The Mandate is a one-size-fits-all sledgehammer [pdf]
ca5.uscourts.gov
ca5.uscourts.gov
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Of course, the principles at stake when it comes to the Mandate are not reducible to dollars and cents. The public interest is also served by maintaining our
constitutional structure and maintaining the liberty of individuals to make
intensely personal decisions according to their own convictions—even, or perhaps particularly, when those decisions frustrate government officials.
Perhaps because previously everyone (or "enough" people) were required to get particular medical treatments (i.e., vaccinations) to get into kindergarten, and that it was just assumed that 'everyone' had the vaccinations—or at least anyone who go into and graduated kindergarten. The only change is a new disease that previously did not exist so there was no vaccine for it, so we all had to get it all at once now.
Rules for my local jurisdiction:
> Unless they have a valid exemption, children who attend primary or secondary school must be immunized against: diphtheria, tetanus, polio, measles, mumps, rubella, meningitis (meningococcal disease), whooping cough (pertussis), chickenpox (varicella) – required for children born in 2010 or later.
* https://www.ontario.ca/page/vaccines-children-school
I'm also amused by current members in the military objecting to having to get the COVID vaccine… when you had to get a whole bunch of vaccinations to join in the first place. And this is nothing new: in the US, General George Washington had mandates.
While I don’t like mandates, I would be less resistant to them if they were applied logically…or if short of logically—at least evenly.
I agree that the vaccine requirements are unprecedented. I just don't think they're the only thing that's unprecedented at this time. I can't imagine being a business owner and having people die because of the air in my building. Even if it's "not my fault" I'd still probably feel horrible. As a side note, my great uncle, we believe, caught covid at a restaurant, along with his wife and his brother-in-law. He died and she was really sick in the hospital.
Likewise food service workers have long been required to bandage wounds, wear hair nets and gloves, avoid work when ill, etc.
If COVID were only transmissible when you were symptomatic there would probably be no real public health need to apply this kind of check. But since it is silly to think you can simultaneously use masks and eat in a restaurant, as anti-vaxxers are fond of reminding us, you're left with measures like that if you want indoor dining in a restaurant.
> The only thing new here is a politically driven disregard for human life.
The only new thing here? And you can read minds and are certain that the only possible motive here is a disregard for human life? Really? That is not a serious comment.
I'd argue there's a lot of new things and qualitative differences here.
Here are 2 big ones you should consider.
#1) Once the technology to measure clicks was invented, the business model of the mass media has changed from promoting how trustworthy they were to a competition about driving traffic through emotional manipulation (fear, anger, sadness, etc). What media somebody uses has a big impact on how they trust either the Covid-Fear-Porn or Vaccine-Fear-Porn presented.
#2) These vaccine were developed in a much different and quicker fashion than previous vaccines: many of which took around 10+ years of development and testing before being introduced into a mass audience. I think it's entirely rational to be more than a little cautious about the short-term side effects and long-term problems with these new vaccines. It's very easy to see why somebody who took plenty of previous vaccines is cautious about these vaccines.
1. Not all vaccines are required go participate in society.
2. I believe this is the first vaccine to be mandated within 12 months of its distribution, though I'd love to be proven wrong about that.
It’s a very clearly written decision.
virus. The list goes on, but one constant remains—the Mandate fails almost completely to address, or even respond to, much of this reality and common sense. "
Many measures have been contemplated (and some taken) that would've been over-reaching and extreme had the disease been smallpox. And COIVD was never smallpox.
Please see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29213830 also.
In addition, IT IS FURTHER ORDERED that OSHA take no steps to implement or enforce the Mandate until further court order.“
Americans have tens of thousands of laws that are locally inconvenient but globally useful for public well being, such as stopping at red lights, not carrying guns on flights, or god forbid, breast-feeding one's kid (who has received a zillion other vaccines).All laws are one-size-fits-all mandates, so why the fuss about this one, other than the obvious political theater?
The petition claims that it is being treated as an "emergency" even after two years. But isn't it the case that it is because of the people like the petitioners that has led to vaccine misinformation and hesitancy, which has stretched the timeline?
I am less surprised about the petition than seeing this as the top voted post on HN.
One cannot say “because COVID” and indefinitely suspend the constitution.
> Americans have tens of thousands of laws
OK, let me try to break this down to make the court ruling more understandable. The mandate is not a law. It's a regulation issued by OSHA, which is not a lawmaking body, but a regulatory body, charged with limiting workplace injury.
If it was a law, then you wouldn't have this ruling. Laws are passed by Congress.
In the U.S., regulations issued by various bureaucracies can't just be arbitrary. They have to be within the mandate of said bureaucracy, and they have to follow certain procedures. Otherwise they can be ruled as unconstitutional.
