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Of course,
the principles at stake when it comes to the Mandate are not reducible to
dollars and cents. The public interest is also served by maintaining our
constitutional structure and maintaining the liberty of individuals to make
intensely personal decisions according to their own convictions—even, or
perhaps particularly, when those decisions frustrate government officials.
I had to get the MMR, varicella, Mantoux test, hepatitis A, hepatitis B, and several other vaccines to work in healthcare. Children need to get a host of vaccines to go to school and that has been true for a hundred years. The only thing new here is a politically driven disregard for human life.
> Never before have I seen restaurants and hospitals requiring me to show proof of a particular medical treatment before they will serve me.
Perhaps because previously everyone (or "enough" people) were required to get particular medical treatments (i.e., vaccinations) to get into kindergarten, and that it was just assumed that 'everyone' had the vaccinations—or at least anyone who go into and graduated kindergarten. The only change is a new disease that previously did not exist so there was no vaccine for it, so we all had to get it all at once now.
Rules for my local jurisdiction:
> Unless they have a valid exemption, children who attend primary or secondary school must be immunized against: diphtheria, tetanus, polio, measles, mumps, rubella, meningitis (meningococcal disease), whooping cough (pertussis), chickenpox (varicella) – required for children born in 2010 or later.
I'm also amused by current members in the military objecting to having to get the COVID vaccine… when you had to get a whole bunch of vaccinations to join in the first place. And this is nothing new: in the US, General George Washington had mandates.
The thing that I think people are missing in this whole situation isn’t that the government hasn’t had immunization mandates before, but how it’s trying to implement this one. There are definitely exemptions to it, and some of those exemptions appear to follow some historical political alliances (democrats and certain unions as an example). When you carve out exceptions based on politics instead of logic, people will resist.
While I don’t like mandates, I would be less resistant to them if they were applied logically…or if short of logically—at least evenly.
Your link requires children to be "immunized" against the diseases, which presumably does not mean "vaccinated". (For example, I have never had a chickenpox vaccine.)
Same here. Although never before (read, in my lifetime and geographic location), has it been possible for people to get so heavily sick or die from breathing in the exhaled air of another human.
I agree that the vaccine requirements are unprecedented. I just don't think they're the only thing that's unprecedented at this time. I can't imagine being a business owner and having people die because of the air in my building. Even if it's "not my fault" I'd still probably feel horrible. As a side note, my great uncle, we believe, caught covid at a restaurant, along with his wife and his brother-in-law. He died and she was really sick in the hospital.
I seem to remember "No shirt, no shoes, no service" in my time, justified as a public health measure (even if that wasn't the real justification).
Likewise food service workers have long been required to bandage wounds, wear hair nets and gloves, avoid work when ill, etc.
If COVID were only transmissible when you were symptomatic there would probably be no real public health need to apply this kind of check. But since it is silly to think you can simultaneously use masks and eat in a restaurant, as anti-vaxxers are fond of reminding us, you're left with measures like that if you want indoor dining in a restaurant.
Isn't this just an argument from ignorance? We probably have written records from the last pandemic. If you really think that the parent post is incorrect, why not furnish evidence?
The whole premise of protecting the replication of a virus at the expense of human life is an argument from ignorance. What if this and what if that and whining about not wanting a little inconvenience to protect my job and my life and my neighbor’s life…what a bunch of entitled snowflakes
>The whole premise of protecting the replication of a virus at the expense of human life is an argument from ignorance
that's not what argument from ignorance means: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_ignorance. While there's definitely anti-vaxxers that making the "well we don't know whether it's safe/effective", it's obvious that this thread isn't arguing that. It's possible to acknowledge that the virus is deadly and the vaccine is safe and effective, and still be against mandates on moral grounds (consequentialism vs deontology). I suggest you better understand the position of your opponents rather than immediately going for the "what a bunch of entitled snowflakes" conclusion.
