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NY Supreme Court reinstates NYC's fired unvaccinated employees, orders backpay

iapps.courts.state.ny.us

391–400 of 443 posts

Re: NY Supreme Court reinstates NYC's fired unvaccinated employees, orders backpay

#391
post #141
post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's pretty easy to like your guy but not the end results of the process or the body as a whole that produced it. This is the biggest argument against my ideas of reform: this is compromise actually working even with all the flaws I think are there. In the absence of consensus the consensus is to do nothing at all, which drives the people who want to do a lot and quickly crazy. That said, Federated States in a Unio…

> others who are ostensibly as much a part of the nation as you are are going to live differently I don't honestly think that most people care about people "living differently". They care because people affect each other. And the rules in your state affect me living in my state quite a bit.

They do. It can be expressed through many different means but the end result is the same: people want to exert control over each other, especially people they consider “their own”. Having a representative legislature with members on equal footing is a bulwark against this. Which is why in the absence of consensus the consensus is to do nothing at all.

> And the rules in your state affect me living in my state quite a bit.

So two things about this: you’re not exactly wrong, but as far as humanity goes: the Earth is a closed system which means as far as we go there’s no limit to this line of thought except those we impose upon ourselves. Recognizable borders are a compromise, even internal ones.

What I do might affect you, and things my State does might change conditions in your State in the abstract, but in the absence of a damages claim or a legitimate grievance, we are not automatically entitled to effect the lives of others as we see fit. Which is why we have representative legislatures and governments: these are chambers and actors which are vested with powers to negotiate amongst themselves on behalf of their constituents and diplomatically engage with other governments.

Re: NY Supreme Court reinstates NYC's fired unvaccinated employees, orders backpay

#392

Wow, NY finally does something right.

This will fail on appeal. NYC had every right to require vaccines.

No one, especially a government, has a right to require vaccines.

Re: NY Supreme Court reinstates NYC's fired unvaccinated employees, orders backpay

#393
post #373
post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And if they were, would that change the ethical calculation here? If we had a sterilizing vaccine, and you refused to take it, and got me sick, could I hold you responsible? I'm just trying to understand exactly to what extent other people's selfish choices should be allowed to endanger my life and livelihood.

This take has a straw man vibe. Who cares about the "what if"? Let's address what happened yesterday and how that impacts today.

It matters because vaccination has slowed both the severity and rate of spread of the disease, due to a reduced viral load shedded by the vaccinated individual.

It isn't a binary yes or no, but it has been a gradient. And every policy decision is made on a gradient of harm/benefit. So yes, it is entirely relevant about what the ethics of the hypothetical would be.

Not getting vaccinated is an action that directly harms other people, for what turns out to be no net gain. Requiring vaccination... Is an action that directly harms a few holdouts for some net gain for the rest. None of this is an absolute ethical question, and the degrees of harm and gain are this completely relevant to it.

Re: NY Supreme Court reinstates NYC's fired unvaccinated employees, orders backpay

#394
post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you willingly refuse to get vaccinated, and are thus more likely to catch and spread COVID, shouldn't we make you pay for any lives you've contributed to taking away?

I agree. We should take away all human rights from the unvaccinated, too! And anyone talking about vaccine problems, they also need to go. We could make a special disinfo re-education summer camp, where we will send all the plague rats and political dissidents. We'll let them out when they're good people again, and tow the party line!

Please stop dancing around the issue, and tell us exactly what these 'vaccine problems' are, and how they compare to the 'problems of actually catching COVID [1] without having gotten vaccinated'.

The comparison will not be favourable to you. [2]

[1] Your camp spent the past two years both telling everyone, and doing your best to ensure that everyone is going to catch it anyways, so this seems like a reasonable comparison to require.

[2] The risk of treatable myocarditis from catching COVID is vastly higher than from the vaccines. The risk of injury and death from less-treatable complications is incomparably higher. If we're all going to get it anyways, you're choosing to both hurt yourself, and others by not getting vaccinated. You can't even freeload off herd immunity...

Re: NY Supreme Court reinstates NYC's fired unvaccinated employees, orders backpay

#395
post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought about this for several moments, and I disagree. Vaccines offer some personal protection but predominantly become effective by achieving herd immunity. Vaccine hesitancy undermines this goal and weakens the system. Being pro-vaccine is senseless without being in favor of enough people being vaccinated to provide strong immunity, including for those who cannot be vaccinated due to medical complications. Even…

Ok I have more vaccines then the law requires because I went places where it made sense to get more shots for more disease. I have not touched the COVID shot because I did not trust it for these reasons: - vaccines take years to test not months - there were new untested biotech involved - in short order I was being told that it does not work for this flavor of COVID. And now it is acknowledged to not protect you or p…

> vaccines take years to test not months

This is because of money, not because of fundamental scientific issues.

This time, there was a financial backer (the government) that was willing to fund development of a whole bunch of vaccine candidates, without any preconditions. That's never happened before.

Normally, if you want to develop a vaccine, you have to go to investors, and convince them that your vaccine has a high probability of succeeding, not only technologically but financially. If you're lucky, you find someone to fund phase-1 trials. After those trials are done, you analyze the results, and then go try to convince investors to fund phase-2 trials. You have to finish those trials, analyze the results, and then go try to convince investors to fund phase-3 trials, which are extremely expensive.

