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Comment by laydn | Hacker News Reader

You do realize, a lot of vaccines are already mandatory all around the world right?

Maybe some of them are mandatory for a child after birth (though I question it because anyway doctors should get parent's signature to do it). But how could you force an adult who is totally ok with lockdown? Cut all access to basic necessities? Make police involved? How?

>though I question it because anyway doctors should get parent's signature to do it

In my European country we got tuberculosis and hepatitis jabs in high school. There wasn't any permission or signature involved, we were just taken the whole class to the nurse's office, got the jab and that's it.

No one is going to be given the vaccine by force. Like you said, as an adult you can choose not to have it, you will just lose access to a lot of things, just like an unvaccinated child isn't accepted into kindergarden. If you don't want to have it then fine, stay locked up at home forever, that's your choice.

Plus pay a fine and maybe do some jail time (probably in solitary as nobody wants to risk contagion in either direction). But all in freedom of course! Okay irony aside, I'm definitely uncomfortable with mandatory vaccines, and I'm also uncomfortable with the amount of sheer stupidity shown by most of antivaccine movement (notable exceptions of course). But when it comes to vote, one has to choose an answer and that answer is only yes/no...

What I am really concerned about is the social divide on the topic. I've seen close friends arguing fiercely about the topic of vaccination and not talking to each other after that.

I can understand that, as it's debating the very basic tenets of society - shall we stick together for the power of the masses (and vaccinate) or we are on our own (buy a gun and live in a remote cottage)? While I can understand the attractiveness of being on my own, I tend to stick with the community option.

>No one is going to be given the vaccine by force

Yet.

Remember that people said over a year ago that "no one will be denied access to facilities without a vaccine passport, that's ridiculous". And yet later on it has become somewhat accepted and even desired. If it saves lives and reduces harm perhaps people will also support force being used? There is no limit anymore, seems to me. Any means necessary seems to be supported by the majority of the world's populations.

All we can say with certainty is "well, not yet".

>>Remember that people said over a year ago that "no one will be denied access to facilities without a vaccine passport, that's ridiculous".

I definitely didn't say that, I was very firmly in the group that thinks people should absolutely be denied access to things without the vaccine passport.

Again, just like I'm fully in support of kindergardens not accepting kids that haven't been vaccinated - it's just not ok.

At the same time I don't want force to be used against anyone, denying access is enough.

Its not right to deny rights to people who already have immunity.

Sure, and some countries recognize that too - a covid passport means either being vaccinated or having immunity. Both should be an option.

For example, for childhood vaccines, France does it by a hefty fine (up to 30.000 Euros) and up to two years in prison if you avoid vaccinating your children.

Maybe the same can be done for adults as well? We will see how they will attempt to enforce it.

https://www.france24.com/en/20141009-french-parents-face-jai...

You'll pay a hefty fine if you don't get vaccinated (and that fine will eventually be enforced).

No they are not, you have a choice. Also in this case you have a choice, take the jab, leave the country or ehhh...get vaccinated forcefully? Commit suicide? Anyway, whatever, there is a choice and they have consequences or something. We live in a democracy you know.

One attribute of a democratic society is what has been described as the tyranny of the majority. Like it or not, it means that if the majority is for a measure, it will happen over the heads of the minority that is against it.

Seems like this is whats happening here.

I guess now you mention it, needing a yellow fever jab to enter Outer Mongolia is a precedent. Not sure what all the fuss is about.

Any seatbelt analogies for us too?

Abortion would be the closer analogy.

Also seatbelts don't require the sort of tracking infrastructure that a vaccine mandate requires. If the plan is a mandate with no tracking then that would be in the realm of comfortable precedent for me. But the experience so far in Australia (not Austria!) is that vaccine mandates are the most invasive privacy violation that the government has ever implemented.

> Abortion would be the closer analogy.

Are abortions infectious now?

I don't know how Australia does it, but the EU green pass isn't and can't really be used for tracking at a big scale. Anyone can implement a reader for the QR codes, and the official ones are open source and just check the validity. And why would any government need to store that information when they can just ask Google and Apple for location data?

The argument for vaccinations and against abortions is it is protecting the lives of other humans. Same class of ideas. Seatbelts don't protect other people.

In Australia we have to be able to prove we are vaccinated to take part in civic life, including visiting friends. It is a concerning new assault on basic civil liberties.

I thought to go to school you had to be vaccinated, even in Australia.

I happen to be double-vaccinated; but being a rebel I went to have a cafe breakfast a few weeks ago without the appropriate paperwork. The waiter didn't feel like making a fuss so I got to eat.

Being ejected, fined and/or arrested for not having the correct paperwork to have breakfast is not a situation that has ever come up for me before. This is different from in-school vaccinations.

Of curse it's different, for one you're (already) vaccinated and for the other not. But what would have happened if you (or your parents) refused the school vaccinations?

Yes, I realize. Not against vaccines in general. I only wanted to know the extent to which the government is going to enforce it as in whether they fine you, put you to jail or vaccinate you forcibly against your will. I heard that the latter is already happening in Australia and personally know a person who fled to the EU for this reason.

> vaccinate you forcibly against your will. I heard that the latter is already happening in Australia

Wow, the misinformation is intense. I'm in Australia, there is no forced vaccination, but you do need to be fully vaccinated to go to restaurants, events etc.

