NYC to mandate proof of vaccination for many indoor settings | Hacker News Reader

NYC to mandate proof of vaccination for many indoor settings

nypost.com

410 pointsunderseacables1,464 comments

Pretty dismal discussion in here at the time of writing. Largely complaints about tyranny. Makes me sad that we can't have a calm discussion about the merits of the policy.

From what I can tell, you might be opposed to this policy if:

1. You have fears about getting a vaccine, moreso than for coronavirus. If this is you, do you prefer a mask mandate? And if so, how do you enforce this in a restaurant, where anyone eating takes off their mask right away?

2. You have fears about the privacy implications. If so, what are those fears? Perhaps your vaccination status can lead people to make inferences about your health?

3. You are not particularly concerned about the community spread of coronavirus (and the implications of that)

There aren't a lot of choices. You can 1) avoid high-risk areas and escape infection/spreading disease, in which case, this policy doesn't really directly affect you. Or 2) you can take your chances with coronavirus, which you will get sooner or later, and spread it. Or 3) you can "take your chances" with the vaccine which, statistically and biologically, is safer than getting coronavirus and reduces spread.

This policy allows people to choose from 1) and 3) but not 2), which is in all ways the worst decision. Unless, of course, you think that the vaccine is more dangerous than coronavirus. And then I don't really know what to say.

(lightly edited for clarification)

I am pro-vaccine (and fully vaccinated), but I don't support this policy at all.

I don't believe this will have much of a net effect on vaccination rate, I believe it will disproportionately negatively impact poor and minority populations in NYC who already have a bad/mistrustful relationship with health care and government, and it is obviously a huge new governmental intrusion into our daily lives. It might well lead to anger and violence (as similar moves have across Europe).

These are my opinions, but I think the strongest arguments against it are facts: if you are fully vaccinated, you are at essentially no risk of serious illness from SARS-CoV2. And literally anyone who wants a vaccine can get one. Those who choose not to get vaccinated are making a risk calculation; they are making a choice.

This policy comes from an almost hysterical fixation on "cases", which are not a metric of any meaning. SARS-CoV2 is not going away. We should be reacting rationally to rates of hospitalization and deaths -- and right now, those are barely changed in NYC, thanks to the very high vaccination rate amongst the vulnerable population:

https://www1.nyc.gov/site/doh/covid/covid-19-data-trends.pag...

One can certainly argue that there exist small groups of people for whom the vaccine is not perfect protection. This is true, but it's no different than all other viruses, which have threatened immunocompromised people forever. We have never before justified such intrusive government policies based on the risks faced by these individuals. So while I empathize with them, this still seems like over-reach to me.

> if you are fully vaccinated, you are at essentially no risk of serious illness from SARS-CoV2.

Terrible first order logic. The threat from the virus is not only immediate risk to the individual, it is also further transmissions increasing the risk of creating new breakthrough variants. Every infected person is a gamble that risks nullifying the effectiveness of vaccines, so the goal must be to bring down infections as strongly as possible.

>We have never before justified such intrusive government policies based on the risks faced by these individuals

we should have. Tolerating disease spread and threats to vulnerable populations when vaccines are available that are practically risk-free (or the risk being magnitudes smaller than the payoff) is ridiculous. Maybe this finally shakes people awake and puts public health and safety to the top of the agenda rather than people throwing tantrums like children about government incursion.

edit: and another point I forgot, with such a significant unvaccinated population we will very likely see surges in admissions in winter again. Public health resources are limited. Unnecessary Covid hospitalizations cause immense opportunity cost in the form of crowding out care and driving costs. Which in many cases other sick people and the public will have to carry.

> We should be reacting rationally to rates of hospitalization and deaths -- and right now, those are barely changed in NYC,

No. No. No. No. No.

Why is this so hard for people to understand? A virus doesn't just enter your body, and quietly go away. In MANY cases, it can have a lasting effect on your underlying health and wellness. This isn't a point of question, it's a known FACT that is all too often left out of the discussion entirely.

I am vaccinated. I have friends who are vaccinated, and have still gotten COVID. One of them still doesn't have their sense of taste and smell back, after nearly 3 weeks post symptoms. They describe being brain fog, and tiredness that they didn't have before, as well as an "itch" in their lungs when exercising that they didn't have before.

There's absolutely no reason to say things like "hysterical fixation on cases". Bringing cases down means LESS LIVES LOST and less HEALTH lost.

> And literally anyone who wants a vaccine can get one.

Literally not true. Kids under 12 are not able to be vaccinated, which puts a limit on the activities they and their families can do. If they're able to know that everyone inside a restaurant is vaccinated they'll be more likely to visit.

> It might well lead to anger and violence (as similar moves have across Europe).

Not really. There were some minor protests and then an untick in vaccination rate. As someone living in NYC right now I really can't see this being met with violence.

"We have never before justified such intrusive government policies based on the risks faced by these individuals."

That would be false.

https://www.cde.ca.gov/ls/he/hn/immunization.asp

which points to

https://www.shotsforschool.org/child-care/

https://www.shotsforschool.org/7th-grade/

https://www.shotsforschool.org/k-12/

And then there's

https://www.uscis.gov/policy-manual/volume-8-part-b-chapter-...

The country I’m in right now, Hungary, seems to be doing as you suggest.

They have about 75% vaccinated I think (a mix of just about all the vaccines available anywhere) and there is no mask mandate nor proof-of-vaccine mandate as of a few weeks ago. (Airport might be an exception, I haven’t been.). Interestingly it is also against the law to require anyone to NOT wear a mask — and I see about one person in 10 with a mask on the tram, usually none in the shops.

Border controls to neighbor countries are very light so there isn’t really anything preventing the unvaccinated or for that matter infected from entering the country.

I have no idea how this will turn out, I personally expect a big new wave among the unvaxxed in Europe after the summer, but if you’re curious what happens with an implicit policy of leaving the unvaccinated to their fate, keep an eye on Hungary, especially when the cold drives everyone indoors around October.

(And there were a LOT of restrictions before the vaccination rate went up, but unlike Germany nobody was out protesting against them.)

> And literally anyone who wants a vaccine can get one.

Completely false. There's several groups that might want the vaccine that can't get it. Including: children and the immuno compromised.

32 kids were hospitalized in one week in Alabama last month. A state with half the population of NYC.

https://www.al.com/coronavirus/2021/07/infant-among-children...

A high vaccination rate is most beneficial for poor and minority populations as they are by far the most exposed to the virus via work.

> I believe it will disproportionately negatively impact poor and minority populations

Those populations are perfectly capable of speaking for themselves, and don't need you to do it for them. You have an opinion, don't dress it up in someone else's situation.

The current leading population for vaccination rate in Alabama is the band of majority black districts (and subsequently case numbers have gone down and down and down) there.

You know what those populations are at risk from? Crippling hospital debt from contracting preventable diseases being spread by people pushing antivax nonsense and who do not take preventative measures. And being shot at their jobs when asking those people to wear masks on private property, for some reason.

The vaccine is free, and widely made available. The communities who aren't getting it, provided they aren't politically conservative, are assumed to be doing this due to lack of trust based on past racism, as you stated.

This is a good faith explanation with no data to support it. These are the same populations most likely to ignore all sorts of laws, rules, etc. I grew up in a trailer park, and the culture was one of die hard defiance to all forms of authority, no matter the cost, or how trivial the guidance/rules. I saw this same cultural trait at play in the inner city when I lived in DC as well.

The reality is that there are several dysfunctional cultures in the US, across multiple ethnic groups including my moron family, that are pathologically opposed to obeying any form of authority. They tend to also be highly fatalistic, have high teen pregnancy rates, high crime rates, etc. And although they are almost always poor, many other cultural groups in the US that are equally poor don't have these issues. Again, my family, and my relatives fall into this category. And so do the urban unvaccinated. Trailer parks and ghettos have more in common than you think.

I say this because you're hitting on a point that is going to really undermine NYC government:

A group of politicians who assume that unequal outcomes are driven by systemic racism are going to run headlong into a law that is going to disproportionately prevent Black and Latino New Yorkers from accessing businesses and restaurants. They are desperately going to continue with a narrative that absolves them of personal responsibility, and continue making the vaccine easier to access.

It's not going to work, and they will get rid of this as soon as they can, rather than go against their own systemic racism narrative.

> don't believe this will have much of a net effect on vaccination rate

People who are still opposed to getting vaccinated, versus simply apathetic, are probably never going to be convinced. These measures should encourage the apathetic. For the others, it's cutting losses and hoping it encourages quarantine--whether that be staying home or moving. (Being unvaccinated upstate or in Tennessee is less problematic than being unvaccinated in Manhattan.)

If we take the promise of mRNA platforms at face value, we are heading into an increasingly disease-free future with a strong minority self selecting affliction. I imagine we'll see more debates of this form if e.g. there is a population that is inoculated against Covid, most STDs, the flu, et cetera; and one that is not.

> if you are fully vaccinated, you are at essentially no risk of serious illness from SARS-CoV2. And literally anyone who wants a vaccine can get one. Those who choose not to get vaccinated are making a risk calculation; they are making a choice.

There are immuno-compromised people who can't get the vaccine for health reasons. By accepting a lack of herd immunity you are throwing those people under the bus. If you are worried about impacts on minority populations then this is something you surely must be considering.

The vulnerable populations aren't vaccinated. The vaccination rate in Brooklyn for people 65+ is just a bit over 50% (51% white/54% African American).

If cases keep rising I don't see any reason why hospitalizations and deaths won't follow. Unless the delta variant is less dangerous or treatments have improved tremendously.

So, the options are 1)Stop indoor dining 2)Accept the public health implications or 3) Require vaccinations for high risk activities. I feel like option 3 imposes the least harm.

> if you are fully vaccinated, you are at essentially no risk of serious illness from SARS-CoV2.

… maybe for currently known variants. New ones will appear, and no one can predict if current vaccines will protect us from them. It makes sense to me that a mixed population of vaccinated and unvaccinated people interacting frequently could lead to vaccine-resistant strains. Keep wearing your masks!

>I believe it will disproportionately negatively impact poor and minority populations in NYC who already have a bad/mistrustful relationship with health care and government...

In my day job, I interact with many prisons and jails both across the US and in other countries. Minority inmates reject vaccination at a rate well above White inmates, largely due to trust issues. It's a huge problem, one that's not talked about enough due to the moronic social media meme that everyone who doesn't want to get vaccinated must be a MAGA-hat-owner. This is provably incorrect.

Note that the C.O.s also largely distrust big .gov. I was just out at a facility where half of my escorts spontaneously brought up buying guns before Biden bans them (as he has indicated he wants to do — it's not a crazy notion). I've always been a skeptic, but the degree of distrust in authority has never been greater in my lifetime. It is unfortunate that this trend is costing lives.

I think there is also ample precedent for policy that prevents or discourages people from putting themselves at unnecessary risk of death or injury. If it's illegal to attempt suicide, then it stands to reason that we can pass rules against exposing yourself to Covid even if you are foregoing opportunities to protect yourself.

The core assumptions to your argument are that secondary infections of children are not of concern at all, and that future variants will have similar propagation and impact.

