Others have already highlighted that you can be vaccinated and anti-mandate, which is what many people are focusing on.

From a numbers perspective, 91.54% of Canadians 18+ have received at least one dose. 88.91% of 18+ have received two.

It's /possible/ that truckers are widely unvaccinated (perhaps they all subscribe to the same train of thought), but it's unlikely.

I am vaccinated, boosted, and anti mandate.

"He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself." — Thomas Paine, Dissertation on First Principles of Government (1791)

You don't have a right to cross a border and spread a deadly disease. As far as I'm aware, these truckers are allowed to work unvaccinated within their own country.

Which disease, flu? They've likely been spreading that for decades.

Various disease, actually. Not the flu, but most borders will ask that you're vaccinated for a whole host of diseases if you come for professional reasons.

Were Canadian truckers previously required to prove vaccination against various diseases?

As far as I understand, Canadians were exempted from these vaccinations for non-covid diseases. That is probably because vaccinations are mandatory as a child in Canada.

At this point a majority of Canadas anti-mandate movement, which recently became a majority is “vaccinated but anti-mandate” just because the numbers literally don’t allow for any other reality.

It looks like your account has been using HN primarily for political and ideological battle. That's not allowed here, and we rate-limit or ban accounts that do it. We have to, because it's not only not what this site is for, it destroys what it is for: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

Past explanations on this:

https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

I can’t understand this dichotomy. Just because one is vaccinated, does not mean they are pro-mandates.

I'm pro vaccine but the mandates and access cards and testing requirements makes me sick to my stomach

I had to sign a letter with my employer stating that I accepted I could be terminated should I not be fully vaccinated by Dec 31, 2021. I feel a line has been crossed, and I fully support the idea that the mandate is bad. Vaccines are great, I voluntarily got it anyway, but I don't feel it's ok to say you deserve to be fired or worse (and I've heard much worse) if you decide the vaccine is not for you. I support the protest. It is not an anti-vax protest. I do not beleive it is about racisim or white supremacy despite what our prime minister says or thinks.

in the USA, a psychiatric patient, even if seriously ill, has the right to refuse medication. This non-negotiable law is in place exactly because of past generations battle over forced medications.

I don't think that's comparable at all. If you don't want to get vaccinated but your employer has a mandate, you can quit.

Similarly, your employer can fire you if there is no reasonable accommodation for your medical condition that you are willing to accept. If, for example, you have a treatable form of schizophrenia but refuse all medication, you can get fired if that condition renders you unable to perform your job duties.

You can get committed to an institution, or your employer can be forced to reinstate you, but absent such an order from the legal system, you are free to refuse treatment, and your employer is free to let you go.

>I don't think that's comparable at all. If you don't want to get vaccinated but your employer has a mandate, you can quit.

You can't quit the game. I assure you. Might as well make the stand here and now, because in the end, it will find it's way back to you. People problems always do.

>in the USA, a psychiatric patient, even if seriously ill, has the right to refuse medication

even if involuntarily committed to a mental institution?

There are definitely constitutional boundaries. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O%27Connor_v._Donaldson

Most states define laws of their own around this, and usually a longer involuntary stay requires a court hearing. But I wouldn’t be surprised if even those are operating in a legal gray area that would get shot down upon a SCOTUS hearing. More realistically, the Supreme Court wouldn’t hear these cases due to higher priorities, but I think the “right to liberty” has only very few exceptions.

They absolutely do medicate people against their will all the time. Google "booty juice".

Same, I'm vaccinated but I recently resigned from my company because they had a vaccine mandate (no testing option) because they're a federal contractor. Now I'm working for a company that has a testing option but I choose to upload vaccine card instead. My personal choice. The company I resigned from dropped the mandate after it was stopped by the courts but the damage had already been done.

In fact, shouldn't it be the opposite way? Imagine getting vaxxed just so you are forced to stay home or wear a mask everywhere just like everybody else.

Public health “experts” have done very little to quell fearful vaccinated people. In my opinion some of the worst anti-vaxx propaganda comes right from these health departments.

If you are vaccinated, you are done with the pandemic. Morally, ethically, and practically. You should be allowed to return to actual, pre-pandemic normal. End of story.

Even if you are vaccinated you can still get sick. The chances are reduced, but you can still end up in hospital, you could still die.

If enough people still get sick at once there could still be a collapse in a local health system due to overloading.

Given the uncertainty with new variations of COVID isn't it better to err on the side of caution and try to protect both the health systems and as many people at once?

No. The time for an abundance of caution was 2020. You can get vaxxed if you want and N95's are effective if you want to protect yourself. Society can't keep dragging this giant "safety" rock behind it forever.

