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Comment by mrtksn | Hacker News Reader

Care to explain? What they did exactly? Is there more to it than “ if you want to come to the office, you must be vaccinated or you need to provide clean PCR test results”?

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No. It had nothing to do with RTO and PCR was not an alternative.

There was a federal policy (not legislated btw, just an EO for all the people complaining about Trump using EOs to undo previous EOs) that said any company with federal contracts (which is nearly all tech companies in the US, not just defense contractors) must have 100% of its employees vaccinated. It had nothing to do with safety since there was no provision for remote workers.

Keep in mind this was very early on before they had any reasonable amount of time to even test the vaccines. Forced medical intervention like that as a federal policy is far more oppressive than just asking immigrants and vistors for social media handles, there isn't any debate to be had here.

Where’s is the oppression in that? It’s pretty normal to have health procedures to the best understanding of the threat at the time. It’s pretty straightforward, all kind of professions have all kinds of rules. Can be argued that the understanding or the precautions weren’t right but I don’t see the personal or political aspect of this. Maybe hi-vis vest are also problematic, so what?

Are you upset with the bureaucratic process? On how exactly was implemented? Like the interaction between the officials? Like on lawyer level stuff?

You can't reason with these people. They don't understand science or biologics. They think it's ok to infect someone's grandparents with COVID-19 and kill or disable them (as what happened to my mother). It's their right as citizens, to spread their filth and pathogens to everybody and refuse the vaccine. In short, it's all about them.

This argument has nothing to do with science. No matter how effective or safe the medicine is forcing medicine on people is invasive.

The science you are speaking of is epidemiology, and has everything to do with science. If I can vaccinate enough people, the disease will not spread. It also falls under various terms: The Common Good, Externalities, and the Responsibilities and Duties of a citizen of the United States. We don't just have rights, we have responsibilities to each other, as human beings. I teach this stuff to Scouts but perhaps you missed the merit badge. It's pretty basic stuff, actually.

> It had nothing to do with safety since there was no provision for remote workers.

Citation needed for all of these claims. Please show me this information in the executive order.

> Keep in mind this was very early on before they had any reasonable amount of time to even test the vaccines.

Sorry, the Moderna vaccines were approved under their expedited schedule under the Trump administration in December of 2020.[1] You're complaining about gov't overreach by the same administration as is implementing the above policy.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_vaccination_in_the_Un...

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