IBM and airlines won’t comply with Texas governor’s ban on vaccine mandates
arstechnica.com
arstechnica.com
The shareholders should fire every single person who is pushing these policies, if they want to retain their best talent. Why are flight attendants being treated like pets or animals while some fat cat boss on an island somewhere sips on expensive wine and laughs?
Your right to swing your fist ends at my face. If you want to work with people, you have to take reasonable measures not to harm them.
An employer that is willing to tell me to come in to work with people who refuse to get vaccinated is one that doesn't care about my well-being, and one I don't want to work for.
What is this narrative we’re pushing today? You’re acting like by not taking the vaccine, they’re directly violating people who did take it. How do you square that circle?
P.S. I’m vaccinated. I’m also not worried about being around people who aren’t.
Vaccines and masks work, but they aren't 100% effective. The effectiveness of vaccines is far higher if everyone who can be vaccinated is, as the protective effect is multiplicative.
There are people who can't be vaccinated, or who are at higher risk, and people who are just unlucky. They don't have a choice. They are affected by other's choices. The "personal responsibility" narrative is nonsense when it comes to communicable diseases.
If seatbelts were as effective as vaccines are supposed to be, then that comparison would start holding water. Instead of a seatbelt, you should use the foam crash deployment from Demolition Man as your example. I can’t wait until that’s available.
Oddly enough I’ve been hit by a drunk driver. He endangered my life by drinking well beyond his limits and operating a motorvehicle, and then making a massive mistake by running a red light and t-boning me. That has no similarity to someone unvaccinated breathing next to me. Based on what I’ve read someone could be vaccinated, and still infect me with a “breakthrough case”. So all I can do is protect myself using the tools available. If the tools don’t work, well, the unvaccinated might be just as doomed as I am.
Of course there is always a risk, virtually nothing in this world is a guarantee, that doesn't mean all risks are equal. The vaccine works, but it isn't 100%. Acting like that means we shouldn't bother is weird.
I had covid, it was like a really bad flu. I got vaccinated because I wanted to travel, and the adenovirus vector didn’t seem that risky. Why would I push that choice on someone else given what I know first-hand of the disease?
This is not the only outcome of getting COVID-19.
* fatigue * memory problems sleep disturbances shortness of breath * anxiety and depression * general pain and discomfort difficulty thinking or concentrating posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD)
https://www.canada.ca/en/public-health/services/diseases/201...
An example of an otherwise healthy person in excellent shape who is likely to have to face a career-ending post COVID life:
https://nationalpost.com/news/an-anti-vaxxer-edmonton-oiler-...
You're right, it's not like polio. In 1952, the worst polio outbreak in US history caused 3,145 deaths and 21,269 cases of paralysis (of varying levels) (ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_polio#Epidemics). In the last roughly-year-and-a-half, COVID-19 has caused 716,370 reported deaths (ref: https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#cases_casesper100k..., but it'll probably be higher by the time you check).
So COVID has been killing people at over 100x the rate of polio at its worst.
Also, polio didn't overload the capacity of the healthcare system the same way COVID keeps doing. This causes consequences for people without COVID who need access to healthcare.
>I had covid, it was like a really bad flu.
COVID has highly variable symptoms; taking your particular experience as typical is a mistake. In a lot of cases, COVID is asymptomatic. In another lot, it's roughly like yours. In a smaller, but still significant fraction, it's much more serious, involving hospitalization. (Also, something like half of symptomatic cases involve ongoing "long COVID" symptoms.) In an even smaller, but again still significant (see above) fraction, it's fatal.
People can understand them. When your everyman sees 99% of people doing fine pre-and-post covid, you can't ask them to have the same fear of the disease. It's unreasonable for you to to do so.
I think that asking a bunch of "chimps with logic" to be rational actors when they're being fomented by propaganda/half-truths/conspiracy theories is unreasonable. At the very least, I believe it will lead to your disappointment.
In my mind, this applies to the people that are hyper pro and hyper against getting vaccinated for covid.
The symptoms of COVID 19 are not always flu like. It is a spectrum of symptoms which is not yet understood why it expresses in different bodies differently.
During the Second wave in India a lot of my friends and acquaintances got it and their symptoms were all over the place. Some had diarrhea like symptoms, some had no visible symptoms at all, some simply lost the ability to smell and became physically weak.
Knowing this information, trying to be safe from COVID by catching it is no less than playing Russian roulette and it makes choosing to take a vaccine no brainer.