It all depends on what are the numbers. In any case before deciding on vaccine mandates, certain conditions have to be satisfied:

1. Will the mandate increase vaccine uptake?

2. Will the mandate prevent overloading hospitals and clinics?

3. Are the health benefits for others proportionate to the risks for vaccinated?

4. Are less restrictive policies available that can achieve similar outcomes?

The UK decided to go with without vaccine mandates. They even revoked them for healthcare workers because with omicron variant they no longer made sense.

I am not saying what Canada should do, but at this moment vaccine mandates don't really seem worth to truckers, if not for all people.

Everything you said is fantasy speculation. Counties and States that have moved on are doing just fine.

All of that was true with the flu and vaccinated people are not any more at risk from covid than flu. Why the permanent change?

In fact, the UK health authorities argued that flu vaccine mandates make more sense for hospital workers than covid vaccine mandates with omicron.

> If you are vaccinated, you are done with the pandemic. Morally, ethically, and practically. You should be allowed to return to actual, pre-pandemic normal. End of story.

What if you have children who are not yet eligible for the vaccine?

Then you look at the data and see that:

"Covid-19 has killed 280 children under 18 from January through September 2021, the time span in which the alpha and delta variants were active. Flu and pneumonia, heart disease, drowning, guns, and motor vehicles were all deadlier to children during the same time periods annually from 2015 to 2019 (the latest years with available data)[0]."

[0]: https://www.vox.com/22699019/covid-19-children-kids-risk-hos...

While I agree that it seems children are very low risk you have to remember they are partly lower because of the precautions taken(lockdowns, mandates, vaccines, masks, fear, etc). We don't know the "normal" death rate for Covid just yet.

How many people have children infected, though? It doesn’t get to them and stop. Kids are very good at spreading germs.

Children are not any more at risk from covid than the flu (even less, I believe) yet never before did we have these restrictions.

How do you know the long term effects?

I’m vaccinated. How do you know the long term effects of mRNA vaccines?

The Bayesian probability leans heavily toward the vaccine being safe and the virus dangerous.

From what we are seeing the vaccine side effects are similar but considerably milder and short term, the virus sometimes has long term negative effects (lung capacity, fatigue, weakness, inability to concentrate…)

We have a long history with coronaviruses. I doubt you worried about any of the others before.

COVID is at most as dangerous as a normal cold for kids. This is a fact. It’s not even controversial.

Children are good at infecting others, for whom it may not be so harmless.

If an at-risk adult doesn't want to get vaccinated at this point, it's on them. Enough with this lunatic safetyism already.

If you made a list off the lunatic safetyism that kids have to put up with these days, I don’t think wearing masks would even make the short list. There’s a lot.

It makes no sense to assume that these guys aren't vaccinated anyway. They aren't against the vaccine, they are against the mandate!

> They aren't against the vaccine, they are against the mandate!

It makes no sense, but the amount of people who conflate the two is shockingly high. I guess strawmans are easier to argue against than someone who holds nuanced views.

edit: one such example of someone who conflates the two https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30225017

It doesn’t help that they intentionally conflate the two issues by defining “anti-vaxxer” as anyone who “opposes regulations mandating vaccination”.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/anti-vaxxer

FYI Merriam Webster is among the worst dictionaries. They are highly activist and have redefined words repeatedly to suit the progressive/far-left political platform.

A couple examples (but there are more):

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-52993306

https://www.dailywire.com/news/merriam-webster-suddenly-alte...

They added systemic oppression of a racial group to the 3 definitions of racism they already had. Do you deny this is a common meaning?

LGBT people objected to sexual preference since the 1980s at least.[1]

[1] https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-1986-07-23-860223...

>why answer honestly with Canada’s level of restrictions and penalties?

Surely you jest. Polls are anonymous. And even if the security is bad, nobody is scrutinizing IP logs of poll respondents. Maybe in Kazakhstan or something, but freedom in the West has not fallen that far.

People do lie on polls, of course, but it's usually about self-expression, not self-protection. I'd imagine that vaccinated truckers are more likely to report antagonism to vaccine mandates by lying about being unvaccinated vs. the reverse.

You also have to consider that unvaccinated answering the poll honestly would be admitting to something that puts their livelihood on the line. I imagine that a disproportionate number would refuse to respond at all.

Imagine if I ran a nationwide poll asking if you’d ever had a felony conviction.

I bet the numbers for that poll would be way lower than the real statistics.

People don’t answer honestly on polls if they feel there is any way (even a perception) that this could come back and hurt them.

Or if you asked if you got away with a felony crime!

This poll was not conducted online.

And probably had only answers that supported whatever hypothesis they were trying to assert.

> Canadian media and Twitter users saying they are “fringe” because by a poll (totally no incentive to lie on those), 85% of truckers are vaccinated.

The state sponsored ones?

At this point I don't think it's only about the vaccines.