Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

npr.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

411–420 of 722 posts

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

#411

Post by f6v »

sennight wrote: post #385
jsolson wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I prefer the known, extremely low risk of contacting COVID I'm a little confused by this. I live in King County, WA (and I work at Google). According to data reported by the county (as tabulated by the NY Times), one in 19 residents have contracted COVID[0]. That's >5% -- with a 1.8% case fatality rate in the US[1]. That's a bit below a one in 1000 chance of having died of COVID if you live in my county, including…

> 1.8% case fatality rate That looks like a scary number until you look at it by age, then it looks very different. If you were at risk of dying from flu before COVID then your odds got worse, everybody else's risk level is largely unchanged. Should employers mandate that healthy employees get experimental vaccines in order to improve the mortality rate among non-employees who were already at risk of being taken out…

This reasoning works only if you believe the society isn’t supposed to help the vulnerable.

It’s clear that the older you get, the worse your immunity works. A vaccine isn’t 100% efficient in the first place and will work worse on a 70 yo than on a 30 yo. This means that in order to protect the vulnerable, the society has to achieve herd immunity.

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

#412

Post by bananapear »

yosito wrote: post #271
paxys wrote: post #52

One angle that isn't being discussed – having vaccinated employees greatly reduces healthcare costs for the company and its insurance provider. I'm sure they would love to enforce vaccinations, annual checkups, healthy diet, exercise, no smoking etc. among employees as a condition for providing insurance or employment if there wasn't a social pushback for doing so.

One key difference is that a lack of exercise doesn't put your office mates at risk.

This study found that obese people remain infectious 42% longer than lean individuals and in asymptomatic cases 104% longer - https://academic.oup.com/ooim/article/2/1/iqab001/6105076

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

#413

Post by ViViDboarder »

selphy1 wrote: post #379
patrec wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I have not gotten the vaccine as I prefer the known, extremely low risk of contacting COVID Your risk of getting Covid if not vaccinated (and leading a remotely normal lifestyle) is close to 100%. With an R0 of 6 you can't just free-ride of people who take the "unknown longitudinal risk", because even if a lot of people take the jab it's extremely unlikely we will achieve herd immunity any time soon -- even if the…

Not OP but if he has not gotten it so far with his lifestyle in 16+ months then it could be easy to think you won't get it for another 16+. Other's just don't care, me for example. I lived in a heavily lockdown country and then said fuck it, travelled to somewhere with (near) 0 covid rules and went nightclubbing almost daily till I got it. Wasn't that bad for me. And my preference is to have it again than being coerc…

The thing missing from this perspective is the additional people you come in contact with while contagious (potentially while asymptomatic). Saying, “I don’t care if I get sick” ignores the others you may spread the virus to.

This is why folks are pointing out the public health aspect as opposed to a focus on individual health.

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

#414

Post by hef19898 »

yobbo wrote: post #410
hef19898 wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't bet on it. Which is a good thing if you ask me. Because without mandatory vaccinations we will prolong this shitty thing for another year, this time at the cost of children and people under 16, while we had the elderly taking the brunt of the cost so far. And all that because as a society we came to a point where we refuse to take one for the team. Not to mention we ignore our own personal health.

Wut? In countries that had lockdowns, children and young adults arguably suffered worse than any other group. For a ten year-old, that's 10% of their life "gone". Children, teens and young adults have foregone life milestones, missed opportunities and friendships. Instead they have been charged with a ridiculous anxiety about something that is harmless to them. It is comparatively inconsequential for the elderly to i…

And which took the biggest losses of life? Funny how children, up to 13 which my oldest age, not really complained that much.

Opening everything up now, without a adequate vaccination rate, would just put them at a huge health risk. Right after the social impact they already had.

And the social impact, IMHO, affected everyone.

