I am vaccinated but the only place I am willing to prove it is at an airport or a medical facility. There is a developing liberty/security divide which is going very much in the direction of far too far. Going along with the irrational ways so many people talk about vaccination I am not willing to give up an inch of liberty to the hivemind. No “papers please” to allow me to participate in normal society where the group in power gets to decide if I’m acceptable.
https://abc7news.com/vaccine-cards-security-covid-19-coronav...
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/04/no-digital-vaccine-bou...
Now let's see where that MRN is embedded... http://dicom.nema.org/medical/Dicom/2016c/output/chtml/part0... http://www.j4jayant.com/2013/02/hl7-identifiers-person-patie...
Citation needed? It’s HIPAA, by the way; one P and two As.
> There is a developing liberty/security divide which is going very much in the direction of far too far.
Total drivel. I’m sick of lockdowns and mask mandates. If you’re legally and medically eligible for a vaccine and you haven’t gotten one, I’m happy for private businesses to refuse you service.
https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/blogs/sta...
There is an example. There has been a proliferation of for-profit companies offering health-related services which aren't counted as healthcare providers which a freely selling and distributing personal data for profit, to law enforcement, and accidentally because they are "not medicine" but in reality they are indeed collecting data about your health and giving you tools, information, and advice as a result of that data.
Companies covered by HIPAA are also sharing your health data extensively either through authorizations which don't very well describe the sharing which is actually happening, or freely without notification or approval as "deidentified" data which has been shown time and again to be rather trivial to unmask deidentified records to figure out the person in question.
Also anonymizes healthcare data is neigh impossible to reconstruct so I don’t understand your claim.
Do you have any proof?
What are your thoughts on individuals contracting and spreading a disease that has killed millions already due to their refusal to comply with the most basic health and safety precautions?
Do you believe that someone's refusal to comply with basic sanitary precautions should take precedence over my and my family and loved one's desire to not die of a preventable disease?
And where do you draw the line in that refusal to comply with basic health and safety precautions? Do you also extend it to other viral diseases that are preventable by vaccination such as measles, or do you single out covid?
>Do you believe that someone's refusal to comply with basic sanitary precautions should take precedence over my and my family and loved one's desire to not die of a preventable disease?
Did you and your family get vaccinated? What unvaccinated people do does not affect your risk profile in any meaningful way. Are your kids too young to get vaccinated? The last flu season pre covid killed more under 18s than COVID-19 has.
Do we need government mandated vaccinations and mask mandates for every flu season now?
>And where do you draw the line in that refusal to comply with basic health and safety precautions? Do you also extend it to other viral diseases that are preventable by vaccination such as measles, or do you single out covid?
Do you get asked if you've had a measles vaccine before you get seated at a restaurant? Are you suggesting this is a reasonable action?
You draw the line where there is a real serious threat which passes a certain threshold.
But with COVID-19 like so many things, the people speaking loudly about promoting their cause in protecting us from it (not the professionals) have absolutely no conditions for victory and will endlessly move goalposts forward and endlessly try to do more regardless if risks change by orders of magnitude.
If you're vaccinated or too young to be vaccinated, COVID-19 is over for you. The risk went from 1 in 1000 people dying to no worse than the risk in any flu season, unless that very mild risk makes you think that we should reinvent what personal freedoms in society means, stop turning and ending pandemic into a catastrophe.
I'm not sure this is settled fact at the moment. There are known variants which have shown to reduce the efficacy of at least some of the available vaccines.
The danger isn't from the individual unvaccinated person, it's from pockets of them creating a reservoir of the virus from which new variants can develop. Strong arming people into being vaccinated is the stick with which to try to limit these reservoirs.
Personally, I'm comfortable with limiting peoples ability to attend mass events (which are elective and for entertainment value only) in the tail end of a pandemic without proof of vaccination, I'm less conformable about allowing employers (outside of perhaps those who work with people who are at risk) to do the same.
I suppose then that after every single person in more developed countries is vaccinated, we should start readying the troops for invasion into the less developed countries that, inevitably, will not be fully vaccinated? Otherwise, pockets > variants > travel > reinfection.
