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

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

iapps.courts.state.ny.us

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

421–430 of 443 posts

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

#421

Post by ClumsyPilot »

Maursault wrote: post #387
ClumsyPilot wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The People have the stronger right to not be infected with COVID by you than your right to be infected. The proper branch of government to decide this is Congress passing a law, not each major making it up as they go along. It is definately distopian for employers to decide anything on this matter -they are not sibject to dempcratic scruitiny. And there are many methods of reducing covid infection avaliable - insta…

> The proper branch of government to decide this is Congress passing a law, not each major making it up as they go along. Congress did decide this already by passing legislation a century ago granting temporary increased powers to the executive in event of national emergency and its declaration. > It is definately distopian for employers to decide anything on this matter -they are not sibject to dempcratic scruitiny.…

> private employers can have any requirements they like

The term used was 'insuburdination' - disobeying legitimate command of employer.

If employer can command you to vaccinate, then they can alsi command you to have windom teeth removed. They can command you to tatoo a barcode on your forehead.

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

#422

Post by Maursault »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #421
Maursault wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The proper branch of government to decide this is Congress passing a law, not each major making it up as they go along. Congress did decide this already by passing legislation a century ago granting temporary increased powers to the executive in event of national emergency and its declaration. > It is definately distopian for employers to decide anything on this matter -they are not sibject to dempcratic scruitiny.…

> private employers can have any requirements they like The term used was 'insuburdination' - disobeying legitimate command of employer. If employer can command you to vaccinate, then they can alsi command you to have windom teeth removed. They can command you to tatoo a barcode on your forehead.

False analogy and exaggeration fallacy, as wisdom teeth are neither deadly nor contagious, and requiring vaccinations does not mean they get to require orthodontics. All employers have wisely required their employees get vaccinated, as one sick employee can decimate the whole company and put it out of business. You don't have to comply if you're antisocial and don't care if you get sick and die nor who you take with you, go ahead and revel in your entitlement, but you'll no longer work there while you do it. Employers usually have dress and grooming codes also, this is nothing new, so they may require a haircut, shave, bathing, etc., but none will require a barcode tattooed on your forehead, but even if they did, you could always refuse and quit. There is no problem here other than narcissism, and no employer will require you to be evaluated and treated, but you may avail yourself of the health insurance your employer provides to treat your mental illness and mitigate the obvious issues with ego that strain every relationship in your life.

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

#423

Post by int_19h »

curiousgal wrote: post #249
colechristensen wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regardless of if they were the right thing to do, many of the various covid mandates being enacted through whatever form of decree really didn’t seem like they fit inside the authority of the government executives trying to enact them. Many were also made to be unenforceable so they’d never be tested in court while still influencing people. The rule of law is important and limiting the power of “rulers” to make large…

Us Americans are so obsessed with government overreach that you'd think our corporate overloads are actually treating us well and that the government is the bad guy. When the government wants to fuck us over, think what the NSA has been doing, they won't look for precedents so there's no point in treating every decision they make as a potential sliperry slope. Covid was/is killing people, vaccines prevent that, so va…

Speaking for myself, I'm obsessed with corporate overreach in general. It just so happens that government is the largest and the most well-armed corporation around, so it gets considerable attention as such.

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

#424

Post by int_19h »

seneca wrote: post #200
alasdair_ wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Democracy is fine. Representative democracy can go to hell.

You're contradicting thousands of years of political philosophy and theory with that statement. Democracy is a complete mess of whiplashing changes. It's only real redeeming factor is that it's better than tyranny by a monarch or aristocracy. That's an incredibly important factor though, so you need to find a way to make it work. Representative democracy is a way to temper the erratic will of the people and turn demo…

Most of those thousands of years of political philosophy was devised by that very aristocracy. Of course they're horrified of "mob rule", if it means that they get stripped of all the wealth that they have so patiently fleeced from their slaves / serfs / workers for generations.

