Hacker News Reader

Comment by jakebasile | Hacker News Reader

I too think it's great when an employer with all the power forces employees to submit to medical procedures against their will in order to continue earning a living.

My body my choice, right?

Wow, I've never gotten a comment flagged in my years of being here, let alone within minutes! Good to see this a fruitful unbiased discussion forum.

View on HN

Yes, your body your choice, and also your employer your choice.

I prefer to flip the script here: none of your coworkers chose to be subjected to someone who is unvaccinated, increasing their risk.

What other characteristics is it ok to use to determine who can earn a living or not?

Employers decide that about literally all the characteristics in the hiring process and all the conditions of continued employment. You may don't think it's ok that they get to fire you if you violate the "acceptable use" conditions of their information security policy either, but that doesn't actually matter. Since abiding by the acceptable use terms is (almost always) a condition of continued employment they can and will.

Literally all characteristics? I think there are some which are protected by law and generally considered not cool to discriminate on. I'm just asking which ones are ok to discriminate on since apparently submission to medical procedures is one of the good ones.

I wonder how people would feel if an employer required other medical treatments, or the inverse: if an employee had a medical procedure the employer doesn't like.

Also, I'd like to clarify that your comparing a company requiring a medical procedure to be performed on all employees bodies to an acceptable use policy telling employees not to use Facebook on their company machine, right?

Vaccines have been required for public schools (with government compelled attendance) for decades. This is nothing new.

For years employers discriminated against people for reasons that are now illegal and considered uncool at best. Just because something is legal doesn't mean it is morally right or just.

If you want to get on the leftist anti-wage-slavery train you are welcome to join us, but I suspect that the number of antivaxx folks who are willing to actually make that leap is low.

This is a bad faith argument. Nowhere did I say, or even imply, you cannot earn a living. You can choose to work for someone who will not require it, such as a company who is remote-first, if this is a problem for you.

There is no bad faith argument from me. I'm simply asking what characteristics of an employee are acceptable to use to determine if they should be fired. What medical procedures can they choose to have?

Their company, their choice.

As an employee, I would very much enjoy the freedom _from_ COVID-19.

If you're vaccinated, and the vaccine works, how does an unvaccinated person endanger you so greatly that you feel the need to discriminate against them?

The variants all come from unvaccinated people. With enough time, a vaccine resistant variant could come around and infect vaccinated folks who are forced to be around you.

"The variants all come from unvaccinated people." This is not necessarily correct. It's clear by now that none of the widely available SARS-CoV-2 vaccines (or maybe none at all) prevent infection by the virus. [1] discusses the role of vaccination in immune escape.

[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41579-021-00573-0

So if a company wants to take the other side here and say they only want to work with unvaccinated people, would that be ok too?

What if an employer decided not to employ anyone who had received a different medical procedure, such as a splenectomy?

If unvaccinated employees can just find other jobs, why can't vaccinated employees just find other jobs?

> So if a company wants to take the other side here and say they only want to work with unvaccinated people, would that be ok too?

Sure but outside of politically charged reasons, I can’t see why they would care. It doesn’t pose any danger to them. Same for below.

> If unvaccinated employees can just find other jobs, why can't vaccinated employees just find other jobs?

They can, if they find themselves at a company that somehow targets those who get vaccinated. It would then be great to make it well known that such company is hostile towards public health and science in general. Can’t imagine they would last long as a business with the type of staff they retain.

Less of this argument please. I would not like companies to have the choice to fire racial minorities just because it is "their company, their choice".

Edit: Protected classes is a legal term and is irrelevant to the topic here. If your argument can be used to support a statement or action that you consider incorrect or immoral then it is not a good argument. After all "Their company, their choice." has in fact been used in the past in order to discriminate against minorities.

But feel free to replace "racial minorities" with a non-protected class such as "blonde people".

Edit2: "You can choose to be vaccinated (minus the obvious medical exceptions), you can't choose your minority status."

This is again irrelevant to the topic. I am arguing against the hypocritical "their company, their choice" argument. This new argument is even worse because similarly one can say the disgusting "you can choose to bleach your skin if your company does not like black people".

Minorities are a protected class. That argument has no bearing at all on this subject.

You can choose to be vaccinated (minus the obvious medical exceptions), you can't choose your minority status.

Of course you can, a minority is determined by population. There are other populations to move to where any given human would no longer be in the minority.

This is the same argument being presented here: the employees can just choose to work for another employer.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com