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Covid Vaccine Mandates: For Whose Benefit?
As the calls for mandating Covid vaccinations grow, especially with formal FDA approval of the Pfizer vaccine, I ask the same question I have asked about mask mandates – who do the mandates protect that justify the intrusion on personal autonomy?
If the Covid vaccines work to protect the person who has received the vaccine, it matters not to the vaccinated person whether other people are vaccinated.
If people who have had Covid have protection similar to the protection provided by the Covid vaccine, forcing those who have had Covid to get the Covid vaccine is overkill. According to some reports (I have no idea how reliable), vaccinating the naturally protected may be counterproductive (in that the vaccine may degrade the already present natural protection).
Vaccine mandates do force people with “vaccine hesitancy” to do what’s “for their own good,” regardless of the person’s own personal risk assessment about the vaccine versus the virus. If that’s true, then we are taking another large step away from being a free people. The Covid vaccines are very new, unlike other vaccines that have become routine. Hesitance on injecting something very new is not irrational, especially since many people may calculate that they have a very low probability risk from the virus itself. Other vaccines that are now mandated (measles, polio, etc.) had much longer track records before the mandates were instituted.
Can people who have been vaccinated spread the virus to others? There have been many claims that vaccinated people can still spread the virus (that’s the justification given for why everyone should wear masks forever). If so, then vaccine mandates don’t do anything to reduce the spread of the virus.
Requiring everyone to be vaccinated doesn’t add to the protection of those who have chosen to be vaccinated, and may not reduce the spread of the virus. So far, the only purpose of vaccine mandates seems to be to force conformity.
Published in Domestic Policy
If there’s any reducing to be done, it’s the reductio ad absurdum angle.
Natural immunity is fine. If one is hesitant about taking the shot, they can refuse. I’m not in favor of government mandates. I’m just saying an employer should be able to set the terms of employment.
We’ve got years of workplace laws preventing this kind of discrimination. Asking for medical information is a great big no no in hiring practices, as it should be. If the candidate can meet the job analysis requirements (can lift 50lbs, can operate a motor vehicle etc…) then you can’t deny them on medical grounds or you risk a lawsuit. Even asking the question, “Have you been vaccinated for ___?” could generate a lawsuit. Requiring testing for X,Y, or Z is another matter, but personal medical information is the red hot coal no responsible employer should pick up.
I guess I don’t understand your confusion.
At the risk of being out of step with the language police, to a large extent Covid is like the flu or the common cold. What we call the common cold are usually rhinoviruses or coronaviruses (just like Covid). We know how the flu or a cold spreads.
A sick person sheds virus ( by coughing, sneezing or even breathing). One sick person can infect several other people. The more people have the flu the more it spreads. So 10 sick people can create 70-90 new sick people. These can then create 500 new sick people.
If there are a large number of vaccinated people (who don’t catch the virus) then the original 10 sick people create 15-30 new sick people. Right there is a reduction in the spread because of vaccination.
If one of the original sick people infects a vaccinated person that vaccinated person will have less severe symptoms that do not last as long, they will shed less virus, so 10 vaccinated people who catch the virus will infect fewer people then 10 unvaccinated people with the virus, again a reduction.
If no one is vaccinated the number of new sick people goes up. If a lot of people are vaccinated the number of new sick people starts to go down.
Nobody, because it’s not about a virus. It never was.
This misunderstands the difference between the interview/hiring decision and the terms of employment.
For years before Covid was a thing, various healthcare systems have had vaccination mandates. They have covered things like a nurse must have all the normal vaccines most of us get as kids or hepatitis, tuberculosis vaccines or the flu shot.
In an interview and in making a hiring decision you can not ask a much if anything about health information. That changes when you offer someone a job. The employer makes an offer with the terms of employment. So, you will make $X an hour for 40 hours on day, swing or night shift. As a condition of employment you must have these vaccines. All of this is normal.
The thing about an employer mandate as opposed to the Government mandating something is that if you don’t want the vaccine you don’t take the job or leave the job. (It would follow that if enough people object to a certain term of employment, the employer will not have staff and will have change their position.)
Is it really the individual companies requiring things like wuflu vaccines, regular flu vaccines, vaccines against icky conservatives? Or is it pressure from joebidenstan? That way the government (our betters) and those three letter acronyms aren’t making you do it, the evil corporations are doing it.
Yeah, wouldn’t be the first time the government had private corporations acting as their proxies in doing what they know they can’t legally do.
See also: censorship.
Generally, yes, but you can ask truck drivers about their eyesight. Not analogous to the question at hand, of course. You can probably discuss a latex allergy with the nurse in the course of describing where alternative supplies are kept.
For the benefit of the Dems.
The Democrats get power by keeping people divided every which way they can. COVID presents them with another opportunity. They want to turn “the vaccinated” against “the
unwashedunvaccinated” because it’s another division they can create so as to control the narrative.Well, yes, the government is beginning to order companies to implement vaccine mandates, but I’m still not clear how mandates (whether imposed by government or by business) produce a better result than truly voluntary programs in which people decide for themselves that being vaccinated is better for themselves.
Yes, because those things are included in the job analysis. Those are requirements under fitness for duty, the same way you need to get recertified annually to perform certain jobs. You can’t move the goalpost on a whim and start levying new invasive medical procedures just because a bureaucrat somewhere thinks it’s a good idea. The terms of employment didn’t state a Covid injection for any job. I doubt many vocations have even updated their paperwork to officially include it now. It hasn’t even existed for a year.
