Should Employers have the right to request staff be vaccinated?

[Bijan]

37 minutes ago, rcarlson said:

Doesn't the question (as it's morphed through the thread) hinge on whether the vax prevents transmission?  There seems to be alot of certitude from people that don't really know.  I believe the studies so far more clearly establish whether the vax reduces severity of symptoms rather than whether they halt transmission. The rest is up in the air.  It may be that reduction of transmission is a side effect.  Hardly certain. 

If the vax isn’t shown to reduce transmission, all that follows falls prey to the usual passions and biases of any other polarizing political debate.  So we're back to the usual suspects that pervade every ethical/moral issue of bodily autonomy versus the greater good.     

 

Well in most basic terms you're much less likely to test positive for covid if you take the vaccine, not just to get less sick.

As far as I know no one has done the study of looking at totally healthy vaccinated people to see if they can transmit Covid, but we should have data on people that are not vaccinated and never have any symptoms and how likely they are to be carriers.

Based on my understanding of that it would probably be the case that vaccinated people are less likely to transmit if they don't get sick, but if they do get sick even if it is weaker they may still be as contagious. So the total effect is that they'll be less likely to transmit than non-vaccinated people, since they're less likely to get Covid. Again that's my understanding of it.

The debate over whether vaccinated people are contagious or how contagious is about the people who do get sick despite the vaccine. I don't think that matters if you're 5 times less likely to get covid if you are vaccinated. That should be good enough. This is one of those the perfect is the enemy of the good situations.

[rcarlson]

 

10 minutes ago, Bijan said:

As far as I know no one has done the study of looking at totally healthy vaccinated people to see if they can transmit Covid, but we should have data on people that are not vaccinated and never have any symptoms and how likely they are to be carriers.

The least we can do is admit that we don't know what we don't know before imposing social restrictions on any segment of the population.  

[Bijan]

31 minutes ago, rcarlson said:

 

The least we can do is admit that we don't know what we don't know before imposing social restrictions on any segment of the population.  

Fair enough but this is data that should be clearly visible from the statistics if it was a major factor.

That is to say if vaccinated people were as infectious as non vaccinated people you'd see the incidence of covid among the unvaccinated increase rather than decrease (since they are catching it from contagious vaccinated people) while it decreased for the vaccinated (since they are infectious for covid but don't get covid).

It seems that both decreased initially with vaccination and both are increasing now due to the delta variant.

[RedLantern]

1 hour ago, rcarlson said:

 

The least we can do is admit that we don't know what we don't know before imposing social restrictions on any segment of the population.  

This is true, but the public is *really* bad at parsing the difference between what can be claimed as “known” by scientific standards, and what is a safe working assumption for every other context. 

[Jimmy_jack]

14 hours ago, Meesterjojo said:

One of our er doctors doesn't believe that covid is serious, masks, vaccines, etc. Despite seeing how we were through round 1. 

Since this physician also runs our er, no one gowns for patients there. Yes, people call us and complain frequently. 

 

You're not serious, are you? You can't imagine why people bash on big pharm?

Lobbyists, promoting drugs which cause addiction and ruin lives, buying the rights to human cells and thus subsequent therapy, over pricing of medications such that people die needlessly each year...

I can't imagine why.

 

I'm not sure you understand how selection works. If you like I'll message you privately, or anyone else curious, and explain it.

Further, employers have the right to demand whatever they want, especially as it pertains to their businesses. If my employees that come into contact with my customers spread covid, you better believe there's going to be a lawsuit. And healthcare professionals like myself are already mobilizing to support those lawsuits and grind employers to the hilt. 

It's all fun and games when a business wants to make money off off population. But when they also infect and contribute to spreading a disease to the same people they prey off of, well, that's despicable. 

 

Reading backwards is just like reading through heart of darkness. It'd a hot mess.

At this point I do not understand why folks are confusing personal rights and freedom's with not wanting to harm your neighbors. 

