Google says employees flouting vaccination rules will eventually be fired | Hacker News Reader

Google says employees flouting vaccination rules will eventually be fired

reuters.com

67 pointsnojito239 comments

We were promised this wouldn't happen by our governments last year right?

It feels like the public are building their own prisons. Why are private companies stuck policing these absurd policies?

Unless you have medical exemption, it's just a jab in the arm?

It's capitulation to coercion, which has its own side effects.

Like rickets?

That's why I drink and drive as much as I want. Can't let the man tell me what to do! /s

Don't forget about seat belts!

The reason why drunk driving is so dangerous is because of the choices of past governments to make implicit subsidies for cars and urban planners making car dependent suburbia.

Our choices are already constrained before we even realize it and yet people chose to die on the vaccination hill.

You employer is checking what you drink before you drive? If not, that's a pretty bad analogy.

When I was driving a company vehicle for my job? Hell yes they were.

So they were checking every morning when you were taking your company car that you had no alcohol in your blood? How did that work? Your boss was waiting at the door?

There are bigger, better and more productive hills to die on if you don't enjoy being told what to do.

You're talking about employment where the employer makes much much of off your labor than you will ever receive, and you are powerless to demand your fair share. Yet instead, a safe workplace is the coercive part?

If you don't want to be coerced, you had better not be an employee with wages. Go out there and start your own business.

It’s hilarious to see HN flip from “I dream of a future where no one has to work and fall under the yoke of greedy employers” to “just get injected with this drug and be thankful you have a job; don’t get it and you deserve to starve”.

The vaccines are the magic future where a small bit of technology prevents disease and death.

> don’t get it and you deserve to starve

It's not by chance that you have to make up ridiculous words and put them in my mouth to attempt to criticize the comment, either in this part where I quoted you, or in the weird assertion about no one having to work.

> The vaccines are the magic future where a small bit of technology prevents disease and death.

That's the part I've found so disappointing about this: a couple of decades of development and we have a massive breakthrough in our ability to rapidly create and update vaccines which precisely target near-arbitrary targets. Seeing what would have been a sci-fi technology when I was a kid being the target of so many conspiracy theories must be incredibly disappointing to all of the actual medical experts who worked so hard on this.

Those medical experts should look at themselves for why people react this way.

An absolute refusal to accept any legal liability for harms done by the product, whilst simultaneously insisting it's perfectly safe? Check.

Claims that anyone worried about long term effects is a crazy malicious person when Moderna was failing to progress beyond animal trials due to multi-dose toxicity as recently as 2017? Check. [2]

Fanatical insistence on forced vaccination, even when the logical basis for mandates has been invalidated by equal infectiousness? Check. [1]

Constantly shifting claims about effectiveness, invalidated within months yet all presented with absolute confidence? Check.

Insistence that nobody look at the database of injuries and papers which do so should be retracted, despite it existing specifically to be analyzed? Check.

A million different non-vaccine explanations for the sudden spike in public heart attacks, none of which are remotely plausible? Check.

We could go on for many pages of this. The medical/public health establishment has consistently wrecked their own credibility and acted in untrustworthy, suspicion-raising ways. They don't then get to make a sad face and say "but sci fi". Let us know when Pfizer/Moderna can be taken to court for injuries and deaths caused by their sci-fi tech, and interest will grow.

[1] https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanepe/article/PIIS2666-7...

[2] https://www.statnews.com/2017/01/10/moderna-trouble-mrna/

If I wanted antivax propaganda, I could get it myself. You're just copy-and-pasting things you don't understand so I won't be spending time on further replies.

Even if you think his arguments are silly, it would be more effective to use facts and data to destroy his argument instead of a ad hominem ("you don't understand") attack on his intelligence.

Your approach of dismissing and saying you are taking your ball and going home is not really a convincing counter-argument.

I agree in the abstract but I have seen nothing in his posting history which suggests he's interested in rationally evaluating this or has made an effort to understand what he's pasting any better than the people he copied it from.

That's just another empty insult. Anyway, consider that half of the reason people debate or take positions on forums isn't to directly convince just the person they're talking to, it's to convince people who are watching. Right now you aren't convincing people who are watching.

Also, really, I should be convincible. A few years ago I was quite like you. I even occasionally used anti-vaxx as a slur, a shorthand for crazy illogical conspiracy theorist, although I'm now ashamed to admit it. I didn't ever review their arguments because I already "knew" they were wrong. Well, and because it was irrelevant as there were no vaccines I was being asked to take. Things changed a lot in just two years.

Moreover, like many people on this forum, I'm a specialist who owes my position and status in society to expertise. I don't like the idea that huge numbers of specialized experts appear to be in the grip of some sort of mass hysteria or collectivist ideology in which the downsides of massive social interventions are simply taboo to discuss. That degrades respect for all kinds of specialism and expertise, in all fields, even if not equally.