Or is too inhumane to invade a country to force them to vaccinate fully? Maybe we should just isolate them economically and close borders with them until they do it themselves.
How far should we go?
I understood your personal thresholds, and thank you for sharing. For me only the government should make and enforce a decision on public health at scale, not any employer, that's my threshold.
I have seen other thresholds being crossed in the last 2 years, but now mine has been crossed, and I don't see this slowing down. What's the next threshold to be crossed?
Yes, variants have shown to be less inhibited by vaccines… but that’s just it, less. Ever had a cold? Influenza? Variants make some vaccinated people sick, but almost none of them end up in the ICU, they’re full of unvaccinated people.
Who is militant? And they aren't putting "everyone" at risk. They are putting themselves at risk surely, but the risk doesn't really spread to people who have been vaccinated.
>You need to prove you are vaccinated when you travel internationally
I also need permission from the government of the country I'm visiting to come at all. They can add conditions if they want and I can choose accordingly.
>So why yes, obviously yes. Don't you agree? Or do you actually believe that an individual's whims and irresponsiblr and reckless behavior should simply put everyone else's life at risk just because?
I don't agree. I think people have lost perspective and have very little idea what the risks of various situations are and can't tell the difference between a risk that could kill millions and a risk that could kill hundreds and are happy to charge forwards to try to prevent any risk regardless of how small because "doing something" has become as a religious mandate.
>I mean, if you really valued freedom then wouldn't you be doing your hardest to ensure that everyone around you should, say, not risk death by an easily preventable disease in spite of everyone except you taking basic precautions?
Freedom is not trying to force everyone around me to do what I determine is best for them.
>do you feel the measles or tetanus shots violate your freedom?
Tetanus basically only spreads through deep puncture wounds with soiled implements. I guess if I didn't seem like I was out of my mind I would want my doctor to accept refusing treatment for a painful and life threatening disease that could only ever effect myself... The question "do you think shot violates your freedom?" really shows that you don't understand my point at all and will continue arguing past and around whatever I have to say.
I am opposed to de facto licensing of public activities based on a choice that should be mine to make. (I did indeed get vaccinated) When there was significant risk and incomplete vaccine access, different rules were acceptable, but only because of the large and temporary risk. Now that that risk is avoidable by anyone in the US who wants to avoid it, continuing to enable and enforce restrictions on everyday activities has gone too far, and normalizing the "papers please" activity does serious harm to our future freedoms.
They _are_ putting those who have been vaccinated at risk since vaccinated people can still get sick. Also this ignores all of those who wish to, but can't be vaccinated for one reason or another.
Then may be you should complain to people who gave you the vaccine, instead of pushing others to take this thing that apparently does not work as advertised.
You clearly don't understand how vaccines work. No vaccine in history has ever kept all vaccinated people from getting sick.
An 80% efficacy may be good enough for you to take the vaccine. But for someone they might be looking for 95% efficacy to make it worthwhile for them.
But in no circumstance, I should be able to dictate that my threshold of efficacy should be good enough for you, and thus you should take it as well, so that my riskier choice will provide better ROI for me...
> They are putting themselves at risk surely, but the risk doesn't really spread to people who have been vaccinated.
This is false because no vaccine provides 100% protection. You even here have agreed we me. Your point that people should complain to vaccine manufacturers about efficacy is both irrelevant and misguided.
Others will be taking a risk for your liberty, that is where it becomes unacceptable.
We live in a society and individual freedoms must be balanced by the responsibilities towards your fellow man.
One thing everyone seems to ignore is those people that have immunity/antibodies and don't actually need a vaccine. Why is that?
As far as I managed to read here and there not even the shot I had protects me from catching or spreading the virus. It only reduces(at least I hope) the damage done when infected even though my age group should be ok-ish even without.
If you do lose the odds and develop an infection, the rates of various outcomes are all better. i.e. very low chance of death or ICU visit, very high chance of no or extremely mild symptoms
People don’t have a good understanding of statistics, of how to treat risk, or of basic disease dynamics.
