Google and Facebook mandate vaccines for employees at U.S. offices • Hacker News Board

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

#671

Post by forcry » Fri, Jul 30, 2021, 8:12 AM UTC

alex504 wrote: post #573

Closi wrote: post #537

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People need to accept the reality that spreading a disease is causing harm, and that preventing people from causing harm is a core function of the rules of society. Mandating vaccines is going a step further - it's forcing people to do an action, which might reduce their chances of causing harm in the future . If the sole goal was to prevent people to cause harm to others, we should prevent people from driving (the…

I was in the same boat as to thinking vaccination should be an individual decision but I have come around to the idea of mandates in the last month. As far as I can tell there is no reasonable justification for an individual not to get vaccinated unless they are immunocompromised. It is a purely selfish thing to do. Choosing not to get vaccinated is essentially saying that you want everyone else to get the vaccine bu…

>As far as I can tell there is no reasonable justification for an individual not to get vaccinated

How about, I don't trust the vaccine research?

You can expect rational people to trust science (which is essentially trusting nature to behave in a regular manner), but you cannot expect people to trust "scientists" just on the basis of rationality, simply because they are human, and is coerciable as the next guy..

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

#672

Post by forcry » Fri, Jul 30, 2021, 8:13 AM UTC

raxxorrax wrote: post #515

WhyNotHugo wrote: post #474

This is extremely shady. I'm in complete favour of vaccination, but I'm amazed that it's even legal for an employer in the US to ask such specific details about one's medical history. My employer doesn't need to know what vaccines I've taken, or anything else from my medical record, unless I decide to share it. Mind you, I'll still tell my team "I'll be about this morning for vaccination". But there's a difference be…

If your company forces you, it should be liable for any possible damage a vaccine might cause. Same should be true for health workers obviously.

This is a point that need more exposure.

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

#673

Post by forcry » Fri, Jul 30, 2021, 8:24 AM UTC

johnny53169 wrote: post #389

blub wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's nothing selfish about not wanting to undergo a medical procedure to help strangers . A vaccine is first and foremost a method for protecting oneself and one's family from disease. The only critical aspect of this situation is that there are kids and people who can't get the vaccine. It would be great if we could protect them and people who work with kids/medical personnel should be obligated to get the vaccin…

> There's nothing selfish about not wanting to undergo a medical procedure to help strangers. Not wanting to do something to help others is the definition of selfish, even if it's your right.

It is dishonest to frame the argument in this way.

A better way to see vaccine mandates is that it will remove one of the fundamental checks and measures from capitalism that ensures the consumer get a quality product.

If a product become mandated, then the producer have a vastly less incentive to maintain the quality of the product. And this is the real danger.

The ability of a consumer to reject a product based on what they see, is the crux of our system of economy, and it cannot be removed or written off, no matter what.

But the companies would love to write it off, and point to authorities like CDC, and say, "Hey, look, you are still protected by these agencies", and the proceed to buy them off (or have them already on the pay roll), and in the end, consumer gets fucked.

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

#674

Post by ergocoder » Fri, Jul 30, 2021, 8:27 AM UTC

boulos wrote: post #177

Can someone explain the “I won’t get it until it’s fully approved by the FDA” logic to me? Unlike usual vaccine trials, these vaccines have been deployed worldwide with hundreds of millions of people across many different conditions. Europe stopped using some due to an extremely rare blood clotting episode that was tens of people out millions. That suggests that rare, acute side effects have been (mostly?) discovered…

Then why don't FDA just fully approv the vaccine? Apparently, FDA hasn't approved the vaccine.

I'm not an expert in the vaccine. So, I won't debate the details.

It is very jarring that FDA/CDC claims the vaccine is safe, but they refuse to approve the vaccine.

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

#675

Post by native_samples » Fri, Jul 30, 2021, 8:42 AM UTC

simondotau wrote: post #616

native_samples wrote: post #429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, really, better not. The people who are "captured" by this meme, as you rather condescendingly put it, generally don't trust the vaccine safety statistics, have many valid reasons not to do so, and are also well aware of the statistics around how dangerous COVID is or isn't for themselves. It would take great faith to believe that the institutions are providing reliable data right now in an atmosphere of mass hyst…

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E6lzVY3WYAEe4gP?format=jpg&name=... End of argument.

Do you think Google and Facebook are overrun with those are were dying of COVID before, i.e. 70+ year old people? I can tell you they're not.