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

#415

Post by ViViDboarder »

jdthedisciple wrote: post #388
bawolff wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And if the risk was only to yourself, by all means that would be reasonable. But it isn't. When we work, we give all sorts of autonomy up. That what work literally is, exchanging some autonomy for some money. Most obviously that means doing parts of the job you don't like (docs aint going to write themselves). Some places it means wearing a tie (eww). My last job made me sign a document saying i agree never to bring…

All such bad examples. It's not nearly as intrusive to say you can't bring your firearm or wear a tie. It's literally a momentary thing, now I a wear a tie now I don't. To compare that to forcing somebody into taking a novel vaccine with questionable long- or even short-term health effects is absolutely disingenious and quite cynical to be frank.

How about comparing it to requiring people to get vaccines? This already happens in schools. When I went to work in a local school district it was required to have a TDAP vaccine.

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

#416

Post by tremon »

paxys wrote: post #77
nixpulvis wrote: post #35

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.

But what makes you think the vaccination will be one-time? There's plenty of indicators the Covid-19 vaccine is only effective for a limited number of months, so -if it turns out to be more like a flu vaccine than a measles vaccine- should we then continuously be able to prove that we got a booster shot in the last 6 months?

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

#417

Post by yobbo »

hexa22 wrote: post #121
nomoreplease wrote: post #118

Current research shows that the previously infected’s antibodies are equal-to or better than the vaccine. So previously infected should be sufficient, yet I expect these companies not to care about that

Is there any research showing that these people should not get vaccinated? At worst it does nothing, at best it helps. I don’t see why google should bother with an exception here.

The worst case is pretty terrible.

From my experience, the immune reaction to the vaccine after having had the infection is an order magnitude worse than what the brochures and previously uninfected people say.

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

#418

Post by Fine-Cut4983 »

yosito wrote: post #270
marton78 wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure I can explain anything related to the FDA (I'm European) but maybe I can shed some light on the insight what people are worried about. These vaccines have been applied hundreds of million times in the past year, true. Therefore, we have a very good understanding of their adverse effects in the first 6-12 months. What we cannot know, however, are possible adverse effects that are longer term. Susceptibili…

> If these vaccines were regular, inactivated virus vaccines There are also inactivated viral vector vaccines for COVID. I got J&J because it was what was available to me. I would have gotten an mRNA vaccine if I could. I agree that the mRNA vaccines should be studied for long term effects, but with what we know about them so far, my prediction is that we will find them to be much safer in the long term than viral ve…

Viral vector vaccines are not the same as traditional inactivated virus vaccines, and are in fact similar to mRNA vaccines in some important ways: 1. mRNA vaccines and viral vector vaccines deliver genetic instructions so your own cells produce the targeted proteins 2. Like mRNA vaccines, there has never been widespread use of a viral vector vaccine prior to this year.

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

#419

Post by ViViDboarder »

Cocojumbo wrote: post #368
yosito wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honest question: why do you say the risk of COVID is known, while the risks of the vaccines are not? Both have been around and exceptionally well studied for more than a year. We have pretty thorough data on the risks of both, don't we?

I have to disagree here. I have diabetes and have the two shots already. My wife is pregnant and we decided not to risk it with the shots. Impact on pregnant women and babies is still not known. Some trials have started, but you can't just say it's been exceptionally well studied. Astrazeneca did cause blood clot in some people who ended up dead. Yes, it's a very tiny fraction but this goes against what people are cl…

My wife got the vaccine while pregnant at the advice of her doctors due to the comorbidities associated with contracting COVID while pregnant. Added bonus is that our baby (recently gave birth) has antibodies as well.

I do understand that it ought to be a choice, and it still is, even with these companies. It looks like they are carving out polices for exceptions because there are folks that are unable to get vaccinated. I would hope that being in a class of people who haven’t been rigorously tested (pregnant women) would qualify.

Beyond that, they aren’t requiring all employees to be vaccinated, but anyone who will be working from an office where they may put other employees at risk. The choice still belongs with the individual.

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

#420

Post by yobbo »

adamors wrote: post #205
nomoreplease wrote: post #118

Current research shows that the previously infected’s antibodies are equal-to or better than the vaccine. So previously infected should be sufficient, yet I expect these companies not to care about that

Then how are multiple infections possible? I know several people who have been sick with COVID 2 times already.

> Then how are multiple infections possible?

Time between infections and mutations.

Post reply on HN