Limited evidence suggests that the delta variant may highly contagious among vaccinated populations and that lambda may be resistant to some vaccines.

your "poor and minority populations" argument strikes me as disingenuous bad faith; if there are poor and minority populations who dont want to be vaccinated, they will be safer by not going into crowded spaces as well.

but above all, some of us have children under 12. we'd like them to be safe. we have relatives who have weakened immune systems, who are in great danger even though they are fully vaccinated. These are the people who have literally no choice between a. hide in fear for years or b. expose themselves to great danger. vaccine mandates allow these people who otherwise have no choice to be more free in the world, by asking those people who totally have a choice to please make that choice by either not entering our public spaces, or getting vaccinated.

I don't think you know many anti-vax people if you think education is the answer. Every one I've met is completely unwilling to look at data coming out, and instead relies solely on headlines they've read that are usually incomplete or outright wrong.

> We have never before justified such intrusive government policies based on the risks faced by these individuals.

This is factually untrue isn’t it? Children are forced to get vaccinated if they want to access the public school system in at least some parts of the US.

> We have never before justified such intrusive government policies based on the risks faced by these individuals.

Except for that time doctors were given police powers to enforce quarantine during the "Spanish Flu" spikes...

> We should be reacting rationally to rates of hospitalization and deaths -- and right now, those are barely changed in NYC, thanks to the very high vaccination rate amongst the vulnerable population

The COVID hospitalization rate in NYC has doubled since the beginning of July, and it has a steep positive rate of change. On its current trajectory, COVID hospitalizations will continue to increase, and sharply.

> if you are fully vaccinated, you are at essentially no risk of serious illness from SARS-CoV2.

For now...

what about immunocompromised people who don't really have a choice. Some of them get the vaccine but it gives them no anti-bodies, as if they were not vaccinated. What about them?

If you get a breakthrough case of Delta, you have a 19% chance of getting long covid. That’s not to say there should be mandatory vaccinations, but case counts definitely matter.

> I don't believe this will have much of a net effect on vaccination rate

Chile saw a big uptick in vaccination when a similar policy was implemented.

I have been in Manhattan for the last week with my family. I have seen 10+ free vaccinations locations. If you want to get vaccinated you can, no matter what your means.

Not being vaccinated put the risk on the kids, which is unconscionable.

I live in NYC.

I can't tell you how important it is to keep people who are unvaccinated away from those of us who are vaccinated.

For those that don't know, NYC has very crowded indoors situations because of the cost of real estate. We are all close together.

No sympathy whatsoever for those who refuse to get a vaccine and even offered $100 to get the vaccine.

People never have the right to infect another human being. That is just the way it is.

No "rights" supersede the right to not be infected by non-vaccinated people. None.

> if you are fully vaccinated, you are at essentially no risk of serious illness from SARS-CoV2.

This is demonstrably false if you actually look at hospital admissions.

>Those who choose not to get vaccinated are making a risk calculation; they are making a choice.

Yes, but that choice does not only impact them. Being disallowed the luxury of going to restaurants and bars could be seen as a form of payment for creating that externality.

We shouldn’t applaud the normalization of health status checks outside a border crossing. The world has a nasty trend of using crises to erode privacy and we collectively never recover - what was sold as temporary becomes permanent, endlessly extended and expanded.

I’m not an antivaxer. The vaccine works and I believe it’s really safe. I’m vaccinated. Nearly anyone who is capable to go to a bar can easily go get vaccinated. If they don’t, I’m not interested in saving them from themselves, honestly.

If the spread or variant breakthrough or some other aspect is so critical that we need to resort to novel privacy violations we should just shut down again instead.

The supreme court ruled that it's legal to mandate vaccinations in 1905. Boston fined people for not getting a smallpox vaccine. This seems like a better option to me.

Don't want to get vaccinated? Fine. Have a valid medical reason, pay a $2500 fee, or leave the city.

>90% of people will just get vaccinated.

> We shouldn’t applaud the normalization of health status checks outside a border crossing.

We shouldn’t applaud the normalization of health status checks outside of a global pandemic.

People see this as a way to go back to the movies again without having to feel guilty about potentially killing someone's grandma. This is an alternative to going back into lockdown.

I'm genuinely curious: what are your privacy concerns here?

I like to think I'm a privacy-minded person, and I can't imagine how the benefits of this policy (keeping things open, preventing hospitalizations, saving lives) wouldn't possibly outweigh the cons (having to bring a vaccine card to a concert).

The first paragraph is how I feel. I'm vaccinated, but fat luck asking to see the card. I almost laughed when it was suggested to me at the vaccination site, by the administrating nurse, that I should get it laminated and put it on a lanyard.

What sort of things will health checks be used for in the future? Once Covid is gone, I don't think people will really care about your health information beyond entities that already care (health insurance providers denying coverage because of preexisting conditions, etc.) Certainly, The Mets won't care if you got your flu shot this year, and your local bar probably won't care that you didn't get your annual physical. If unrelated companies start caring about your health information after the pandemic, we should tell them to fuck off.

Covid is a public health crisis -- the single most dangerous existential threat we as a society are currently facing -- and we have great tools to kill it dead. Letting it spread right now is just stupid, because we can end this plague once and for all. While we're working on it, I think it's totally fair to let someone check your vaccination status before you pack yourself into close quarters with them. It's not a matter of the government or the corporate overlords wanting your health information. As the person standing next to you in a crowded bar, I don't want you there if you're not vaccinated. If indoor businesses won't check customers, then I won't go to those indoor businesses, and if enough people think like me, those businesses are gone forever.

Get vaccinated or stay home. You have a choice!

(The real threat during crises like these is things like "we shouldn't have a free press, because nutjobs are spreading misinformation". That is an exceedingly dangerous line of thinking and we should push back against that hard, because the cure is worse than the disease. That's not the case with Covid -- the cure is much better than the disease.)

Do you not show your ID at a bar? What privacy are you giving up here?

> Nearly anyone who is capable to go to a bar can easily go get vaccinated.

It’s too risky to themselves and others for unvaccinated people to drive to a bar to drink alcohol. Ha. Similar to swabbing the injection site for lethal injections to avoid infections.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slippery_slope

For #2, if you have a medical condition that prevents you from receiving the vaccine it would require either falsified vaccine cards to show you as complying with the mandate, or disclosure of a/the medical condition that prevents you from getting it. Effectively, this small minority is finding themselves in a position that pits their medical privacy of their underlying medical conditions against the requirement to prove vaccination status.

On a related note, I wonder why antibody levels aren't used. I mean, we should want to measure outcomes, not output. If you have comparable levels of antibodies from natural infection vs the vaccine, then you should be well protected. Conversely, if you recieved the vaccine but your immune system does not produce a sufficient level of antibodies, then they shouldn't be considered "safe", right? This question was mostly based on an article I saw about a nurse who was fired because she didn't get the vaccine eventhough she had antibodies. It made me think it was mostly a move by some corporate lawyer limit liability.

"you can "take your chances" with the vaccine which, statistically and biologically, is safer than getting coronavirus."

Can you elaborate on what you mean by biologically safer? Also, I'm looking forward to the data Pfizer will be releasing soon for their regular market approval, because I haven't been able to find good statistics about covid v vaccine serious side effects by risk factor(s).

In Israel antibody levels are a way to get the "green passport". My parents get vaccinated in the US, and since israel doesn't recognize foreign vaccinations, when they visited Israel they had to get an antibody test to be let out quarantine early. As it should them having antibodies, they were let out. As Israel doesn't have data that says they were vaccinated, they were let out as "recovered" (even though as far as we know, neither ever caught covid, and my father was in in and of the hospital over the past year so was regularly tested).

As my mother is an Israeli citizen, she was given the "green passport", as my father was only in Israel on a "tourist visa", he was not. this is just an artifact of the current Israeli system where they aren't giving "green passports" to tourists, but demonstrating that one can give them to people that show sufficient antibodies.

> For #2, if you have a medical condition that prevents you from receiving the vaccine it would require either falsified vaccine cards to show you as complying with the mandate.

IMO, people with legitimate medical conditions should just be granted excelsior passes, the same as those who are vaccinated. There's few enough people with these conditions that it shouldn't be a health issue.

Religious exemptions are the tricky one, since NYC especially has e.g. orthodox jews clustered together in their own communities. IMO, they should not got passes. If they don't want a vaccine, fine—they just won't be able to go to the movies.

Here in Germany you get the same kind of certificate when you prove that you recovered from the disease as when you got vaccinated.

> This question was mostly based on an article I saw about a nurse who was fired because she didn't get the vaccine even though she had antibodies. It made me think it was mostly a move by some corporate lawyer limit liability.

That's ridiculous, but hey it's the blankfaces making/enforcing the rules! [0]

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28042392

Requiring people to consume a medical product, especially one that has not been subject to the full FDA approval process, just to live their normal lives is morally wrong. They are making people into test subjects for a multinational corporation. It doesn't matter if we already do this to an extent with other vaccines; nothing in the past has ever come close to this.

It doesn't matter if you think the vaccine is more or less dangerous than the coronavirus. It goes back to basic human dignity and human rights. You wouldn't want strangers mandating injections into your body that you don't want. No one would be okay that, unless they are insane.

You might make the argument that anti-vaxxers are endangering others' health by being out in public without a vaccine, but that's only a claim. Lots of people make claims about others infringing their rights all the time, and a nontrivial number of those are baseless. A huge number of assumptions about medical science and constitutional law would need to be tested in court for it to hold any weight, unless you're willing to jettison the entire process of civil society.

We live in a society that operates under a set of laws, including entrusting public officials and experts to make decisions on our behalf.

Not all the laws are going to be popular. I'm sure not everybody is thrilled about schools requiring all children be vaccinated. People can object to it and express concerns about, and you can even try to change it through legislation. But the majority will prevail.

Regarding your statement: "You might make the argument that anti-vaxxers are endangering others' health by being out in public without a vaccine, but that's only a claim." It's a claim backed by stats. On an individual level, it may be discriminatory to accuse an anti-vaxxer of endangering others without specific proof. But in aggregate, unvaccinated people are more likely to be infected and also spreading disease unknowingly. At least until the Delta variant came along, and now the officials have revised guidelines to ensure everyone wears mask.

Do I think it was premature to let vaccinated people go without mask? Sure. It wasn't my call. But nobody has a crystal balls into the future. So we adapt.

In the long run, operating this fashion has served us well.

How many compulsory vaccines were necessary for you to attend school?

For me, it was three or four at least, and until some genuinely inimical people decided vaccines were a good way to get famous at the expense of the body politic, nobody cared.

> You wouldn't want strangers mandating injections into your body that you don't want.

I mean, compulsory vaccination is a thing in many countries, and I think it's a net good for the world?

So your hang up is the FDA giving full approval? Because recent reports indicate that will likely be happening for the Pfizer vaccine next month.

Somehow I think there will be a major shifting of goalposts by the anti-vax camp around that time.

Your rights end when exercising them endangers my life and the lives of my family. That’s also a basic tenet of civil society (see traffic laws for example).

