I guess this post got autobanned because it points to a non English source. Sorry about that. Here is a repost that points to politico: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29275773
Austria makes Covid19 vaccination mandatory as of Feb 2022
51–60 of 125 posts
Re: Austria makes Covid19 vaccination mandatory as of Feb 2022
#52Earlier quoted context omitted.
You do realize, a lot of vaccines are already mandatory all around the world right?
Yes, I realize. Not against vaccines in general. I only wanted to know the extent to which the government is going to enforce it as in whether they fine you, put you to jail or vaccinate you forcibly against your will. I heard that the latter is already happening in Australia and personally know a person who fled to the EU for this reason.
It's difficult to understand a "I've heard"-style of argument in the age of internet. Unless it comes from China or Russia where there's a different official understanding of "information highway".
Re: Austria makes Covid19 vaccination mandatory as of Feb 2022
#53A point a lot of people seem to miss is that there is a huge difference between making a vaccination mandatory, taking full responsibility for any side effects, and forcing people to get vaccinated by depriving them of their basic rights if they don't, but not taking any responsibility for side effects.
Apparently what a lot of people seem to miss is that this is not what is happening.
Who knows what's happening? Everything depends on the enforcement, and there's no details on that yet except that it will be a "Verwaltungsstrafe" not to get vaccinated.
This would be a fine, but that's not saying much.
Re: Austria makes Covid19 vaccination mandatory as of Feb 2022
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
Abortion would be the closer analogy. Also seatbelts don't require the sort of tracking infrastructure that a vaccine mandate requires. If the plan is a mandate with no tracking then that would be in the realm of comfortable precedent for me. But the experience so far in Australia (not Austria!) is that vaccine mandates are the most invasive privacy violation that the government has ever implemented.
> Abortion would be the closer analogy. Are abortions infectious now? I don't know how Australia does it, but the EU green pass isn't and can't really be used for tracking at a big scale. Anyone can implement a reader for the QR codes, and the official ones are open source and just check the validity. And why would any government need to store that information when they can just ask Google and Apple for location data…
The argument for vaccinations and against abortions is it is protecting the lives of other humans. Same class of ideas. Seatbelts don't protect other people.
In Australia we have to be able to prove we are vaccinated to take part in civic life, including visiting friends. It is a concerning new assault on basic civil liberties.
Re: Austria makes Covid19 vaccination mandatory as of Feb 2022
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
I guess now you mention it, needing a yellow fever jab to enter Outer Mongolia is a precedent. Not sure what all the fuss is about. Any seatbelt analogies for us too?
Abortion would be the closer analogy. Also seatbelts don't require the sort of tracking infrastructure that a vaccine mandate requires. If the plan is a mandate with no tracking then that would be in the realm of comfortable precedent for me. But the experience so far in Australia (not Austria!) is that vaccine mandates are the most invasive privacy violation that the government has ever implemented.
I thought to go to school you had to be vaccinated, even in Australia.
Re: Austria makes Covid19 vaccination mandatory as of Feb 2022
#56I would have preferred giving lower priority in hospitals to voluntarily unvaccinated persons seeking COVID treatment. That would require no violation of personal freedoms and avoid the great economic cost of implementing a lockdown at the start of the touristic winter season at the cost of letting these people suffer the consequences of their belief that the vaccine is more dangerous than the disease.
Re: Austria makes Covid19 vaccination mandatory as of Feb 2022
#57A point a lot of people seem to miss is that there is a huge difference between making a vaccination mandatory, taking full responsibility for any side effects, and forcing people to get vaccinated by depriving them of their basic rights if they don't, but not taking any responsibility for side effects.
unwilling to get vaccinated is at least from a legal perspective not a "basic right" . Austria had compulsory vaccination before (Smallpox). Measles vaccination is mandatory in Germany. The law is that during a pandemic the country is able to impose mandatory vaccinations. see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaccination_policy#Compulsory_...
I think even from a practical perspective it is shaky - forced medical procedures are distasteful but they are already morally on the table for things like insanity and similar things where decision making is impaired. So the raw power to do it is probably there and the ethical line is always subject to negotiation.
But how often are emergency powers of this nature rolled back? If governments put the monitoring systems in place to enforce a vaccine mandate it is never going to go away. It'll be War On Terror all over again, the theatre for getting on a plane is still ridiculous 20 years later. The vaccine mandate tracking and enforcement seems a lot more invasive than that.
Re: Austria makes Covid19 vaccination mandatory as of Feb 2022
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
Desperate times and all that. With a incident rate of >1000 (and a lot higher in some hotspots), hospitals are at their breaking point right now.
Meh. If it's like in France there's a lot of dramatization: we got an official report about last year: COVID represented 2% of all hospitalizations and 5% of intensive care.
Right now in Switzerland there's 16.8% COVID patients from the hospitalizations. Would you call this dramatization?
Re: Austria makes Covid19 vaccination mandatory as of Feb 2022
#59People either have a reduced risk of infecting themselves and others like the vaccines provide it or they do not. Reality does not care about believes and concerns. If one ignores reality for too long, it will biff one right on the nose.
The current Covid-19 vaccines don't reduce people's risk of infecting themselves and others by nearly enough to control Covid outbreaks, and reality doesn't care about whatever sense of justice or political viewpoint is making people believe they do anyway. There's also diminishing returns for vaccinating the remaining part of the population, since their limited effectiveness means it doesn't take particularly high vaccination levels for vaccinated people to be the main ones who're catching, spreading, and getting hospitalized with the disease.
Re: Austria makes Covid19 vaccination mandatory as of Feb 2022
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
No one is going to be given the vaccine by force. Like you said, as an adult you can choose not to have it, you will just lose access to a lot of things, just like an unvaccinated child isn't accepted into kindergarden. If you don't want to have it then fine, stay locked up at home forever, that's your choice.
Plus pay a fine and maybe do some jail time (probably in solitary as nobody wants to risk contagion in either direction). But all in freedom of course! Okay irony aside, I'm definitely uncomfortable with mandatory vaccines, and I'm also uncomfortable with the amount of sheer stupidity shown by most of antivaccine movement (notable exceptions of course). But when it comes to vote, one has to choose an answer and that…
What I am really concerned about is the social divide on the topic. I've seen close friends arguing fiercely about the topic of vaccination and not talking to each other after that.