Again, I don't think people are anti-mandates because they're pro-virus. Characterizing that side as "pro-virus" makes as much sense as characterizing the anti-surveillance crowd as "pro-terrorist".
>To be against the mandate on moral grounds cannot be moral, because killing people is wrong and perpetuating the virus is anti-human.
Consider the following: you're a consequentialist, your opponents are deontologists. You think the ends justifies the means. They don't.
For what it's worth: religious, medical, and philosophical exemptions to various immunization requirements have also been some kind of thing forever in various locations. And in the past, nobody hyperventilated about their own immunity not working if another person wasn't immunized for some reason.
> The only thing new here is a politically driven disregard for human life.
The only new thing here? And you can read minds and are certain that the only possible motive here is a disregard for human life? Really? That is not a serious comment.
I'd argue there's a lot of new things and qualitative differences here.
Here are 2 big ones you should consider.
#1) Once the technology to measure clicks was invented, the business model of the mass media has changed from promoting how trustworthy they were to a competition about driving traffic through emotional manipulation (fear, anger, sadness, etc). What media somebody uses has a big impact on how they trust either the Covid-Fear-Porn or Vaccine-Fear-Porn presented.
#2) These vaccine were developed in a much different and quicker fashion than previous vaccines: many of which took around 10+ years of development and testing before being introduced into a mass audience. I think it's entirely rational to be more than a little cautious about the short-term side effects and long-term problems with these new vaccines. It's very easy to see why somebody who took plenty of previous vaccines is cautious about these vaccines.
And those childhood vaccines are required by STATE law, using the states legal authority. The injunction spells out that the states have ‘police authority’ in this area, not the federal government.
So do you think OSHA has any legal authority regarding occupational safety and health? Is their existing regulatory authority unconstitutional across the board?
It’s all spelled out in the court ruling. OSHA derives it’s power from the commerce clause which gives Congress authority over interstate commerce activities.
You are exposed to millions of antigens daily, and almost none are FDA approved. This isn’t at all like a new chemical entity, it is a short-lived antigen that trains your immune system, then goes away. This isn’t 1960, it’s 2021. It’s safe, certainly safer than COVID, and necessary to protect you, your family, your neighbors, and our society.
"We next consider the necessity of the Mandate. The Mandate is
staggeringly overbroad. Applying to 2 out of 3 private-sector employees in
America, in workplaces as diverse as the country itself, the Mandate fails to
consider what is perhaps the most salient fact of all: the ongoing threat of
COVID-19 is more dangerous to some employees than to other employees. All
else equal, a 28 year-old trucker spending the bulk of his workday in the
solitude of his cab is simply less vulnerable to COVID-19 than a 62 year-old
prison janitor. Likewise, a naturally immune unvaccinated worker is
presumably at less risk than an unvaccinated worker who has never had the
virus. The list goes on, but one constant remains—the Mandate fails almost
completely to address, or even respond to, much of this reality and common
sense. "
> It is thus critical to note that the Mandate makes no serious attempt to explain why OSHA and the President himself were against vaccine mandates before they were for one here. (elided further citations)
Many measures have been contemplated (and some taken) that would've been over-reaching and extreme had the disease been smallpox. And COIVD was never smallpox.
Please don't cherry-pick a quote like that and make it the title—that's not only editorializing, it's the leading form of editorializing. HN titles need to be accurate and neutral, and represent the article as a whole.
I really don't quite understand this fuss about the mandate.
Americans have tens of thousands of laws that are locally inconvenient but globally useful for public well being, such as stopping at red lights, not carrying guns on flights, or god forbid, breast-feeding one's kid (who has received a zillion other vaccines).All laws are one-size-fits-all mandates, so why the fuss about this one, other than the obvious political theater?
The petition claims that it is being treated as an "emergency" even after two years. But isn't it the case that it is because of the people like the petitioners that has led to vaccine misinformation and hesitancy, which has stretched the timeline?
I am less surprised about the petition than seeing this as the top voted post on HN.