Well, it happened to all of us for months for the past several months: in many places, people were prevented from "living their normal lives": in San Francisco, you could no longer get your hair cut, go to a restaurant, or worse, have family or friends over etc. Now, we are saying instead of imposing such restrictions on everyone, we are giving the opportunity of those willing to vaccinate to get back to some of these things. Why is it a problem to keep some restrictions for the unvaccinated that we've had for all for months? Unless you think there should never have been restrictions, but then how would you propose to handle all the folks that would have come knock on the doors of hospitals and clamor for oxygen, like what apparently happened in India?

Requiring me to consume a novel virus in order to live my life is morally wrong. You're making me into a test subject for the bats.

The whole point of civil society is to solve coordination problems and deliver public goods like sanitation and health. If it can't accomplish something as basic as vaccination then it is blatantly unfit for purpose. Absolutely, jettison it! The truly crazy idea here is that we would retain and bear the costs of a civil society which is so incompetent at its bread and butter job.

We don't leave the water mains to gush into the street, we don't leave the sewers to back up into the toilets, and we don't leave the viruses to circulate in the bars.

Residents of the US have self-selected into two cohorts:

1) People that will get resistance via vaccines

2) People that will get resistance via infection

Some 30-40% of the US population decided on #2. Roughly 0.7% of them will die because of that decision, but this is exactly what they are asking for! If you are in cohort #1, you really don't have a lot to worry about from the virus. Why are you denying people the consequences of their decisions?

Yes, the medical system will be briefly overrun, and it would be a terrible time to need hospitalization. That's a good argument for getting it over as quickly as possible! The delta variant is estimated to have an R0 of 8-10. Let it rip and the surge will be over in weeks.

What about the children? Serious negative effects on kids seem to be extraordinarily rare. The kids will be fine.

I am only half joking here. "We live in a society" cuts both ways - we have to respect the general health of everyone, but we also have to respect the explicit wishes of a huge portion of the population - almost a third. The good news is that almost exclusively, they're going to be the ones dying. I can live with that.

That's not the only reasons people wouldn't want to take the vaccine. For instance lots of people already had covid (particularly in NYC), and developed a natural immunity, which from the low reinfection rate, seems to be rock solid. It doesn't make a lot of sense to require that population to take a vaccine.

As for the vaccine being more or less dangerous than the virus, I think for any population over 40 or in poor health, the trade off is clearly in favour of the vaccine. But if you are 20 and in good health, I am not sure it is that obvious.

I am not overly concerned about the vaccine myself, and I got vaccinated even though I had covid (mostly to be able to travel), but I have some sympathy for people who decline to be vaccinated, particularly when all the population at risk had a chance to get vaccinated. At this point this is them managing their own risk. Their life, their decision.

This measure can't be a way to create "zero covid spaces" because people who are vaccinated can still transmit the virus (even though less than unvaccinated people, but it doesnt seem to be a 90% reduction either). So the goal here is to increase the vaccination rate.

It seems pretty weird to ask the indoor business owners to be the ones who are in charge of controlling that the vaccination rate is increasing and to be the one who are punished because the vaccination rate is not high enough.

I have strong opposition on this policy.

1. No particular vaccine concern, have mine.

2. Yes. I am not telling my name and birth day for random person in public but now this is required for many public venue. No more being anonymous in public.

3. I have lowered concern, most people with vaccine have lesser time of it even with breakthrough infection. Or maybe better to say I am past caring.

4. All prior vaccine requirement (school, other places) have exemption for religios reason, personal objection, or both (varies by state). Compelling medical procedures is not a good thing ever. Saying that we have no compulsion is disingenuous if vaccine are required for restaurant, job, etc.

I am having objections not to vaccine but to compulsion to show government document before any entry to certain places. Public school fine, government worker fine, but government forcing proof before entry to private restaurant very bad from perspective of civil liberties and privacy. Also I have worries over changing requirement: already there are discussion that maybe a booster shot is required. I am fine with taking this booster shot but do not like constant moving goalposts. Maybe later government adds some other requirements for what somebody must do before allowed entry somewhere, the infrastructure for lineing up for getting scanned already will be in place.

It’s also worth pointing out that this isn’t exactly a new policy. Most forms of education from kindergarten through college requires proof of various vaccines. I remember having to get a whole slew of boosters at 18 because we couldn’t find the old records in order to go to college.

You’d think that after a pandemic has killed 600,000 of our fellow citizens we’d be able to come together and simply repeat as adults what we do for most children, but alas we live in a deeply unserious time.

The part that irks me about a vaccine mandate is it being imposed before FDA approval. The FDA isn't confident enough to approve the vaccine yet, yet other parts of the government are (effectively) saying they know better than the FDA? Is it really surprising that people hesitate when they see this? Isn't it kind of alarming to hear a government say, hey, our own scientists haven't approved this, but we want to inject it into your body anyway?

NPR yesterday was interviewing a guy who'd had an organ transplant and thus has to take immunosuppressant drugs. He'd been vaccinated, it was either pfizer or moderna.

His doctor tested him for antibodies, his were undetectable. He was getting a third shot in hopes it would finally give him antibodies.

By being against vaccines or against vaccine requirements, people risk the lives of those like that guy, who's already suffering and already has to be 10x as cautious.

> You have fears about getting a vaccine, moreso than for coronavirus. If this is you, do you prefer a mask mandate?

As someone who is vaccinated, I'm frankly tired of wearing masks, and I don't feel I should have to wear one to protect someone else who is refusing a vaccine.

My problem is that the whole thing is based on old data and a false premise that life is safe when vaccinated people are only around vaccinated people. We know this is slightly more true than among the unvaccinated, but only by about 40%. This is real data.

Fears of privacy implications: Tracking data/metadata, How data is recorded, How long are records kept. What other data is linked to vaccination checks?

Fears of discrimination: How is vaccination proven? Are special IDs required? What is the cost of identification? What about people who are ineligible to get vaccinated due to age, health status, medical conditions. What percentage of minority groups are vaccinated in comparison to other groups?

Unintended consequences: Will this make unsafe behavior appear safer to vaccinated individuals? What about future variants? Are there future plans to extend the list of businesses/places this applies to like public transport, medical facilities, etc?

Lastly, If you are vaccinated and feel safe doing these activities, why should you care about those who chose not to get vaccinated

I have a family member who, despite acknowledging that seat belts work and save lives, refuses to wear his seat belt purely out of petty spite "because I'm not gonna let the tyrannical government tell me what to do!" This endless conversation about vaccines is feeling more and more like that. Orthodox Individualism has become a religion.

What's the harm in letting unvaccinated people spread covid amongst themselves? Vaccinated people aren't at risk. Unvaccinated people know the risks and they've had plenty of time to be vaccinated.

It's not illegal to decide to do $XYZ_DANGEROUS_ACTIVITY, why should it be illegal to be exposed to covid?

The only concern in theory is that a vaccine-immune covid variant could develop amongst unvaccinated populations. Is there any evidence for that though?

EDIT: see responses below, there is some good info, thanks folks.

> you might be opposed to this policy if: { 1...2...3 }

You listed three reasons that people might be opposed to the vaccine itself, not merely the policy. None of these are applicable to my particular group, of which there are many:

4. You are pro-vaccine and anti-covid, but strictly opposed to insane and tyrannical government overreach by the very same people who literally murdered tens of thousands of elderly nursing home patients in 2020 by intentionally exposing them to COVID patients.

It's strange you didn't even consider this option, as if meek, bootlicking obedience to authority - specifically, authority that has already demonstrated that they don't care at all about preventing COVID deaths - is to you as water is to a fish.

> take your chances with coronavirus, which you will get sooner or later, and spread it.

This is patently ridiculous. I am fully vaccinated, but the research is clear - I can carry an infection just as effectively in my nasal cavity as my antivax cousin. Showing my card at the door does PRECISELY NOTHING to prevent spread. The Times, no friend to the antivax crew, grudgingly admitted this a few days ago:

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/29/health/cdc-masks-vaccinat...

It's quite obvious at this point, that vaccination protects ME, and ME alone. Pretending that vaccination status confers magical sainthood and capital-P Purity amongst its devotees is old hat.

And enacting actual unconstitutional policy predicated on old science is even worse.

I'm still waiting, after a year and a half, for any governments, anywhere, to mandate the ONLY thing that the science is VERY CLEAR will ACTUALLY dramatically reduce COVID fatalities among everyone under 70: mandatory weight loss for the obese.

But something tells me you won't advocate for THAT particular policy position, will you?

My gut feeling is closer to

4. You perceive the government as taking more and more power without ever giving any back.

I don't know if this is true, but that is the reason for my instinctual opposition and I haven't overriden it yet.

Vaxed and pro-vax, but I'm pretty opposed to this policy out of NYC. (And I suspect other cities soon). I'm personally a bit of a privacy nut so take that as you will, but open to changing my mind.

To have a different take than other people, I just don't know if this precedent is really one that we want to start, particularly if you are liberal/leftist.

For e.g. let's say we're at the beginning of the HIV epidemic, and the govt mandates a policy requiring you to have a negative HIV test in order to go-to any bar/restaurant etc or there are a bunch of private businesses that say they don't want to risk their patrons from getting HIV, so require a negative HIV test in order to enter, or even that their patrons are just uncomfortable being around people with HIV so they mandate it.

HIV patients aren't a protected class so it could happen and there's nothing anyone can do about it, yet I bet most of the people wanting these vaccine card mandates now would disagree with that policy.

Businesses being able to reject/accept customers can already run into some weird civil rights issues already, and it's strange that so many people who are ostensibly left wing are advocating for libertarian positions on what a business should be able to discriminate on, because it benefits their team this time.

How many people out there argued that a business should have to bake a gay wedding cake, b/c businesses shouldn't discriminate on your sexual preference, but think they should on your personal health decisions? (Which, since vaccines work means that patrons in that business who are vaccinated shouldn't be in any particular extra danger.)*

More frustrating is that if we want more people to be vaxxed there's many more things that we that aren't punitive, but probably don't feel as fair. (aka why did I get nothing for getting vaxed but XYZ got 100-1000$/lottery/free tickets whatever.) Since a large portion of the unvaxed aren't the Trumpian sterotype, but concerned with things like having to take days off of work to deal with side effects. [0]

0: https://www.kff.org/coronavirus-covid-19/poll-finding/kff-co...

* This discounts the generation of new variants outside the business, since this policy is ostensibly targeted at keeping patrons safe, not at being a pseudo-mandate for getting the vaccine.

> 2. You have fears about the privacy implications. If so, what are those fears? Perhaps your vaccination status can lead people to make inferences about your health?

That it won’t stop at this. That I’m going to have to entrust my medical information to a shitty app that requires access to my location and contacts to show a QR code that links to a poorly secured database that will get hacked, all because the government doesn’t trust me when I say I got the vaccine.

Anecdotal case: I got covid this January, quite symptomatic, full anosmia, high fever and about 20% of lungs damaged. Since then I contacted freshly infected people at least twice. Both of them became sick 1-2 days after contact, one with proved Delta variant. In both cases I self-quarantined and get mild symptoms for 2-3 days: light fever, partial anosmia. Both time I got significant increase of IgG antibodies. So I consider my immunity is first class. At the same time, both persons I contracted virus from were fully vaccinated with two doses couple of months ago, one of them had a pretty bad case, missed hospital just one day away.

