Google and Facebook mandate vaccines for employees at U.S. offices

End of argument.

Herd immunity. It's an important part of the efficacy of the vaccination of highly contagious pathogens. It's why smallpox is now just a page on Wikipedia, rather than an existential risk to your life.

People don't want to hear this, but does anyone have a plausible alternative that might actually happen? Where a debate like this was resolved sans conflict?

Maybe some sort of cool-down timer for posters, who are otherwise polite, getting too agitated? Some kind of rate limiting for new comments on a controversial submission?

To me heavy disagreement usually makes more interesting of a discussion than mere conformity, and HN is one of the few places where it can take place without bans, kicks, brigades.

I can stand all but the arrogance of projecting one’s perspective as a conclusive “quality” to the entire discussion. It is an insult to the efforts of the well meaning commentators, it is an insult to the intelligence of the readers and their capability on deciding what is relevant or interesting to them on their own.

It boils down to freedom vs. safety, period. It's just that simple.

In a free society, you have to sacrifice safety. The safety people are fine to feel they way they want to feel, but they need to understand that argument is antithetical to American values. America is founded on the ideals of freedom; it was not founded on the ideals of safety.

Pied Piper to one side. Rodeo clown to the other.

Protect yourself. Don't walk into the trap.

Says who?

I am one of the, according to you, stupid Americans who loves and demands freedom. I am forced to live in society and I am forced to participate by paying taxes. I don’t want your shot or your schools or your healthcare. I want to be left alone. You may think I am stupid but I think you are too.

If it is beyond me to evaluate the product, I would look at people who are capable that I trust, to evaluate it for me.

So this is the basic principle in this context. I should be free to choose who I trust. Just because I trust someone, shouldn't mean you must trust them as well.

But with these mandates, the implication is that every one should trust a certain bunch of people. And that is the freedom of choice that is really being taken away from the people.

Diabetes can make you much more likely to have issues with infection too. Should it cause you to stay home? How are you going to eat and pay utilities?

It's not about you, nobody's stopping you from playing Russian roulette with your own skull. I personally do not want to be around unvaccinated people any more than I want to be on the same road as a drunk or street racer.

Yes I would take it. Because if there is a vaccine available and recommended to the general population that has 90% kill rate, the thing it’s protecting against would undoubtedly have a higher kill rate then this. End of days scenarios we would be talking about nonetheless.

The point is that the presence of unvaccinated people is going to cause stress and problems for other people who are less productive and happy at home and want to return to the office but feel unsafe doing so knowing that they would be sharing space with unvaccinated people.

> Doesn’t the vaccine cover for this? You get the vaccine and it reduces your symptom

I don't want reduced symptoms, I just don't want your germs. And I wear seat belt or helmet but that doesn't give you a pass to booze up your commute, even though it would reduce the symptoms of rear ending me.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

>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.

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.

The simple reason being that the vaccines have the spike protein as a marker - the part of the virus that we expect is least likely to change significantly.

What we do know is that the current Delta variant, which is a fitness escape but also partly an immune escape, has infected a number of people that had the vanilla variant.

[1] https://twitter.com/ENirenberg/status/1412865782862725125

> previously infected’s antibodies are equal-to or better than the vaccine

Better how? If they still get reinfected (and they do) then how is this quantified?

Ultimately when enough of the population is vaccinated, you’d expect the majority of hospitalizations to be vaccinated.

A vaccinated person is doing the bare minimum to avoid serious complications and the vaccine is extraordinarily good at that. S/he is not an idiot. An unvaccinated person is practically inviting illness. They're idiots, through and through.

Maybe not on the question of vaccination, but in general you could prick a random first world country.

The US started the war on terror, that wasn't really about civil liberties and the course hasn't changes as far as I know.

- Lots of people cannot get vaccinated due to medical reasons

FWIW I think (I think) they should be allowed to enforce this if they want, even if i dont like it. Although I might support measures to make this kind of discrimination illegal, I'd have to think more about that. Despite having my vaccine, I would not work for a company that asked me to prove it, however. I've got no beef with the vaccine, only with giving state or corporate actors power over my health choices.

Perhaps a rather simplistic model, but somewhat illustrative.

[1] for the Delta variant, which at this point is what matters

So when your unvaccinated coworker exercises his selfish right to be stupid, you’re putting others at risk. The difference here is that your exposing your coworkers children and others who cannot be vaccinated to infection.

We socially tolerate people like this who choose to infect an entire office or daycare with rhinovirus, flu or the cold, because the impact is generally lower. COVID is different, and frankly, people don’t want to be around unvaccinated people just as they avoid people who display bad judgement in other ways.

Less transmission of disease in the office would be a good thing as we return.

If an officemate wanted to be a free rider on one of those they could, and it would be very unlikely any harm would come from it.

If we had a 90% vaccination rate for this coronavirus we would not be having this conversation (and several hundred Americans would not be dying daily from a preventable illness).