Really the most concerning and effective anti-vaxx propaganda, as you put it, is exactly the sort of responses you're posting now. Not "here's evidence that point X is wrong" but rather, almost boastful proclamations that they aren't going to engage in the discussion at all because they are too intellectually pure to do so. It looks and sounds like a sort of fanaticism.

You are just making up ridiculous claims that don't pass even a basic sniff test, much less ant tiny amount of skeptical inquiry.

I'm not sure why you have been convinced of these falsehoods, or why you think anybody else could be swayed a bit by them.

Which claim specifically do you think is wrong? They are all correct. Some have citations. You may not like them, but they're correct.

For example if you don't believe the claim about legal immunity, maybe you'll believe CNBC?

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/12/16/covid-vaccine-side-effects-c...

At any rate, your comment is unsubstantive, which is against the HN rules.

There's been a lot of this, though.

HN used to be firmly anti-FBI/CIA and pro-Assange. Something flipped that around such that the FBI and CIA are Real American Heroes and Assange is some sort of Russian asset. The NSA is still a bit of a bogeyman here, but even that may not hold.

HN is also filled with people who were OccupyWallStreet or AntiWar types who now bloviate endlessly on portfolio management and advocate for the invasion of Iran/Syria/Russia/China/etc.

And don't even get me started on the cypherpunks, the phrack guys, etc. There might be one or two of them left who aren't actively wiping their asses with the CAM or Hacker Manifesto daily.

I suspect that evolving from eating Ramen and reading zines in a communal hackerspace to being paid $400k/yr to analyze the click habits of a billion people changes a person.

The anti-war/free love/hippie/flower power boomers did precisely the same thing, of course. Money and status will always kill lofty ideals. Always.

At my restaurant we save money by never cleaning the kitchen. No one should coerce me into doing something where it is not necessary. Cleaning wastes my time and money and it's my freedom to not clean! No one should take that freedom away in a free country!

Sure, but do you get to pretend your kitchen is clean at the same time?

It hadn't occurred to me that this might lead a whole bunch of people, who didn't previously, to regard the employment relationship as fundamentally coercive. Hm. I'm now torn on this.

For many people, it's more than just a jab, it's 1-3 days of being quite unwell.

I have no underlying health conditions, but I've been bedridden by my 2nd shot and booster shots, with a high fever, fatigue, dizziness, and aches for at least 48 hours. My partner who is immuno-compromised is worse off, generally being very ill for 1-2 weeks after each jab. Her case is somewhat different though, as her situation is just all round unfortunate.

I'm not saying I won't continue to comply with all health advisories for vaccination or other public safety measures, and I'm not saying vaccines aren't worth it for society. But it's not "just" a jab.

This is why the company I work for will give you up to three paid days off after getting a vaccine shot. Feeling bad after the shot should not be a reason to not get it.

Hell, mine even reimbursed traveling to another country before they were available to the general public in my own country.

The pro vaccination camp has been more annoying than the antivaxers - at least the nutjobs are easy to filter out, it takes soo long to wade through the bullshit when it's veiled as facts.

Why can't companies mandate a lobotomy then? After all it is just jab in the brain. You hardly notice it if you receive it...

Yes they can do that. They can then complain about the huge labor shortage.

Lobotomising people would create a surge of labour for many tech corps..

>> ...it's just a jab in the arm

Until it isn't. Then what are you going to do? Probably nothing except suffer debilitation for life or death (~20,000 that have been reported to VAERS, so probably substantially more).

https://brandnewtube.com/watch/full-hearings-ron-johnson-039...

Edit: spllng

I saw less than half that number — 8099 — on the VAERS site.

And this is for a disease which has killed 821,335 Americans after infecting 51 million.

So if it’s absolutely perfectly safe and there is a roughly 5% chance of getting infected with Covid while waiting for the vaccine to take effect, it would look like this.

>> 8099

Not sure where you get that number. Also, the numbers for VAERS entry are very probably not even in the ballpark of all injuries because doctors don't often advertise VAERS or even enter patient data there. Why would they, it's basically extra work they don't get paid for.

https://vaersanalysis.info/2021/12/11/vaers-summary-for-covi...

>> ...killed 821,33 Americans...

I had a family friend that shot himself in a hunting accident. Drove himself to the hospital bleeding, didn't make it 24 hours. Tested positive for Covid. Labeled covid death.

I get that it can be a serious disease for some, but it's rare unless you're already in poor health. The response to Covid and vaccine insanity has been ultra overblown.

> Not sure where you get that number.

https://wonder.cdc.gov/vaers.html

Like I said, the VAERS site.

