Trader Joe's, Dollar General And Others Are Paying Workers To Get Vaccines
npr.org
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I would imagine that as we get further into the effort, most/all states will end up doing something like this. And in any case, the companies in the article will be prepared for rollout to general population.
The irony is that this includes people with self-induced risks, like smoking.
I'm wondering how many people will either falsely claim to smoke, or even just start smoking to skip to the front of the line..
Why? Isn't part of the point to keep bodies out of ICU beds?
> I'm wondering how many people will either falsely claim to smoke, or even just start smoking to skip to the front of the line.
Probably some, but you're risking increased insurance premiums for years to come if you insurance company finds out.
Yes, we know that smoking increases dangers from Covid-19. There is, however, a self-induced aspect that makes it at least worth discussing as a valid policy.
And let me add that anyone can suddenly become a smoker right beforehand to qualify.
You can't deny it's at the very least awkward social policy.
Not sure how that plays with stores like Dollar General, which carry some groceries. Don't believe there are any Dollar Generals in NYC, but what about the bodega workers?
It seems like February will have a bit of a vaccine supply drought. But Pfizer and Moderna are scaling up, and hopefully the Johnson & Johnson vaccine gets approval and gets past initial production hiccups.
So, maybe hope for March for jabs for “front-line” workers? Warehouse workers, bus drivers, cashiers…
Note: I am not an antivaxer. I think vaccines are great, and it is a good idea for people to take them, just like working out and eating healthy. I just don't understand the logic behind mandatory vaccinations to protect other people. It doesn't make sense to me when people believe others not taking a vaccine is somehow a significant threat to them. And I am not saying the logic is incorrect, merely that I do not understand the logic.
For most of the things you mention, it's possible for the employee to control the impact it has on their work hours. You can drink while ensuring you're not drunk or hungover at work, for example. For COVID, it's not possible to control the impact; if you have COVID, you do not work. Additionally, you can spread COVID to other employees prior to a positive test or symptoms and consequently affect the business outside of your personal availability. That's not really the case with drinking or a refusal to exercise.
Also: unlike most of those other things, this virus is clearly infectious, so it isn't individual well-being that is at stake.
I'm curious, are you not in the US?
Many workplaces routinely test employees for drugs, even drugs that are legal in their states. Employment at many places is conditioned specifically on not using drugs.
Similarly, employees at many firms must maintain an adequate credit rating or risk termination. So the slippery slope you describe...we've already slid down it.
Outside employers who have the federal government as a direct customer and employees who have to deal with DOT rules (truck drivers) drug testing is incredibly rare. Employers aren't dumb enough to voluntarily restrict their talent pool in that manner.
- Walmart (1.5 million US employees)
- IBM (352,000 US employees)
- Target (350,000 US employees)
- Kroger (450,000 US employees)
- Home Depot (400,000 US employees)
These are just spot checks of the top 10 largest employers. Obviously, sectors such as transportation and finance also have broadly embraced drug screens.
Based on my experience in IT, they are not outliers. As a contractor, I've even had to submit to drug testing for contract gigs in the past.
I would imagine that if you look at the current state of the COVID-19 pandemic... we have a vaccine and we've been able to give first doses to maybe 5% of the U.S. right now.
It is estimated that herd immunity, or basically infection frequency / transmission dropping low enough that you are unlikely to get COVID-19 requires about 75% of everyone to be fully vaccinated (both doses for the two leading vaccines).
So to have the vaccine or not have the vaccine is not a binary choice for every person at this time. Lots of 64 year olds could walk into a grocery store, wishing they had a vaccine, but they don't. Ideally, every store employee at such a store is low or no risk for that 64 year old, just in case. Masks help but are not 100%. Catching it from surfaces is, I believe, presumed to be low on incidence, but I would not assume it is 0% either.
So the best bet for 64 year olds that are not yet eligible for the vaccine is that employees at places people have to go contain largely vaccinated employees as soon as possible. Also don't know the numbers, but there are probably a lot less grocery store workers than say all people between 50 and 64 years of age.
(I'm also not 100% clear on when a 64 year old with no underlying conditions and no front-line worker qualification will otherwise be eligible.)