That is what the court ruled on. Not whether covid is important, or whether vaccines are good, or even whether vaccine mandates for covid are good. It ruled on whether OSHA is able to create a nationwide vaccine mandate using its ETS (emergency temporary standard) powers.
So the short summary of what "all the fuss" is about is whether this regulation was lawful.
Note that OSHA has a long history of abusing the ETS, and of the 10 times in its history that OSHA issued an ETS, it has been struck down or withdrawn prior to being struck down 9 times.
This is because the ETS powers are extraordinary and so are placed under very strict scrutiny by courts. Again, the courts are not ruling whether vaccine mandates are good, they are ruling whether the ETS power is being abused. This is why many (if not the vast majority) of legal experts have said that you can't use OSHA to make a nationwide vaccine mandate, and that this standard would inevitably be struck down.
This is a very similar situation to when the Biden administration tried to use the CDC emergency powers to freeze evictions. Again, the debate is not whether evictions are bad, or whether it was a good idea to freeze them, but whether the CDC emergency powers allowed freezing evictions. That, too, was struck down.
Hope that helps.
It seems much of the conflicting arguments about this article are debating more about whether or not vaccine mandates are good/legal/constitutional, rather than seeing that this is a ruling against the method used to deploy the mandate (namely, using an OSHA ETS) and whether or not that is constitutional.
1) legislation (which requires some horse trading -- you'll need to give the GOP something in return to peel off a few moderate votes in the Senate), or
2) work directly with the states to push them to roll out vaccine mandates, which again means that some states wont do it, but that's the way it is.
A combination of one of the above plus requiring vaccines for federal contractors -- which is like half the economy -- and you will get as much coverage or more as the current OSHA ruling which (strangely) affects only employers with 100 or more people. Thus it only covers 61% of workers, and workers are less than 50% of the population, so this OSHA mandate is only going to cover less than 30% of the population. That's a terrible way of doing public health.
FYI, that's another problem with this ETS. If it's such an emergency and it poses such a grave threat to worker safety, then why only apply it to firms with 100 or more workers? Why would workers in a firm with less than 100 employees be in less physical danger? And here's another problem -- they will need to claim this is a grave and immediate threat to workers -- something like daily exposure to a toxic waste dump or nuclear radiation (the bar is really high for ETS) but it's not -- 80% of the deaths are people over 65, so why do this in the name of protecting the health of workers? Of course you and I know the answer, we want the workers to get vaccinated to protect the elderly, so this is a public health measure where workers protect someone else, and doesn't fit well as a workplace safety measure. People can challenge this so many ways -- e.g. why not just require workers over the age of 50, etc? And it's going to be hard for OSHA to come back and say that workers under the age of 50 are in such grave and immediate danger. There are just so many things wrong with this approach, and so many ways to poke holes in it.
mandate -> no choice. I thought you all claimed to be pro-choice?
See? It's almost as if someone's political beliefs has more nuance than a two word slogan.
In this case the increasingly fanatical "vaccinate everything over and over" brigade refuse to accept that disagreement can have any kind of rational basis, and thus don't even listen to the people who don't want to take it. But that is exactly why this type of mandate is really bad news.
As for "what about the other vaccine mandates" - yep, time to revisit them too. Apparently public health agencies aren't at their most trustworthy when talking about this topic. Their treatment of COVID vaccine data has been shockingly poor. It's not a big leap to wondering whether they've been acting like this in the past too and people just didn't notice.
I'm not saying it doesn't work, but it's not a silver bullet, and only time will tell if it's safe.
It had 'due process', the same process any other vaccine would receive (including previous vaccines), culminating in an FDA authorization for use. All based on decades of research and 18 months of "shots in arms" data to back it up, when we know after a great deal of experience that vaccine side effects would show up in weeks, not years.
That doesn't make the Pfizer vaccine a "silver bullet" but it has not sideswiped due process and there's no additional data to be gained from waiting longer. So we're at the situation where if the courts decide this vaccine mandate is contrary to the public health, no vaccine mandate could be enforced either.
Because if the goal is elimination and not crushing the curve, then mandating experimental anti-virals is the only logical next step, and it will only work if its truly global.
This virus is endemic now, deal with it. It will never go away, and anyone who thought that 60-70-80-90% vaccination in the USA only would magically stop it was nuts. The vaccine wont prevent transmission or replication, not even in the slightest. Its only at best a therapeutic that 'might' keep you out of the hospital, not even guaranteed.
The government didn't want to create "vaccine hesitancy" so they ignored any and all counter data, doubled down on a bad idea and mandated it, pitted neighbor against neighbor, and suckers fell for the groupthink. Now that its endemic, we have to step back and ask, is +0.07% more deadly then the flu worth all this heartache (lockdowns, mandates, masks, etc)? If its never going away, then at what point do we all plan to take the masks off?