In practice, all the claims that were made about representative democracy being superior to direct on the basis that it's "less erratic" have been proven false by experience - just look at who we keep electing to Congress etc. At best, it gives the whole circus some veneer of respectability - as in, our representatives still make an erratic mess, but they do so with gravitas. But even that doesn't last for long - at some point, if enough voters really feel like it, you get someone like Donald Trump.

The worst thing about representative democracy is the sham scalability. In theory, a parliament can "represent" as many people as you want - there's an upper limit on the number of MPs who can still hold a coherent discussion, but there's no limit on how many people each MP "represents". However, the higher that number is, the more said "representation" is removed from the voters, and the more of a sham it is. With direct democracy, because of how poorly it scales, you have to keep the scope of the government small for it to function at all procedurally, and then come up with some federation arrangements above that - and that's a good thing.

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

#425

Post by RC_ITR »

StanislavPetrov wrote: post #244
RC_ITR wrote: 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 This is completely wrong. Our current social structure in the United States is build on the threat of violence. Sense of duty, sense of shame, fear of ostracism, respect for tradition and family are all forms of social structure that have existed since we were crafting tools from stone. Of course all of these non-violent forms of social structure r…

> sense of shame, fear of ostracism

I think you have a loose definition of violence.

“Go live in the forest” is very violent, in practice.

The duty and and family stuff are arguably window dressing on the ostracism violence.

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

#426

Post by scatters »

throwawaylinux wrote: post #420
scatters wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What was the point of writing that?

It was commensurate with your reply. What exactly is the cause and what is the effect that you think I have backwards?

You think that the authorities are creating an internal enemy to sow division. I am saying that the visceral reaction to plague is an instinctive human universal, not something that has to be cultivated.

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

#427

Post by db48x »

lesuorac wrote: post #350
db48x wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Health Commissioner can _quarantine_ someone, for a specified period of time, yes. But that’s not what happened. Instead the Commissioner apparently decided that these people, who were not sick, couldn’t be allowed to work and earn their living. But they could still go to grocery stores and baseball games, because those places aren’t important. Besides, you cannot go by the overall mission of some government agen…

> Instead the Commissioner apparently decided that these people, who were not sick, couldn’t be allowed to work and earn their living Demonstrably false. The commissioner's order (which I linked above) never required them to be fired. The order solely required they be kept off the premise which is not the same as fired. Sure somebody could fire them and then claim the health order told them to but that wouldn't make…

> The legislature has delegated a vague do everything to the agency.

I should have been clearer here. I made a general statement about determining what an agency may or may not do based on a mission statement. This is always a mistake that you want to avoid.

But it’s not really relevant to this case!

The judge didn’t find that the agency overstepped its authority. Instead, the judge found that the agency had created an order that was arbitrary and capricious, because it treated certain groups of people differently, even though they were in the same situation.

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

#428

Post by lesuorac »

db48x wrote: post #427
lesuorac wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Instead the Commissioner apparently decided that these people, who were not sick, couldn’t be allowed to work and earn their living Demonstrably false. The commissioner's order (which I linked above) never required them to be fired. The order solely required they be kept off the premise which is not the same as fired. Sure somebody could fire them and then claim the health order told them to but that wouldn't make…

> The legislature has delegated a vague do everything to the agency. I should have been clearer here. I made a general statement about determining what an agency may or may not do based on a mission statement. This is always a mistake that you want to avoid. But it’s not really relevant to this case! The judge didn’t find that the agency overstepped its authority. Instead, the judge found that the agency had created…

> because it treated certain groups of people differently, even though they were in the same situation.

The judge can find whatever they want but to pretend that a sportsball player is the same as a city employee is obviously bogus.

EO 62 [1] very clearly layed out the difference in their situation as concert performers and sportsball players will increase the economic activity of NYC. A city employee just doesn't have the same economic impact as the exempted classes.

Look, the judge is just again vaccination requirements and will find whatever reason they want to justify their position against them. This is pretty much layed out when the judge goes on how the city could've kept its testing strategy despite the fact that the judge doesn't at all justify what effect a testing strategy would have or what effect a vaccination strategy would have or how the two would achieve similar goals or what those goals were (i.e. the judge has no problem making an arbitrary and conspicuous claim about how the state should've ran itself).

