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Comment by md8z | Hacker News Reader

I'm not sure if you're saying this is your opinion, but just to be clear: Vaccine mandates are not coercive, the vaccine is not experimental, and vaccines in general are not gene therapy.

To elaborate: You can consider work vaccine mandates to be similar to any other job requirement. The COVID vaccines have received a huge amount of studies and trials. And "gene therapy" usually refers to use of things like CRISPR-Cas9 or other methods of delivering DNA into the cell which are able to modify genes. mRNA vaccines do not modify genes. (I'm not a biologist so you should ask one if you want more information on this)

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>> mandates are not coercive

Wait, hold on. That's an actual argument you are making and not satire?

"Mandates are not coercive", that's a thought that actually went through your head and you thought, "Hmm, that sounds like a reasonable argument"?

Please read my follow up responses where I explain it further. Also your comment doesn't really have anything substantial in it that I can respond to, you may want to note these parts of the HN guidelines:

"Be kind. Don't be snarky. Have curious conversation; don't cross-examine. Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community."

"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."

The strongest plausible interpretation of "mandates are not coercive" is very weak.

Please see my explanations in the follow up responses where I give a stronger interpretation, thanks. Best of luck.

It's not my opinion, it's a fact that;

Mandates are coercive by definition, that's the entire point of them, putting whatever magical word in front of them you like doesn't change that.

The medication to which the "Vaccine mandates" refer is not the same as traditional inactivated virus vaccines, and before this whole fiasco started, was always referred to as what it actually is which is gene therapy.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4817894/

It doesn't matter how great or how well tested these things are, or how reasonable it is to take them, and that I will acknowledge goes into the realm of opinion and given how polluted that discussion is with political barracking yeah I'm not interested in having it at all, the simple underlying fact that they are actually coercive experimental gene therapy is exactly that, pure fact, not opinion at all.

I would not say anything you've said is facts, they're just incorrect statements. (Sorry to be blunt.) You're saying it's coercive when they're part of a job requirement? No, I explained this farther down. Please check my other post, thanks. If your presence being there is going to cause the company's insurance rates to rise to the point where they can't afford you anymore, then they're going to dismiss you. That's unfortunately the way it's been at a lot of companies I've seen for a very long time, for many other things besides vaccines as well.

Also that paper seems to suggest that mRNA could generally be used as a component in gene therapy. It does not say that mRNA vaccines are gene therapy. You're getting several things mixed up. Let me know if you want clarification, or if you want some helping finding a biologist or doctor who could answer more of your questions. But mRNA vaccines are probably not "coercive experimental gene therapy" unless you really want to stretch that definition.

IMHO making something part of job requirements is coercing, definitely. You may argue that the coercion is justified (just as many other mandates in job requirements coercing employees to do something they might not want to do) but it clearly is coercion, and it seems quite ridiculous to deny that the mandate was made with the intent to coerce people to vaccinate.

I would not say anything you've said is facts, they're just incorrect statements.

If you believe so then it would help to demonstrate why. Otherwise let me know if you want some clarification on what I said, thanks.

Because the definition of coercion doesn't change when you put a bunch of qualifiers in front of it and say it's for the greater good. It's still coercion. Sometimes coercion is necessary, psychopaths will kill random people absent coercion not to do so for example, but it's still coercion that stops them from doing so.

Your objection basically boils down to "I don't like the way 'coercive experimental gene therapy' makes what my team is presently doing sound like". That's not an argument, it's just an attempt to force people not to use accurate language you disapprove of. Maybe coercive experimental gene therapy is exactly what's needed, just like coercive physical restraint is just what's needed when it comes to dealing with violent psychopaths. But in both cases, refusing to call a spade a spade doesn't change it from being a spade.

When you respond with stuff like "I wouldn't say any of that is a fact, merely incorrect statements" then you're begging your opposition to simply make the exact same statement back to you.

We are not in opposition, please stop. I really don't want to get into a heated argument with you, you and I both know that's not the way to convince anyone. Also I am not on any "team" and I don't represent anyone, these are my own statements. I'd appreciate it if you didn't make these assumptions about me, thanks.

I am sympathetic to people who can't get vaccines for medical reasons but there are companies that simply are not equipped to employ those people safely. There's nothing coercive about that, everything else you're saying about that is not related to what I'm saying. For a lot of these companies it's a matter of either they require the vaccine, or they go back to having long lines, reduced hours, occupancy limits, strict mask requirements, and other things that are inconvenient and cost money and hurt the business. This stuff is unfortunate because it also applies to immunocompromised people with whom the vaccine is not effective, I don't really know a solution that could work for them on a large scale.

> We are not in opposition

Yes we are, you are continuously making the argument that if you can give good reasons for coercion, it is no longer accurate to refer to it as coercion. This is false.

Examples;

> For a lot of these companies it's a matter of either they require the vaccine, or they go back to having long lines, reduced hours, occupancy limits, strict mask requirements, and other things that are inconvenient and cost money and hurt the business.