You do not have the right to harm other people. That's is why you need to get vaccinated,  mask up, or leave society.

No one has the right to harm others. End of debate.

Selection? What are you talking about?

Employers do not have the right to demand whatever they want. Separate from this conversation about COVID, that’s a silly statement.

 

[Meesterjojo]

2 minutes ago, Jimmy_jack said:

Selection? What are you talking about?

Employers do not have the right to demand whatever they want. Separate from this conversation about COVID, that’s a silly statement.

 

Clearly you either don't live in the USA or you're not in a right to work state.

Regardless, natural selection is why there are covid variants, and subsequently why we're still in this mess and why this topic is being discussed. It's literally the reason for the season. 

But let's take this private. 

[BrightonCorgi]

14 hours ago, Meesterjojo said:

Further, employers have the right to demand whatever they want, especially as it pertains to their businesses.

That is so far off from reality.

So, a business can say "We don't hire blacks or women" or "We don't sell to Jews or gays"?

[Meesterjojo]

28 minutes ago, BrightonCorgi said:

That is so far off from reality.

So, a business can say "We don't hire blacks or women" or "We don't sell to Jews or gays"?

You're taking a statement to an absurd conclusion and/or making direct equivalency with race and health. 

Plus, your statement is really in poor taste. I believe you can stay on topic. 

[Jimmy_jack]

54 minutes ago, Meesterjojo said:

Clearly you either don't live in the USA or you're not in a right to work state.

Regardless, natural selection is why there are covid variants, and subsequently why we're still in this mess and why this topic is being discussed. It's literally the reason for the season. 

But let's take this private. 

You must be sleepy. Some rest will likely help your posts make more sense.

[BrightonCorgi]

10 minutes ago, Meesterjojo said:

You're taking a statement to an absurd conclusion and/or making direct equivalency with race and health. 

Plus, your statement is really in poor taste. I believe you can stay on topic. 

You could fill in the blanks with whatever you want and it's not poor taste as this topic relates to the most personal topic; our personal health records & compulsory experimental drug injections. 

In the US, low vaccinate rates are highest among minorities.   There's a lot of "eggshell walking" about how do we direct our segregation (to those who do not want experimental drug injections) without sounding racist.

[Cairo]

1 hour ago, BrightonCorgi said:

how do we direct our segregation (to those who do not want experimental drug injections) without sounding racist.

OK--time for my newest joke on this touchy topic.

Q.  Why are the black doctors shown on PSAs (public service announcements) failing to convince black citizens to get vaccinated.

A.  They are wearing white coats (bad optics).  😀

[Bijan]

9 hours ago, RedLantern said:

This is true, but the public is *really* bad at parsing the difference between what can be claimed as “known” by scientific standards, and what is a safe working assumption for every other context. 

Don't know if this was directed at me, but I'll try to restate what I said sticking closer to science.

The science says that vaccinated people get covid less often, that is they did double blind studies with vaccine vs placebo and tested everyone in both groups and the vaccine group had statistically significant less covid.

Second science says that to infect someone with a virus you need to be infected with the virus. This is regardless of symptoms. For example you can have HIV for years without getting AIDS the disease but you need to be HIV positive to infect anyone else with HIV.

Those two facts together mean that the vaccine almost certainly reduces transmission.

But there's no certainty not even in science. Maybe this is the one virus that defies virus logic. As far as I know no one has done a study because it doesn't seem reasonable.

Meanwhile there are anti Vax people who won't shake hands or sit in the same room as a vaccinated person because they fear vaccine cooties.

One person was evicted from their rental here in Ontario for having a vaccinated visitor against their landlords wishes. The person moved rather than deal with the courts and their crazy landlord.

Anyways the main reason I oppose a vaccine mandate without an opt out is basically due to the above. I fear the anti Vax people or their equivalent getting into power someday and banning vaccines or limiting the rights of the vaccinated. If we make vaccines an entirely political issue that is the risk we run.

