OSHA to require employers with 100 employees vaccinate or test workforce • Hacker News Board

Re: OSHA to require employers with 100 employees vaccinate or test workforce

#751

Post by tomrod » Fri, Sep 10, 2021, 4:06 PM UTC

oceanplexian wrote: post #589

Jeema101 wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It ends when half a million+ people per year (in the US anyway) aren't dying of a preventable disease - not to mention probably millions more suffering long term effects. I see a familiar pattern with sentiments like this: showing lots of hand-wringing over civil liberties, but seemingly no concern over all the people who have died and who have been incapacitated. Those people had a right to not be exposed to a deadl…

Authoritarian governments have killed millions of people too. Civil liberties shouldn’t be hand waved as a sort of a selfish privilege when most of them were written in blood after terrible wars and periods of oppression.

Indeed. I believe this is why Biden's approach came after long deliberation. Civil liberties are not something to be trifle with, and this has to be balanced with the government's reason to exist (as per the Constitution preamble, ensure the general welfare).

Re: OSHA to require employers with 100 employees vaccinate or test workforce

#752

Post by piva00 » Fri, Sep 10, 2021, 4:06 PM UTC

xyzzy21 wrote: post #736

burntwater wrote: post #474

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never understand this whole "99% survival rate" being presented as if that's low. I don't know about you, but if I'm around something that has a 1 in 100 chance of killing me, I'm going to do everything I can to not let it, because those are NOT low odds. It also conveniently ignores the known and unknown long-haul effects from Covid, which impacts a significant percentage (20%?). I, for one, like staying in relati…

The odds of infection are equally low. MULTIPLE both to get the actual odds of dying from it. Plus then COMPARE that to other probabilities of death such as car accidents, medical mistakes, etc. which are FAR HIGHER.

I knew more people that died from COVID in 2020 than in car crashes combined all of my life.

Re: OSHA to require employers with 100 employees vaccinate or test workforce

#753

Post by tomrod » Fri, Sep 10, 2021, 4:07 PM UTC

dang wrote: post #78

Recent and related: Biden to mandate coronavirus vaccine for federal workers - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28472856 - Sept 2021 (262 comments) The titles are emphasizing two different things, but it's the same announcement.

Thanks dang.

Re: OSHA to require employers with 100 employees vaccinate or test workforce

#754

Post by kbos87 » Fri, Sep 10, 2021, 4:07 PM UTC

The number of comments here that fall back on some sort of a slippery slope argument, based in a worry about government overreach, is really disheartening. If COVID has proven anything in the US, it's how little control the federal government actually has. They've barely been able to enforce mask mandates.

The slippery slope argument doesn't hold water here. I think we can look at the facts - 700,000 people dead, hospitals overwhelmed, countless people injured or disabled from COVID, and no end in sight - and decide that a strong mandate makes sense here, and that a mandate won't make sense in future cases.

The "government is always bad, personal choice should always win" mindset runs deep in this country unfortunately, and from what I can see, it's often based in nothing other than veiled conservatism and a preference for division and anti-cooperativeness.

Above all else, this sentiment holds very little water when it's coming from people who speak out against a vaccine mandate but choose to stay quiet on things like abortion rights.

Re: OSHA to require employers with 100 employees vaccinate or test workforce

#755

Post by piva00 » Fri, Sep 10, 2021, 4:07 PM UTC

Hunter235711 wrote: post #687

I am not anti-vax, but I STRONGLY oppose this vaccine mandate. Looking at the CDC data here: ( https://data.cdc.gov/NCHS/Provisional-COVID-19-Deaths-by-Sex... ) there have been 3,043 covid deaths in the 18-29 year range out of 103,738 total deaths in that same age range. I'm 29 and in good health. I know I'm much more likely to die from activities I enjoy like rock climbing, farm work, skydiving, driving my car, but…

It's not about you dying. It's about you catching it, passing it to someone who might need to be hospitalised and fucking up the whole healthcare system.

Stop thinking with your ego.

Re: OSHA to require employers with 100 employees vaccinate or test workforce

#756

Post by tomrod » Fri, Sep 10, 2021, 4:08 PM UTC

ctrlp wrote: post #203

Whether or not you agree if there is legal authority for mandates for this vaccine or this pandemic, where does it end? The trajectory we're on is for all people to be monitored by the State for compliance with the vaccine programs. Israel is already saying 4 shots (and more) will required [0] to participate in that society. Australia, New Zealand, and Canada are quasi-police states [1] and will probably mandate vacc…

With regards to the slippery slope argument, Bill Burr has the response when someone asks where it stops (pardon the quoted French):

> F**g Somewhere!

Re: OSHA to require employers with 100 employees vaccinate or test workforce

#757

Post by atkailash » Fri, Sep 10, 2021, 4:09 PM UTC

disneygibson wrote: post #353

Inevitable outcome in a society that is terrified of everything. And to think that our ancestors sailed across the oceans into the unknown and faced diseases, war, famine, and worse. Now we are instituting a surveillance state in the name of a fairly bad flu virus with a 99% survival rate. We really need a new frontier. Hopefully space travel happens before human beings become completely domesticated.

99% on average. Does not take into account individual circumstances. And viral shedding loads and exposure time change that significantly.

Plus with a diverse workforce who knows who might be taking care of an immune compromised person at home they might simply carry it to.

Then there’s long Covid as others mentioned.

Re: OSHA to require employers with 100 employees vaccinate or test workforce

#758

Post by azth » Fri, Sep 10, 2021, 4:09 PM UTC

etrautmann wrote: post #619

azth wrote: post #542

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about things that do have a lot of cost? Drinking (10,000 lives per year lost in the USA due to drunk driving), not to mention destroyed families and caused homicides, smoking (countless lives lost), sexual immorality (countless abortions and mental and psychological effects of casual sexual relationships).

The alternative also has a large cost. Pretending that no lives would be lost under a prohibition scenario ignores the data from times that's been tried either for alcohol or other drugs.

It can be done correctly without lives lost. See Islamic nations for their entire existence pre Sykes Picot

Re: OSHA to require employers with 100 employees vaccinate or test workforce

#759

Post by tomrod » Fri, Sep 10, 2021, 4:09 PM UTC

xyzzy21 wrote: post #742

tomrod wrote: post #722

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course we are. The long haul effects of COVID are partially known and are super bad. The expected long haul effects of the vaccine are pretty well known (J&J, AZ) or use well understood pathways (Pfizer, Moderna).

We largely know what causes Long Haul COVID - it's depletion and interference with vitamin B metabolic pathways.

Interesting.

Source? And is it reversible?

Re: OSHA to require employers with 100 employees vaccinate or test workforce

#760

Post by Gibbon1 » Fri, Sep 10, 2021, 4:09 PM UTC

tolmasky wrote: post #512

disneygibson wrote: post #491

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That wasn’t the average lifespan of people who reached adulthood. Infant mortality was simply higher.

It wasn't much better if you reached adulthood. Seems like mid-forties up to the 1400s, and early fifties up to 1600s, for the nobility in England. So, you know, not the people getting on those boats probably.

I think the mortality rate for teens and adults was something like 3-4 times higher than today. People also lived through epidemics that would cull 5-10% of the population every 20-30 years.

Also my grandmother mentioned that when she was young girl just a 100 years ago old people were absolutely broken. Today a lot of people spend their sixties and seventies in very good health.

Also I remember reading about grave site on a bluff in California that was eroding away. Contained the graves of sailors that died when a ship sank in the 1880's. Before reburying them higher up on the bluff they looked over their bones. They weren't in very good health despite being in their 20-40s.