The point is: if someone is ready to take a risk and contract covid - society should allow it because those people will either die on they own knowledge, or get a better immunity than any vaccine can offer. We know now that vaccination status and even natural immunity is not stopping people from virus transmission, so this argument is off the table.

A selection of other arguments, roughly ordered by strength:

1. This is mandating that vaccine companies make more money, the incentives are suspect. We might reasonably expect people who already had COVID should have better immunity than the vaccinated since the vaccination is basically just a simulation of having COVID. Why not then be suspicious of reasoning motivated by unscrupulous profiteers? People will be getting vaccinated who don't want or need it, which raises an eyebrow. This policy is probably a fig leaf for government handouts to big pharma.

2. The evidence changes. We don't know what the 2 year effects of COVID are yet since the disease hasn't existed for 2 years. Even now week-to-week what everyone knows can change. I do not trust that the scientific basis for this decision will still be sound in 12 months - the data here is raw.

3. What about the argument that people have a right to control their own bodies? There has been a concerted push by reasonable people for that, eg, in the area of abortions. If the NYC government can demand vaccination for the greater good then it is basically the same logic as demanding carriage of babies to term for the greater good. We know a lot of people disagree with that logic.

4. You also haven't distinguished between (1) thinking that the vaccine is a bad idea and (2) thinking that governments feeling empowered to mandate the most experimental vaccines in a generation is unwise. It already appears they don't work as advertised given that having taken the vaccine doesn't acceptably improve their risk profile vs. COVID (in the NY government's opinion). Which I think it does.

5. The far more effective measure would be tight border controls to prevent even worse variants - the biggest risk here as far as I can tell has always been something like a delta variant appearing and breaking through the first generation of vaccines. But defending against that would inconvenience the people making the decisions, so it is unlikely they'll think of that. The decision makers aren't serious about stopping the virus, so their decisions made to allegedly stop the virus are suspect.

> You have fears about getting a vaccine, moreso than for coronavirus. If this is you, do you prefer a mask mandate? And if so, how do you enforce this in a restaurant, where anyone eating takes off their mask right away?

I'd rather have a mask mandate, like we did earlier. Lacking one is ridiculous because it's trivial to lie and forge a vaccine card. First they said masks wouldn't help, then they said the vaccine was enough. Both steps have been wrong. Societies are being petulant and refusing to just skip to the effective option because they want to party and avoid cooking.

> Or 2) you can take your chances with coronavirus, which you will get sooner or later, and spread it. Or 3) you can "take your chances" with the vaccine which, statistically and biologically, is safer than getting coronavirus and reduces spread.

Given recent data which appear to demonstrate even the vaccinated can and will still catch C19, although with milder symptoms and [much] lower risk of needing hospital treatment, isn't the evidence still pointing to us all getting it sooner or later?

"Covid-19 will now join other coronaviruses in being something we contract multiple times throughout our lives "[0]

In many countries so many of the vulnerable and elderly are already vaccinated that maybe encouraging populations to reach some [ever-rising] "herd immunity" vaccination rate has become a political endeavour, not a scientific one.

"Medical Research Council Biostatistics Unit at the University of Cambridge estimates that well over 60 per cent of 15-24 year olds [in the UK] have already had Covid anyway"[0]

If so many young people have apparently already had it, is it right to spend so much time, money and political capital worrying about the vaccination rates in healthy young people?

[0] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/08/04/offering-vaccine...

> Unless, of course, you think that the vaccine is more dangerous than coronavirus. And then I don't really know what to say.

I'd still encourage everyone to vaccinate for pro-social reasons, but for the young and the healthy I don't think this is such a ridiculous assertion. I'm virtually 100% confident that vaccines are completely safe and effective. However for a large fraction of people they will make you feel like shit for 2-5 days.

Let's just do a quick QALY based tradeoff for a healthy 25-year old. To make it interesting let's also say that she was already previously infected with Covid. The baseline CFR for this age group is approximately 0.004%. For someone with antibodies this number's at least 50% for subsequent infections.

Assuming 70 years of remaining life expectancy, Covid infection would lead to the loss of 12 hours of life expectancy. In contrast, I'd definitely prefer to be dead than live with the post-vaccine symptoms I experienced. And for me the suffering lasted about 96 hours. And I'm not atypical here. In that sense, vaccines are nearly ten times worse from a QALY perspective than the risk of being unvaccinated.

Again, all that being said, I was vaccinated and would encourage everyone else to do the same. But for the typical healthy 20-something, skipping the vaccine isn't necessarily irrational-- just selfish.

4. You already have had COVID-19 and feel the added (minor) protection by 1-2 vaccine shots gets you into more cons than pros.

It's simple.

If you're vaccinated you shouldn't care whether other people in the restaurant are. That's the point of vaccination after all.

And if you're not vaccinated obviously you're not going to be in favor of this new mandate.

The people who support policies like these are vaccin efficacy denialists, petty tyrants, and doomers of various sorts.

And there are good reasons to not want to live in a "papers please" society.

How about...

4) You recognize this as yet another crisis that the government is using to unconstitutionally increase its powers. 9/11 and the Patriot Act and Iraq/Afghanistan being a recent example.

This stuff happens again and again and yet somehow the default position is “convince me why this is a bad thing.”

History education needs more funding, and fast.

4. You had covid, and you don’t want to pay pharmaceutical companies to go to McDonalds.

This is one that I think you missed that I have heard a lot:

4. You view this as the state being paternalistic to protect the unvaccinated when, in fact, if in August of 2021 you have not yet been vaccinated, you are almost certainly making a personal risk management decision and, as such, should be prepared for the consequences to not only yourself, but others like you (unvaccinated).

This view also seems to be predicated on the idea that the vaccinated are largely unaffected by the spread amongst the unvaccinated. To what degree this is true, I don't know. It's hard to keep up with the evolving data and narratives.

I am very worried about setting a precedent for mandating a medical procedure like this. Times like these are when it's both the hardest and the most important to stand by principles like that.

It's very easy to give up power to government and very hard to claw it back, and I'm of the opinion that it's not worth giving up norms like this in the long term, even if I agree that in the short term this would be good. I feel similar about e.g. free speech and privacy.

I think I basically worry that the policy is not very effective. It doesn’t really allay anyone’s fears about the safety of the jab (I’ve seen people claim that the FDA giving it full approval rather than emergency approval would help but I don’t really believe them.)

But then France recently announced a similar policy and saw a few protests and a lot of people getting the vaccine. They like to protest more in France than America but I think Americans (even in NY) are perhaps more vaccine-hesitant.

I think I would like to see:

- more effort to make vaccines more accessible (wider range of times of day; working with community groups to have pop up vaccination events that include non-vaccine things so people aren’t scared off; maybe trying to let people know where they can get vaccinated and that it’s free; requiring employers to give people paid time off work to get vaccinated; etc)

- other incentives for vaccination (I see examples like being entered into a lottery or getting free donuts, but I mostly prefer just giving people cash to get vaccinated. Say $100 or maybe even $1000)

Another thing would maybe making it easier for businesses to only admit people who are vaccinated or have some suitable exemption but I think the latter is hard for privacy reasons and I think the former is just inviting businesses to decrease their custom which they are not normally wont to do.

I don't have much problem with a mandate, but I think you are missing a reason someone might be against one. A vaccine will protect the vast majority of people from bad outcomes if they themselves get it. There is strengthening evidence that vaccinated people can still be very infectious and a big danger to the unvaccinated. Therefore if you believe that governments should be parsimonious in their regulation of people's activities, mandating a vaccine that doesn't particularly protect anyone but the person who gets it might be an example of government overreach. We let people smoke after all. If you believe that the vaccine will protect others (and I hope it does, despite some recent concerning studies) then it is more defensible to mandate it.

Basically, I would hope mandates like this are done on the science instead of on the hope that if we're all very good citizens and get our shots we will somehow be rewarded with protection from the big bad virus and an end to the pandemic.

> Unless, of course, you think that the vaccine is more dangerous than coronavirus. And then I don't really know what to say.

There are vast demographics for which this is actually the case. Children under 18, for example.

If you think these passports will only ever be used to check for Covid vaccination status, or that they'll be rolled back once Covid is no longer killing appreciable numbers of people, you're as gullible as they come and I can only assume have been paying no attention to how these sorts of "temporary," "for the duration of the 'emergency' " measures have progressed over the past 20 years. This is the tip of the spear for implementing permanent a social credit system in the West.

Yeah, let's let the state mandate that you buy an injection every year from private pharmaceutical companies, with extremely dodgy records and motivated entirely by profit, just to participate in normal life. What could go wrong?

Here is my take: anyone who wants the vaccine can get it. If there are adults who can't, perhaps we need a law to grant paid time off for anyone who doesn't have it, specifically to allow them time to get the vaccine. There doesn't seem to be evidence that children are at a high risk of health issues due to the virus.

So in America after 8 months, most people who want the vaccine have it. Those who have it are incredibly safe, though not completely.

My question is this: when do we admit that in the US, we can go back to normal? At this point, i do see it like the flu or any other moderate respiratory illness. There is a risk, and we mitigated it.

If someone wants to wear a mask, okay. If a business or hospital wants to mandate masks, fine. But at this point, the unvaccinated in this country have chosen to ride without a helmet. So long as the health system doesn't collapse, that is on them, as it has always been.

Compared to the Reddit discussions in the COVID subreddit, these comments are publishable in Lancet.

I look forward to the full CDC approval that will validate your presumption about any given vaccine’s efficacy and safety. Right now, the manufacturers have no “skin in the game”…no legal liability. I assume that liability will return with full CDC approval, instead of emergency approval that they have now. (My personal peripheral understanding)

You see, there is a fourth choice, wait on vaccination until those making a vaccine are willing to accept the normal legal responsibility for the products injected into your body. Depending on your personal risk and risk exposure profile and your level of skepticism in an emergency drug, it may be the prudent personal choice. There are even other choices as well. There is more in Heaven and Earth than dreamt in your decision tree.

Ivermectin has shown great promise not only treating symptons of covid (5000% reduction in viral load in one paper) but also as a prophylactic. The small studies released recently suggest up to 83% effectiveness as a prophylactic. Of course larger RCT will need done, but fat chance of that with the economic incentive for big pharma and their politcal cronies and the weird political push to get EVERYONE vaccinated.

Getting downvoted by the hive mind so here's some links to a paper and offical news sources-

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8088823/

https://journals.lww.com/americantherapeutics/Fulltext/2021/...

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.05.31.21258081v...

https://www.jpost.com/health-science/israeli-scientist-says-...

meta study - https://ivmmeta.com/

https://www.thedesertreview.com/opinion/columnists/indian-ba...

https://www.pfizer.com/science/coronavirus/antiviral-efforts...

Giving a small list and saying everyone must fit into these boxes is incomplete logic.

You could be anti-needle. You could have health issues. You could be in an isolated community. You could have got the vaccine and are not worried about their kid.

