If someone wants to exercise their “freedom” to not be vaccinated - for whatever reason, I’m fine w/ that. But I’m also fine w/ them being ostracized and experiencing significant disadvantages as a result - including loss of job, expulsion from school, restricted access to various locations/activities, denial of health care, etc.
Live - and die - free and alone.
Well, it’s good that’s not what I was saying then. 
I said it was like the Flu in respect to it is probably in the population now and will keep with seasonal changes, not talking about it’s lethality. Though, you are comparing one seasonal variant of the Flu…if you were to compare Covid to, say the Spanish (from the US) Flu then you get a different answer wrt lethality. Regardless, that’s not what I was saying there, so it’s kind of moot from my perspective.
But doesn’t that reflect a choice on his part, to listen to nothing else? It isn’t as though anyone is forcing him to listen to loonies. And the overwhelming body of sensible info isn’t exactly hard to find.
Maybe I’m wrong, but I always thought of brainwashing as something forced upon someone - such as by captors. The idea of being brainwashed by one’s own choices strikes me as an strained interpretation of the word.
As I said, I don’t really know that much about the subject. From what I’ve been told, the fact that we already have so many variants in such a short time means, at least to those telling me this stuff, that this is likely to expand since the more who get it the more chances it has to mutate to a new variant, and that it’s already in the population doing just that. I don’t believe that the Smallpox virus mutated as rapidly, so you could basically make it extinct in the wild, so to speak. But I could be totally wrong and misunderstanding what I’ve been told, so you could be correct and we could just wipe it out if we vaccinated everyone.
I was trying to go a step further and say that we can’t just treat it like the flu for those reasons. Voluntary seasonal vaccinations like the flu aren’t going to do the job, I suspect. People will forget, people will not do it because it’s a minor pain in the butt, they don’t like needles, they feel bad for a day afterward, etc… All the same dumb-ass reasons people give for not getting flu shots like they should will still be there for COVID.
Except COVID’s worse. That’s why we’ll need mandates in some fashion if we want to avoid this being a constant public health issue. (estimates are that the unvaccinated will catch COVID every 16-17 months).
Ok, just making sure we were on the same page with what I wrote. I understand where you are coming from.
There were also no animal reservoirs for smallpox. There are for Covid. My understanding is this makes a big difference in ability to wipe it out.
Cows? I thought (again, perhaps erroneously) that Smallpox and Cowpox were related, and that this was the animal reservoir.
Might be related, not sure. But Smallpox was considered to have no animal (or insect) reservoirs.
Variola virus is the etiological agent of smallpox. During the smallpox era, the only known reservoir for the virus was humans; no known animal or insect reservoirs or vectors existed.
That would be an argument for a true mandate, not just one on an ad-hoc company-by-company basis. If you have to get a vaccine no matter where you work, and you can’t avoid it by quitting, then you won’t lose any staff.
Though, honestly, I think that a lot of businesses would be better off without anti-vaxers, even at the cost of not filling those positions. An anti-vax medical worker is worse than no medical worker at all: They’re supposed to be making people well, and instead they’re making people sick. And who knows what other insane ideas they’ll come up with, at their patients’ expense?
They’re very distant relatives, so you can wipe out smallpox while still having cowpox around. Cowpox is also pretty rare.
Not all those who oppose the mandate are anti-vaxxers. Not even all of them are unvaccinated, at least those who I’ve talked to who are protesting a mandate. There are various reasons I’ve heard. I lot of them revolve around the various unions (all of those departments and agencies, at least in my organization, have unions). I’m not sure exactly why, but that seems to be the case.
I think it’s a bad thing that people are so willing to dismiss and broad-brush whole groups when there are various reasons why people conclude what they conclude. I’m certainly no fan of anti-vaxxers, as I’ve made clear here in the past, but i think a lot of these folks go beyond this group.
That said, I do see merit in a mandate. But, getting back to your earlier paragraph, we AREN’T putting in an overarching mandate, so the issue I brought up is a real-world issue that is impacting us. And I’m not convinced that having no police, or 10% fewer police as is more realistic for how many might actually quit, retire or go elsewhere is better than a percentage of those not being vaccinated but following the mask and other mandates and being tested. Having been tested myself a few times I can say…I’d get the freaking vaccine just to stop having to do that alone!
Thank you. Appreciate the info. I love these sorts of threads as I learn a lot of stuff in them. 
So, getting back to the poster-up thread that brought this up, we could do the same with Covid, assuming this doesn’t have an animal repository in the wild?
That’s a shame. Both really really should - they are in confined spaces (often old with questionable ventilation) with people for a long period of time.
It’s much more likely to get a covid variant from an UNvaccinated person.
And the “bad” reactions so far have been similar to AND WEAKER THAN reactions to the actual virus; this is not a reason not to get the vaccine - it’s a reason TO get the vaccine!