I can keep taking boosters, keep wearing masks, keep trying to stay healthy. That has nothing to do with people (who are not me) doing whatever they want with their situation.
Vaccines work when a significant part of the population has them, if workplaces and schools can institute vaccine mandates against diseases like Diphtheria, Measles, Rubella etc. Why should a disease much more infectious than them not get a mandate?
For a stark example see this thread https://twitter.com/benshapiro/status/571113104920027136?t=r...
If someone has access to the vaccine in their area and have not taken it yet for any reason other than a medical reason should really do some proper "research" and get it ASAP.
As a vaccinated person, why you should care or not other people get vaccinated or not?
1. Less reservoirs for viruses to mutate into more harmful strains.
2. There are people who are immunocompromised , who cannot take vaccines . They are protected by those who are healthy and have been vaccinated.
3. >90% of all recent COVID deaths in the US have been of unvaccinated persons. A non trivial percent of the vaccinated dead by COVID were immunocompromised who were infected by unvaccinated folks.
If these reasons cannot convince you, I don't know what can.
I'm sorry for your relations that caught it, but my question was rhetorical. Using unvaccinated people's suffering doesn't help the argument that we should force people to get vaccinated against their will, if the vaccines work for people who want to take them.
If you suffer when you are unvaccinated-by-choice, then that is on you.
> 1. Less reservoirs for viruses to mutate into more harmful strains.
As opposed to the population that has taken the vaccine, but is still capable of catching it due to "break through cases"? Wouldn't a "leaky" vaccine cause more mutation due to evolutionary pressure than people catching it and building immunity?
> 2. There are people who are immunocompromised , who cannot take vaccines . They are protected by those who are healthy and have been vaccinated.
Why are they "protected", and the people who aren't vaccinated by choice not "protected"?
> 3. >90% of all recent COVID deaths in the US have been of unvaccinated persons. A non trivial percent of the vaccinated dead by COVID were immunocompromised who were infected by unvaccinated folks.
What happens when an vaccinated person has a break through case and gives it to an unvaccinated person who is immunocompromised?
> If these reasons cannot convince you, I don't know what can.
I'm not convinced. This seems more like an ethics litany than a reason we should a) create two classes of citizenry (the vaccinated and the unvaccinated) or b) violate people's body autonomy "for their own good".
That appears to be a talking point that was just invented on the spot.
No, vaccines don't have any kind of multiplicative effect. How would that work? That isn't what herd immunity means (or are we still not supposed to talk about that concept? I can't keep track). Herd immunity doesn't change the effectiveness of the vaccine for those who took it, it's only meant to be of benefit to people who don't (can't/won't) take it.
Especially there cannot be any such effect from a 100% leaky vaccines that have already entirely stopped protecting people against infection - see the UK stats for proof.
2. They ignore the science by not recognizing that the vaccinated also transmit Covid.
3. They are unjust because they do not recognize some people declined the second Covid shot after a bad reaction to the first and are therefore considered unvaccinated.
2) This point makes no sense. Yes, of course they can, but at hugely reduced rates. Something not being perfect doesn't mean it isn't valuable or necessary. Seatbelts are not perfect, but they are mandatory because they save lives.
3) If someone has a medical issue with the vaccine, they are exempt from every mandate I have ever seen. If that is not the case, then change the mandate. It's not an inherent issue with the concept. They are the very people who most need mandates, as the people who cannot have it themselves need as many others to be vaccinated as possible.
https://www.quebec.ca/en/health/health-issues/a-z/2019-coron...
"you received a first dose of a COVID-19 vaccine (Pfizer, Moderna, AstraZeneca, or Covishield) at least 21 days after contracting COVID-19 (confirmed by a nucleic acid amplification test) and it has been at least 7 days since you received this dose;"
2. The jury is still arguing this one, but another aspect is that the more people who gets vaccinated, the lesser they risk going into the ICU and overloading the healthcare system.
3. There's a reason why they ask you to stay after getting the vaccine, to take you in charge of a medical emergency in case of an adverse reaction. That applies with any other vaccine, and if the first reaction is severe enough (according to a professional), they'll receive a proper exemption.
Alternatively, order them to stop operating in Texas. If an airline breaks ranks, they'll enjoy a monopoly in the state and will be able to comfortably triple its ticket prices with no competition. Meanwhile the others will bleed like mad, scrambling to get their planes out and move their HQ.