> The response to Covid and vaccine insanity has been ultra overblown.

Last year the UK ran short of mortuaries and body bags.

On several occasions, hospitals have been unable to meet demand in various different ways, from beds (meaning staff for them rather than literally beds), to oxygen.

> I had a family friend that shot himself in a hunting accident. Drove himself to the hospital bleeding, didn't make it 24 hours. Tested positive for Covid. Labeled covid death.

My condolences.

But it works both ways: If he’d had a recent vaccine instead of a covid infection, that would be listed on VAERS as correlated to the vaccine, from what I gather.

Most of the case (>99.9%), it's very likely just a temporal correlation rather than real causation. Even without vaccine, thousands of healthy people die every day without any prior sign and vaccine doesn't change that.

>We were promised this wouldn't happen by our governments last year right?

We were promised that a company can't require a vaccine as a condition of employment? Seeing as some companies have required vaccines for as long as there have been vaccines, I think I must be misunderstanding you.

>Why are private companies stuck policing these absurd policies?

Companies are requiring the vaccine because they make employees less likely to miss work due to illness.

With the exception of healthcare I don't think a lot of companies have mandated vaccines. My wife works in healthcare and there was a tuberculosis shot mandate for specific jobs at her hospital. There was a flu shot mandate of sorts, but it was tied to a small bonus.

You can't point to a small sector that has mandates and say it wouldn't be a significant change if suddenly 100% of all workers everywhere were subjected to it.

Any business doing work with the US government will have to mandate vaccines.

My employer already went this route, something about a fed mandate for their contractors... and we have a lot of those. They extended it to everyone lol

Millions of people in various sectors outside healthcare (by the way, since when is healthcare a "small sector"?) have had vaccines required as a condition of employment. , mostly people with plenty of risk like teachers, the military and some people working in the travel industry, but this is not always the case. I was required to get the flu shot (or an exemption) in my last job at an electrical engineering firm.

On a broader note, I think (coming from the US) workers should have stronger protections against being fired, but everyone I've personally talked to who does not believe your employer should be able to fire you for not getting a vaccine is also opposed to "state controlled employment" or almost anything else that exerts control over the employer-employee relationship. You can be fired for almost any reason in the US, being fired for not getting a vaccine does not seem any worse to me than being fired for any number of awful yet totally legal reasons.

As a counterpoint, when I worked for a private university (unrelated to healthcare) I was required to have up-to-date vaccinations. I was also not allowed to smoke on campus.

These kinds of workplace safety rules may be more common than you think.

> Companies are requiring the vaccine because they make employees less likely to miss work due to illness.

Then if I don't want to get a vaccine, I'll sign an agreement that if I get sick and miss work, I don't get paid, and that's the end of it.

That’s not how infectious diseases work. You can be getting other people sick. Vaccines aren’t 100% effective so prolonged exposure in indoor spaces increases chances. Some people also are immuno compromised and can’t be vaccinated so you’d be putting them at risk too. Are you going to start paying for their sick time too and signing away that you’re personally liable for deaths?

Are immunocompromised people exempt from the mandate? If they're working next to anybody, vaccinated or not, they're at risk of getting sick.

New rule: every googler who works near immunocompromised coworkers has to wear a mask.

The rule is likely that you have to keep wearing a mask indoors regardless of your vaccination status.

> You can be getting other people sick

You must be missing the part that vaccinated people transmit the virus just the same. This is not a sterilizing vaccine we are dealing with.

That's not boolean: vaccinated individuals transmit _less_ than the unvaccinated. It's not as good as we'd like but it's better than doing nothing and given how quick, easy, and cheap vaccines are it's like mandating seatbelt usage even if you know that some people will still be injured.

Not for a while now.

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanepe/article/PIIS2666-7...

"In the UK it was described that secondary attack rates among household contacts exposed to fully vaccinated index cases was similar to household contacts exposed to unvaccinated index cases (25% for vaccinated vs 23% for unvaccinated)."

No difference in infectiousness. And with it, no logical justification for mandates. But this is Google and factions within it will certainly not give up a chance to get rid of what remains of the conservative/libertarian part of their workforce.

That's not incompatible with my point: vaccines are not 100% protection, as medical professional warned us about since before the vaccines were deployed. Household transmission is the worst-case scenario because you're talking about very long periods of unmasked shared airspace, often with poor ventilation, and close contact.

For an employer, this tells you that you can't rely on one thing to prevent spread but the combination of masks, vaccination, air filtration, etc. remains effective.

There's a substantive difference between none and "not 100%". Medical professionals didn't warn anyone about zero effectiveness < 12 months after deployment. They said, repeatedly, that vaccines were 95% effective and anyone who had any concerns about the trials were just crazy and unscientific.

