Nearly 1,900 Washington state employees quit, fired over vaccine mandate | Hacker News Reader

Nearly 1,900 Washington state employees quit, fired over vaccine mandate

thehill.com

Being fully vaccinated I'm still concerned about the precedent of making a medical procedure a requirement for employment. Almost two years of working remote might lead one to think that accommodation was possible but willfully ignored.

It's not like this is anything new.

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2021/09/08/vaccine-ma...

I wonder if there will be successful discrimination lawsuits. I'm kind of frightened at the precedent being set here. I've heard all the "prior precedent" but fail to see it matching the scale of whats happening here.

“Discrimination” lawsuits would be like lawsuits from people that didn’t pay their taxes because they think taxes are unconstitutional.

As I understand it, someone has to be a member of some "protected class" to sue over discrimination. I'm guessing that the protected classes vary based on the issue.

I sincerely doubt that "anti-vaxxer" is a protected class. I'm guessing that some suits will be filed, and those filing the suit will have to come up with membership in a protected class, otherwise the suit will be tossed for lack of standing. The suits that don't get tossed will be decided on the basis of "are you really in that protected class". That's a dual-edged sword. Make it super-easy to claim religious group membership? You've just made it super-easy for peace churches to really go after registering for selective service.

How about people who, for one reason or another, can't get vaccinated for medical reasons?

Sure, in any reasonable system, they would be exempt from the requirement. But were they? If not, they almost certainly have legitimate grounds for a suit.

And it doesn't have to be a discrimination suit. It can be a suit alleging, for example, unreasonable requirements for employment. (Do you have to be vaccinated for measles to be employed by Washington? How about influenza? If not, then what's the rationale for requiring Covid and not the others?)

> legitimate grounds for a suit

Ah, must be nice living in 2018. I remember those days in the Before Times.

There is literally no group that needs to be exempted for medical reasons. Name one. Either way the whole thing allows for medical exemptions.

I'm guessing recently transplanted people. I say 'recently' because my spouse was vaccinated, was on priority list, and she takes immunosuppressors, w/ a 20yo liver transplant. Some people going through chemo? I'm probably missing some cases.

Also pregnant women for a while. But realistically none of those people are actively working and there are real medical exemptions anyway.

Yes, none of those should have to work... And it's the case... in civilized countries.

Well at least for Pfizer I know those with a rare PEG allergy can’t have it. Not sure about the other vaccines. But yeah it’s actually very rare with these vaccines to find someone with a genuine medical reason for exemption.

The article says that 3% of employees are not vaccinated, but have an accommodation. So there must be a way for people who cannot be vaccinated to continue working.

> unreasonable requirements for employment

A pandemic that killed >700,000 Americans probably makes vaccination a reasonable requirement. It also varies by job — some state jobs probably do require MMR or Hepatitis vaccinations.

This death number constantly trotted out is such misinformation.

The vast majority of those people died from morbidities at exactly the age they were expected to.

They admitted plenty of times that any positive test within a month of death means the death is regarded as a covid death.

Plus hospitals have monetary incentives to record these covid deaths.

The excess death rate, adjusted for population age, was almost negligible in 2020

I'm genuinely surprised at the excess deaths number? Can you square your "no excess deaths" vs this data from CDC?

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm

> Plus hospitals have monetary incentives to record these covid deaths

Hospitals have been deferring elective procedures, which are big revenue and profit drivers, due to COVID. I doubt this has been a huge moneymaker for them

> As I understand it, someone has to be a member of some "protected class" to sue over discrimination.

Everyone is member of a protected class as everyone has a race, nationality, sex, gender, sexual orientation, religion or lack of it, family status, etc.

But to have a claim, you need to show that you were discriminated against because of your protected class. Vaccination Status is not one of those

I agree, I'm just pointing out that protected classes apply to everyone, and not just some minorities.