It depends on the state. But in Massachusetts, that 64 year old is part of the general pool, i.e. they're eligible at the same time a healthy 20 year old is. It depends on how many people are willing to get vaccinated and whether vaccinations can be tamped up above 1 million per day (so 2 million jabs for the 2 dose vaccines). But it could easily be 6 months out, though hopefully closer to early summer.
Added: Though Biden is only promising to get 50 million people vaccinated in the next 100 days.
So to answer,
> taking the vaccine does little to prevent others for catching the [virus]
Yes, with a high enough threshold, herd immunity will reduce the probability of others in your environment to get the virus. You can see it like a network effect where nodes that could be infected finish by being surrounded by nodes preventing infected nodes to reach high-risk ones modulo the hypotheses stipulated above.²
Besides that they are also social, economic, politic reasons to push to massive vaccination programs. But for me, herd immunity reasons are the why, I tend to be in favour of a nation-scale vaccination program.
¹ For example in the Netherlands if a worker is contaminated at his workplace, the company have to close their offices during two weeks and pay a fine.
If you are vaccinated, you are vastly less likely to get the infection you are vaccinated against. It is kind of like car accidents - you are vastly less likely to be in any sort of car accident if you are walking (vaccinated) than if you are driving a car (unvaccinated). Most folks will be protected.
Since most folks will be protected and won't get the disease, it means that - with enough vaccinations - the risk for those who don't get the vaccine or who are unlucky enough not to have full effectiveness are more protected as well. This situation is more akin to most folks taking public transport instead of driving cars: Since there are fewer cars on the roads, everyone's risk of getting into a car accident drops significantly.
I'm just explaining the logic. It's ok if you don't agree, but the parent legitimately seemed to not understand the argument.
I'm 100% in favor of requiring vaccines and keeping the antivax crows in a silo, away from the general population. (That includes my family members who are antivax.)
It's not as clear-cut like you make it out to be and there are real ethical questions here. So let's Steelman OP's argument. This vaccine was developed very quickly and there are potential side-effects. And like OP said, the vaccine doesn't necessarily prevent transmission (though in fairness, it must have some effect because it does reduce the viral load). So you're mandating a healthy individual (who may not even be in the at-risk group for COVID either) get inoculated with something that did not follow traditional healthcare protocols for vaccine development, can cause adverse reactions, and doesn't prevent spread.
Are we OK with signing off on that kind of policy without some debate? What complicates it for me is that dissenting opinions from credible virologist and epidemiologists and clinicians is routinely suppressed and blocked by social media right now.
>I'm 100% in favor of requiring vaccines and keeping the antivax crows in a silo, away from the general population.
I know you say that, but you're not because you're never going to fully trust health authorities with your health (remember, health authorities are people and they make mistakes, see what happened in Flint when the State was telling people water was safe to drink when it wasn't).
For example, let's say there are reports[1] of clusters of really major adverse reactions - do you fully trust health authority's guarantees that vaccine is perfectly safe? Are you really really sure this wouldn't be a repeat of the 1970s flue vaccine fiasco - another vaccine that was rushed into production? And again, the context here is also important. There is a higher risk factor associated with this specific vaccine than a traditionally developed one.
[1] Again, social media has decided to editorialize on this point. That is, even if credible reports come out against the vaccine, they will suppress these reports if it goes against health authority guidelines. Which, paradoxically, leads to reduced trust.
The diseases we tend to vaccinate against aren't the common cold, though. They are worse. So much worse. As in, they can be deadly or create lifelong complications in healthy folks. It can be a quick death sentence for compromised folks - much worse than the common cold.
Has anyone here paid for it? How does this work with insurance?
My parents fall into the 65 and older category and can't find a vaccine anywhere local.
It'll be months I suspect before these groups of people get their shots. Then they move into another group and it'll repeat. I don't anticipate getting my shot until summer at the earliest.
The reason I say it's a mess in the US is each state is sort of doing their own thing. And some areas are getting very little vaccine.
What worries me now is the push to get schools open without vaccinating parents.
It's not just the time to get the shot.