[rjake100]

7 minutes ago, Bijan said:

Those two facts together mean that the vaccine almost certainly reduces transmission.

I agree with this logic. Thanks for the well constructed post.

[Tstew75]

I think we've positively confirmed it is indeed legal (in the US at least) for employers to require you to get vaccinated. If you don't like it, go elsewhere- it's a free market.

The thing I find more interesting is that down the road companies will start to refuse unvaccinated customers b/c of increasing pressure from World heath organizations (& by default governments) who exist to end world-wide pandemics as quickly as possible.

The biggest example here is airlines- it's on the table for the big guys to refuse service to any non-vaccinated person if they don't have a medical exemption. Flying is not a unalienable right, it's a privilege & supplied by private companies that can make their own rules. It's crazy to think that the airline industry alone could push many more people to get the shot & help end this thing. I'm positive it will happen if this pandemic rages on for the foreseeable future.

Vaccinated people shall not carry the heavy burden of the (voluntarily) unvaccinated forever, at some point everyone will be exhausted & the scales will tip.

[oakalley]

I think we've positively confirmed it is indeed legal (in the US at least) for employers to require you to get vaccinated. If you don't like it, go elsewhere- it's a free market.
The thing I find more interesting is that down the road companies will start to refuse unvaccinated customers b/c of increasing pressure from World heath organizations (& by default governments) who exist to end world-wide pandemics as quickly as possible.
The biggest example here is airlines- it's on the table for the big guys to refuse service to any non-vaccinated person if they don't have a medical exemption. Flying is not a unalienable right, it's a privilege & supplied by private companies that can make their own rules. It's crazy to think that the airline industry alone could push many more people to get the shot & help end this thing. I'm positive it will happen if this pandemic rages on for the foreseeable future.
Vaccinated people shall not carry the heavy burden of the (voluntarily) unvaccinated forever, at some point everyone will be exhausted & the scales will tip.

Absolutely. I feel like the entities here in the USA that are “encouraging” vaccination but not mandating it are not willing to put up with the legal hassles of requiring the shots. However when the FDA gives final approval, in a matter of days or a couple of weeks I expect to see most if not all major companies, hospitals and even many small businesses make vaccination mandatory.
I work in anesthesia in a small(150 bed) small town hospital in Mississippi. We are overwhelmed with the Delta variant. Our ICU,ER and Telemetry units have been full for several weeks. We have patients in the halls in our ER literally waiting for a ventilator. We have had 6 deaths in the past week, ages 28-79 , all unvaccinated. We have had a few breakthrough cases of vaccinated folks, but none thus far have required hospitalization. We are all tired! I would not wish wearing and N-95 mask and full protective gear on anyone, even people I don’t like. Folks, this is real, and as long as we have around 60% unvaccinated, we will be be fighting this for a long time. In our state with no mask mandates and politicians that refuse to follow the science we are in trouble. The longer we allow this large number of unvaccinated people to move freely about, the greater the risk not only of Delta, but the next mutant that may be much worse.
For the sake of everyone, vaccination is the only clear path forward. If it takes mandatory vaccination, then so be it. We stamped out Smallpox and Polio by getting everyone vaccinated. We can do the same with Covid, but it’s going to mean that everyone needs to be vaccinated.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[inter4alia]

I find it very interesting that airlines are  now considering banning anyone from flying who is not vaccinated, yet all the airlines continued to fly during the past year when no vaccine was available and there were no reports of air travel causing mass transmission or acting as super spreaders.

So it was perfectly safe for unvaccinated people to fly every day pre vaccine but now it's unacceptably dangerous to allow unvaccinated people to fly because some people are vaccinated?

[Islandboy]

At present, when it comes to a business mandating a certain vaccine status on its customers, I think there are more examples of anti-vax business owners disallowing those who are vaccinated, although I suspect the cases of this are still few and far between. Perhaps the opposite is around the corner as some have suggested - I for one hope not.