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

#676

Post by native_samples » Fri, Jul 30, 2021, 8:44 AM UTC

zajio1am wrote: post #542

native_samples wrote: post #437

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"One thing everyone seems to ignore is those people that have immunity/antibodies and don't actually need a vaccine. Why is that?" It seems fairly clear that many COVID related policies are not justified by any physical or medical theory. It may appear that way on the surface but as you observe, it only takes a few moments to discover internal contradictions that some people are trying to cover up. The cause looks li…

> My mask protects you, your mask protects me". There is no physics behind this, masks aren't one way barriers, were never studied or sold as such, nor are they capable of stopping the sort of explosive air pressure caused by a cough. The proposed mechanism is that during exhalation (or more importantly speaking and coughing) there are relatively large droplets of saliva/mucus containing viral particles, and these dr…

If that were the way the virus spread, pre/asymptomatic transmission wouldn't be noticeable.

There's lots of debate about whether that's really how respiratory viruses spread, but more importantly, we know it can't be that simple because we can see the effect mask mandates had on case curves (there wasn't any). So however they're theorized to work, real world data disagrees. There can be lots of reasons for this that aren't even related to mask material, e.g. most transmission occurs in homes, care homes and hospitals, all places where you'd expect most transmission to take place because people have to be confined in a small space with other sick people for long periods, and also places where you can't make people wear masks all the time.

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

#677

Post by simondotau » Fri, Jul 30, 2021, 9:07 AM UTC

forcry wrote: post #656

simondotau wrote: post #629

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> one of the, according to you, stupid Americans I never said "stupid Americans." You have the freedom to misrepresent my words, but you don't have the freedom to actually change what I wrote, which remains published above. > I am forced to live in society No, you want to live in society. Society is where the hamburgers are; it's where the Internet is; it's where the houses with pipes delivering an endless bounty of…

> accepting that many things which affect you every day are outside of your control and will be decided by someone else. Ok, so it is not ideal right now, but we should try to move towards the ideal, instead of away from it.

Your post implies that "ideal" is well defined. I disagree. For what it's worth, I vehemently disagree that libertarian freedom is an ideal in theory or would be tolerated by the vast majority of people if applied in practice.

I would assert that most everything that most people actually enjoy in life is directly or indirectly scaffolded by a combination of socialism, capitalism and authoritarianism—and would be made worse by the actual reality of libertarian freedom.

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

#678

Post by TulliusCicero » Fri, Jul 30, 2021, 9:16 AM UTC

squabble wrote: post #660

TulliusCicero wrote: post #560

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The hell are you talking about, we have data from the clinical trials that ran last year. Those phases have completed.

If you read the fact sheet which comes with the Pfizer vaccine, it says things like, "There is no FDA approved vaccine to prevent COVID-19" and "This is an unapproved vaccine" This was written by Pfizer, May 10, 2021

It has emergency authorization rather than full approval, true, but it still went through multiple phases of trials.

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

#679

Post by simondotau » Fri, Jul 30, 2021, 9:19 AM UTC

forcry wrote: post #657

simondotau wrote: post #654

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know of anyone who's "dictating" that you get the vaccine and I would oppose anyone who wants to make vaccinations literally compulsory. But given how extremely well tested it is, given its utterly astonishing and indisputable efficacy, given that the upsides greatly outweigh the risks[0], I have no problem with society applying a bit of societal pressure on people to get vaccinated voluntarily. [0] Obviously…

>I have no problem with society applying a bit of societal pressure on people to get vaccinated voluntarily. The problem is that you are essentially imposing your trust in the institutions, onto others. Trust in "science" is fundamentally different from trust in "scientists". Even though it might make sense to apply societal pressure to mandate trust in "science", it makes no sort of sense to mandate trust in "scient…

This has nothing to do with trust any more. I no longer have to trust a single thing said by any individual scientist, any individual medical doctor, any institution of science or any institution of medicine. Why? Because sufficient evidence is now available in hard numerical statistics.

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

#680

Post by forcry » Fri, Jul 30, 2021, 10:09 AM UTC

simondotau wrote: post #679

forcry wrote: post #657

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I have no problem with society applying a bit of societal pressure on people to get vaccinated voluntarily. The problem is that you are essentially imposing your trust in the institutions, onto others. Trust in "science" is fundamentally different from trust in "scientists". Even though it might make sense to apply societal pressure to mandate trust in "science", it makes no sort of sense to mandate trust in "scient…

This has nothing to do with trust any more. I no longer have to trust a single thing said by any individual scientist, any individual medical doctor, any institution of science or any institution of medicine. Why? Because sufficient evidence is now available in hard numerical statistics.

> Because sufficient evidence is now available in hard numerical statistics.

Can you show me the exact number of adverse events observed after, say pfizer covid vaccine, in real world use?

Can you show me the exact number of breakthrough infections observed after, say pfizer covid vaccine, in real world use?

Even if these numbers are available, then it is anyone take if they want to trust the entity that collected this data..

Basically, it always comes down to "trust", if you are not the once who is collecting the raw data and doing the analysis on it.

Also, you would be very wrong is "consensus" cannot be set on a single flawed metric, you would be very wrong as well.