I've seen reports (both in the news and from a friend who has been vaccinated) that the second dose frequently triggers really miserable flu symptoms that last a day or so.
I'd be prepared to take a sick day or two.
And it's probably best for a team -- or a family -- to not all get the shots on the same day.
I am two days past my first COVID vaccine dose and still feel lousy, although I can finally lift my arm up ninety degrees now without a lot of pain and the swelling is mostly gone. I'm dreading what Dose #2 will do.
I know, everyone perkily says "That means your immune system has noticed!" but good grief, I often wish they would make vaccine variants without adjuvants.
Data would be better. From what I've read, more severe reactions are extremely rare.
Not data, not a large sample size, but very consistent and from knowledgeable observers.
This is not unusual for some types of vaccines, however my spouse is a medical professional and we know many PAs, nurses, and doctors that have already gotten the vaccine and it does seem that the rebound effects of the vaccine are more severe than other vaccines. That said, they also reported feeling better in 24 hours or less.
[0] https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/expect/af...
[1] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-modern...
We still see <1% of those kinds of reactions to dose 2 though.
Which doesn't give you the flu, but can give you (shorter-lived, milder) flu symptoms, because “flu symptoms” are mostly symptoms of the immune response to the flu.
The article mentions various companies/countries but this does not make any sense to me. Obviously I'm not an expert.
I would not be surprised if this becomes a contentious topic once vaccines are widespread and workplaces, airlines, etc. require proof of vaccination.
“I think it’s an interesting idea but I think it is also fraught with challenges — we are certainly encouraging and motivating people to get vaccinated as quickly as possible but we always know there are people who won’t get vaccinated and not necessarily through a personal or political choice,” Trudeau said during an interview at the Reuters Next Conference.
“There are medical reasons, there are a broad range of reasons why someone might not get vaccinated and I’m worried about creating knock-on, undesirable effects in our community.”
https://globalnews.ca/news/7576955/coronavirus-vaccine-passp...
The honor system will not work!
Whatever institution performed the vaccination could do it.
Of course, if you want it to be forge proof, there are some non trivial issues.
The incentive to forge proof of a COVID vaccine is way higher, and in some jurisdictions there may even be political and/or media cover for doing so (because it's about your "freedom").
These payments to take it might be a form of risk reduction from the companies perspective, as you can get a waiver in return for the payment.
Once they're FDA approved, sure, but none of the vaccines currently being distributed are approved yet so I doubt this will be enforceable for another two or three years.
https://www.fda.gov/emergency-preparedness-and-response/coro...
https://www.fda.gov/emergency-preparedness-and-response/coro...
> Under an EUA, FDA may allow the use of unapproved medical products, or unapproved uses of approved medical products in an emergency to diagnose, treat, or prevent serious or life-threatening diseases or conditions[1]
The difference is that something pushed out under EUA is _not_ FDA approved. So any laws related to approved medicine, devices, vaccines, etc do not apply automatically to EUA products.
[1] https://www.fda.gov/vaccines-blood-biologics/vaccines/emerge...
In the specific case of the COVID-19 vaccines, they are explicitly NOT covered by VICP, but rather the CICP.
[Countermeasures Injury Compensation Program (CICP) | Official web site of the U.S. Health Resources & Services Administration](https://www.hrsa.gov/cicp)
The Wikipedia page does not clarify either: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Vaccine_Injury_Compen...
I’m not commenting about whether or not business should or shouldn’t be shielded from covid liability. I just wanted to make it known that liability of legal costs, from low paid and high paid employees, and poor and rich customers, is a material risk to a business, especially ones that don’t already have lawyers on staff.
If the worker takes fewer overall sick days because they've been vaccinated against the virus, the company benefits by having a more stable workforce than if employees were taking time off to naturally recover from infection.
There's also a legal liability question here -- could an employee sue their employer if they contract COVID-19 at the workplace? I don't think that's been decided conclusively yet.
And for what it's worth, scientists are trying to figure out what kind of vaccine we have -- we just don't know yet, because of how fast this vaccine was developed.
Do we have a "reduce symptoms so people survive the disease" vaccine or do we have a "completely block infection" vaccine? The latter would indeed hamper infection.