Probably hospitals and care homes are actually the worst-case scenarios for viral transmission because they're full of people who are already sick or have weak immune systems.

You've ignored the point about illogicality completely.

> transmit _less_ than the unvaccinated.

you will have to come with a citation needed to make that claim. I have seen studies showing exactly the opposite of what you claim.

You also have to factor the social aspect. Vaccinated people, thinking they are protected, are way less careful now and therefore have a higher propensity to transmit the virus.

> That’s not how infectious diseases work. You can be getting other people sick.

That's not how vaccines against COVID-19 work. They diminish the risk of severe illness and death, not transmission rates.

I keep hearing this in this thread but I don’t follow.

> Based on evidence from clinical trials, in people ages 18 years and older, the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine was 94.1% effective at preventing laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 infection in people who received two doses and had no evidence of being previously infected.

If you’re prevent infection, aren’t you effectively reducing the R0 by definition? How is the vaccine making it harder to infect not reduce transmission rates?

[1] https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/different...

Yes, these are the original data from clinical studies. Now, in real life, a few months later the efficiency has dwindled considerably [0]:

> Reports of waning vaccine-induced immunity against COVID-19 have begun to surface. With that, the comparable long-term protection conferred by previous infection with SARS-CoV-2 remains unclear.

[0] https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.24.21262415v...

"Remains unclear" is very different from "no impact on transmission rates". Here's the follow-up paper from the same group [1]

> These results suggest that the vaccine is initially effective in reducing infectiousness of breakthrough infections even with the Delta variant, and that while this protectiveness effect declines with time it can be restored, at least temporarily, with a booster vaccine.

The paper you're looking at is analyzing waning immunity against the Delta variant.

[1] https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.29.21262798v...

> "Remains unclear" is very different from "no impact on transmission rates".

Well, at least within households[0]:

> Research reveals fully vaccinated people are just as likely to pass virus on to those they share a home with

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/oct/28/covid-vaccinat...

The first sentence of the article is that it's about "People who are fully vaccinated against Covid yet catch the virus". If the vaccines don't lower P(transmission|infection) but do lower P(infection), then they lower P(infection & transmission) (because that's the product of those two).

It's also not how other workplace safety rules work. You can't just sign a waiver allowing you to go without a hard hat on a construction job. Vaccination during a raging deadly pandemic seems to fall squarely in the "workplace safety" category, like banning smoking, which few people seem to have a problem with. Employers have a responsibility to take steps to ensure their place of work is not hazardous.

Which just leads to employees coming while sick, which is a pretty bad non-solution.

When I miss work, it costs the company much more than my salary. Otherwise what would be the point of hiring me, if I cost exactly as much as what the value I bring to the company?

And that's not even accounting for the fact that if you get sick, you might infect others in your company.

That covers you but what about the members of staff who actually have a genuine reason for not receiving the vaccine? Peter in ops recently received a double lung transplant and no longer has a functioning immune system. Are you prepared to also sign an agreement barring yourself from ever walking into one of our offices or attending social gatherings?

If Peter in ops has no immune system, he will get sick from non-COVID viruses or diseases regardless of what is done by other people. In that hypothetical situation it would be him who shouldn't go to an office, not other people.

I'm not sure why you immediately assume this is hypothetical. I know a couple people in similar situations. They exist and are not so uncommon as to assume the OP is making it up.

It's also not the doom scenario you describe. Yes they have to take extra precautions, and yes the people around then have to make a point to not be around when they are sick, but with a little consideration plenty of people with highly compromised immune systems live meaningful lives.

People with compromised immune systems need the shot even more

Should companies also require their employees not be overweight because they are less likely to miss work due to illness?

I don't think weight is a protected category, so yes this is fine. For example insurers will discriminate based on weight. The military discriminates based on weight. Hooters discriminates based on weight. Etc.

Well I hope we don't end up in such a world. Even if I personally won't be affected negatively. Sounds incredibly distopian.

You already do. Just because nobody writes an articles talking about how they try to avoid hiring overweight people doesn't mean it doesn't happen.

Or to be sterilised so they can't get pregnant or make their partner pregnant. Having kids leads to missing work after all.

An employment policy interfering with employee pregnancy, in particular, is illegal (but only because it was explicitly made so in 1978 - https://www.eeoc.gov/statutes/pregnancy-discrimination-act-1...).

In general, when an employment discrimination is not specifically forbidden via the Civil Rights Act (or interpreted as equivalent to something explicitly forbidden by the Court), it is legal to discriminate based on it in the United States. Beyond that, the Court and the legislature are (from a political philosophy standpoint) generally willing to let individual employees and employers (or employers and unions) hash out the messy details.

At some point I wonder if health insurers will start denying claims related to the treatment of COVID infections if the person is eligible for the vaccine but has refused to get one?