It is reasonable to believe that having had an existing infection will boost your immunity against future infections and that both vaccines and previous infections will protect you on a diminishing basis, say, for a year or two. (based on existing covid evidence and the behavior of immunity to other coronaviruses which are common in humans which are usually very mild and referred to as a "cold")
5. China’s lockdown was effective, what are you talking about?
To your last point, Brazil is a good example of a complete failure of individual level solutions.
The proposed mechanism is that during exhalation (or more importantly speaking and coughing) there are relatively large droplets of saliva/mucus containing viral particles, and these droplets can be catched by masks (they are big and move more balistically, so masks need not be airtight).
But once these droplets are in air, they dry to (much smaller) aerosol that cannot be catched by masks, you would need properly fitted FFP2/3 respirator.
There's lots of debate about whether that's really how respiratory viruses spread, but more importantly, we know it can't be that simple because we can see the effect mask mandates had on case curves (there wasn't any). So however they're theorized to work, real world data disagrees. There can be lots of reasons for this that aren't even related to mask material, e.g. most transmission occurs in homes, care homes and hospitals, all places where you'd expect most transmission to take place because people have to be confined in a small space with other sick people for long periods, and also places where you can't make people wear masks all the time.
We have seen the kind of snowballing effect 1 or 2 infected can cause.
Of course vaccines do not have 100% efficacy rate, but the risk of getting corona and its effects is at least a bit reduced if you get vaccinated.
Reporting is that almost no intensive care patients in the US these days have been vaccinated.
We're not scared of covid-19 because it'll make us feel shitty for a few days, we're scared of it putting people on ventilators or killing them. There is a very strong signal that vaccination makes the rates of severe negative outcomes of infection very very small - down to the levels of many other rarely severe diseases which don't justify significant action.
"Liberty" isn't the freedom to put yourself at risk with no consequences to anyone or anything else.
It is recognizing that there must be, at some point, a prioritization of giving people choices that might impact others.
>individual freedoms must be balanced by the responsibilities
Must be balanced not obliterated by "responsibilities".
>>> It is recognizing that there must be, at some point, a prioritization of giving people choices that might impact others.
There will always be a set of people who prioritize themselves over others and in the case of corona as we have seen it just takes 1 selfish person to start the snowballing effectt.
We are seeing actual Zombie movie tropes playing out in real life coz of this corona pandemic. even if 98% of people get vaccinated, the holdout population maybe enough to incubate and spread new variants.
That's the future I want to avoid, you want the screaming majority to dictate if you're allowed to do anything outside your home, go ahead and continue to advocate social control with this metaphor.
What I heard though is you may get carded to buy alcohol.
In many countries there has to be a justified reason to request a criminal record certificate.
As for the vaccine, the employer has no business knowing or demanding anything related to the health of an employee, unless that thing is directly affecting their performance. Lack of vaccination does no such thing.
First and foremost, sometimes checks include arrests (without conviction, or a not guilty verdict) if the company chooses the wrong background check company. The government doesn't regulate them very well.
But it can be things like a google search for you (Which means that a protest you went to could mean you "aren't a good fit for the company.").
It can be a credit check: I had to pass a credit check to work at a gas station once. The district manager was convinced that bad credit meant you were more likely to steal.
Very, very often - and more often than a criminal background check - is a drug test. I didn't take a job that did pre-employment hair follicle tests, mostly because the person in the room with me explained she had a drug problem in the past. She had been clean for 2-3 years clean and was willing to take regular drug tests. But they said the tests went back further than that, and no job if the hair follicle test wasn't passed (I think there are now laws that would have protected her).
Urine tests are more common, though. And a slew of employers do random drug tests - some call centers, for example, might do random hair follicle or urine tests (Student loan collections do this in some places). It doesn't matter if it would affect your job or not.
This is all mostly because there is no law protecting it: The behavior would be illegal where I live now.
Now, with vaccinations: Employers do have a little bit of business knowing health concerns if it can affect workplace safety in ways that can make other employees or customers fall sick. They already do this to some degree in, say, foodservice. For example, I know a food factory here (That I worked at temporarily) that requires stool sample tests and time off work if you have any sort of vomiting or diarrhea - you know, because it can make others sick.