Judge lays out rationale very well. One of the main issues is whether a federal body like OSHA can mandate such a broad thing, and how that infringes on “state’s police power” which is a fundamental principle in the constitution limiting federal power into what is up to every state to legislate locally.
One cannot say “because COVID” and indefinitely suspend the constitution.
> I really don't quite understand this fuss about the mandate.
> Americans have tens of thousands of laws
OK, let me try to break this down to make the court ruling more understandable. The mandate is not a law. It's a regulation issued by OSHA, which is not a lawmaking body, but a regulatory body, charged with limiting workplace injury.
If it was a law, then you wouldn't have this ruling. Laws are passed by Congress.
In the U.S., regulations issued by various bureaucracies can't just be arbitrary. They have to be within the mandate of said bureaucracy, and they have to follow certain procedures. Otherwise they can be ruled as unconstitutional.
That is what the court ruled on. Not whether covid is important, or whether vaccines are good, or even whether vaccine mandates for covid are good. It ruled on whether OSHA is able to create a nationwide vaccine mandate using its ETS (emergency temporary standard) powers.
So the short summary of what "all the fuss" is about is whether this regulation was lawful.
Note that OSHA has a long history of abusing the ETS, and of the 10 times in its history that OSHA issued an ETS, it has been struck down or withdrawn prior to being struck down 9 times.
This is because the ETS powers are extraordinary and so are placed under very strict scrutiny by courts. Again, the courts are not ruling whether vaccine mandates are good, they are ruling whether the ETS power is being abused. This is why many (if not the vast majority) of legal experts have said that you can't use OSHA to make a nationwide vaccine mandate, and that this standard would inevitably be struck down.
This is a very similar situation to when the Biden administration tried to use the CDC emergency powers to freeze evictions. Again, the debate is not whether evictions are bad, or whether it was a good idea to freeze them, but whether the CDC emergency powers allowed freezing evictions. That, too, was struck down.
It seems much of the conflicting arguments about this article are debating more about whether or not vaccine mandates are good/legal/constitutional, rather than seeing that this is a ruling against the method used to deploy the mandate (namely, using an OSHA ETS) and whether or not that is constitutional.
Correct. Court decisions are about the law, and here
I blame the current administration for trying to take a shortcut and not doing either
1) legislation (which requires some horse trading -- you'll need to give the GOP something in return to peel off a few moderate votes in the Senate), or
2) work directly with the states to push them to roll out vaccine mandates, which again means that some states wont do it, but that's the way it is.
A combination of one of the above plus requiring vaccines for federal contractors -- which is like half the economy -- and you will get as much coverage or more as the current OSHA ruling which (strangely) affects only employers with 100 or more people. Thus it only covers 61% of workers, and workers are less than 50% of the population, so this OSHA mandate is only going to cover less than 30% of the population. That's a terrible way of doing public health.
FYI, that's another problem with this ETS. If it's such an emergency and it poses such a grave threat to worker safety, then why only apply it to firms with 100 or more workers? Why would workers in a firm with less than 100 employees be in less physical danger? And here's another problem -- they will need to claim this is a grave and immediate threat to workers -- something like daily exposure to a toxic waste dump or nuclear radiation (the bar is really high for ETS) but it's not -- 80% of the deaths are people over 65, so why do this in the name of protecting the health of workers? Of course you and I know the answer, we want the workers to get vaccinated to protect the elderly, so this is a public health measure where workers protect someone else, and doesn't fit well as a workplace safety measure. People can challenge this so many ways -- e.g. why not just require workers over the age of 50, etc? And it's going to be hard for OSHA to come back and say that workers under the age of 50 are in such grave and immediate danger. There are just so many things wrong with this approach, and so many ways to poke holes in it.
What is the point of weekly testing anyway? If it doesn't equally apply to both vaccinated and unvaccinated. If the test is positive it's too late with unvaccinated anyway. And if vaccinated aren't tested they are still wilfully spreading to those who aren't vaccinated...
