They are not forced to take the medicine. They are given an choice to take the vaccine or find another job. If they refused to take the vaccine, that is their choice, period. They cannot claimed they are being forced because they are given an choice in the first place. They are given a free will with their decision. Thousands of Thousands people screeching for being forced when they are given a choice. Society don’t have to conform to those people who want to endanger their people and their livelihood.
The government can’t violate your right to free speech. They also can’t “ask” a private company to censor you as it effectively the same thing.
Telling someone “its your choice but if you don’t do it you’ll lose your livelihood” is not a choice at all.
The ability of the government to establish vaccination requirements is long established. It's only becoming a hot topic now because anti-science folks have been programmed to fear a safe and effective vaccine.
The difference is you flipped the switch and decided to turn up to work without clothes. You decided to radically change your behavior and actions in the workplace. This will obviously have consequences due to your unsightly naked body offending co-workers.
When someone doesn't flip any switch, but continues to work exactly as they did before, they have not done anything you can label a "choice with harsh consequences".
Unvaccinated people are not suddenly shedding and dangerous, in the way a naked person is shedding pubic hairs everywhere.
>Unvaccinated people are not suddenly shedding and dangerous, in the way a naked person is shedding pubic hairs everywhere.
Unvaccinated people are inherently dangerous. The change is that we now have the ability for them to become vaccinated people who aren't nearly as dangerous to their clients.
In June 2020, we had no choice but to have unvaccinated health care workers. Today, we do.
They are not dangerous. A person who has access to sharp knives but is currently not holding a knife, is no more dangerous than someone who does not have access to knives.
But even that analogy doesn't fit, since vaccinated people can certainly still get sick and transmit the virus.
Besides, I am not restricting my position in this debate to health care workers. I am talking about anyone with a job, who is now required to get vaccinated. That's what happened where I live (Australia). Everyone in my state from barristers, to builders, office workers, truck drivers... literally every professional who isn't working from home, is required to get the vaccine or lose their job.
Many are pissed off with the expanding scope of mandates.
I can understand the requirement for health workers to be vaccinated. But even then, they should have the option to be tested regularly instead.
This is what happens... incremental laws expand and eliminate choice. Suddenly you live in a world where you must get jabbed every 6 months, and repeatedly prove your vaccine status to everyone every day. Tagged, tracked and validated for walking around doing normal things is not a world we should be encouraging, even in pandemic times. If we must disagree on that point, then fine, we disagree.
Vaccinated people can get sick and transmit the virus, true, but it's much less likely that they will. People with STIs can also transmit the virus, so we wear condoms to make the risk of transmission substantially less. If your sexual partner is unwilling to wear a condom or unwilling to have sex with you if you wear one, you can just choose to not have sex with them and the risk of transmission goes to nothing. That choice doesn't exist with work. If my co-worker chooses to remain a massive public health risk, my chances of catching COVID-19 go up quite a bit. I can't choose to just not be around you and the rest of anti-vaxxers. Not to mention there are people who have legitimate medical reasons who are unable to get vaccinated who are put at substantially higher risk by being forced to be around conspiracy theory anti-vaxxers.
I'm talking about 'well-established' in that it's been happening for 200+ years. The conservative right-wing theocratic extremists that trump appointed will destroy our judicial norms for the next 50 years but that doesn't make them right.
Don't pollute comparisons with situations that have other considerations
You are not an island. You live in a society, a community of people that requires individuals to give up some personal liberties for the good of the whole. Those who don't like that should go move to an isolated island where their harm to others can be limited.
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3...
Vaccines are safe and effective so I wont get into what conspiracy theories you believe about the COVID-19 vaccine. Most importantly, vaccines have been mandated by the government in different settings for years. I'm sure if you went to college at a public school, you had to certain vaccines. I know I did.
Despite what the media and elected/appointed officials are telling you the SARS-CoV2 vaccine is not 100% safe[1] or effective[2]. The authority to mandate vaccines resides with states not the federal government. The SCOTUS has upheld this authority in Jacobson v. Massachusetts. The federal government has absolutely zero authority to mandate vaccination in any capacity.
Yes, I did get vaccinations that were mandated by my state to attend public school. All of them were for diseases that are much more destructive and deadly than SARS-CoV2. In my case the vaccines required by my state were diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis, polio, measles, mumps, and rubella.
[1] https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/safety/ad...
[2] https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3...
Who the fuck's been saying either of those things? None of the mainstream sources I've seen, certainly. Usually, for the efficacy angle, they're emphasizing that it's not 100% effective, and that's part of why it's important that more people get vaccinated and that vaccinated people continue to take precautions.
a) Many frontline workers have superior natural immunity anyway.
b) We're in a pandemic and this nuclear option ensures we have fewer healthcare workers, not more ("fewer workers to make the curve more impactful!")
c) Not a year ago these were our heros and saviours, and now they're villains for failing to comply. LOL
This is the top Google result for “fire in a crowded theater”: https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/11/its-tim...
With firecodes what they are today, a bomb is a more comparable danger to what a fire was 100 yrs ago, anyway.
Be careful about so willingly giving up your right to self-ownership.
You may not ever get it back.
Apply that to other rights like the right to bear arms. If government couldn’t set standards and people could procure any weapon, how does society function? How does air travel even exist with people owning anti aircraft missiles.
That’s why our founders made our constitution a living document with courts interpreting the constitution and balancing individual rights with our collective rights.
The founders were purposefully vague in several areas of the constitution because they absolutely did want circumstances to determine interpretation, however they were not vague at all about delegated and reserved powers. These things are not "living" in a sense of judicial review.
By "living" document, it was intended that the constitution could be modified by an amendment process. There was never a provision for judicial review.
In fact, then entire concept of judicial review arose from Marbury vs Madison [1] where the court claimed this power.
The purpose of the U.S. Constitution, and one of the things that makes it unique in history, is to limit the powers of the government. The founders believed that individual rights were innate (granted by God), not granted by government and certainly not granted by the federal government.
All powers other than those specifically Delegated to the federal government are reserved for the States - the 10th Amendment makes this clear.
It is not the role of the federal government to decide on "greater good" mandates, those powers are very specifically reserved for the states, who are constrained on what they may do by the Constitution and its amendments.
We, as a country, have allowed the federal government to overstep this in many areas. The DEA, for example, only exists because of a very bad interpretation of the Interstate Commerce Clause, which arose from a bad Supreme Court decision (Wikard vs Filburn)[2] about whether or not you were allowed to grow your own wheat.
Forcing care workers to take a medicine against their will is constitutional you say?
All medical procedures should be voluntary, or we go back to the times of lobotomy and forced sterilizations of minorities (and that's not as many decades back as you may think).
> Government can and has jailed and/or fined people for not getting a vaccine.
This means being unvaxed is a something only the rich can afford. Pay fines, and have a good lawyer.