On TV today I saw that Kroger employees don't get sick day pay if they are off because of COVID unless they have been vaccinated (and I would assume there's a medical exemption).

Accusations of Racism. Only 28% of young black people in New York are vaccinated as of October, for example.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/12/nyregion/covid-vaccine-bl...

Edit: Added "young" adjective that was missing, point remains.

> Only 28% of black people in New York are vaccinated […]

This is not what the article you’ve cited says.

Whoops - It said young (whatever that means) as an adjective. I'll edit that in.

It means 18 to 44, according to the article.

AKA working age people that will have to choose eventually between getting the vaccine and losing their job. A pretty rough choice for those hesitant.

(I am vaccinated please don't post hot takes about how I am a anti-vaxer.)

Please don't overuse the word racism. Yes, a smaller percentage of black people in both the US and Canada are vaccinated. Yes they have very good reasons to be distrustful of government and institutions in general. It doesn't mean the vaccine distribution or enforcement is racist.

I am very much against the forced vaccinations of people, and I very much abhor what is happening in Canada (where I live) with the vaccine passports and the making of the unvaccinated second class citizens. But don't make the term racism a worthless term by using it for everything. It's counterproductive.

I say all this as a black Trinidadian immigrant that lives in Canada. I am vaccinated myself, but many black people I know are not.

I am not going to state here whether I think it would or would not be racist.

I am saying though, that if you unilaterally denied COVID care to non-vaccinated patients, that would be the equivalent of denying service to ~70% of "young black people," which would be easy bait for people calling that racist. Which is why the health system probably won't do it.

I understand what you're saying actually. I mean, if that hinders the enforcement of vaccination to exist in society, then I'm on board I guess. Even if I would prefer if people got vaccinated.

Ah yeah, anti-vaxxers (I'm not calling you one) grasping at straws including calling the vax mandates racist because of the low vax uptake from Black people.

If it was a policy that's based on something that the Black people can't change about them (e.g. refusal to entry to a club based on your address, with majority black areas of town being in that list), and it disadvantages them, yes that'd be racist. But in this case, the Black people (or whoever) can easily change it by getting vaxed...

It's important to keep in mind that black people have very many reasons to distrust government.

Racism by intent and racism by outcome are both racism.

Regarding the latter, it's not difficult to create a policy that's non-racist in construction, but has reliably racist results. Correlated parameters, etc. Whether anything can or should be done about it is a thornier question.

In my country (EU) COVID incidents get handled by public health system only. Which was not in great shape to begin with. Health insurers had bailed out since day zero on COVID.

There's lately though talk about unvaccinated COVID patients bearing the cost nonetheless. Note that public health system is for free.

> Note that public health system is for free.

In my country (also EU) the public health system is most definitely not "free". It is paid for by a universal tax called (insidiously and inaccurately) "health insurance".

> There's lately though talk about unvaccinated COVID patients bearing the cost nonetheless.

Calls for true insurance (individualized, based on actual health and habits) are completely infeasible for political reasons.

What I can see happening is the existing mandatory health tax PLUS extra payments for non-grata groups. Some constitutional changes may be needed, but since all the right people would profit (extra $$$), that's just a technical detail in this day and age.

I'm not sure I follow you but a few things are apparent to me at 45 yrs of age:

1. public health system will take care of you to its abilities (which to a large extent are defined by the taxation yes)

2. no private insurer is paying or covering anything COVID-related and they never did

3. been trying to get private insurance on top of the public one and I'm told time and again that a few systems of mine will be excluded (i.e. they won't insure me for anything bearing the remotest possibility of actually needing them for). Also that I am too old to start now...

if anything is clear from the COVID story in my mind is that we need a better and more capable public health system. Private healthcare is not about health or care.

By that logic insurers could deny claims related to obesity, or risky sexual behavior. Would you approve of that?

Some of us gladly would.

Try getting a liver transplant without sobriety.

Sure, but everything up to that point gets paid for happily.

It is not possible to spread obesity or risky sexual behavior to others.

Irrelevant? Personal choice = costs to others.

Isn’t that the argument?

Not true. It's trivial to spread immorality and normalize it which would lead to risky sexual behavior. We're literally living through it now. Just look at how things slid in the past 100 years on that front.

People who engage in risky sexual behavior increase the spread of STDs in the population as a whole, causing increased risk even for those who don't engage in risky sexual behavior. The parallels to COVID seem pretty clear, no?

This is a grossly disingenuous analogy. A vaccine is trivial to get, takes no willpower, isn’t a result of addiction, isn’t negatively influenced by such factors as advertising, restaurants, food deserts, requires no trust in individuals, etc.

I have never seen a person trying hard to get vaccinated with available vaccines all around them unable to do so. I have seen people attempt to lose weight. The fact that it’s big business is a testament to this.