It is an out. If you absolutely refuse vaccination then there is another path to relative safety. If the testing is weekly then the time for infection is spread is still present but limited, at least in theory.
your liberty is being sledgehammered. next will be a BMI mandate, because high BMI individuals are responsible for taking up 10X more hospital beds than covid patients.
PAGE 15
"The underinclusive
nature of the Mandate implies that the Mandate’s true purpose is not to
enhance workplace safety, but instead to ramp up vaccine uptake by any
means necessary"
Careful, getting a bit close to saying the quiet part out loud here: “The federal boogeyman is coming door to door to take our guns.” Got news for you, there are federal laws on the books that can do a lot of harm to you if you do something antisocial. And not getting the vaccine is antisocial, so no this is not a harbinger or something to come. It’s not something new or radical. But you know what is? January 6. Neofascist terrorism. Destabilization of democracy through foreign influence campaigns online—-maybe even this thread.
I'm sorry to pile on, having already replied to you twice, but your flamewar comments in this thread have been one of the worst cases of on-tiltness and breaking the site guidelines that I've run into in quite a while (and that's saying something!) Fortunately your previous commenting history looks great. Please don't do this again. I realize that divisive topics entail strong feelings, especially when encountering views that we consider to be deeply wrong—but that's when it gets more important to follow the site guidelines.
The ends don't justify the means. There's a vast difference between a measure designed to directly improve safety in the workplace (ie. "let's make vaccines mandatory if you want to work, so there won't be workplace infections"), and a measure designed to punish non-complying citizens (ie. "let's make vaccines mandatory if you want to work, so non-vaccinated people have to vaccinate, otherwise be ruined financially").
The mask shows us your political affiliation. It tells me if you are one of the good guys or one of the bad guys.
It also offers a ritual, a bit of theater, to spend our propaganda-induced anxiety upon. For true believers anyway. I guess the heretics can just suffer.
Edit: you unfortunately have a history of breaking the site guidelines and we've had to ask you many times to stop. Would you please fix this? I've banned those other accounts and am not going to ban yours right now because you've also posted good things—but we need you to follow the rules if you want to keep posting here.
I didn’t think we would end up in a timeline where courts are trying to protect the replication of a deadly virus that has killed millions. Look at the results. Mandate->lives saved; no mandate->more death. I thought you all claimed to be pro life?
Ideological flamewar hell is exactly what we don't need on this site, and you dived straight into it with this comment. That's not cool and is against both the rules and the spirit of this site. Can you please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and not do this anymore?
The issue is, a whole lot of people disagree that mandate = lives saved. The reason mandates are bad is that when lots of people are disagreeing with a law, there are usually rational reasons why.
In this case the increasingly fanatical "vaccinate everything over and over" brigade refuse to accept that disagreement can have any kind of rational basis, and thus don't even listen to the people who don't want to take it. But that is exactly why this type of mandate is really bad news.
As for "what about the other vaccine mandates" - yep, time to revisit them too. Apparently public health agencies aren't at their most trustworthy when talking about this topic. Their treatment of COVID vaccine data has been shockingly poor. It's not a big leap to wondering whether they've been acting like this in the past too and people just didn't notice.
> Pro-life not pro-tyranny! Forcing people to take a vaccine that was rolled out almost immediately, without due process is not protecting anything.
It had 'due process', the same process any other vaccine would receive (including previous vaccines), culminating in an FDA authorization for use. All based on decades of research and 18 months of "shots in arms" data to back it up, when we know after a great deal of experience that vaccine side effects would show up in weeks, not years.
That doesn't make the Pfizer vaccine a "silver bullet" but it has not sideswiped due process and there's no additional data to be gained from waiting longer. So we're at the situation where if the courts decide this vaccine mandate is contrary to the public health, no vaccine mandate could be enforced either.
I'm just not sure how the mandate forces people to take a vaccine. Doesn't it say that people don't have to take it but then have to get tested weekly...if they want to stay at a company of over 100 employees? Doesn't that give people lots of options if they want to refuse taking a vaccine? 1) get tested weekly and 2) move to a smaller company are at least two alternatives to a vaccine, no?