This article discusses more: https://www.fredhutch.org/en/news/center-news/2020/12/covid-...
But my amateur understanding is that while there are vaccines that don't fully eliminate transmission, they all do it to some degree, and on average the numbers are quite good.
Happy to be corrected by someone with actual knowledge!
Seems like a pretty easy distinction to me.
And in construction if you refuse PPE your fired
However, the kind of people who do safety for unreasonable employers (usually process driven BigCos, mines and shipyards are good examples) and the kinds of people who's only exposure to industrial environments is the mandatory safety training they took once upon a time for their internship tend to dominate internet discussions about PPE and safety. This results in some real gems of insanity.
Safety culture is super hard to build, taking years of collaboration between management, workers, and unions if applicable. Every group wants nothing more than for the employees to go home the same way they went to work.
Any one time you do a task with less than required PPE, probably nothing will happen. But over the course of a career, those "this one time" instances add up and eventually will cause an injury or death.
The largest demographic experiencing heat issues in the shipyard are younger than 40.
Sure, there can and will always be one-in-a-million outliers. But that's true about anything, including wearing a helmet.
But more importantly, Covid is not the flu, and comparisons start failing pretty quickly. Not only do more people die of Covid, but more people have long-lasting symptoms, life-altering, after their infection.
If you don't want to, don't work for someone that requires it. It might severely limit your employment prospects, but that is your choice (obviously, exceptions should be made for those that cannot get it for medical reasons. They do not have choice).
And there are employers that require flu shots, especially in the healthcare/long term care industries. Hell, many (most?) public schools and universities require certain vaccinations to be allowed to attend.
It's absolutely how it works, because the labor laws we have don't generally prohibit requiring vaccinations, especially where that mitigates danger to yourself, other employees, or the public that come from you doing your job. Lots of jobs require certain vaccinations now.
> If vaccines can be mandated by companies where to draw the line?
Typically, at conditions which unreasonably endanger workers or the public, not ones that protect them.
- require routine drug testing, even for drugs that are legal in your state
- require routine credit checks
- mandate attire standards
- dictate grooming standards
- require employees to routinely expose themselves to hazardous materials
- require travel to hazardous locations
- perform duties that are known to result in serious injury or loss of life
- require vaccines for things like the flu
- require employees to sit still in front of a computer for 8+ hours at a time, for months on end.
The remedy in the US for people who do not like these factors is to not work for employers that have different tolerances for physical safety than does the employee. I don't see how conditioning employment on receiving a vaccination for Covid is materially more dangerous than requiring an employee to work on sea-based drilling rig or in a coal mine.
That said, I do not think that vaccination is an unreasonable requirement.
"Something like Covid" is exactly the sort of disease that should be vaccinated against. The only reason why this is being done at an employer level rather than at a government level is because the federal government under the previous administration plugged its ears and refused to acknowledge the severity of the disease.
I assume they could if they felt it was important enough. And, for all I know, some hospitals may.
We regard our bodies as our own possessions, and something like a vaccination is a potentially irreversible change to our body (etc.).
This is not an argument to say bodily sovereignty shouldn't be "ignored" here, only that it is a different case.
EDIT: anyone want to explain the downvote?
Forced medication is not the same as forced clothing choice so your argument is technically a strawman.
So if your employer wants to require of the people in your team that they know C++, speak Swahili or carry photo ID, that's allowed because not forbidden. But the law does have provisions for religious discrimination (in most countries, perhaps all) so requiring your team to be Pastafarians is out (if that's what the law says, the law might make an exception for the Pastafarian Church).
Requiring vaccines might also be forbidden by your employment contract. But is it? I doubt it.
Your contract also could say "the employer cannot permit you to take paid sick leave if you're ill on the day after a vaccine" or "the employer cannot permit you to get a vaccine on company time" but both sound far-fetched to me.
What about “pep-pills”? Can they require that?
Can they coerce anti-psychotic drugs to those who need this medication to stay balanced?
In a fully remote company, where you never meet customers, vendors or other employees, requiring vaccination might be viewed by a court as unrelated to the work. If you're supposed to meet customers or other employees and there's a pandemic going on, though...
