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Comment by ceejayoz | Hacker News Reader

Perhaps we were too lackadaisical about flu.

I've certainly enjoyed not getting the usual bouts of cold and flu my kids would bring home from school every winter.

I hope at least one lesson we take from COVID is "people should be able to take sick days rather than coming to work/school sick".

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People can do that, stay home when sick. Then they just have fewer vacation days. At least, that's how it works for me. I suppose we could think of it as an incentive to remain healthy.

Sick time should be separate from vacation time for that reason. Otherwise, people have an incentive to come into work while sick so that they can use their paid time off for holidays and vacation when they aren’t ill.

On the other hand, I guess there are some people who when given a separate bank of sick time feel it’s ok to use it as a 2nd pool of PTO. My workplace gives a separate set of sick time though and it’s always seemed a better way of handling things to me.

For office workers, the whole remote experiment of the last year seems to be the equilibrium. You can still "come to work" even if you feel like death, you're just allowed to do it from home until you're not contagious.

That's quite a privileged perspective. Many low wage, non-union workers don't have that flexibility.

> People can do that, stay home when sick. Then they just have fewer vacation days.

I experienced that too, when I lived in the US.

In Denmark I have separate sick leave. Staying home sick doesn't count as PTO. For more than a few days I'll need a note from the doctor.

I think it's around 6 months before sick leave is grounds for termination.

In any case, in the US people don't take sick days unless it's really bad. Obviously, this must cause more infections.

It’s perfectly fine for that to be ones risk tolerance and to take mitigation steps. It’s not to mandate them by government fiat.

We've been quite comfortable with vaccine mandates for decades. My kids needed proof of MMR, DTaP, and several others to be able to attend school. Colleges have similar requirements. Hand washing is mandated "by government fiat" in many scenarios, as are quite a few other OHSA or public health scenarios - try working on a construction site without a hard hat, for example.

In 2019 or earlier, when have you had to show an ID and proof of vaccination to enter any building other than your own house? And for schools, didn't you used to have private schools or homeschooling as an option to avoid these kind of mandates? And hard hats aren't really comparable, since you can take them back off at the end of the workday.

> In 2019 or earlier, when have you had to show an ID and proof of vaccination to enter any building other than your own house?

I live in upstate New York - one of the more aggressive states for COVID measures - and have not yet had to do this, a year and a half into the pandemic.

(I did, however, have to prove my vaccination status and present ID when I became a naturalized US citizen quite a few years ago. https://www.uscis.gov/policy-manual/volume-8-part-b-chapter-...)

> And for schools, didn't you used to have private schools or homeschooling as an option to avoid these kind of mandates?

These still exist.

> These still exist.

But they don't get you out of the mandates anymore. Adults who already finished school used to never have to tell anyone their vaccination status to participate in society.

Again, I literally had to prove my vaccination status to be allowed to stay in the US. In 2009… and I’ve yet to present my COVID card anywhere in upstate NY.

Non-citizens do not have the right of citizens, you might have known already, but one can be denied the green card and/or not allowed into the country for having a communicable disease like AIDS or TB. If I follow your logic, it's okay to have AIDS, TB, leprosy, etc. passports too?

> If I follow your logic, it's okay to have AIDS, TB, leprosy, etc. passports too?

If they start spreading exponentially via aerosols, sure.

But people with AIDS are not allowed into the country already, why you add conditions? Does the Constitution say anything about aerosols? Besides, TB spreads with the aerosols so we should have the BCG vaccine mandates, right?

It's fairly obvious that TB is not spreading like COVID does in the United States. If it were, restrictions would be sensible. (I would note that if you have TB, you may wind up subject to a quarantine order. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/tb-patient-quarantine-condition...)

Constitutionally, SCOTUS has ruled on the point in the past. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacobson_v._Massachusetts

> Jacobson v. Massachusetts, 197 U.S. 11 (1905), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court upheld the authority of states to enforce compulsory vaccination laws. The Court's decision articulated the view that individual liberty is not absolute and is subject to the police power of the state.

You argued that the rules applied to foreigners should be applied to the citizens. Right now foreigners with TB, AIDS and many other diseases are not allowed in the country. The question for you: is it okay to deport citizens with the same diseases? If the same rules apply then we should be doing this but as we obviously don't do this, this means the rules for foreigners are different. I am sure you can find the court cases confirming that.

Not entirely true. Certain classes of jobs, like working in health care, have always mandated vaccination. Additionally, when most vaccines are given in childhood, making sure everyone is vaccinated in grade school has the effect of ensuring that most adults are vaccinated. No need to keep re-checking throughout life.

I’m referring to masks. Mandating vaccines is fine and good.

So you are ok with injecting things into peoples bodies, by force.

But covering the nose and mouth, when around others, is beyond the pale?

Yes, because I’ve gotten vaccinated and I shouldn’t be continued to be punished with restrictions.

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