You could be anything.

I think the fear is another recession and businesses having to shut down for another time. The US can't exactly UBI death out of it's way. People are gonna die and plagues happen. I don't get why people assume that it's not supposed to happen in their lives? Guess what? Life is a constant gamble. The fact that we've hedged the odds in our favor doesn't mean that every now and then the House that is mother nature wins.

It's a collection of sophistry from Typhoid Marys.

And yes, she was a real person. Those who ignore the humanities are doomed to repeat humanity's worst mistakes.

Given that the Delta variant is so contagious that it would require 90% vaxxed to achieve herd immunity, I see the situation as largely hopeless for those who fail to see the wisdom of getting vaccinated

The crazy thing is that the knee-jerk backlash against this vaccine has carried over into ALL vaccines for many people... So expect to see measles, polio, etc. etc. all over again thanks to the polarization involved at this point

> Pretty dismal discussion in here at the time of writing. Largely complaints about tyranny. Makes me sad that we can't have a calm discussion about the merits of the policy.

Ill bite and present a good faith argument.

Let's start with the fact COVID-19 is not a very scary disease. The media makes it seem FAR worse than the reality.

Yes, there are risks. It appears to be 2-4x more deadly than influenza, but primarily impacts people with pre-existing conditions. As such, those individuals should protect themselves. If society needs to make some minor accommodations that may make sense. Example, perhaps we allow elderly to shop 6-9am at stores. They're given n95's, etc.

To put it in perspective, in 2020 people in their 80's have a 20% higher chance of death than 2019, so if you have a 5% chance of dying per year, we're talking 6%. That's not dramatic.

> 1. You have fears about getting a vaccine, moreso than for coronavirus. If this is you, do you prefer a mask mandate? And if so, how do you enforce this in a restaurant, where anyone eating takes off their mask right away?

The evidence cloth masks are effective doesn't exist. As such, the policy doesn't make sense. Surgical and N95 masks do have evidence they help, but aren't primarily what people are using.

If you're talking about "fears about getting the vaccine", the vaccine isn't approved and there are treatments for covid-19. Meaning we shouldn't have emergency use authorization at this point AND it's not an FDA approved drug. Even if it becomes approved, I would not expect anyone to take it without discussing with their doctors.

Trials today are not completed. All we have are preliminary reports (phase 1, 2, 3):

https://www.modernatx.com/covid19vaccine-eua/providers/clini...

Long term impacts wont be known for 5-10 years. Further, many people can't have the vaccines.

I dont' see an issue with the vaccines, but people should be informed and not coerced.

> 2. You have fears about the privacy implications. If so, what are those fears? Perhaps your vaccination status can lead people to make inferences about your health?

In terms of privacy, the 4th amendment protects against government search and seizures. When government mandates papers being reviewed, they are effectively acting as agents of the state and doing searches.

Further, doctors should be the ones managing care, not bureaucrats. Historically, CDC and FDA issue suggestions and provide evidence. It's dangerous to try and enforce vaccines when we aren't taking into account pre-existing conditions. For instance, there are drugs, ages, pre-existing conditions, all of which impact vaccine effectiveness and risk profile(s).

Coercing people to take a take part in a human experimentation is something we consider a crime against humanity.

> 3. You are not particularly concerned about the community spread of coronavirus (and the implications of that)

The disease is already wide spread and approximately everyone has been exposed. Arguably the vast majority have a partial immunity (had the disease or vaccine). If it's still spreading, there's nothing we can do. Further, the delta variant spreads more easily, but is less deadly. So we shouldn't really worry here.

> 2. You have fears about the privacy implications. If so, what are those fears? Perhaps your vaccination status can lead people to make inferences about your health?

Could you explain why you are NOT afraid? Can you please explain what Apple and the City of New York have done to earn the kind of trust you want me to place in them?

Is your starry-eyed trust also extended to police departments as well?

They are building infrastructure to track people everywhere and punish us for non-compliance.

Do you believe that systematic racism exists, and if so, do you think that it is possible that it could creep into the new health surveillance and enforcement infrastructure that they are building? Are there any mechanisms to challenge the abuses that will happen?

I would be more ok with these policies if they pledged to dismantle (or mothball) contact tracing as soon as it is no longer needed, instead of just leaving it up and expanding it forever "just in case", as they certainly will do.

This discriminates against the same parts of the population that are unable to get an ID to be able to vote. I would think a vaccine passport would need some other form of ID first so it can be tied to a particular person.

4) You oppose tyranny. People should be free to make their own choices. By going out unvaccinated, I'm not putting anyone in danger, except those who choose to be endangered (not isolating / sheltering at home, unmasked, unvaccinated).

5) You oppose discrimination. I'm immune but not vaccinated. Where's my immunity certificate?

Isn't one of the merits of a policy, whether it is, or isn't tyrannical?

This ignores that willingly spreading the virus hurts the efficacy of the vaccine.

This is one of the strangest comments here, but you're trying to be rational while breaking down the vast majority of the worldwide population into one of 3 positions? You know most places don't have these mandates and never will? And things will be fine.

We settled this point at Nuremburg.

Involuntary experimental medical procedures are what the bad guys do.

> Unless, of course, you think that the vaccine is more dangerous than coronavirus. And then I don't really know what to say.

You say this because you trust the authorities, the media and the scientists.

You are free to trust them. And someone else should have the freedom NOT to trust them.

And that is the whole point.

> Pretty dismal discussion in here at the time of writing. Largely complaints about tyranny.

Because it's highly tyrannical? Odd how cavalier you are about this.

Nevermind that you have a right to privacy when it comes to health matters, this also forces you to carry "ID" pretty much everywhere.

Also, all tyrannies a born to "protect you".

> Makes me sad that we can't have a calm discussion about the merits of the policy.

I don't think that's what you are interested in. You wouldn't have started off your comment that way if you did.

> Unless, of course, you think that the vaccine is more dangerous than coronavirus.

Do you have the answer to the following questions?

Why did the mRNA technology remain unapproved for a long time since its inception?

What exactly was relaxed in the approval process that lead to its EUA?

Since the vaccine has been used population wide, will the missed studies or what ever due process eventually be done? Or will they be skipped, citing the real world usage (which was not controlled or followed up in a systematic manner)?

Meta: What do you think about the timestamps on the children comments here? So many/much responses in <1min from the parent comment? GPT-3 manipulation?

I care more about the health of small business than I do about the health of people who contract covid and will continue to view all sociopolitical activity through that unchanging lens.

Largely complaints about tyranny

Thought-terminating cliches are a very effective tool for shutting down discussion. Sadly they've become very common HN in recent years as the site has grown.

Why would you be opposed to a policy requiring everyone to jog three miles every day? Jogging is good for your health, its side effects are minor and benefits to the society in whole will be tremendous.

Vaccine requirements have been in place for decades. For pre-K in NYC kids need shots for PCV and Hib.

For kindergarten they need more shots: Hep B, Polio, Chickenpox, and Measles, Mumps and Rubella.

Going to middle school? Then you'll need more shots, the TDAP and meningococcal conjugate.

These are all vaccine requirements. Is it an invasion or privacy to demand children's records? Is it the nanny state? We could go down that road, but who wants to live in a world where we lose herd immunity to all of those diseases because 30-40% of people choose to opt their children out?

Honestly, I think a lot of people here without kids have absolutely no idea that you need to prove immunization in order to attend school.

What’s funnier still to me is men (it always seems to be men) outraged that they might need to prove vaccination in order to send their kids back to school, publicly admitting that they’ve been fobbing that work off on their spouse.

People know. They know, if anything, because you need to be vaccinated to attend colleges.

The issue is that this vaccine is not FDA approved. A vaccine that provides for only a year is hardly the same as a booster shot which is good for 10 iirc.

Is it required or can you just sign a waiver and get out of it for religious/personal/health without a doctor reasons? Or is the documentation required easily forgeable?

Your argument is fine in itself, the sexist remark is unnecessary.

Early (i.e. existing) Covid vaccines are NON-STERILIZING, unlike almost every vaccine given to kids. There are sterilizing Covid vaccines in development, e,g. delivered nasally directly to the upper respiratory tract, but none have yet reached the market.

https://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=243127

> To be sterilizing a vaccine must prevent infection. Since you never get infected you never replicate the virus and thus do not shed it. If you do not shed it the potential path of the viral life-cycle for that particular infection ends with you and thus you cannot pass on or cause a mutation. You are sterile against that disease; from the point of view of the virus you are a lifeless rock. Among commonly-used sterilizing vaccines are MMR (measles, mumps and rubella), Varicella (chicken pox), OPV (oral polio) and others. The only time that such a vaccine fails is when you do not build immunity (such as due to immune compromise.) This is extremely rare and the protection from such vaccines tends to be either decades-long or lifetime.

> A vaccine that is not sterilizing permits the virus to infect you and replicate and as a result you can infect others. Technically it is not a vaccine at all (which by definition prevents infection); it is a prophylactic therapy. Such a "vaccine" instead acts to reduce or eliminate symptomatic disease. You don't know you're sick and you don't get sick. You don't go to the hospital and you don't die. Unfortunately since you don't know you're sick but are infected and the virus is both replicating in you and shedding you are more-likely to spread the infection to others. All of the current Covid jabs are in this category and so is, for that matter IPV (injected polio vaccine -- the original Salk discovery.)

> During the original vaccine trials in the summer and fall of 2020 they deliberately did not test any of the recipients for asymptomatic infections. Only a person who developed a significant illness was tested. This has continued post roll-out with the CDC specifying that a close contact of a known case who was vaccinated did not need to quarantine or be tested until and unless they became symptomatic. They knew damn well, in other words, that the jabs were not sterilizing but did not want that data up for public debate because then those who have read history would be likely to make the connection to the present day and thus they did their level best to hide it. That has now blown up in their face with it being conclusively known that jabbed people in fact not only get infected but spread the virus to others.

> ... natural infection with Covid-19 is sterilizing. Being infected and recovering conserves the nasal and respiratory mucosal response which is where the virus enters the body.

I find it hard to believe they “didn’t want the public to know” when one of the earliest studies the CDC did on vaccines, with a March 2021 publish date, was a study that tested weekly regardless of symptoms to see if it prevented infection outright. Maybe not perfect sterilizing immunity but it does prevent asymptomatic.

I agree they didn’t get into the nuances of sterilizing vs. non sterilizing but for the general public that’s deep in the weeds, anyone who followed the details knew this was the case early on.

> “One of this study’s strengths is its design: participants self-collected nasal swabs each week for RT-PCR laboratory testing, regardless of whether they had developed symptoms of illness. Researchers were able to look for evidence of SARS-CoV-2 infection irrespective of symptoms. A small number (10.7 percent) of infections in this study were asymptomatic (i.e., did not result in symptoms). However, the majority of infections (58 percent) occurred among people whose infections were identified by testing before they developed symptoms or knew they were infected. The study demonstrates that these two mRNA vaccines can reduce the risk of all SARS-CoV-2 infections, not just symptomatic infections.