> there are companies that simply are not equipped to employ those people safely.

And many other times.

Further, you're refusing to acknowledge that the vaccines under the vaccine mandates are experimental gene therapy, with the justification;

> Also that paper seems to suggest that mRNA could generally be used as a component in gene therapy. It does not say that mRNA vaccines are gene therapy.

The paper is from 2015, the "mRNA vaccines" were not a thing at the time and thus this paper discussing what mRNA gene therapy is would of course not refer to things not released for six years to come/ "mRNA vaccines" is just a new label on the underlying technology discussed in the paper, which they clearly point out is actually gene therapy.

It's coercive experimental gene therapy. Maybe it's good, maybe it's necessary, whatever. It's still coercive experimental gene therapy.

Actually I have explained multiple times why it's not coercion and why your description is incorrect. Some companies simply are unable to safely employ people who are unvaccinated. If you feel you are opposed to me then I would ask that you stop that, it's going to prevent us from having a reasonable discussion. I will tell you right now, I am not in opposition to you, I just see you may have some misconceptions and I'd like to help clear that up, if you are willing to let me do so. If not then please mention that and we can end the conversation.

Otherwise I'll try to use an analogy. Would you call it coercion if a construction company had all its welding equipment malfunction, break, and become unsafe, and as a result had to let all its welders go? Or would you call it coercion if a trucking company refused to hire people that didn't have trucking licenses, on the basis that it wouldn't be safe for them to drive a truck that they weren't trained for? Or if you're a nurse and you get let go for not being vaccinated, in a hospital where the entire job description is that you can't infect the patients with more diseases?

On your comment about gene therapy, AFAIK mRNA vaccines are not a new label on the underlying technology there. They are a different technology from the purpose described in that paper. Please see my other comment for what is generally referred to as gene therapy. Again we can contact a biologist or doctor for more information about this if you'd like to do that.

Edit: The paper you posted has a good citation that explains it better. https://www.nature.com/articles/nrd4278

"The FDA definition of gene therapy is as follows: '... modification of the genetic material of living cells. Cells may be modified ex vivo for subsequent administration to humans, or may be altered in vivo by gene therapy given directly to the subject. When the genetic manipulation is performed ex vivo on cells which are then administered to the patient, this is also a form of somatic cell therapy ... Recombinant DNA materials used to transfer genetic material for such therapy are considered components of gene therapy.' As RNA does not result in 'modification of the genetic material of living cells', one would anticipate that its administration will not be classified as a gene therapy in the United States."

Sorry but all you have done is repeat false claims and insisted with progressively more intensity that they're true. In light of that, I'm not interested in continuing this unproductive discussion.

Actually, there are no false claims. I have sourced my claims using sources that you previously quoted to me as being true, and I also asked you to clarify your claims with several questions that you didn't answer. I can provide more sources if you'd like that, or I can provide some more analogies if that helps explain it more. Just let me know if you change your mind, but I agree we will not have a productive discussion if either one of us is not agreeing to answer questions or be open to considering new sources and changing our minds. I personally would be open to all of that, so feel free to ask me any questions or share new sources if that will help you make it productive. But it may be more productive to just stop being hung up on that definition, you can check the paper you sourced for more details.

Definitions matter and if you change them arbitrarily in order to declare victory where none would exist if your incorrect definitions were not accepted, it is pointless to engage with you.

I didn't change anything. I clarified my definition several times, then I asked you for a clarification of your definition and you didn't give any. Coercion usually means when someone is pressured to do something via threats, and in all the examples I gave (including when it's related to vaccines) there are no threats or pressure to do anything. We can discuss this but you're not giving me anything to work with.

For gene therapy I think typically the goal of that is the opposite of vaccines. Similar vectors can be used (in this case mRNA encased in lipids) but everything else is different. With vaccines you're intentionally trying to provoke an immune response, but one that's weak enough so it doesn't harm the patient. In gene therapy, you usually want to avoid generating an immune response at all, so the body doesn't start attacking the modified cells.

What do you mean the vaccine mandates are not coercive? Isn't that the entire selling point of the mandates?

The selling point of the mandates is to reduce spread of the virus.

Yes, that is ultimately the end goal of the mandates, but the selling point of the mandates is that they are a tool to get people who would otherwise remain vaccinated to get vaccinated by introducing additional costs (ie. coercion)

Not sure where you heard that. Maybe that's a secondary goal that some would like to reach if they're trying to convince someone else to get the vaccine, but for a business the primary goal is to prevent unvaccinated people from entering that business so they avoid getting other coworkers and customers sick. Few businesses seem to want to carry the liability of causing a super spreading event. Edit: I believe some health insurance rates for businesses also go up when employees aren't vaccinated, so that can cause more of a problem too. Being in the ICU for two weeks on a ventilator is not cheap.

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