Sexual behavior, well yea there is careless behavior but also deceit. How would you tell the difference?

With vaccines, the end goal is to get people to get the vaccine so they can live their normal lives. There is no one time simple action someone can take to prevent obesity. There is no vaccine for all stds I’m aware of.

I would not be in favor of denying health insurance claims but I would be less averse to allowing health insurance companies to factor in certain chronically risky behaviors when calculating health insurance premiums.

For example, a smoker who is not actively engaged in a smoking cessation program or someone who is morbidly obese by choice and not actively engaged in a medical weight loss program should be paying higher health-insurance premiums to offset their increased costs. (The former is not uncommon and while the latter may be controversial it is not necessarily a niche perspective. [1])

So yes, I think the same logic should apply to individuals who choose not to receive vaccines.

[1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19548556/

Not denial, but businesses classified as for profit are certainly within moral rights to claim risk appropriate premium.

Insurance companies have to toe the thin line between a business and a social good. With prediction models to become more and more accurate I would be happier if we have non-profit insurance that amortizes/socializes the draw of the lottery. For voluntary choices of risky behavior, drug addiction, unsafe sex, etc etc., I think insurance companies are within their rights to charge more.

I would agree in principle, but notice that health "insurance" has migrated from a risk-management product to a health care financing/service provision mechanism.

> if health insurers will start denying claims related to the treatment of COVID infections

Will health insurers deny claims related to cancer if you have been drinking alcohol? Good luck living in that world.

Health insurers want to increase, or at least maintain, their profits. They won't deny claims because they want a better society, they want to minimize their financial risk.

So yes, one would expect to be in their commercial interest to deny cancer claims to people who willingly put themselves at excessive risk of cancer at some point in the future. It's the infinite wisdom of the free market!

Quitting alcohol is nowhere as easy as getting covid vaccines. If there was a cheap/free safe vaccine that reduced the chances of getting hospitalized or dying of cancer by >60%, your point would be more valid.

The difference is that it's a choice to get addicted to alcohol.

They are clearly not the same, but you first have to make the claim that insurance coverage should be tied to ease of prevention at all, before arguing where the line should be.

I'm not aware of any other risky behaviors that exclude coverage, so this would be a precedent.

I've since come around and now think they wouldn't exclude coverage, but they might charge a different premium. That seems fair.

So are they going to charge premiums for gay people because they have a higher risk of STDs? Seems fair to you?

You wouldn't charge gay people more because that isn't a choice.

Do you think it's unfair that smokers pay more for life insurance?

Pretty much every smoker has higher medical bills. Labelling all gay people as STD risks is a much bigger reach?

If you don't have 3-4 comordibities your risk of hospitalization + dying of COVID is so low it's close to zero. Not sure what you point is, unless you consider everyone has loads of comorbidities out there.

> Quitting alcohol is nowhere as easy as getting covid vaccines

you have a choice to buy the next bottle or not, as far as I know. It's not like addiction is unavoidable. And cancer risk for alcohol consumption is not even related to addiction, you increase your risk of cancer significantly even with a small, non-zero consumption of alcohol. Look at the data.

But isn't that the point of insurance? You pay in some money to offset the risk of an unlikely yet massive expense? What's special about covid versus other risky activities that individuals can take action to offset? Even something as horribly negligent as drunk-driving is handled by insurance. So are drug overdoses.

IMO this sentiment is just another manifestation of the overwhelming desire to punish the unvaccinated, rather than being based on clear thinking.

If you have a drunk driving conviction, your insurance rates are going to go way up. If you are a drug addict, your life insurance premiums will be very high. I suppose the appropriate response to people who choose to not get vaccinated would be to pay a higher premium to account for the extra risk.

Usually, insurance companies do this carrot-style, not stick-style (i.e. they will give you a premiums discount of some kind if you get a COVID vaccine, or possibly even a one-off gift like a gift card or toaster or something).

... but yes, they definitely already do similar things to influence customer behavior (such as discounts on weight loss programs).

BUPA (UK private health insurer) isn't covering treatment for conditions caused by the vaccine:

https://twitter.com/bupauk/status/1368841967086473216

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ExeyKpEW8AEDAdg?format=jpg&name=...

I'm definitely pro-vaccine, but I'm also concerned about the long-term impact of alienating whole swaths of the country with policies like these. Perhaps there are less onerous policies that would be similarly effective?

To address the risk of transmission for in-person employees, would a combination of masking and testing be similarly effective at minimizing office outbreaks?

As for the increase in a company's health insurance costs it seems like we could simply let health insurance companies consider vaccination status when calculating an individual's health insurance premiums (like they currently do with smokers). It seems like the reasonable free-market approach to ask people to pay for any increase in risk they willingly choose to take on.