92% of employees are vaccinated. The % who quit or were terminated over the mandate is 3%:

> A separate 3 percent of employees, 1,887, have left their jobs or were terminated as part of the mandate.

Vax policies are finally giving us the smaller gov’t so many administrations have failed to do.

per the article, those positions will be filled.

They will try to fill them. Washington State is having a bit of a hard time hiring right now given the current worker shortage and state pay steadily losing ground against private sector pay.

Anti-vaxxers tend to be Republicans too. Finally putting their money where there mouth when it comes to smaller government.

With natural immunity showing a better robustness response than the vaccines, I wonder if they had exemptions for that.

source?

First page of google...

https://ncrc.jhsph.edu/research/comparing-sars-cov-2-natural...

https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research-matters/lasting...

etc.

So breakthrough infections are more likely for people who have been vaccinated vs people who have already caught SARS-CoV-2 and developed natural immunity. Interesting.

Still a good idea to get vaccinated to fight / reduce risk of infection.

If only getting vaccinated prevented getting infected...

It is a good idea in the abstract, but ignoring that natural immunity is better is extremely expensive.

This is an absurd position.

Vaccination isn't just a good idea in the abstract, it is a good idea (for public health) in the real world.

Natural immunity is not better just because it correlates to a lower breakthrough infection rate than vaccination immunity. If you choose the natural immunity path, you're subjecting yourself (and others) to higher risk of death and health problems.

Possibly, but it might be better to focus on vaccinating the poor and bringing their immunity to 90% from 0% than mandating a rich person improve from 96% to 97% or get fired :) (this is where I think you might be misunderstanding, I’m not saying we should use natural immunity as a strategy for the 0% as you imply)

Mostly agree, but I think both (vaccinating poor + public service vaccination requirements) can be part of a holistic public health strategy.

This is the ideal case, but that assumes a public health system people can trust.

Preferring natural immunity to sensible precautions including vaccines is extremely costly in terms of human life.

But when people on an aircraft carrier of double-vaccinated personnel get COVID, does the vaccine really work better than natural immunity?

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-57830617

It reduces the spread, and greatly reduces the risk of death and hospitalization. It's not 100% effective, and that's never been the point. It's not like the "natural method" is 100% effective at preventing infection, either.

The "natural method" provides protection against variants, whereas the vaccine needs boosters to protect against the variants.

The vaccines have stood up pretty well against variants, when looking at hospitalization and death rates. The "natural method" has much higher rates of both. Boosters aren't being universally applied almost anywhere, and people getting hospitalized in places with big waves right now are mostly unvaccinated. Maybe you like mass graves and overcrowded hospitals, but the rest of us are getting vaccines.

Not what I'm seeing. I'll stick with the pureblood crowd.

https://theswedenpost.com/most-covid-deaths-in-sweden-and-uk...

https://nypost.com/2021/10/06/sweden-suspends-moderna-vaccin...

Where do they think they will work next? Can they really not see how universal these mandates are becoming? Lifelong unemployment just to prove a point?

For myself the resolution is suicide, if they come after me. I never though I gather enough courage, but I learned something about myself, and, sadly, about people around. With little goodies I acquired during endless lockdown there isn't more than couple years for me left anyways. So, fail hard, fail quickly is the only option. Hope you all rejoice and will live forever. After all, your sweet percentage will go up.

Hi there, you replied to a post I made a little while back. Your reply has touched a lot of the people I know and it's really strengthened the resolve of many of the people I know in my community. I hope you are OK with me having shared a screenshot of it; I could not bare to let your words go unread by those fighting against these terroristic mandates against the people.

Please hang in there and know that there are a lot of others like you out there as well. There is a groundswell that will be taking place.

I know I should mourn the loss of jobs but I just love this so much.

Hey, those people either quit outright, or were informed multiple times about the consequences of inaction. It's their choice, not really a loss of jobs.

The jobs are still there.

Good point. This just gets better and better.

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