If there's someone who guarantees funding for all three phases up-front, you can go a lot faster, without sacrificing scientific integrity at all. You can begin recruiting people for the phase-3 trials before phase-1 trials even begin. You can immediately begin the next phase of the trials once you know the vaccine passes the requisite safety threshold, even if the previous trials are still returning data.

Normally, these things are done strictly in order in order to minimize financial risk. If there is no financial risk, you can do a lot of things in parallel.

> And now it is acknowledged to not protect you or prevent the spread of COVID.

The vaccines reduce your risk of serious disease or death by orders of magnitude. That's extremely strong protection. They reduce your chance of infection and transmission by a bit (more in the first few months after vaccination), but not as much as they protect your health.

> How can you claim any social good here? it has bad side effects and does not work.

The vaccines have likely saved more than a million lives in the US. The worst side effects are extremely rare, and are caused at a higher rate by the virus itself.

Re: NY Supreme Court reinstates NYC's fired unvaccinated employees, orders backpay

#396
post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The problem is that this is a very first mandate for vaccination we ever imposed on ordinary people. That's not true! It used to be you had to show your smallpox vaccine scar (the vaccine left a distinctive mark) in order to enter many businesses.

That is true. I forgot about that. And why did they check for scars? Because people were forging their vaccination certificate (like now with COVID). So this mandate thing did not really worked well.

I imagine the scar would be relatively easy to fake with makeup. I always assumed it was just the most obvious way to verify smallpox vaccine status. Did we even have consistent medical records back then?

It's okay if some unvaccinated people manage to cheat the system, as long as the vast majority cannot. Similar to how laws against thievery are useful even though thieves still exist.

Re: NY Supreme Court reinstates NYC's fired unvaccinated employees, orders backpay

#397
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>where's the penalty for committing those actions in the first place You've hit the core problem of society/government that countless generations have tried to obfuscate via an academic body that implies that social interactions can be studied/understood like natural sciences. At the core, all social structure is built on the threat of violence - Commit non-violent white collar crime? Show up to court, because if you…

> At the core, all social structure is built on the threat of violence Cripes. Nope. If this was true, how do you explain backyard cookouts, pool parties, trick-or-treating, or Christmas present exchanges? How do you explain folk dance festivals, buskers, and non-royal weddings? How on earth do you explain hugs?

>If this was true, how do you explain backyard cookouts, pool parties, trick-or-treating, or Christmas present exchanges?

How do you explain why you get to determine the guest list?

Re: NY Supreme Court reinstates NYC's fired unvaccinated employees, orders backpay

#398
post #390
post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are the options if that trust is abused? People emotionally trick other people into voting for them and then do whatever is on their agenda during their mandate.

There is no universal solution to "emotionally trick other people into voting for them". If the politicians don't follow up, you vote them out. The problem in the US stems from lack of choice, owing to the entrenched 2 party system. Almost every other country around the world has more than 2 options, and there are many examples where democracy is functional. If you're assuming that every voter is intelligent enough t…

I assume that many people find out themselves that they've been tricked shortly after the election and almost 4 years before the next election, when the first promises are broken.

> If the politicians don't follow up, you vote them out.

That's what I think where it lacks options. You cannot really vote politicians out. You can only vote politicians in. In some cases you can even only vote for parties, not for people. The ancient Greeks used to vote people out. I would at least want to be able to vote for party X, but not this guy, not this other guy and definitely not that guy who was the worst liar over the last 20 years, but somehow managed to stay afloat every time.

Re: NY Supreme Court reinstates NYC's fired unvaccinated employees, orders backpay

#399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have been in favor of 3 changes to the House. 1. Wyoming Rule. No district should be larger than the least populist state. 2. Make DC a Museum. With modern technology there is no need to "send" legislatures to Washington DC, they can vote, meet, etc all remotely. This will make lobbying more expensive, and put the representatives back in their actual communities, because lets face it most of them represent Washingt…

I'm entirely in favor of making lobbying as expensive as possible, but I disagree that there isn't something to be gained from having people be in the same physical location to achieve a common goal. Some things just can't be done very well over Zoom. I do wish that more federal functions would be spread out throughout the country, in the same way that Germany does; many of their federal agencies are headquartered in…

>but I disagree that there isn't something to be gained from having people be in the same physical location to achieve a common goal.

So then I assume you also reject Full time work from home?

I can not think of a single reason why Congress needs to be in the same physical location to read a bill, take public comment on a bill, then vote on if that bill is good for their community or now. That is the SOLE and ONLY function of the US House of Representatives.

If they are doing other things, well that is beyond their scope of work and should be curtailed.

Re: NY Supreme Court reinstates NYC's fired unvaccinated employees, orders backpay

#400
post #262
post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The biggest risk would be that a politician will be wrongfully denied participation when they actually were fit for the job. That's a smaller price to pay than living with a politician who works against the constitution.

Blind adherence to a document written ~200 years ago, in a world that has vastly changed cultural and social norms is incredibly short sighted. People elect politicians based on trust, and if the politicians decide to pass a law that is the will of the people manifested.

People don't elect politicians based on trust, that's crazy. They choose the lesser of two evils (in the US generally).
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