I agree with you on workplace safety, but in this case it seems like posturing, since the SARS-2 vaccines don't protect from sickness and transmission (any more). Several countries are experimenting with "vaccinated, cured or tested" to enable reasonably fair and safe access to social life. Since tests will no longer be free, this seems to be a very strong incentive to get vaccinated.
In countries like the UK, Germany, France, etc they're also pondering making it mandatory for health care professionals to get vaccinated. That probably makes sense, together with e.g. teachers, especially since kids can't get the vaccine. But the government must guarantee that any vaccine side-effects will be made up for. The nasty thing about AZ for example was that you would of course get treated if you got the brain thrombosis, but no compensation was awarded. I indirectly know of someone that had this critical side-effect and they survived but last time I heard they were still half paralysed.
But I do feel like there's a distinction between a urine test and a vaccine, since it's impossible to have a negative reaction to a piss test.
As a fully vaccinated individual, I still dislike the idea of having to disclose this fact. Not for any logical reason I can personally attribute, but just because I'm used to not wanting to discuss my personal medical history in a professional setting. Perhaps this is actually worth changing, given how fucked up our medical system is here (USA). Just because something is new doesn't make it bad. What worries me though is backlash for the tiny fraction of population that actually can't take the vaccine for whatever reason.
This line of reasoning falls apart pretty quickly after this point, since if you look for it, you can come up with whatever reasons you want for fearing the vaccine and therefor not taking it. At the end of the day you just need to trust that some things work as designed and that you are probably stronger than you think you are.
Sorry I ended up going off on a tangent here.
I also have both my vaccine shots and got them as soon as I possibly could.
What I worry about is the idea of being compelled to do it, and of being compelled like you say to provide sensitive information for employment. It's better to push against something that you agree with the goal but are uncomfortable with the methods than wait until you have to fight against something you disagree with entirely. I would have to think very hard before taking a job where I had to prove to anyone I was vaccinated.
My view is that focusing on increasing voluntary vaccinations to the point that it doesnt matter is the answer. Giving up to authoritarianism just this once is not a useful precedent to set.
The precedent is already set for things of far less value. Vaccine disclosure actually seems like one of the few things companies require I provide that is valuable for the workplace.
I feel this jab is disingenuous.
The goal of a drug test is to test whether you took recreational drugs. The goal of vaccination is to ensure the odds you contract and spread a disease is low to none.
What I find mind boggling is that the concept of a drug test is extremely intrusive, as it tracks whether you took a recreational drug sometime in the recent past, like in your personal time very far away from the company's offices and while not on the job. Why is that encroachment deemed acceptable and normal by antivaxers but the simple and extremely safe act of taking a vaccine is somehow a major problem?
Not to mention it would strike many positives thanks to prescription amphetamines being prevalent among developers. Then one would have to disclose psychiatric diagnosis (ADHD) to prove not being a druggie.
In the US, yes. There is a very, very, very good chance that your cashiers, call center workers, and a slew of other low-level (and store management) positions have had to take a pre-employment drug test. A lot of government jobs require it as well (IIRC, the government has some issues getting tech folks because of drug test requirements): Some have to take random drug tests during their employment.
It doesn't matter if it will affect your job at all. In some states, they can reject or fire you for nicotine.
I don't think this is as acceptable outside of the US: I'm in Norway now, and it would probably be illegal without reason (pilots, for example... perhaps). And a real reason, not just wanting sober employees or to sort potential employees.
if taking drugs would cause bleed-over effects into the job time, then it's not really only affecting their own time, and thus, the employer has the right to control it partially.
I don't know what's the experience in the US, but in my home country everyone has a little booklet they carry with them since pretty much birth where we register not only when we took vaccines, such as measles or tetanus or hepatitis, but also when we should take the booster shots.
Oddly enough, the booklet looks a bit like a passport. Well, a passport is also a log, right?
So I'm kind of baffled why some people claim this is a radical turn of events.
Security (or safety) requires some social contracts to be fulfilled. When these social contracts aren't enough we start to see polices and law take up the slack. Our existing privacy laws and regulations (e.g. HIPPA compliance) could be argued to be too strict, whereas at the same time, we're in an age of spyware / ad-tracking which is in dire need of curtailment.