I think there's a strong argument to be made for cruel and unusual punishment (or maybe not that but the unfairness of the consequences), as things ratchet up. For me, it seems fair to say people should get tested every week. If it were tested every 5 minutes or had to wear a full hazmat suit, then yes, I think that takes it wayyyy too far and then would be much more upset about it.
I guess I just don't see how the current alternatives prohibit people from participating in society. I guess some places say only vaccinated people, but most seem to just require a negative test within the last 72 hours or something.
So the mandate that employers of over 100 people must require them to be vaccinated or tested weekly is bad because eventually those people will have to stop participating in society?
Can’t find it now because google seems to have down ranked it. There have been cases of medication having very long term side effects which were not caught during trials. I’m thinking specifically of something that caused birth defects.
I don’t think it is wise to claim so much authority as you have when it is literally impossible to have FULL confidence. Are you going to take responsibility for the 1 in 1 million who reads your comments and goes on to suffer an adverse reaction?
What my one friend, who has a PhD in gene therapy, said is that these vaccines are safe now and in the long-term according to the best scientific knowledge we have at the moment. So I agree, there may be unforeseen ramifications of these vaccines in the future, true. I guess I just also believe there may be unforeseen ramifications in the future of having had covid-19 and I'm placing a bet that it's more likely that a previous covid-19 infection will be worse for me in the future than the mRNA vaccines I got. I have no certainty on it, I don't think anyone does, and it frustrates me sometimes when we don't mention that.
I think you're thinking of Thalidomide. It took the best scientific minds about 5 years to make the connection with it and birth defects.
This (admittedly unlikely) chance of long-term problems is one of many reasons that I believe that the vaccines being introduced into a mass audience at this time is the dumbest risk-management decision in the history of humanity.
I find it fascinating the number of people who seem to follow this reasoning, but don't think it's more likely that having covid-19 will cause long term problems years->decades down the line. Chicken pox causes singles, a number of viruses are associated with various cancers, but you think it's more likely that a carefully engineered and studied vaccine will have negative long-term effects than a novel virus?
> it is a short-lived antigen that trains your immune system, then goes away.
The injection being "short-lived" is completely irrelevant, as its effects on your body are permanent. As we don't have long-term knowledge of its effects, the (admittedly unlikely) possibility of long-term problems exists until proven otherwise.
Feel free to disagree if you want to, but I judge that risk to be a bigger threat to me and society than the comparatively small risk from Covid.
> This isn’t 1960, it’s 2021
I'm sure people in the 1950s were saying something similar, perhaps something like, "This isn't the ancient world and we're no longer messing around with leeches or trepanning. We have sophisticated modern laboratories, have modern medicine that has boosted life expectancy tremendously, and man has even harnessed the atom's powers. The days of medical errors are over."
Scientists should always be wary of hubris.
> It’s safe, certainly safer than COVID,
First you say it's safe, then you say it's safer. Which is it? I know how to identify weaselly language when I see it.
> and necessary to protect you, your family, your neighbors, and our society.
This is a slogan.
The risk-management calculation is different for every individual.
Can you please stop posting flamewar comments to HN, regardless of how wrong someone else is or you feel they are? It's not what this site is for, and it destroys what it is for.
Can you please stop posting flamewar comments to HN, regardless of how wrong someone else is or you feel they are? It's not what this site is for, and it destroys what it is for.
Edit: you posted 30 comments to this thread, and most of them broke the site guidelines. That's way beyond the pale. I'm not going to ban you for this because your commenting history before this looks fine, and everyone goes on tilt sometimes—but for heaven's sake please don't do it in the future!
Thank you. As a pharmacist, I am at the end of my rope when it comes to the war I fight every day against people who are disrespecting those who have died of this virus. What you are seeing here is the frustration of a health care professional. I will stop posting, but I take issue when one says the argument has devolved. I made some good points and then the ignorant horde starts using admins to stop a doctor from making points. I like this site and hope it will stay a place where people can share different views, as I have done here.