To the question at hand though, part of me feels that if an employer provides their employees with a health care plan, and will be burdened with the cost of an employee’s Covid care (and ultimately the rest of their employees will share some of that burden through rising premiums), then they should have the option of mandating the vaccine. The employee is free to terminate their employment if they disagree.

My employer encourages getting vaccinated based on currently available data, but based on a pretty open-minded company culture, and all of the unknowns swirling around, I don’t expect it will ever be mandated - until it becomes a cost-of-healthcare issue.

[Puros Y Vino]

1 hour ago, inter4alia said:

I find it very interesting that airlines are  now considering banning anyone from flying who is not vaccinated, yet all the airlines continued to fly during the past year when no vaccine was available and there were no reports of air travel causing mass transmission or acting as super spreaders.

So it was perfectly safe for unvaccinated people to fly every day pre vaccine but now it's unacceptably dangerous to allow unvaccinated people to fly because some people are vaccinated?

Flights may not have been major infection points but they sure carried a lot of infected people. Canada for instance dragged it's feet putting on restrictions for foreign flights into Canada. And when it did, they were easy to get around. Our airlines along with others hand delivered all the lovely variants from across the globe. People from India who had it came here to escape what was happening back home.   Our Indigenous people whom we have placed in some of the remotest regions of our provinces got ravaged.  They were traditionally distrustful of gov't mandated vaccinations with good reason but when they started getting hit, they screamed for the vaccines and accused us of a renewed genocidal campaign because we couldn't roll it out fast enough.  In short. Those flights did serious damage.  

[BrightonCorgi]

8 hours ago, Tstew75 said:

Flying is not a unalienable right, it's a privilege & supplied by private companies that can make their own rules.

That's not true.  It's public and private partnership.  They don't own the sky or the runways, or infrastructure.  They can not totally make their own rules.

[rcarlson]

3 hours ago, Puros Y Vino said:

Flights may not have been major infection points but they sure carried a lot of infected people. Canada for instance dragged it's feet putting on restrictions for foreign flights into Canada. And when it did, they were easy to get around. Our airlines along with others hand delivered all the lovely variants from across the globe. People from India who had it came here to escape what was happening back home.   Our Indigenous people whom we have placed in some of the remotest regions of our provinces got ravaged.  They were traditionally distrustful of gov't mandated vaccinations with good reason but when they started getting hit, they screamed for the vaccines and accused us of a renewed genocidal campaign because we couldn't roll it out fast enough.  In short. Those flights did serious damage.  

The proposed mandates here include intrastate and interstate travel.  

 

1 hour ago, BrightonCorgi said:

That's not true.  It's public and private partnership.  They don't own the sky or the runways, or infrastructure.  They can not totally make their own rules.

No kidding.  Does the same rule of "you can work somewhere else"  also apply to "you can fly another airline?"

 

12 hours ago, Bijan said:

Don't know if this was directed at me, but I'll try to restate what I said sticking closer to science.

The science says that vaccinated people get covid less often, that is they did double blind studies with vaccine vs placebo and tested everyone in both groups and the vaccine group had statistically significant less covid.

Second science says that to infect someone with a virus you need to be infected with the virus. This is regardless of symptoms. For example you can have HIV for years without getting AIDS the disease but you need to be HIV positive to infect anyone else with HIV.

Those two facts together mean that the vaccine almost certainly reduces transmission.

But there's no certainty not even in science. Maybe this is the one virus that defies virus logic. As far as I know no one has done a study because it doesn't seem reasonable.

Meanwhile there are anti Vax people who won't shake hands or sit in the same room as a vaccinated person because they fear vaccine cooties.

One person was evicted from their rental here in Ontario for having a vaccinated visitor against their landlords wishes. The person moved rather than deal with the courts and their crazy landlord.

Anyways the main reason I oppose a vaccine mandate without an opt out is basically due to the above. I fear the anti Vax people or their equivalent getting into power someday and banning vaccines or limiting the rights of the vaccinated. If we make vaccines an entirely political issue that is the risk we run.

