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Comment by odshoifsdhfs | Hacker News Reader

I work remotely even before Covid. I am also vaccinated.

I would quit if this was mandated on me. My country already has vaccine 'passports' for certain activities, and while I am fully vaccinated and support vaccines in general, I fully oppose vaccine mandates/passports and refuse to do any activity that requires it. I guess if in the future to go to the supermarket to buy food I might show my passport as the alternative is to starve, I am 100% against this and will as much as I can, remove myself from civilisation if this the path we move towards to.

(ps: also no FB, IG, twitter, bla bla blah before someone says X or Y are tracking me already)

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Why? You provided no rationale for this position. Do you have a drivers license in your country? Mandated insurance? Pay taxes? It's the price we pay for having such large populations in societies - we all have to sometimes do things that we might not want for the betterment of the society we live in.

Are you ok with going to a bar and showing you don't have HIV so in case you hook up with someone you won't spread it?

Or to go to a restaurant and prove you have a flu vaccine?

Or tuberculosis exam as it also spreads via the air from an infected person?

What about if you haven't been able to get the vaccine (like my girlfriend which she is stuck in a fucking bureaucratic limbo due to most public services not working due to.. well guess what, COVID lockdowns) and not being able to be part of everyday life?

And I really dislike the 'well we have mandatory things already, so why not this also?' way of thinking. If now to enter a restaurant we required a rectal exam, it should be ok right? you already have a driving license so we should be able to ask anything else based on that alone

> And I really dislike the 'well we have mandatory things already, so why not this also?' way of thinking.

You've literally employed that thinking in your rebuttal.

"We don't have to do X, Y, Z. So why this also?"

The 'well we have mandatory things already, so why not this also?' is what you are using to argue against the vaccine. I think a little nuanced thinking goes a long way when comparing all of the examples you proposed.

Please note I am not arguing against the vaccine. I am fully vaccinated. I am against limiting parts of society to people that haven't been vaccinated no matter the reason why. There is a big difference (I have all my vaccines, my son also has all his vaccines, and he may or may not get the covid vaccine depending on the recommendations for his age group).

You are arguing against the vaccine, because the goal of vaccination is eradication through collective immunity.

Whether you're vaccinated matters to you.

Whether everyone is vaccinated matters to everyone.

> Are you ok with going to a bar and showing you don't have HIV so in case you hook up with someone you won't spread it?

That's an absurd comparison considering HIV doesn't spread by simply being in a room with someone who is infected. Also, I'm guessing that you're unaware that in many countries there are laws against knowingly exposing someone to HIV without disclosing it to them. https://www.aidsmap.com/about-hiv/hiv-criminalisation-laws-a...

A law against spreading infections diseases (HIV, Flu or even covid) exist in many places (my country for example). Hard to prove in court, but the law is there. The principle is, are you ok with having to show a passport for a vaccine to be part of normal society to reduce the risk of catching/spreading a disease.

from CDC:

CDC estimates that the burden of illness during the 2018–2019 season included an estimated 35.5 million people getting sick with influenza, 16.5 million people going to a health care provider for their illness, 490,600 hospitalizations, and 34,200 deaths from influenza (Table 1)

Now, I am not saying that covid is just the flu, but 34k deaths in 2018 from the flu. Does this number also justify having flu shot mandates/passports? Or is it only if it is 340k deaths? 3.4 million deaths? 3k deaths is enough? I heard at a time some people saying 'if it saves only one life, it is worth it' so I wonder how much they will also do for all these other deaths.

>Now, I am not saying that covid is just the flu, but 34k deaths in 2018 from the flu. Does this number also justify having flu shot mandates/passports? Or is it only if it is 340k deaths? 3.4 million deaths? 3k deaths is enough? I heard at a time some people saying 'if it saves only one life, it is worth it' so I wonder how much they will also do for all these other deaths.

That's disingenuous and you know it. There wasn't a global effort to contain recent flu strains like there has been with covid. In 2018 working from home was not the norm. People weren't wearing masks and isolating from others. Concerts, movies, restaurants, fairs, etc... weren't shut down. The global economy wasn't halted. Even with all of that being enforced due to covid there were still 375k deaths in the US in 2020, which is 11x greater than the 34k flu deaths in 2018.

If you want to see what happens when you let covid run its course without interference, especially in an area with a low population density, look no further than Sweden. Their (mostly) laissez faire approach resulted in a death rate that was up to 10x greater than neighboring countries. https://www.businessinsider.com/sweden-covid-no-lockdown-str...

Context matters a lot for whatever I will be for or against a vaccine mandate (full disclosure, I'm for covid vaccine mandates for tech workers to return to the office). Here are the points I consider when determining whether I support a given mandate.

- Have mandates been effective in the past? Yes. We eliminated polio and smallpox, in part due to mandates in the US. - Is the activity required for a reasonable person to be able to live? If so, I'm generally against a mandate. E.g. I wouldn't support mandates for going grocery shopping. I'm ok with them for bars. - Can I take reasonable precautions as an individual to ensure I don't get infected without a vaccine? For covid, not really. I'm reliant on everyone else either not having it, out properly wearing a mask. For your HIV example, I can easily choose to not have unprotected sex with someone until we are both tested, or I can roll the dice. The decision and consequences are controllable by me as an individual. With covid, I can do everything right and still get sick buying groceries because someone else acted irresponsibly. - What is the risk of the virus vs. effectiveness of the vaccine? The flu is significantly less infectious and less lethal. The flu vaccine is far less effective than the covid vaccine. Those three facts make a flu vaccine mandate less pressing and less effective. When our hospitals can be easily overrun, then it's pressing. There were days in Oregon where you couldn't get an ICU bed if you got into a bad accident because of the number of COVID-19 patients. That's terrifying and entirely preventable

You're not allowed into certain countries without relevant vaccinations.

There are also many countries where kids aren't allowed into schools without a standard set of vaccinations - because the alternative is literally horrific.

When did so many people become narcissists who just can't even with the very real truth that the public good is vitally important and absolute freedom cannot exist without terrible consequences.

If this attitude had been common when polio vaccination became available there would be literally millions of crippled kids clanking around the country in leg calipers or suffocating slowly in iron lungs.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/09/us/politics/vaccine-manda...

I am not american so not sure why this reply is supposed to mean anything. While highly encouraged, vaccines aren't even mandatory here and you can refuse any vaccine and still legally allowed to do anything (school, university, healthcare worker, etc)

They are in the US and pre-COVID many schools and occupations (esp. healthcare) had requirements as well.

>I am not american so not sure why this reply is supposed to mean anything.

Does not being American affect your ability to read? I'm not Asian but I understand why many cultures have long ago adopted the widespread use of masks to prevent spreading illness.

No, it hasn't, but just posting an article how in the US before there was a vaccine mandate adds nothing to the discussion. Many countries never had them (and the world isn't only the US), and even if the US or other country has done this before, doesn't mean it is right to do so now.

>No, it hasn't, but just posting an article how in the US before there was a vaccine mandate adds nothing to the discussion

Of course it doesn't further the discussion when you refuse to acknowledge it in the first place. I'll just copy and paste what I wrote again because you ignored it the first time.

>Does not being American affect your ability to read? I'm not Asian but I understand why many cultures have long ago adopted the widespread use of masks to prevent spreading illness.

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