They can't require things that have unknown medical impact, so random pills out.
(However, some food items can be mandatory. For example if you're a sporter, you can be required by your employer to take certain supplements.)
Military pilots are also issued "go pills" (dextroamphetamine) for long combat and long single-pilot transit sorties.
There isn’t much you can say ‘No’ to without risking a discharge or courts martial.
I'm sure you could, if you paid the employee for it.
> fluorinated water
How would anyone verify that? Seems like the kind of thing you'd have to go to court to find out if it's legal.
This is actually the more important bit. If your country is so dysfunctional as to not provide free vaccination for this, and the employee is stretched so thinly that they don't have time to get it without losing pay, then both of these are required.
https://www.walgreens.com/topic/pharmacy/healthcare-clinic/p...
And there are vaccine clinics and discounts and blah blah blah. The cost, as in what you pay at the register, is manageable.
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What’s less manageable, and is actually the point in what you quoted, is getting time off to go to the damn clinic. Oh my god, the grocery store is not going to put me on probation for missing a shift to get a shot? And they’re actually going to arrange it so I don’t have to fight my way through public health red tape? That’s the big deal.
Vaccines are free in most Eu countries and the USA... not sure what you’re on about
A lot of people in US retail don’t have sick leave and make very little money. For them taking some unpaid time off to be vaccinated would be a big problem.
Same happens with elections being done on Tuesdays. Many people simply can’t afford to go voting.
Yes they are free and there can be no cost sharing of any kind in the USA - insured and uninsured get if free. Same goes for most countries in the EU.
But I'm worried about the iatrogenic risk of rapid, global vaccine roll-outs. Let's say in a few years someone identifies a virus with a similar threat profile to SARS-Cov-2. QUICK, vaccinate everyone... PHEW, dodged another lockdown/recession. Repeat, over and over, with ever greater efficiency. Until one day half the planet dies from some side effect.
Unfortunately, waiting to see if the vaccine has long term side effects means that we would not get the health benefits of a widespread rollout.
Tough situation. Vaccination is probably the way to go.
Any option involving contracting the disease or being administered the vaccine has unknowable long term risks; and it's foolish to argue otherwise. That doesn't mean you can't argue about short and medium term risks; but if someone is worried about long term risks, pointing to the months of studies doesn't help at all.
Given the known short and medium term risks, vaccination seems like a good plan, at least where there is community spread. In areas where the disease is controlled, the unknowable long term risks dominate, IMHO, and would make it a harder decision. Of course, lack of supply moots that question for now, there's more than enough people to vaccinate in areas with major caseload, so we don't have to think about vaccinations in places that are under control.
Mind you there is no scientific reason it should do this, so why is my mind trying to make the worst possible scenarios?
>Until one day half the planet dies from some side effect.
While intent to get vaccinated is at least rising, it’s still only 60% [1]. The anti-vaxxers are out in full force over this one. Combined with the existing public skepticism about COVID, I think we are going to find it difficult to get enough people vaccinated without providing some kind of an incentive. We are going to have to fight fake vaccination cards, and more strongly fight fake medical exemptions from doctors [2]. We are going to see surpluses of the vaccine going to waste because states can’t find enough people in later “tiers” willing to vaccinate.
1: https://www.pewresearch.org/science/2020/12/03/intent-to-get...
2: https://www.physiciansweekly.com/california-passes-laws-to-r...
If each vaccine provider had a digital certificate signed by the relevant health authorities and then that was signed by a root US gov cert that everybody could download the public cert for, it would be virtually impossible to produce a fake one, and it would be pretty obvious which provider had faked the records.
We could even burn the entire system once enough people have been vaccinated, by publishing the secret key of the root cert.
so $100 for potentially serious consequences . sounds like a poor deal.
I always thought linking the vaccination to the stimulus or federal legislation of Marijuana would have been great for the economy. Sad it didn't gain more traction.
(Not an anti-vaxer and I'll be getting the vaccine as soon as I'm able, if that context matters.)
What? I'm not following vaccine news closely.