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

Austria makes Covid19 vaccination mandatory as of Feb 2022

rainews.it

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 125 posts

Re: Austria makes Covid19 vaccination mandatory as of Feb 2022

#61

Post by soco »

66fm472tjy7 wrote: post #56

I 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.

A blanket measure (mandate something for all) is always easier to rationalize than a targeted measure (in this case, denying a person hospital admission). So while some politicians will agree with your spirit, they won't be thrilled to implement it.

Re: Austria makes Covid19 vaccination mandatory as of Feb 2022

#62

Post by soco »

kavalg wrote: post #60
soco wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I can understand that, as it's debating the very basic tenets of society - shall we stick together for the power of the masses (and vaccinate) or we are on our own (buy a gun and live in a remote cottage)? While I can understand the attractiveness of being on my own, I tend to stick with the community option.

Re: Austria makes Covid19 vaccination mandatory as of Feb 2022

#63

Post by makomk »

c0l0 wrote: post #7
kavalg wrote: post #3

Are they also planning to implement a forced vaccination for the unwilling?

No, but there will be fines ("Verwaltungsstrafen", which can be converted to "Ersatzfreiheitsstrafen" - jail time - if you are unable or unwilling to pay).

Given how ineffective vaccines or any other measure have been at stopping Covid-19 from spreading within prisons, jail time for this is effectively sentencing people to be infected with a deadly disease in the name of protecting them against it (but only if they're poor and can't afford the fines). I'd say that any loss of trust in the state and medical industry resulting from that would be 100% earned.

Re: Austria makes Covid19 vaccination mandatory as of Feb 2022

#65

Post by DyslexicAtheist »

sasaf5 wrote: post #18
orbifold wrote: post #9

From the country that brought us Mozart, World War 1, Wittgenstein, Gödel, Hitler. So this is either a brilliant or horrible idea ^^

+ Yodeling ^^

I just returned from Switzerland where I took yodeling classes. These classes are in huge demand by tourists. We were asked to form an orderly orderly orderly queue.

Re: Austria makes Covid19 vaccination mandatory as of Feb 2022

#66

Post by jmnicolas »

soco wrote: post #58
jmnicolas wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

There is probably a wave of hospitalizations now like every year with the flu. When you average on a year it won't be as bad and won't justify trampling civil liberties.

It's just a power grab IMHO and people are so afraid of COVID they just go along. But sadly we won't get our freedoms back once all this is over.

Re: Austria makes Covid19 vaccination mandatory as of Feb 2022

#67

Post by roenxi »

soco wrote: post #55
roenxi wrote: post #19

Earlier 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.

I thought to go to school you had to be vaccinated, even in Australia.

I happen to be double-vaccinated; but being a rebel I went to have a cafe breakfast a few weeks ago without the appropriate paperwork. The waiter didn't feel like making a fuss so I got to eat.

Being ejected, fined and/or arrested for not having the correct paperwork to have breakfast is not a situation that has ever come up for me before. This is different from in-school vaccinations.

Re: Austria makes Covid19 vaccination mandatory as of Feb 2022

#68

Post by raxxorrax »

sofixa wrote: post #48
blub wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For Austria they are completely new... And AFAIK there's no European country which requires all adults to get any vaccine, it's mostly kids and specific professions.

But... If you vaccinate all kids, you've effectively vaccinated all future adults. As of today, most countries in the EU, including Austria, have their populations vaccinated against a bunch of things ( measles, tuberculosis, etc.) by mandates for child vaccination. Just because now it's to be done to adults doesn't change things much IMHO. If Covid stays with us, a vaccine against it will probably be administered to…

For the most time we had vaccination quotas beyond 95% with voluntary vaccinations. Truth is, the performance of the current ones is mediocre at best as Covid already mutated. This isn't comparable with vaccines for a lot of other diseases aside maybe for the flu.

What brought us into this mess was idiots in charge and part of the population being exceptionally scared. We will continue this way and the situation won't improve until we are in a state like Sweden or Spain.

Re: Austria makes Covid19 vaccination mandatory as of Feb 2022

#69

Post by gehatare »

roenxi wrote: post #57
DyslexicAtheist wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 syste…

We don't have mandatory smallpox vaccines in Austria anymore, even though we had them in the past. I really see no way how these energency powers will stay.

Re: Austria makes Covid19 vaccination mandatory as of Feb 2022

#70

Post by gehatare »

jmnicolas wrote: post #45
gehatare wrote: post #30

Earlier 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.

Well, it's not like in France, so I don't see your point. Hospitals in Salzburg and Österreich can't treat emergency patients properly anymore for lack of capacity. Also year round numbers won't help you if the cases are clustered.
Post reply on HN