> let health insurance companies consider vaccination status when calculating an individual's health insurance premiums

If I'm in my late 20s or early 30s and in great shape and eat healthy, a vaccine is not going to make a difference in personal risk. If anything, vaccine rates should be used by a company when getting health insurance benefits for the org as a whole.

> If I'm in my late 20s or early 30s and in great shape and eat healthy, a vaccine is not going to make a difference in personal risk.

Assuming that's true then I'd expect your health insurance premiums to remain similar regardless of your vaccination status. I didn't mean to argue that people who are unvaccinated should be charged more, I meant to argue that vaccination status should be added as a sixth factor that health insurance companies are legally allowed to use to set premiums. (The ACA already allows them to consider things like tobacco use and age.)

> If anything, vaccine rates should be used by a company when getting health insurance benefits for the org as a whole.

Seems reasonable. If it results in cost increases for the company it would be up to the company to decide how to pass that on to employees. (I.e. should everyone pay a little more, just the unvaccinated, or should the company eat the cost?)

(I needed to look it up:) flout (verb) - to openly disregard (a rule, law or convention). "these same companies still flout basic ethical practices"

This definition and example of using it in a sentence were ironically provided by Google search.

What I find sad about this is how many who seem to be against it were just recently so in favour of private business autonomy [1].

No one's rights are being violated here. If you don't want to get vaccinated, you can. But those choices come with consequences, like just about every other choice we make.

It's worth noting that fully remote people won't fall under this policy (from my reading of it anyway) so this isn't a blanket policy.

It's also worth noting that a whole bunch of vaccines are required to attend public school already [2].

[1]: https://www.cnn.com/2018/06/04/politics/masterpiece-colorado...

[2]: https://www.health.ny.gov/prevention/immunization/schools/sc...

My Dad has a big divot out of his arm from the vaccine gun when he joined the army. Everyone got a vaccine and that is how it was because the decision was science-based and not up for discussion. Same for when I went to school. Kid not vaccinated? You aren’t going to school. Somehow that got eroded by madness.

> science-based and not up for discussion

You realize this is a contradiction, right?

Science can be conclusive.

Sure, everyone was positive about a millenium ago that everything rotated around the Earth. It was not even up for debate, even among scientists.

We all know how that turned out.

That's a selective reading of scientific history.

What about the rest of our modern scientific knowledge base? Gravity. Electromagnetism. Chemistry. Biology. There are entire swathes of disciplines that are well nailed down by results, and used daily as though they were fact. Because they work reliably.

So I'm going to call BS on the idea that science can't be conclusive because of the definition of the scientific method. It's arguing in bad faith to point at the 1% and ignore the 99%.

Even when it's conclusive, it should never become "not up for discussion". That's the realm of blind faith.

Individual studies might be conclusive about a particular thing, but as a whole, science by definition isn't conclusive.

> Everyone got a vaccine and that is how it was because the decision was science-based and not up for discussion.

And that's exactly what GP was stating, which is why parent's quip against an out of context quote was unreasonably pedantic.

How is this being downvoted? The objective of science is to further knowledge with study and revise conclusions.

My dad told me about getting his polio vaccination during the public health drives of the 1960s. They did an entire grade school in a single day. And there were parents who were furious about it at the time. No progress happens without protest.

But personally, I'm pretty damn thankful for their sacrifice so that we live in a largely polio-free world today.

I'm not sure when "what you can do for your country" got so small that people aren't willing to take the minuscule risk of vaccination side effects in order to gift the substantial benefit to their neighbors. Used to be, selfishness like that made you an asshole.

Science is always up for discussion. A lot of people like making appeals to authority and calling that "science".

I say this as someone who is vaccinated and encourages others to be so as well.

These are the same people who fought net neutrality on the grounds of "protecting private entities (ISPs) from government overreach" and then a few years later were petitioning their congressmen to write laws regulating speech on twitter.

The quality of the reasoning in these above opinions is a useful example of not believing in the standard of logic, consistency, or truth - technically nihilism of the most banal kind. A choice on the condition of consequences is not free or a choice. This deflection of responsibility by the company providing the "choice" is pure gaslighting, and the sadistic glee with which people repeat these slogans should be indicative of who you are dealing with.

It's very close to what is called Hobson's Choice (take it or leave it, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/Hobson's%20choice..., but it's really closer to Harvey's (Weinstein's) Bargain, where you are free to join him or not and if you don't, the part goes to someone else. It's not quite a quid-pro-quo, as the threat is to take something from you that you already have.

Companies appear free to offer Hobson's Choice, except they haven't been up until now, and the pandemic narrative has provided air cover for a political purity purge. Anyone who is sceptical of the internal passport system the vax is being used to implement probably isn't a culture fit at a platform company anyway, and they should talk to an employment lawyer about their options for getting a settlement for constructive dismissal.