I fear that we're giving up on weighing cost benefit so it no longer requires a meaningful examination of either, which ironically feeds into your expressed concern.  I believe that all of this lines up on who proposes the mandate, not moral, ethical, expediency or currently deemed practical considerations by those in charge.     

[Tstew75]

13 hours ago, BrightonCorgi said:

That's not true.  It's public and private partnership.  They don't own the sky or the runways, or infrastructure.  They can not totally make their own rules.

Not so. Airlines can & do decide who can fly every day.  One example is black-listing the idiots who cant follow their mandatory mask requirement during flight...or harassing flight attendants. They don't need the governments 'OK' to do so.

Just b/c the government subsidizes the highway system doesn't mean you can't be banned from taking an Uber or Lyft.

You do not have a right to fly. No one does.

 

[BrightonCorgi]

43 minutes ago, Tstew75 said:

Not so. Airlines can & do decide who can fly every day.

Then why don't they charge passengers by their weight?  Why not charge double for young children?

These are just a couple of examples, but there are many. 

There are many things the airline industry wants to do.

[Tobbot]

@Meesterjojo @oakalley

Thank-you for what you are doing on the front lines. I'm an RN and have done a small bit of undergraduate research in epidemiology (math modeling). Always through this pandemic our greatest risk has been overwhelming our healthcare systems. You both describe exactly this in your workplaces and this is very frightening. Especially so when one considers that you aren't speaking about isolated incidents. As you know this is when the real shit-show starts! I don't know what to say except that your work is appreciated and inspiring!

To the topic of thread... I voted yes. To me this is easy, we are smack dab in the middle of a global health crisis. Six months ago when vaccines first came out they were a powerful tool against SARS-COV2. As all are aware, this is changing, and each new infection is another opportunity to mutate. Six months from now it is very realistic that these vaccines are much weakened as the newest variant asserts themselves.

Everyone here I'm sure is familiar with all tools used to fight COVID. With weakened vaccines we now must revert to using all tools in our box again. I'm well aware of the risks inherent in lockdowns and school closures, to me this is a very simple risk vs reward calculation. To say that children don't catch covid is a lie, a lie told directly to a second grader by one of the most powerful people in the world, no less. Not only do children catch this but they also experience Long COVID. And even if most are asymptomatic, they certainly are capable of transmitting to their family. A child's life has more value (according to those who evaluate this sort of thing) due to the simple fact of their potential years remaining. Because of this, the horrors I just described are that much more devastating. So, back to my point, simple risk vs reward. Yes there are risks with lockdowns. However, if our governments used their enormous financial might they could mitigate some of the damaging effects of lockdowns, etc until we have the situation under some semblance of control. But no, they simply give trillions, world-wide, to corporations and ultra wealthy and let us suffer. 

And, oh yeah, one last thing... The story line of this being a human designed virus is absolute B.S. I'm pleasantly surprised that this hasn't been discussed. In science there is no way to either prove or disprove ANYTHING. So, unfortunately this conspiracy theory will never be laid to rest. But there are a few major problems with this "theory" one is the genetic sequencing and two is the fact that bats are the perfect incubation machines for many viral species and have many Corona virus species already in their populations. If you wonder why just picture in your head thousands of bats roosting, packed together like sardines AND THEN they travel miles! 

@El Presidente Thanks for the thread. I haven't seen this done anywhere else and thanks to all of your employees that make this possible! 

 

[Baccy]

No because millions on workers already have natural immunity, even though the Fauci army doesn't want to talk about this, it exists. They say just shut up and take it. As far as I know there have been very few cases of clinically documented reinfection. Correct me if I'm wrong...

[Cigar Surgeon]

5 hours ago, Baccy said:

As far as I know there have been very few cases of clinically documented reinfection. Correct me if I'm wrong...

I know at least 7 people personally in the cigar industry that were infected twice, and at least 3 more than were infected three times. 🤷‍♂️ All confirmed with COVID tests, according to them at the time.