As for the flu, its not especially dangerous, not prone to exponential spread, pre-symptomatic transmission is rare and the vaccines are not especially effective. So the flu shot is in a different class than the others.

Every one of us will end up having to pay for the problems caused by 1/3rd the population feeling they have the right to risk my life because of unfounded fears. If said people were so worried about their life, they would do the same risk analysis lots of us did. It's very clear that COVID is more likely to fuck me up than the vaccine.

And if it turns out the data was a result of every first world country in the world coordinating amongst themselves to spread an insanely damaging lie telling us exactly the opposite of the truth, we have much much worse problems.

Lower socioeconomic communities have poorer access to vaccinations and lower rates of vaccination.

Just because something does not claim to discriminate by race, does not make it true. Measures to segregate the unvaccinated WILL impact lower socioeconomic communities more than middle class communities.

Given the amount of doses administered, we would expect this, right?

Or are you making the claim that the proportions are higher?

The taxi cab driver would be relevant in February of 2020 when it was new and unknown. If you're going out in public today unvaccinated, you're knowingly complicit in spreading covid.

Please explain this right? What exactly is it? So by this right, can I demand pills for my disease free of cost?

The problem is, you know what I don't want to have put in my body even more than the vaccine? The coronavirus. The fact that it's some anti-vax luddite coughing on my kid and putting the virus in their body that way instead of a nurse administering a shot is just a minor implementation detail.

We've banned leaded gasoline and smoking indoors because we recognize the harm caused to others, even if it's hard to directly pin-point a specific cigarette to a cancer case. We need to pull society into the 21st century and acknowledge that spreading viruses has the same dynamic.

Since we can't effectively hold people liable for the damage they cause (eg, suing or imprisoning the person who negligently spread the disease when someone gets hospitalized or dies) I don't see any practical option other than requiring the vaccine. Maybe the liability model could work- if you went out in public unvaccinated, you're held liable for the medical expenses, missed work or wrongful death of the people you exhaled the virus onto.

As far as I can tell there is no reasonable justification for an individual not to get vaccinated unless they are immunocompromised. It is a purely selfish thing to do. Choosing not to get vaccinated is essentially saying that you want everyone else to get the vaccine but not you because there is some infinitesimal risk involved. If you have to choose between the vaccine or covid you would be very irrational to choose covid, so you are essentially saying you want there to be herd immunity without personally taking any actions. It is pure selfishness.

The longer this goes on the clearer the damage and risk have become. If we don't reach herd immunity the economy will shut down again, hundreds of thousands of people will die in our country alone, unknown thousands more will have disabilities, and all of the problems that come along with social distancing will continue. It is a huge waste of life and resources and happiness in return for what?

Meanwhile the vaccine that has already been administered to hundreds of millions of people with virtually no long term negative effects. With a mandate everyone will be much better off, especially those who wouldn't get vaccinated as they are avoiding the much greater risk of the potential damage covid can cause.

My guess is that more companies will follow suit and I applaud it. The VA hospitals were the first and there will be many many more to come. The government wont ever do it so it is left to private businesses. It is becoming clearer and clearer to me that this is the right call.

Unless you get infected, in which case you made a pretty big mistake.

So then your basically saying you don't want to get vaccinated or get covid. I'm guessing you probably also want to stop social distancing. in which case you would eventually certainly get covid if it weren't for the existence of the vaccines.

So the choices are: - Don't get vaccinated and everyone continues social distancing for several years, or until you get Covid. - Don't get vaccinated and stop social distancing once everyone else gets the vaccine - Get vaccinated

Only the third option is remotely defensible. The second option is borderline sociopathic and there are enough people taking it that it is far more dangerous than option 3.

I challenge you to try again without assumptions! Unless you are saying, for those who are unsure of long term health risks, to just follow your expectations?

Please take a pause before replying to understand why people are hesitant to blindly follow the blind

Over the past couple years we’ve witnessed and discussed at length the level of regulatory capture that has affected the FAA (via Boeing).

That makes me wonder if the FDA has also succumbed to the same issues (via Pfizer).

The agencies have a similar role and similar potentiality for capture. Revolving doors, lots of $ at stake, huge multinational corporations.

I’ve brought this up before and was downvoted to hell. But I’m just putting it out there without bias. It’s based on a logical thought process. I don’t understand why we can’t even discuss if there are issues with the FDA’s process being corrupted by corporations with billions of dollars.

In countries that had lockdowns, children and young adults arguably suffered worse than any other group. For a ten year-old, that's 10% of their life "gone". Children, teens and young adults have foregone life milestones, missed opportunities and friendships. Instead they have been charged with a ridiculous anxiety about something that is harmless to them.

It is comparatively inconsequential for the elderly to isolate.

When you realize it's potentially already too late

Also, you can transmit covid and be asymptomatic.