Otherwise, you can't argue with a nihilist position, as it uses discourse to filter people through a lens of alignment to power and narrative, and has no interest in reconciling to truth.

> It's also worth noting that a whole bunch of vaccines are required to attend public school already [2].

Vaccines required at school while children don't get any kind of side effects of COVID19 anyway (and get more risks from the vaccine than anything else). This is so far from any kind of Science.

> Vaccines required at school while children don't get any kind of side effects of COVID19

Other than dying [1] you mean?

Dying aside, children can still spread the virus. I’m sure someone will make the straw man argument of “the vaccine doesn’t 100% prevent transmission”, which is true but no one claimed it did. It does however improve the situation.

[1]: https://data.cdc.gov/NCHS/Deaths-by-Sex-Ages-0-18-years/xa4b...

This is revisionist history.

https://www.businessinsider.com/who-says-no-evidence-coronav...

> Moderna's chief medical officer, Tal Zaks, said last month that he believed it was likely the vaccine would prevent transmission but warned that there was not yet "sufficient evidence" of it.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/01/health/coronavirus-vaccin...

> The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Thursday walked back controversial comments made by its director, Dr. Rochelle P. Walensky, suggesting that people who are vaccinated against the coronavirus never become infected or transmit the virus to others.

> that choices come with consequences

But should it?

rights are are social constructs created by people, we are as such allowed to re-evaluate them, unless you are speaking in a specific context of law/convention(s).

Also, wrt to that [1]; refusing customer business and firing employees are entirely different things, even if they both fit the description "business autonomy".

1. It's really not about business autonomy. In many states businesses don't have the option to bring everyone back to the office unrestricted. Getting everyone vaccinated is just the path of least resistance within legal limits.

2. I can't believe people still parrot the "choice with consequences" argument. If abortion is persecuted in Texas, is that just a choice with consequences? The only premise that matters is whether threatening someones livelihood -- which is quite frankly a nuclear option -- is a fair and proportional response.

3. Last but not least, vaccine precedents cut both ways. Measles and smallpox don't mutate and require new vaccines. Covid does. Measles and smallpox don't discriminate by age. Covid does. Measles and smallpox vaccines don't have notable adverse effects on young people. The Covid vaccine does.

Covid has little in common with measles and smallpox, which are mandated. It does however have a lot in common with the flu, both the disease and the vaccine, which is not mandated in schools nor hospitals.

Does anybody know what exactly their rules are, as the article doesn't actually say? Do they mandate people be vaccinated, or just that they upload their status. Or can they work from home and only have to be vaccinated to be allowed into the office?

Sounds like they are able to apply for religious exemptions so I’m not sure what the issue is here

What religion would come handy? Does the Flying Spaghetti Monster say you should not be vaccinated? I would expect them to require some proof of religious affiliation.

Nah, just appeal to the simulation theory. ie. "I believe the Computer scientist running this simulation added the vaccine side quest as a test of gullibility and trust of big govt and big pharma."

its really interesting/disturbing that people put so much blind faith in the organizations pushing these vaccines. so many people are acting unscientifically in the "pursuit of science". science is not something where you blindly trust what the corporations and authority figures tell you.

the safety trials had no control group, the approval was based on 4 months of data, the situation that we are in now seems to suggest they dont really work very well, there certainly is no long term data about what happens when you keep reinjecting boosters over and over, lipid nanoparticles themselves are a novel technology that is not very well understood, most people are at low risk and have no need for it, the list goes on

Come to Florida. We are actively hiring. If Google does not want you, we do! jobs@bytefederal.com

Intelligent adults generally get vaccinated (unless they have a preexisting medical condition), so I can imagine that Googlers don't have problem with saying goodbye to the few antivaxx colleagues.

I think we can say, at a minimum, compliant adults get the vaccine.

Intelligent or otherwise, why would Google or any company want to retain anti-authoritarian staff?

Google itself was anti-authoritarian when it was small, for example it was campaigning for net neutrality when most of US politicians were campaigning against it.

Understanding statistics behind vaccines requires some general understanding of setting up controlled experiments (vs just looking at some numbers, like ratio of vaccinated vs unvaccinated people in hospitals without controlling for age).

Generally more intelligent people have a better understanding of statistics, and Google uses a way of intelligence test to hire people (even if that is unpopular here on HN).

“I am paying you for half your days worth of time so you better shape up”

They have already done hairsplitting analysis on the few stragglers. They figured we will go full stasi if they quit f* ‘em. We are still a market monopoly protectorate of the government. It will barely make a dent.

I could care less about Google. Maybe some employees will leave they will not. 2021 is a sad year.

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