So what if people get sick? People get sick every year from colds and flus. [I consider the potential effect on medical facility capacity transient and therefore not appropriate for creating a permanent requirement.] So anyone who wants to reduce their own probability of getting sick should consider taking the vaccine. And if they do, they have little to fear from those who choose differently. Why does the possibility that someone else might get sick entitle me to require a person to undergo a medical procedure?
I understand both having been in management for a long time. If the terms of employment did not include subjecting yourself to a Covid injection (for those hired prior to March of 2021) you can’t make it a stipulation now without allowing for exemptions or risking a lawsuit. My daughter had to stand up for her rights when her employer wanted their employees to take and log their temperatures every hour. That’s illegal, and so is a mandated Covid injection. She stood her ground and the legal department backed down because they’re not as stupid as some managers are. So much of this is just coercion into getting a “voluntary” procedure.
Believe me, the lawsuits are coming, even against military as we saw last week. A lot of medical and other professionals are in this ballpark as we speak. Many are resigning, others are refusing and letting it play out in a wait-and see posture. Unions are trying to figure out what to do. In my opinion the smart money for those caught in the crossfire (I’ve got two nurse friends in this fight currently, a family member in the WA school district) is to make them fire you and then sue them.
So far the hospitals and schools are still only pressuring (according to my friends) probably because someone in charge understands employee rights better than they let on. Call their bluff and let the chips fall where they may. I’ll put money on people winning these cases in the near future.
Unless an employee is covered under a Union’s collective bargaining agreement, most employees are “At Will” employees. This means that the terms of employment are what ever your boss says they are and can change whenever the boss wants them to change. The “officially updated paperwork” requires no more than a company email saying here is the new policy.
Try telling that to a pregnant woman, or a guy who gets fired after hurting his back, it’s not that simple even though some employers think it is. There are thousands of non-union employers who play by a strict set of rules about this kind of thing to mitigate legal issues.
Personally, I plan to pay as little attention to them as possible. They can’t control the agenda of what I think about.
If you have a better idea, by all means let us know.
OK, an employer has an incentive to reduce absenteeism by requiring employees to undergo vaccinations and possibly other medical or health related procedures that are likely to reduce their sicknesses. Employers is one beneficiary that might justify Covid vaccine mandates.
I think it’s a separate discussion on whether and how far employers can go in mandating employees go undertake health or medically beneficial procedures that are likely to reduce absenteeism.
Other than employers seeking to reduce employee sick time, back to who is less likely to be hospitalized or die from Covid because Covid vaccines are mandated (as opposed to people choosing on their own whether they would be better off with the vaccine)?
Maybe you are right but I am not sure.
Historically Hospitals tend to win vaccine mandate cases if they have carve outs for medical and religious issues.
The EEOC and DOJ have stated mandates are legal.
Last year Federal courts allows University of California to mandate the flu shot.
This year federal courts threw out a case thus allowing Methodist Hospitals of Texas to have a Covid mandate and allowed Indiana University to have a mandate
Yes I understand that, and you’re right that the courts are no friend to justice. Any child services worker can affirm that. But it doesn’t mean that the injection mandates don’t violate a person’s rights and threaten their life any more than an abortion violates a child’s right to live. That the courts allow it doesn’t justify it, even when if the law explicity permits it, which it doesn’t in this case.
2020 and beyond is the era where courts have decided the law no longer matters. There will be a reckoning.
1)urine testing for drugs as a condition for employment by employers is well established- it isn’t considered an unwarranted intrusion. Many insurers require drug testing after workplace accidents as well. Neither has any civil rights problems.
2) An added reason for employers to mandate vaccination is the threat of lawsuits by customers & other employees blaming the workplace for getting COVID. IIRC the congressional Dems have refused to pass legislation limiting the liability of employers for COVID. If you mandate vaccination you can easily claim you took every reasonable step to prevent the spread of COVID at your facility.
Someone on Nextdoor called me “dangerous”, and demanded that I stay home, since I refuse the new State mask mandate. I would have responded to that comment, had the site not closed comments before I got the chance. They have been removing all opinions regarding the vaccines, that don’t comport with the CDC official information (which changes often). We are salted with Karens everywhere around here, and in the first 48 hours of the new mandate, the state “tip-line” has received over 200 complaints. The State is getting heavy-handed, threatening the licenses of businesses who do not strictly enforce the indoor 100% mandate (vaccinated or not). They can all go to hell, I still will not comply.
Washington State is mandating the vaccine for most state employees now. Many prison employees have stated that they will quit rather than take the vaccine. That means a lot, since that threatens their pensions.
Give em hell. This is how we win. Stand firm and stand tall.
Testing an individual for evidence of a substance already within their body is completely different than injecting a substance into their body.
How do you suppose many of those substances get into the body?
Were there no Federal mandates some people would get vaccinated and wear masks and others wouldn’t. With mandates the same thing happens but those who go along or resist wouldn’t all be the same. Freedom gives rise to a variety of outcomes. That’s how we learn and why freedom works and why lack of it eventually ends badly.
My area only has mandates coming for Health systems/ Hospitals. So the idea behind these mandates starts as almost a platitude but moves on to really people who benefit. The basic idea is that people go to the Hospital because they are sick, not to get sick.
Who benefits, extremely sick people, elderly, immunocompromised people, cancer patients and transplant patients. These people have enough health problems and some are medically excluded from taking vaccines or vaccines don’t work as well in them.
The tragedy is that there would be no mandates if the government had not suppressed the many successful therapeutic interventions. I believe Dr. Peter McCullough when he says that 80% of the deaths could have been prevented. This was never about stopping the illness. In fact it was about revving it up. It’s a bio-weapon, but it didn’t need to be a successful one.
Or you might not.
Or all the fellas get the snip.