Dutch Airline Pilots Association blocks mandated vaccinations for new pilots
gaacoalition.substack.com
gaacoalition.substack.com
And for the record, I'm triple vaxxed myself and continue to strongly support mandatory vaccinations where they do clearly make sense, eg. measles.
That's usually not possible with universal healthcare.
Then as you accept the principle, you will be mandated to take other vaccines. Your compliance will be verified by a chip.
"Imagine the compliance": https://nitter.net/loffredojeremy/status/1527521228688445442
[0] While technically it's the company who pays VAT to the HMRC, it is the end customer who actually spends that money, so it's just semantics.
At some point, half of the population fall under some risk factor that they could avoid, but instead, make society pay for it.
That's the game of universal healthcare.
As a vaccinated French citizen, I'm ok with it. The pros beat the cons.
What evidence you know of the contrary? The À la une of some journal stating that or something more solid?
Beside that, speaking about France did you read the official report https://www.atih.sante.fr/sites/default/files/public/content... ? Did you read constants articles about medical deserts due to neoliberals reforms ?
Long story short: try to compare USA health costs (the highest in the western world) with the lowest mean quality with classic EU PUBLIC and UNIVERSAL health systems the cheapest and the best in mean quality. Than try to draw where the costs came from and more important: from witch pocked money depart to end up in witch other pockets.
I'm not entirely sure about the numbers on things like obesity, drug use, etc. off-hand.
I agree with you as a matter of principle, so not that it really matters, but people sometimes say "smokers should pay the cost they inflict on society themselves!" and turns out they're not actually inflicting the huge costs people imagine they do.
You have only shown arguments to revise implementations of universal healthcare - not any reasonable stance to regulate behaviour (which by the way, is not a novel topic - see seatbelts etc. - and not a trivial one with easy answers).
That's what the universal stands for.
It's for everybody, no matter the person.
If you are not ok with that, they you don't want universal healthcare, you want something else.
I personnally love universal healthcare, and I'm happy to pay for it. I don't want to have to play a game of chess to live my life in the most likely way to be reimbursed by the system.
Here are even more popular-but-unpopular opinions (facts).
We did not "all" think vaccines would have a meaningful impact on transmission. Sadly they never had any impact on transmission. A whole bunch of studies have measured the SAR split by vaccine status and there's no difference, that's not something specific to Omicron. Although health authorities claimed they would reduce transmission, they had no scientific basis on which to do so because the trials didn't test transmissibility, or even impact on severe illness or death. They only tested reduction in PCR positivity rates (and only symptomatic, iirc).
People who were already checking the claims of public health authorities against the trial data knew this from day one, which is one reason so many people opted out of the vaccination process: if the vaccines are so great, why are they making unsupported claims with 100% confidence? Why lie?
Sadly the answer seemed to be not for medical reasons, but because public health had become obsessed with total vaccination regardless of need. The means had become the end. Telling people the vaccines reduced transmission manipulated huge numbers of people into taking them, even if they weren't in any risk groups and knew it, just out of a sense of obligation to others. And then telling people vaccines reduced transmission enabled them to implement vaccine mandates by claiming the unvaccinated were dangerous to the vaccinated.
Also, Occam's Razor to me indicates that people and governments entirely reasonably seized on vaccines as a way out of the mess last year, no grand conspiracies or intentional manipulation needed.
We really don't have much proof that vaccines reduced transmission. It could be to some extent but how meaningful was that?
We also know that some governments but not all governments implemented vaccine mandates. For example, the UK was pretty lax on them but Germany was very strict.
Occam's razor indicates that apparently some governments didn't have scientific basis for mandates. The opposite that they really had all scientific proof but somehow hid that from the public sounds like a conspiration theory and does not cut the mustard.
People chased the vaccines because of the promise of effectiveness. That was reasonable. Going further and making up claims with no basis wasn't.
(I’m pro-choice here and elsewhere. I have chosen to get three jabs, because I think the vaccine’s benefits to the individual far outweigh the risks.)
To decide that everyone is mandated to eat vegetables, the actor (decisor) should be a perfect, ideal one, knowing much more than we actually know.
They have a non-zero effect on transmissions, severe symptoms, hospitalizations, and deaths, but don't prevent any of those 100%. Problem is, people hear "they don't work in 100% of cases" but only listen to the "they don't work" part.
To me, "risk of transmission of a deadly disease" should fall under the category of workplace hazards, like falling metal beams and air quality. Employers are allowed to mandate helmets and prohibit smoking, so they should be allowed to mandate other things that reduce the risk of their employees encountering other workplace hazards.
I've heard it theorized that vaccination makes Omicron spread faster, because being vaccinated reduces symptoms while not reducing the viral load, making it more likely for someone to unknowingly infect others.
Whether or not mandating this particular vaccine is a good idea on balance, I don’t think that employers are the right group to be independently determining them. (If society wants to implement them, do it via the government. If that implementation includes a check at school enrollment or by employers as a compliance mechanism, fine, but leaving vaccine mandates to individual employers is about as crazy as leaving them to individual schools.)
* I’d be curious to see a 2x2 grid of pro-union/anti-union and pro-mandate/anti-mandate. I suspect there is a more than 25% of population in each of the pro/pro and anti/anti camps, making me think of that meme with the guy sweating in front of buttons labeled “Right of Workers to Collectively Bargain” and “COVID Vaccine Mandate”
Plenty of countries require covid vaccination to enter, that’s an operational problem for an airline deploying staff.
It's funny you say that within the context of an airline. Where pilot and air staff's health is under extreme scrutiny because they need to be in good condition, otherwise people could die when things go south. They probably enforce vaccines for yellow fever and similar for pilots flying to countries impacted to those diseases, why is it any different for COVID-19?
VNV and everyone: “No problem!”
KLM: “You also need this extra healthcare requirement that KLM is imposing.”
VNV: “No. We’ll see you in court.”
Airlines ensuring their flight crews are complying with federal laws and ICAO standards is great. Airlines setting their own medical standards differently is what I (and the pilots’ union) think is improper.
I think you're mistaking the country, KLM is a Dutch airline, and the Netherlands is not a federation. They're under EASA and ICAO regulations, on top of Dutch and (every country they operate in) regulations.
> Airlines setting their own medical standards differently is what I (and the pilots’ union) think is improper.
It's up to them to set those medical standards if they think they're needed. They probably have mental health standards too, considering the worst air disaster in terms of death toll was caused by a pilot of theirs forgetting he's not in a simulator with bad visibility and crashing his 747 into another 747.
As has already been said, many countries require Covid vaccination for entry, including in the EU. Why would an airline not require their air staff to be vaccinated?
The court disagreed in the case we’re discussing.
Are you sure? Available numbers have varied. Are you sure that it is not just a superficial appearance, and that damage could be revealed by a low-level assessment? Some people do not drink or smoke, you know - they want to be optimal, not "it's just a scratch".
Those people who judge the potential damages from covid as negligile but for limited cases would have little reason for reclutance towards vaccination, which would gain the advantage of further reducing those chances.