that you have also clearly selected to support your own desired result.

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