Thank you. This is one of the reasons I like HN! How about essential activities, such as going to work, school, institutions, banking, public transport etc? Do you need the vaccine to go there as well?

In my state — Victoria — you need to be vaccinated for non-essential retail locations (department stores, hairdressers etc), and to work in most on-premises roles (hospitality, office work, construction, schools etc). Students 12+ are elegible but not currently required to be vaccinated when attending school, though there's a pretty standard list of vaccines which are usually required for students to attend school, and I suspect the covid vaccine will make its way onto that list at some point.

Essential retail locations (food, pharmacies, laundries etc), and other essential services (public transport, government offices, medical facilities, consular services, banks) etc. do not require proof of vaccination, though many of them do require masks.

On the whole though, vaccination isn't a huge issue here: we're just crossing 90% (age 12+) fully vaccinated now. There are some small protests about the vaccine requirements, but they're very much in the minority.

Other states in Australia are slightly different in the details, but taking broadly the same approach.

You'll pay a hefty fine if you don't get vaccinated (and that fine will eventually be enforced).

It's difficult to understand a "I've heard"-style of argument in the age of internet. Unless it comes from China or Russia where there's a different official understanding of "information highway".

Yes, whereas we only get the raw unadulterated truth from our media outlets and tech censors here in the West.

I thought that this is a very unusual step that Austria's taking, so I did some reading...

Germany, Austria and Switzerland don't have any mandatory vaccines for the general population. Only in Germany is vaccination against measles mandatory for children and caregivers (daycare, etc).

Austria in particular had no mandatory vaccination at all until they announced it now.

France and Italy seem to have many mandatory vaccinations for children.

Desperate times and all that. With a incident rate of >1000 (and a lot higher in some hotspots), hospitals are at their breaking point right now.

Meh. If it's like in France there's a lot of dramatization: we got an official report about last year: COVID represented 2% of all hospitalizations and 5% of intensive care.

Right now in Switzerland there's 16.8% COVID patients from the hospitalizations. Would you call this dramatization?

There is probably a wave of hospitalizations now like every year with the flu. When you average on a year it won't be as bad and won't justify trampling civil liberties.

It's just a power grab IMHO and people are so afraid of COVID they just go along. But sadly we won't get our freedoms back once all this is over.

A hurricane doesn't raise the average wind speed for the year at your house by much. Yet you can't ignore it.

If I were to press the business end of my soldering iron onto your hand it would only raise the average amount of thermal energy that your hand absorbs this year by a negligible amount. Yet I'm pretty sure you would very strongly object.

Hospitals in many areas are being overwhelmed to a far greater extent than they are in even bad flu years. When you are going to need a hospital for something in the future that you can be flexible with scheduling, then you just need a hospital that on average has enough capacity. When you need a hospital now with no flexibility in timing, all that matters is if demand now is above what the hospital can serve.

You're right but does it justify the power grab anyway? What has been done since last year about hospitals capacity?

I can tell you that in France we have less beds than last year (not sure about intensive care though) and we fired quite a lot of unvaccinated nurses.

What you're suggesting basically comes down to mitigation, which we've been having a lot of issues with.

I think what we actually need is a solution, so there's nothing left to mitigate. Imo mandatory vaccinations might be just that.

The vaccine isn't efficient enough. Look at Gibraltar: 99% are vaccinated and they're still cancelling Christmas celebrations.

Vaccination isn't a binary state. Protection wanes over time. I don't know where to get the data, but I'd guess that most people in Gibraltar have been vaccinated quite a while ago.

Maybe we need tighter schedules, i.e. one shot every two months? With delta, i think that's when effectiveness starts to wane.

Gibraltar is having a case surge, but they are having almost no deaths [1].

[1] https://graphics.reuters.com/world-coronavirus-tracker-and-m...

Well, it's not like in France, so I don't see your point. Hospitals in Salzburg and Österreich can't treat emergency patients properly anymore for lack of capacity. Also year round numbers won't help you if the cases are clustered.

numbers for a year aren't hugely useful. The issue is the concurrent rate, not the annual rate.

I'm in Ireland - the numbers given on Wednesday were 15 ICU beds free nationwide, with 40% of beds being used by covid patients.

An easy month and a tough month might average out over the year, it doesn't actually help anyone if there's a lack of beds during the tough month.

It's like the "HN hug of death" - if your server fell over when you needed it, it doesn't matter if you got no visitors for the rest of the year. The average is irrelevant.

The "HN hug of death" is a sign that your infrastructure is not adequate.

A regular flu year was 1.5% hospitalization. We're drowning with .5 more after years and years of reducing hospitals capacity.

I can't comment on Ireland I don't know the situation but I'd bet it's the same than in France: not enough beds when something is a bit out of the ordinary.

Mandatory vaccines in February won’t do anything until April probably and by then the current wave will be over.

Assuming the new South African variant won’t make things worse yet again.

> Only in Germany is vaccination against measles mandatory for children and caregivers (daycare, etc)

Well, aren't the children the (future) general population? If all children have to be vaccinated, all adults are also vaccinated.

Austria used to have a mandatory smallpox vaccine until that proved effective enough to eradicate the disease.

Hopefully we can say the same about covid in a few years :)

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