This is important because preventing both asymptomatic and pre-symptomatic infections among health care workers and other essential workers through vaccination can help prevent the spread of SARS-CoV-2 to those they care for or serve. Findings from this study complement earlier reports that these two mRNA COVID-19 vaccines can reduce both asymptomatic and symptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infections.“

https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2021/p0329-COVID-19-Vacci...

If the amount of taking vaccines, drugs, and paying medical services determine our good health, people in the US would be the healthiest ones, and they are not... Is it because they don't take many or much enough?

I'm not American, but from the American news I watch a significant % of the population doesn't have the ability to get government ID.

If they can't get that, how are they going to get vaccinated and maintain those records?

11% of Americans don't have government-issued ID. Not "don't have the ability" to get ID but don't have ID. They can get it with ease. Once we hit 89% vaccination rate then we can worry about that.

Blatant false equivalence. All of those are FDA approved.

To preface: I got the vaccine months ago (as soon as I had access), I'm a big believer in vaccines.

With that being said, this policy doesn't sit well with me. None of the currently available vaccines in the US are FDA approved. Of course, a lot of people have received those vaccines, but I also don't necessarily fault individuals for feeling hesitant (the nuance here is that I think people ought to get the vaccine). mRNA is a new, unknown technology, and the vaccine was rushed faster to public access than any other vaccine before. We have absolutely no idea if there are any long term side effects of these vaccines.

Both candidates Biden and Harris expressed the need for full trials and transparency in regard to the vaccine before they were in office, then changed their tune after (see: https://twitter.com/pbhushan1/status/1416969060890210305). Biden says:

> When we finally do, God willing, get a vaccine, Who’s going to take the shot? Who’s going to take the shot? You going to be the first one to say, “Put me — sign me up, they now say it’s OK”?

If the vaccine is as effective as it seems, then this decision feels positively nanny state to me. It takes away an individual's agency to inform themselves of the risks on both sides and make an informed decision.

> mRNA is a new, unknown technology

This is untrue, researchers have been testing various mRNA therapies on people for 30 years, with it being first done in vitro in 1990 then in vivo in 1992 [1]. Lipid nano particles were first used around the same time.

> the vaccine was rushed faster to public access than any other vaccine before

This is only true if you ignore the development of the mRNA vaccine platform for flu, rabies, and zika that predated the pandemic by years. The novel development here was swapping in new protein encoding. If you look at this as a continuation of that process, then it's only a little faster than normal, and a lot of that was due to the FDA switching sequential steps in the process to be parallel.

> We have absolutely no idea if there are any long term side effects of these vaccines.

This isn't a meaningful claim for 2 key reasons. There has never been a vaccine that had serious side effects that did show up shortly after vaccination[2]. The history of mRNA treatments began as an experiment in gene therapy, but has largely ben abandoned because the effects never lasted long enough. As of 2020 this is an ongoing area of research[3]. No one has figure out how to stabilize mRNA so that it has long lasting effects.

> Both candidates Biden and Harris

They're both craven, ignorant politicians, who cares what they said when the other guy was in power.

[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/nrd.2017.243

[2] https://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/concerns/concerns-history....

[3] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7076378/

[edit] All that said, I am no pro mandate but seriously you should all voluntarily go get vaccinated IMHO.

> None of the currently available vaccines in the US are FDA approved.

On one hand, I can't wait for the Pfizer vaccine to be fully FDA approved in September. On the other, everybody who uses that argument today will simply forget about it and move goalposts.

>If the vaccine is as effective as it seems, then this decision feels positively nanny state to me. It takes away an individual's agency to inform themselves of the risks on both sides and make an informed decision

If this were mandating that every resident of NYC must be vaccinated, I would agree. But it's not doing that. It's only saying that anyone wanting to dine (or possibly shop, too) indoors, that is, in spaces we know to have higher contamination and spread rate, they need to be vaccinated. People that are hesitant can still go unvaccinated and that's fine, but they have to keep to areas where contamination and spread are less prevalent.

And I think that's fair.

I don't understand calling it a nanny state. The government punishes you for not wearing a seat belt, children are excluded from school if they aren't vaccinated, drunk driving is illegal. Other than fda approval is the covid vaccine any different? if you're worried about the long term side effects and thus choose not to get vaccinated shouldn't you expect to not participate fully/freely in society (a la children's vaccines or repeat drunk-driving offenders)?

> We have absolutely no idea if there are any long term side effects of these vaccines.

By that logic, we have absolutely no idea if there are any long term side effects of COVID-19, and how they might compare to the unknown of the long term side effects of vaccines.

We do know that many COVID-19 patients have had very bad effects over many months (I'm thinking of long COVID here), not to mention the possibility of death. We don't know what it'll be like 5 years from first getting COVID-19, but we know long term problems happen from the virus.

Compare that to what's known about the vaccine: we haven't seen any indication that the vaccine is causing very bad effects over many months in any significantly large percentage of the population.

You lose all credibility when you bring up the Biden/Harris comments.

At the time we were at the point where it was a real possibility that Trump would push out the vaccine regardless of the status of trials, etc. Trump kept saying dates and deadlines for all sorts of things throughout the pandemic that had no basis in reality, to the point that pushing out the vaccine early was a real possibility, just to make him look better.

THAT is what the Biden/Harris comments are referencing.

Could they have been more clear? Absolutely. But I'm confident that you personally know the difference and that you're just deciding to peddle that bullshit to further whatever right wing agenda you have.

Just to point out: The vaccines available in the US are authorized for use through an established FDA process.

If you trust the FDA approval process, why not the FDA’s EUA process as well?

> If the vaccine is as effective as it seems, then this decision feels positively nanny state to me. It takes away an individual's agency to inform themselves of the risks on both sides and make an informed decision.

Do people feel the same way about schools requiring vaccines, or children getting the MMR, Hep B, or Polio vaccines?

Without getting into the whole vaccine thing...

People need to start protesting with their wallets. People need to talk less and act more.

I work in NYC, in an "essential" service. In the beginning myself and other workers were threatened with discipline if we did not show up for work. We were told to go straight home, and stay inside, and do as little as necessary otherwise.

Now, this is easy for me, as I am single with no family, but I continue that policy to this day. I buy the essentials and no more.

You want to threaten me? If I don't do this, I can't travel? Fine, I'll keep my money. I can't go to a restaurant? Fine, I'll keep my money, and cook myself. I can't go to the beach? Well fine, I'll keep my money. I'll find something else to do (some of the parks are empty this time of year as everyone's at the beach!). Can't hurt me by telling me I can't spend.

I do the same when gas prices jump. I travel less. Not because I'm hurt more financially, but as a middle finger to the corporations behind the price increase.

Yeah, it doesn't make a dent in the grand scheme, but at least I don't feel the fool.

Honestly with all of this spending less and the way even essentials are jumping in cost, I haven't been able to save much more, and that's a shame.

There are so many ways Americans could make this work, to send a message, if they didn't spend as the corporate overloads told them they have to do.

As a former New Yorker... people should vote with their wallets and their feet.

New York has become a pretty miserable place to live. And for the privilege of living in a miserable place you pay an exorbitant amount.

Bless you! I have reached the same conclusion. If the economy is all that matters then only an economical protest will do.

Any restriction that prevents me from spending I will gladly follow.

Since NYC was the epicenter of early Covid cases, it means a sizable subset of the population, especially essential workers, were already infected and recovered. These workers, who bore the risk of serving those sequestered at home, are now to be punished for their service? https://thehill.com/opinion/healthcare/558757-the-ill-advise...

> During the pandemic, the professional laptop class protected themselves by working from home while exposing the working class that brought them food and other goods. It is now the height of hypocrisy to recognize immunity from vaccinations but not immunity from those exposed while serving the laptop class.

https://brownstone.org/articles/forced-medicine-the-new-fron...

> Consider this from the Wall Street Journal. “Children under the age of 12, who cannot be vaccinated according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, would likely not be excluded from the program’s outlined indoor activities ... So Broadway shows of children’s plays are permanently banned? Families cannot eat in restaurants? Kids under 12 cannot go to indoor events at all? Is this serious? Media questioned New York officials about all of this, and it truly appeared as if the geniuses running the city had completely forgotten to think about children at all. The question alone seemed to take them by surprise. If they exempt them, there is already a problem. Why include a 12-year-old but exclude an unvaccinated 13-year old?

> Regardless, this is an appalling and unthinkable amount of compulsion to impose for the sake of a vaccine that the willing have long ago accepted and about which the remainders have either grave doubts or hard-core opposition. People figure that it will be challenged in court but that takes time and money, and it is not at all clear how courts will respond. In the end, though lawsuits are fabulous and there should be many more, I don’t see how they stop this tyranny. I’m not sure what precisely does but I know this much: a people and culture that acquiesces to this level of imposition is not well suited for the preservation of liberty or civilization in general. This really does feel like a new chapter in the history of American rights violations.

There are some advocating to expand the scope of the No Fly list, https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/unvaccinated-people-belong...

It's not just you. I stopped using amazon and other big corps completely when they locked us down.

I am also voting with my wallet. Despite being vaccinated, I am watching the infection dynamcs closely when considering indoor activites, especially where I can't wear a mask.

By not getting vaccinated you are pushing the onus of responsibility to society.

When you occupy a bed in a hospital for a preventable disease (like covid post-vaccine) you are a detriment to society. You are occupying precious resources because you were dumb. Just dumb. No ifs or buts - we need to start calling out stupidity again.

We already handle people occupying hospital resources with self inflicted diseases, like lung cancer or liver trouble, by taxing the shit out of cigarettes and liquor (in countries where universal healthcare is a thing). We can’t put a covid tax on people I guess, so we might as well mandate vaccinations for everything we can.

People who believe vaccines aren’t at least reducing mortality by 10x to 100x can just maintain their stupidity and become pariahs to society. I idgaf anymore. These people are dumb and I won’t waste another breath defending them. It is immediately proven from vaccination campaigns globally that the impact vaccines have is at least 10x reduction in mortality. Vaccines would be worth it even if they killed 1/2 of the numbers of covid, bout they don’t. They are a HUGE reduction.

Now let's do obesity. From the CDC [1]:

> From 1999–2000 through 2017 –2018, US obesity prevalence increased from 30.5% to 42.4%. During the same time, the prevalence of severe obesity increased from 4.7% to 9.2%.

> Obesity-related conditions include heart disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes and certain types of cancer. These are among the leading causes of preventable, premature death.

> The estimated annual medical cost of obesity in the United States was $147 billion in 2008. Medical costs for people who had obesity was $1,429 higher than medical costs for people with healthy weight.

Also, if the government really cared about the health of the population, why aren't they mandating exercise or dietary health?

[1] https://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/adult.html

"Precious resources" - the narrative was that the resources _were_ precious and we needed "two weeks to slow the spread."

Why are these resources somehow "precious" two years later? Where was the ventilator production? Staffing?

If this were such a serious issue, what have we been doing?

I agree that the vaccines pose very little risk to a given individual, even though the possibility of long-term effects have yet to be ruled-out in the scientific literature.

But there are selective pressures & second order effects to consider regarding mass vaccination using the current mRNA vaccines which induce an immune response that is highly targeted towards the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein [1][2].