That being said, I’m iffy on OVERALL mandates. For certain professions (first responders, teachers, medical personel) - absolutely. These are professions dealing with sick and vulnerable, or (as I mentioned above) in close proximity to people for long periods of time in confined spaces. Yeah, a clerk in a grocery store comes into contact with a lot lot lot of people, but it’s for a short time in a much bigger (more air volume for the virus to get lost in) space. My wife is a classroom aid; I have three kids who work retail and one who is an EMT. They’re all fully vaccinated; they’re all lining up for the boosters when they’re available.
Let’s look at some other occupations. Construction trades. Much of that work is outside; even if it’s inside, it’s usually pretty spread out. Other blue-collar jobs like Farmer and Truck Driver - yeah, that’s really solitary. Retail - like I said, larger spaces for the virus to dissipate; easier to distance. Corporate America - I can work from home. Jobs like these aren’t superspreaders.
I actually like the current idea, where the COMPANY says “If you want to work here, you have to be vaccinated.” No one is forcing you to work there; you don’t want to get vaccinated? You don’t want to work there. That being said, I’m all for “vaccine passports”. Live theater is back in our area, but you have to show proof of vaccination. You want to sit in a very small space for 6 hours with 200 other people to get across the country? You sure as hell better show proof of vaccination.
No, we can’t. How long has Polio vaccination been around, and we still haven’t FULLY gotten rid of that. The logistics are too hard for something that spreads this easily.
And all of those arguments come down to “You can’t make me! YOU’RE NOT MY REAL DAD!” tantrums.
Well, where have those whole groups - unions or otherwise - expressed sensible reasons for their positions?
From what I’ve read, a great deal of it is versions of “You can’t tell me what to do!” As a union member myself, I suspect there is some element of unions seeking to use ANY issue as a bargaining chip.
No, I don’t think there is a slippery slope here. I’d be perfectly happy to limit such mandates to proven safe vaccines against single diseases in which >50,000 Americans have died in a single calendar year.
Individuals should feel free to make their own decisions. But they ought to bear the expected costs.
So, getting back to the poster-up thread that brought this up, we could do the same with Covid, assuming this doesn’t have an animal repository in the wild?
If our vaccines work well enough to stop infections among new variants. Otherwise, our best bet will be to acquire enough immunity to take the teeth out of this virus. Hopefully, it will be like many coronaviruses that cause the common cold.
Of course, unlike smallpox, there’s tons of other bat coronaviruses out there that could evolve in bats or intermediate hosts to infect humans. Hopefully, our immunity to this virus will prevent that from causing another coronavirus pandemic.
Our district mandated vaccines for all staff and have been very aggressive about enforcing that mandate, including removing senior teachers from their classes and making them teach on-line for those (idiot) parents who don’t believe in vaccines.
The right to refuse forced treatments, which have a terrible history, is important and needs to be weighed against community benefits, evidence, risk and costs. Some jobs involving people contact should have a lower threshold. Many immunizations have done a stunning job of reducing morbidity (eg HiB meningitis) or problems in pregnancy. I do not like the politicization of medical issues in general.
I think Covid has been costly and evidence supporting vaccination is good. I think significant risks of vaccination are well publicized but actually very small. So in this case I think it is reasonable to get people vaccinated using reasonable methods. I would be less comfortable with forcing everyone in Canada to get a vaccine for, say, malaria though it would likely benefit.and be appropriate in sone situations and countries and is probably a very important breakthrough.
For some jobs, like working with the elderly or immunocompromised people, absolutely. For everything else, I’m pretty torn, and, honestly, leaning toward “no” for the most part. (I might be more of a yes if the vaccines weren’t pretty awesome at protecting vaccinated people from severe outcomes, but much more hit-and-miss at protecting them from getting infected and potentially infecting other people. If it were the other way around, I think there would be a stronger rationale for requiring it.)
I also think this has become such a culture-war flashpoint that there are a ton of unintended consequences if we don’t tread lightly and carefully. For example, if schools have mandates, what happens to kids whose parents refuse permission? Do they end up dropping out, getting homeschooled by parents who probably don’t have the intellectual tools to do it well, being enrolled in private schools that cater to families with, shall we say, particular political and cultural viewpoints? And, in general, when you tell people that they have to do a thing that they aren’t otherwise inclined to do or they won’t be allowed to participate fully in society, does that tend to incentivize them or radicalize them? (That’s a genuine question, not a rhetorical one; I don’t know the answer to it, but I wouldn’t be surprised if there is an answer, or at least some social science research pointing the way. At any rate, I certainly hope we’re paying attention to that research if it’s out there and not just guessing!)
I agree with this for the most part. Branding people as outsiders is dangerous and not likely to be effective. I much prefer a more positive approach where people are rewarded for compliance, rather than punished for non-compliance. Make proof of vaccination a requirement for just about every facet of public life - people will see they need to do it in order to go to a ball game, go out to eat, travel, go to a pub with their friends, put their kid in a public school, and they will likely more readily just go along with the program because they will see it’s easier to get on with life than to resist. Allow them to come to their own conclusions will be easier than forcing them (altho I agree our collective patience has worn thin). Much like training other kinds of animals - give them positive reinforcement (reward) for behaving the right way, rather than smacking them on the nose for doing it wrong.
Of course, it may be too late now, since the whole thing has been politicized and polarized to the extent it is.