[1]: https://www1.nyc.gov/office-of-the-mayor/news/062-003/emerge...

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

#429

Post by laverya »

DiogenesKynikos wrote: post #416
laverya wrote: post #405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> > vaccines take years to test not months > This is because of money, not because of fundamental scientific issues. This is not at all true. There is only so much you can parallelize things, as every software dev should know. It will always take 9+ months to figure out what the effects are for a mother that was vaccinated before conception, for instance. (Does this trigger autoimmune issues? Birth defects, like thal…

> It will always take 9+ months to figure out what the effects are for a mother that was vaccinated before conception, for instance. A couple of things. First, pregnant women are generally excluded from vaccine trials - this isn't something specific to the SARS-CoV-2 vaccines. Second, what is the scientific basis for thinking that vaccination before pregnancy will affect women at the end of their pregnancy (that is,…

> First, pregnant women are generally excluded from vaccine trials - this isn't something specific to the SARS-CoV-2 vaccines.

This is perhaps not an argument in favor of the proven safety of vaccines for pregnant women.

> Second, what is the scientific basis for thinking that vaccination before pregnancy will affect women at the end of their pregnancy (that is, 9+ months later)? When you propose a possible harm, there should be a scientifically plausible basis for it. Is there one in this case?

We fundamentally do not understand the human body. We do not know why many common medications work, and many of the reasons we think others work are likely wrong. And we know that many chemicals carry future risks of birth defects.

> CoVID-19 was one of the leading causes of death across a wide range of ages. The idea that only the elderly suffered from it is not true.

This is because people in their 20s and 30s are so unlikely to die outside of accidents and malice, not because covid was a large absolute risk. The risk of death for someone over 65 was iirc 100x that of someone under 55.

When you limit the group to "otherwise healthy people under 40" the risk ratio skews even further. This is normal. But it means that those people receive a much lower benefit from vaccination.

> There is no known mechanism that could lead to these vaccines causing long-term side-effects

Spike protein accumulating in cardiac tissue leading to myocarditis. Antigen fixation, leading to reduced protection against future variants. The immune system identifying the mRNA delivery vector as a threat, preventing the use of future mRNA treatments.

"But those aren't proved" is really not convincing to me. For an EUA for at-risk populations, ok. For mandates? Heeeelll no, go cross those Ts first.

> and there are very good biological reasons for believing that they do not cause any long-term side-effects.

The whole point of a vaccine is to cause long term effects. That intended effect is immunity to disease.

"Nothing else could possibly persist" smacks of hubris to me.

> Vaccine side-effects occur within months of vaccination, for reasons that are understood. They do not arise years afterwards (also for reasons that are understood). Saying that there may be side-effects years from now is simply FUD.

This is medicine we're talking about, a bit of uncertainty and doubt is very much justified - especially when the process has been politicized.

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

#430

Post by triceratops »

db48x wrote: post #409
triceratops wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't know about small hardware stores being forced to close. That's the arbitrary part then. If it was a question of space, they should've been allowed to continue business with curbside pickups. Religion and community are important. But congregating inside a church building is not something that needs to be prioritized during a pandemic. Schools and daycares first.

> But congregating inside a church building is not something that needs to be prioritized during a pandemic. Schools and daycares first. Not everyone puts priorities in that order. For many people, religion is much, much more important than daycare. Plus, any order which treats businesses differently is going to be arbitrary. If you can go to a school but not a bar, then that is arbitrary.

> If you can go to a school but not a bar, then that is arbitrary.

It literally is not. I don't think you understand what "arbitrary" means. It's not "I don't see the difference".

> For many people, religion is much, much more important than daycare.

So have the service in the parking lot of the church. Or on an open field, the way JC used to preach. Not having daycare is far more disruptive to far more people objectively. Way more people go to school and daycare every day, than go to church. Way more people depend on having a school or daycare to send their kids to, than go to church.

Post reply on HN