Combined with the evidence that people who have naturally acquired immunity are protected equally as well as vaccinated individuals [3][4], and that combinations of existing medicines have proven effective in reducing hospitalization and death [5] - don't you think that a strategy focused on vaccinating only the most vulnerable populations across the world would be more rational?

[1] Risk of rapid evolutionary escape from biomedical interventions targeting SARS-CoV-2 spike protein https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33909660/

[2] SARS-CoV-2 immune evasion by the B.1.427/B.1.429 variant of concern https://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2021/06/30/scie...

[3] SARS-CoV-2 infection induces long-lived bone marrow plasma cells in humans https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03647-4.pdf

[4] Necessity of COVID-19 vaccination in previously infected individuals https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.06.01.21258176v...

[5] Multifaceted highly targeted sequential multidrug treatment of early ambulatory high-risk SARS-CoV-2 infection (COVID-19) https://scholarlycommons.henryford.com/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?a...

> By not getting vaccinated you are pushing the onus of responsibility to society. When you occupy a bed in a hospital for a preventable disease (like covid post-vaccine) you are a detriment to society. You are occupying precious resources because you were dumb

Why are you focusing on weak predictors of expected medical cost like vaccination status instead of strong predictors like diet and obesity?

You are looking at things from the perspective of being vaccinated. Yeah you are fine because you got vaccinated. But because you are vaccinated, you now pose a risk to all unvaccinated people because you now have a non-zero chance of transmitting.

In other words, by getting vaccinated you pushed the onus of responsibility onto society.

See how this is a zero-sum game? Either everyone gets vaccinated, and maintains that vaccination forever, or someone is still getting the short end of the stick, and society as a whole loses.

I'm sure you personally feel great for getting a vaccination, but that means literally nothing in the grand scheme of things. But clearly getting everyone vaccinated isn't the focus here, not with this post nor this law. The focus is clearly to feel good about yourself if you are vaccinated and look down upon those who aren't. So I'd say keep ngaf, because as long as lawmakers share opinions like those of yourself, this issue isn't going anywhere.

A bit off topic but you know what’s really jarring for me?

For the past ten years I’ve agreed with the majority on hacker news on almost every issue. Software patents, voting rights, who knows what else. Everyone seemed to just find the right answer and it made sense.

Then all of a sudden I’m in tiny minority because I believe people should be able to choose what they put in their own bodies. It really feels like a twilight zone episode.

> I believe people should be able to choose what they put in their own bodies

You still can, with limited exceptions:

* Kids need to be vaccinated against ~9 ailments before they attend school (seems mandatory but homeschool is an option in every state)

* Adults need to be vaccinated against one before they patronize indoor restaurants, entertainment venues and gyms (completely optional activities and only in the densest city in the US, probably some others will follow)

There are also things you are banned from putting in your body, some by age (tobacco & alcohol) and some entirely (e.g. DEA scheduled drugs) and some controlled to the point that are effectively illegal to consume (e.g. meats that aren't allowed to be harvested or imported)

> Then all of a sudden I’m in tiny minority because I believe people should be able to choose what they put in their own bodies.

It's just being selective, because you had to be vaccinated to go to school and/or college.

And ain't nobody alive today that can choose to not ingest microplastics, PFAs, pesticides, many can't avoid lead in their drinking water, and none of us can avoid air pollution.

And COVID for that matter! I would like to choose to not put COVID in my body! It'd be great if I could CHOOSE that. But people are just wandering around spreading the plague like that's their constitutional right. Your unvaccinated fist is right in my face.

This is a really interesting point. And I felt the same exact way, but over the past few weeks, there seems to be more and more people on HN that are against all this government overreach. So, I personally, am starting to feel better that there are many more that feel like I do than I thought.

What are you talking about? The vast majority of comments here seem to be against this policy.

So how does that make you a tiny minority on HN?

Interestingly, this thread has got me surprised that there are so many vaccine skeptics or people that have such a deep mistrust in these vaccination incentives.

You do have a right to choose. This isn’t a vaccine mandate. It’s the vaccinated asking to be separated from unvaccinated individuals in high risk places of recreation (restaurants, movie theaters, gyms, and large venues). Meanwhile, mask mandates will likely stay in place for places where it isn’t possible or important to separate the vaccinated and unvaccinated (grocery stores, MTA, healthcare settings, the great outdoors). To avoid antagonizing the unvaccinated and reducing spread for high risk individuals that don’t have a choice, grocery stores are requiring masks for everyone still.

So what are people so in arms about? Overreaching? This isn't (legal, ethical) overreaching, this is using data to drive the economy forward without killing people in ways that have been supported by the courts for almost a century. The more we reduce cases, the less likely we get a variant that’s worse than Delta.

While we’re discussing gripes, the states that were in staunch opposition to mandatory vaccines (*and masks*) are the ones that reopened the earliest and with the highest cases. You can’t have your cake and eat it too. Read stories from people who are on their death bed from COVID, some ask for the vaccine (it’s too late), others still deny that it could have saved their lives.

I'm feeling the same way.

Also, it's like the vaccine debate has turned into the same arguments as the pro-life/pro-choice debates.

Might be time to reevaluate your position and examine your gross simplification of the issue

Agreed. And furthermore it's distressing to see hundreds of well-written, good-faith comments downvoted to oblivion for holding the wrong opinion. I thought on hn we downvoted for meta-concerns like being off-topic or ad hominem, and not as a "dislike" button.

Welcome to the club. I've been consistently anti-censorship and pro-freedom-of-speech for as long as I can remember, and I lost touch with the majority here years ago. The sudden lurch toward authoritarian in the tech world was something that I didn't expect and that I still lament.

This is real.

There has been a total invasion of commies to HN over the past decade. I don't know if it's the schools to blame or what but something has definitely flipped.

Hackers, as a demographic used to be hard-core libertarian (not necessarily a party member).

This is the point where we have to stop making trade offs of choice and liberty in the name of "security". Give the public open data about the effectiveness of the vaccine and then let people make their own decisions about what to do. The moralization and judgement about the vaccine has become ludicrous.

If you're scared to do things around others even if you're vaccinated, then that's fine. We cannot accept a societal change towards mandating choices for people. It will be very, very hard for us to walk that back.

> Give the public open data about the effectiveness of the vaccine

and done: https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#datatracker-home

> then let people make their own decisions about what to do

As we see, they go to crowded places, unvaccinated, and spread the virus. I think that's irresponsible. Is that "ludicrous moralization and judgement?"

> If you're scared to do things around others even if you're vaccinated, then that's fine.

This has been a societal change in the making for quite some time. It used to be that if one were uncomfortable they were free to not participate, one's requirements were not an onus on others. Now people feel free to create onus on others.

Today people feel free to demand that others comply to their requirements to feel safe rather than relying on/increasing their own self protection and isolation standard.

I'm sorry but the whole "let people make their own decisions" is BS.

Making epidemiological decisions isn't something that most people are qualified to do. I have seen the takes from random people and 99% of them are abject garbage.

I'm not scared for myself, I'm scared for people on anti-rejection medicine (for example) who have taken vaccines but still can't produce the necessary antibodies. These people have to contend with their fellow man deciding against all rational thought to become a potential walking plague vessel.

It is as if some subset of humanity decided to start driving their cars blindfolded and the internet commentariat proclaimed, "their car, their choice! Spare us your ludicrous moralization and judgement!"

> We cannot accept a societal change towards mandating choices for people. It will be very, very hard for us to walk that back.

We mandate many choices for people already, including, specifically, about taking vaccines.

> in the name of "security"

It's in the name of not spreading a deadly virus, not security with scare quotes.

> Give the public open data about the effectiveness of the vaccine and then let people make their own decisions about what to do.

Exactly. Governments need to figure out why people aren't getting vaccinated and fix those issues.

Privacy watchdogs, data protection groups, and human rights councils have largely condemned these "vaccine passports".

To date, I haven't seen their concerns mentioned - mentioned - in any of these pronouncements.

I get that there are enough people willing to go along with this that they'll likely stick around for a bit - but another thing I haven't seen is an end game.

Corona is in the deer, it's in pets. Are they all going to get vaccinated too? Are people going to willingly get shot up with Pfizer and Moderna every six months for the rest of their lives; living in a three-tier society?

It seems that the endgame is to keep on pushing tighter and tighter restrictions on certain communities of people, strongly discouraging open debate, leaving dissenters no other option but to physically remove themselves, until only the most compliant remain, forming a tight-knit, ideologically homogenous group.

I don't really see what the problem would be with vaccinating every six months in case it turns out to be necessary to keep up immunity; in fact even vaccinating every month would be fine to avoid the risk of severe COVID.

Indications though seems to be for only needing 2 or 3 doses or needing boosters multiple years apart.

Obviously the end game isn't seen. We're nowhere close to the end game. We don't know about lasting immunity or about variants that don't even exist yet.

Maybe we can eradicate it, maybe not. Literally no one knows what the future holds here.

Surviving is not the same thing as living just as noise is not the same thing as music.

People have lost their minds over covid and act in ways that they would have said were insane probably five years ago.

A bunch of younger people at very little risk of getting horribly sick, are demanding that everyone get vaccinated wear masks and want life to be miserable even though it is older people who are saying I’d rather just live my life and if I die I die.

I might get one dose of the vaccine, just so I can not be part of either side of this crazy debate.

You can't become part of some crazy ideological group unless you start believing and spreading their rhetoric -- the crazies on both sides don't "own" the action of getting a vaccine. If you're already willing to get the vaccine, you may as well get both doses (assuming you're talking about a two-dose vaccine). You can keep living normally, instead of just surviving as you say, while affording yourself and others around you the maximum protection possible.

> I might get one dose of the vaccine, just so I can not be part of either side of this crazy debate.

What a silly way to make health decisions.

Covid will be long gone in 100 years. But you know what might not be gone: the precedents we’re creating today. Introducing a show-your-papers culture where we once had a free and open society.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacobson_v._Massachusetts This was 116 years ago.

You have to "show your papers" to go to school. It's likely been like that for longer than you've been alive.

In 2000, WHO declared measles "eradicated" in the United States [1]. Of course, that's no longer the case thanks to those who have decided their feelings and watching an unverified Youtube video trumps science.

Requiring vaccination is not new. As a matter of law in the US the issue was settled by the Supreme Court in Jacobson v. Massachussetts in 1905 [2]. Mandatory vaccination has been used to effectively eliminate smallpox and polio, in particular.

We've now administered billions of doses of Covid-19 vaccines. The idea that we're somehow missing side effects is quite frankly ridiculous at this point.

That idea also shows a basic misunderstanding of what's going on here. Immune system responses to something like a vaccine are actually extremely quick. This is not the same as, say, other drugs or compounds that live in the body for a long time. The body's response is known very quickly, which is why the very slight possibility of a clotting issue with AstraZeneca, for example, was identified extremely quickly.

Vaccines just aren't a personal choice. If it was, nobody would care what individuals did. The idea that someone's baseless opinions should trump public good as a matter of principle is sad, false as a matter of law and baseless as a matter of principle.