Finally, death is not the only "bad" outcome of covid. About 1/10 people have "long covid", ie symptoms that persist over time (lack of smell or taste, fatigue..). And this affects young people too.

So, as others have said many times, this vaccine is not a matter of individual choice. This is an infectious disease, so by being infectious, you may harm others, even young people. This is why governments or companies are making it mandatory.

You do not know the u-u risk of covid for precisely the same reasons you do not know the u-u risk of the vaccine: they are both on the same timeline.

You also do not know the aggregate u-u risk to others: asymptomatic spread, modalities of spreading, etc.

The aggregate u-u compound the individual u-u of covid. Eg., suppose long-covid occurs at a higher rate than supposed, has a longer lasting impact, has a more severe neurological impact.... then this compounds the u-u risk on spreading (eg., suppose that asymptomatic spread is more severe...).

All you're saying by declining the vaccine is that you care more about the u-u risk to yourself.

Its not as simple as that. Most covid transmission occurs when the infecting person is asymptomatic. And approximately 30% of people who get covid have no significant symptoms at all.

You have a right to make decisions about your body and medical treatment. And, taken on its own, the decisions you make are very unlikely to make a significant difference to the outcomes for the society that you live in. But when large numbers of people decide, like you, to prioritise their own autonomy over the safety of their community, we end-up with a situation that is exploitable by the disease. The way to beat it is to act together. Sincerely, I'd urge you to consider this.

We do know what a vaccine does, especially in the case of viral vectors(they’ve been around for decades). What specifically seems to be unknown?

Not wanting to do something to help others is the definition of selfish, even if it's your right.

I'm sorry if someone's decision not to get vaccinated costs them their job, but I have to protect myself and my family.

This is far from the most dangerous vaccine ever to be required.

I do understand that it ought to be a choice, and it still is, even with these companies. It looks like they are carving out polices for exceptions because there are folks that are unable to get vaccinated. I would hope that being in a class of people who haven’t been rigorously tested (pregnant women) would qualify.

Beyond that, they aren’t requiring all employees to be vaccinated, but anyone who will be working from an office where they may put other employees at risk. The choice still belongs with the individual.

It’s clear that the older you get, the worse your immunity works. A vaccine isn’t 100% efficient in the first place and will work worse on a 70 yo than on a 30 yo. This means that in order to protect the vulnerable, the society has to achieve herd immunity.

This is why folks are pointing out the public health aspect as opposed to a focus on individual health.

And the relevance of 16 months would be? At this point it's pretty much a given that covid will become endemic. Due to general idiocy we've missed our chance of eradication.

In the 16 months you cited Covid has become both more virulent and almost twice as infectious. We'd now need around 85% population immunity to stop it from spreading, and the best vaccines only have below 90% effectiveness against symptomatic infection, and less against asymptomatic it seems. And evolution likely still has more low hanging fruit to find to make a virus that only made the jump to humans very recently better adapted to its new host.

So even if OP only has a 20% chance of contracting Covid in any one year interval (and it's likely higher), over 10 years that's a 90% chance (and 99.5% over 25). I have no idea what OP's belief that they have a extremely low chance of contracting covid is based on (that's why I asked, but unsurprisingly received no answer).

My employer mandated vaccines. Exceptions for sincere religious belief or documented medical reasons. I didn't want the vaccine but I wasn't going to lie about having a legitimate religious reason for it. Some people will, but most people wont.

So I got the shot, but if I have any serious side effects I will certainly be contacting a personal injury attorney.

But it's all irrelevant in this case because Google is almost entirely an at-will employer. They can change the terms of the agreement at any time - take it or leave it.

google/facebook is gonna understand this

Sort of, delta is confirmed to be less contagious and less deadly among a (significantly) vaccinated population. It is probably more contagious than the initial variant among an unvaccinated population, yes. But whether or not its more or less deadly, or whether vaccines + improved treatments have reduced the severity/survivability isn't clear. So delta is less deadly in practice at a population level, but it might be more deadly in only the unvaccinated population, or the same, or less. We don't really know.

This is a private company deciding that they don't want to employ you. There are no governments involved here.

If you want to take a political tangent, it is your choice. Again, this is a decision by a private company. If you are against big government, you should be in favor of the freedom of private companies and individuals implementing their own policy. In your single mindedness you have failed to realize that private companies being allowed to make their own decisions is actually not an example of big government. Also, you cannot have personal health Privacy without bug government. But that is a debate for another time.

I think the problem with your argument is equating the covid vaccine to medical experimentation as considered in the Nuremberg Code. That code was written as the result of the Nazi experimentation of human subjects. The covid vaccine is technically experimental under the FDA definition only because it hasn't received full approval yet, but it has already gone through trials that (to some extent) have proved its safety. I don't think "medical experiment" has used in the code is the same as in the case of the covid vaccine as of today.

Companies have a responsibility to provide a safe workplace. If some people are disinterested in avoiding harm to their coworkers, employers are under no obligation to indulge them in that.