I hear the frustration and empathize, but we can't allow the downward spiral that results when people who feel strongly about something for good reason take it as a license to break the rules. I know it's not easy to do otherwise.
You are exposed to millions of antigens daily, and almost none are FDA approved. This isn’t at all like a new chemical entity, it is a short-lived antigen that trains your immune system, then goes away. This isn’t 1960, it’s 2021. It’s safe, certainly safer than COVID, and necessary to protect you, your family, your neighbors, and our society.
This position assumes that all harmful side effects are detected, recorded and correctly ascribed to the vaccine.
What we see in reality is that "medical professionals" like yourself are loathe to accept that reports of problems could be linked to the vaccine, even if they occur very soon after vaccination. Instead they are routinely ignored or ascribed as coincidences. For instance, the system is still totally ignoring the apparently widespread appearance of menstrual problems in women who have been vaccinated despite it being one of the top reports in VAERS. Female friends of my girlfriend are reporting this problem at a very high rate, yet as far as people like you are concerned it doesn't happen at all.
It seems very much like virtually none of the reactions that would intuitively be caused by the vaccine are actually being recorded as such. In that environment your confidence would be severely misplaced.
You are exposed to millions of antigens daily, and almost none are FDA approved. This isn’t at all like a new chemical entity, it is a short-lived antigen that trains your immune system, then goes away. This isn’t 1960, it’s 2021. It’s safe, certainly safer than COVID, and necessary to protect you, your family, your neighbors, and our society. Also, it doesn’t affect fertility.
Please stop posting ideological flamewar comments and please do not use HN for ideological battle, because we ban accounts that do that (regardless of ideology).
I haven't read the court documents...is the argument that states can make these sorts of mandates but the federal government can't? I thought some states were claiming these mandates were illegal at all levels but I can't recall.
The decision seems very well written and is worth at least a skim. The section that answers your question is (f), and starts at the bottom of page 16.
As I read it, the decision says that the State's definitely have the police power to mandate vaccination, and suggests that the federal government lacks this authority under the Commerce Clause (but doesn't directly claim that no other authority exists). The basic claim is that OSHA, given it's current legal authority, lacks the right to regulate "noneconomic nonactivity".
If they mandate we all take the latest and greatest anti-viral cocktail daily or even weekly, fresh out the Merck/Pfizer lab, would we all be onboard with that also? You see the legal precedent that have been set here because "just save one more life".
Because if the goal is elimination and not crushing the curve, then mandating experimental anti-virals is the only logical next step, and it will only work if its truly global.
This virus is endemic now, deal with it. It will never go away, and anyone who thought that 60-70-80-90% vaccination in the USA only would magically stop it was nuts. The vaccine wont prevent transmission or replication, not even in the slightest. Its only at best a therapeutic that 'might' keep you out of the hospital, not even guaranteed.
The government didn't want to create "vaccine hesitancy" so they ignored any and all counter data, doubled down on a bad idea and mandated it, pitted neighbor against neighbor, and suckers fell for the groupthink. Now that its endemic, we have to step back and ask, is +0.07% more deadly then the flu worth all this heartache (lockdowns, mandates, masks, etc)? If its never going away, then at what point do we all plan to take the masks off?
You are exposed to millions of antigens daily, and almost none are FDA approved. This isn’t at all like a new chemical entity, it is a short-lived antigen that trains your immune system, then goes away. This isn’t 1960, it’s 2021. It’s safe, certainly safer than COVID, and necessary to protect you, your family, your neighbors, and our society.
Submitters: If you want to say what you think is important about an article, that's fine, but do it by adding a comment to the thread. Then your view will be on a level playing field with everyone else's: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...
Commenters: if you're going to post to a thread on a divisive topic, make sure you're up on the site guidelines: .https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. Note this one: "Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive." We got a lot of hellish flamewar in this thread. That's not cool.