Contrary to the opinion of many (sadly) absolute selfishness isn't a virtue, it's just selfishness. And it's the latest iteration of the underlying anti-intellectualisms in the US.

What's especially disappointing, even worrying, is just how much traction these baseless ideas get from those who allegedly have a science education.

With NYC's mandate (which I support), it still doesn't mean you have to get vaccinated. It just means there are consequences if you don't. We already have this with schools. While we're at it, it's time to stop this nonsense of vaccines being against one's "personal beliefs" to get an exemption.

If you want to live in a society that benefits from mass vaccination you should be prepared to do your part, particularly when that part just means getting an extremely safe needle. If you want to opt out of that, you also opt out of the benefits of that.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Measles_resurgence_in_the_Unit...

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacobson_v._Massachusetts

> The idea that we're somehow missing side effects is quite frankly ridiculous at this point.

I personally went to the ER with heart attack like symptoms (chest pain) and it was Pericarditis . No one warned me of this risk. Now I'm footing the $15k bill for the good of the public. Additionally no doctor suggested reporting it to VAERS. Why? i suspect because it's become taboo to speak ill of the vaccine in any way. (watch to see if this comment gets downvoted to oblivion, proving the point)

"Free" turned out to be not so free for me.

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/safety/my...

> We've now administered billions of doses of Covid-19 vaccines. The idea that we're somehow missing side effects is quite frankly ridiculous at this point.

I truly hope that we're right on this one.

Why people are so quick to blame to blame anti-vaxxers? The United States has millions of immigrants and visitors from other countries. Some go through official channels which require vaccinations, many do not.

According to the CDC, Measles is brought into the US by international travel:

  Measles cases in the U.S. originate from international travel. Make sure you and your loved ones are protected against measles before international travel. [0]

[0] https://www.cdc.gov/measles/plan-for-travel.html

I don't think that the city should be able to impose this arduous constraint on private businesses. These businesses have already suffered greatly under the capacity restrictions of closures. Now they're being asked to turn away potential customers and enforce unpopular rules without compensation, under threat of substantial penalties.

If the city wants to impose this rule, then at the very least they should handle the enforcement. Outsourcing the mandate without compensation is absurd.

Currently it’s actually the opposite in that the best restaurants are thriving because they ~doubled capacity by adding huge outdoor dining structures on the sidewalks that were previously not allowed. Note that it only impacts indoor dining not outdoor and that some restaurants, gyms, and venues has already begun to require of their own volition.

Surely this is a violation of civil rights law. The law is going to have a disparate impact on minority groups since there is a difference in vaccination rates between different racial groups. The law doesn't seem narrowly scoped to achieve a specific compelling government interest. People from the government seem to be claiming this is being used to incentivise vaccine uptake. If the government made the claim that the vaccine was necessary in an indoor setting in order to reduce the spread then the law might be ok but because they have been caught making these other claims then it could burn them in court.

Wrong. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacobson_v._Massachusetts

>there is a difference in vaccination rates between different racial groups

Considering that people of color have been the targets of medical experimentation under the guise of public health by both our government and the same drug makers peddling the vaccines (usually in other countries), this shouldn't be a surprise to anyone.

Then close the gaps.

Glad I left LA last September. I can't believe NYC is going even more extreme than there, but they are. The good news, is my home purchase down here in Charleston is up 10% in only 3 months. This ridiculousness in CCP NYC will only help ensure my home price goes through the roof. So, yes, if you want to live in a place that respects your right to choose what you do with your body and your life, come on down south. Just don't bring your bad policies down here with you is all the locals ask :)

> if you want to live in a place that respects your right to choose what you do with your body and your life, come on down south

Unless you are a pregnant woman you mean!

Louis Rossmann, owner of Rossmann Repair Group, released a video attacking this new policy - and he is pro-vaccination and encourages his family and employees to get it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3roD8cKdJlY

What is the plan for undocumented workers? Especially in restaurants. Even if they managed to get vaccinated by providing valid "proof of age" documentation[1], they will not appear in the registries. And if anyone was skeptical and thought that the state might be lying about not tracking identity and immigration status, surely that identity information would likely be false. This is a significant, and likely a majority, of back-of-house restaurant workers, but it also cuts across industries.

When enforcement comes knocking, are we going to give them a pass? How does one reconcile requiring it for clients who spend and an hour or two, but not for workers spending 15 hours on premises?

1. https://www1.nyc.gov/site/doh/covid/covid-19-vaccine-eligibi...

In California you can get your shots without showing any ID, and in fact for my first shot nobody checked mine.

pragmatically, the mandatory vaccinations seem to be predicated on the following assumptions:

1. Asymptomatic transmission is the primary vector and just as dangerous as being in proximity to a sick individual - has this been confirmed or refuted? Obviously-sick people aren't going to be in restaurants and bars so they can be taken out of the equation entirely. The virus has a normal lifecycle like all others: incubation, infestation and recovery, and during the 2nd phase people should be showing symptoms that our human instincts would urge us to isolate from and ostracize against.

2. The human body cannot become immune to a strain of this virus by recovering from it naturally - most people have had the virus by now, and if the virus is omnipresent, the non-vaccinated should keep becoming re-infected and in a perpetual state of illness - greatly multiplying their chances of death. I don't see the fatality data supporting this hypothesis, so natural recovery immunity is probably serving some protective function.

> Obviously-sick people aren't going to be in restaurants and bars so they can be taken out of the equation entirely.

I think this is neither obvious nor true. There are an unfortunate number of people in this country who choose to go out and socialize when they have active symptoms.

Boston Mayor Kim Janey explicitly rejected vaccine passports as being reminiscent of slavery.

https://www.wcvb.com/article/boston-mayor-janey-compares-vac...

Note that I'm not making the comparison with slavery myself, I'm just passing on the statement from another big city mayor with a different perspective.

I have many issues with this policy, and I'm both vaccinated and pro-vaccination.

1. As others have mentioned, this is being done before the vaccine being available to children under 12 and before the vaccine has been officially approved by the FDA.

2. This policy isn't simply being announced as a way to temporarily bring down cases, it's being instituted indefinitely, with no pre-determined expiration date.

3. There has been no attempt to justify the policy. And the burden of proof should be on those instituting the policy.

4. This announcement is nearly triumphant rather than displaying any kind of humility. They barely conceal their glee at having the political capital to spend on this policy.

The policy excludes children under 12 given they are not eligible.

Vaccine mandates are good in concept* and will probably spur a lot of the "I'll get it if it's required" or "I'm going to wait and see" people to go ahead and get it.

But they're kind of weak as implemented here. Considering that a photo of a vaccine card is considered valid proof (and the guy checking cards at the bar or whatever is only going to spend two seconds looking at it), some enterprising scumbag could probably whip up a site that automatically creates fake vaccine pass photos over a weekend or two.

*Even with delta, the vaccines are pretty damn effective at preventing infections. A lot of media coverage on this is misleading and is based on not understanding base rates - when a high proportion of people at risk of hospitalization are vaccinated, you're going to see vaccination rates among hospitalized people that are higher than the actual efficacy rate would suggest.

Regarding security: You can get fined over using fake certificates. So most people won't use fakes as long as the incentives are right. There's no need for airtight security here.

Replace “COVID” for “AIDS” and see how irresponsible and even criminal is to complain when you might have it now and not know it.

Fear about the vaccine, privacy, or how “minorities are going to suffer”? BS

I’m a little confused at this comment. Are you saying the AIDS vaccine (when it comes) should be mandatory for all sexually active people?

A couple of tidbits no one seems to be touching on

- what will this do to the long term economy of the localities that choose to mandate this, if later the rest of the country does not go along? Will this see a rise of restaurant soeakeasies?

- do people not wonder about the timing of it all, when the powerful opposition to the mayor of nyc (cuomo) is politically weakened by a sex scandal, and absorbs all the front page news in the process, effectively innoculating a mayor that is hated, among all demographic groups in nyc?

Anyone who thinks that government and Big Tech are going to setup a platform just for this one disease and just for the duration of the pandemic are simply not fit to vote in a free country. This is the beginnings of a social credit system, à la China/Gattaca.

I saw the same connection, moral judgment passed on a citizen's personal, perfectly legal choices, by the government that leads to the restriction of that person's right to engage in society. This is to say nothing of the Orwellian tracking by the (soon to be I'm sure) required NYC or State pass on your phone.

Well, here in the civilised world where we’re about done with the vaccination we’re also almost done with the restrictions and required proof of vaccination/recent test.

Of course we can both be right. I mean, if you can’t achieve herd immunity for some reason, then you can never really stop the requirement for proof either. But then, if a country has so many adult babies that it can’t achieve hers immunity through vaccination during a pandemic, maybe it needs to be run like a kindergarten (which you coincidentally can’t attend unless you’re vaccinated).

Appreciate NYC finding ways to push up vax% but not sure what to say about the app they are promoting.

Just checked this "NYC COVID Safe" app[1] which is claimed to be "Key to NYC". All it does is taking and storing a photo on the phone. It obviously meant to be CDC paper card, but there seems no validation, client side or server side. (update it does phone home for some apparently analytics event like onboard, added card, etc)

In contrast the NYS Excelsior Pass app [2] at least did some check on server side on personal information like name/DOB and place/date of vax before generate a QR code. Also there's another app for business side to verify the consumers' generated QR. It may not be 100% perfect but at least did some diligence.

[1] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/nyc-covid-safe/id1565213506

[2] https://covid19vaccine.health.ny.gov/excelsior-pass

It's horrible how confident and grandstanding the NYC government is of their own policy:

“A strong stance needs to be taken,” the lawmaker added. “It will be controversial, but your stance — when we look back in history on this one, this will be a defining moment in your government.”

They act like they know what's best, when in fact we have no idea how COVID-19 will evolve in the future or what the efficacy of the current vaccines will be with future variants. Also, we have studies coming out that show natural immunity is stronger than vaccine immunity against future COVID-19 infections. Simply put, this virus is going under evolutionary pressures that nobody can predict.

Having the NYC mayor saying things like, "it’s the only way to protect our people"? Um, you could do lockdowns, mask mandates, social distancing, or IVM. He is trying to incite hatred and war, with words like "We could not have been more kind... The voluntary phase is over". Pretty shameful in my opinion.

> we have studies coming out that show natural immunity is stronger than vaccine immunity against future COVID-19 infections

Which... studies? As far as I've seen the opposite is true.

I keep seeing an argument put forward that we should mandate getting vaccinated (and feel righteous about it!) to prevent the rise of a new scary variant that might bypass the vaccines.

This argument, of course, is made by innumerate people who do not realize that the number of US holdouts is utterly dwarfed by the number of people who want a vaccine but can't get it no matter what. If we are worried about a new scary variant slowly burbling away in the lungs of the unvaccinated, preparing to jump out and get us good vaccinated folk, should we not be focusing our energy on... I donno, actually trying to help people who want it get vaccinated instead of forcing people who are reluctant? My $0.02 from a fully vaccinated person who still thinks people should be able to make their own decisions about their bodily autonomy.

Thinking about this more, maybe we should literally go so far as doing a last call for vaccines. Okay, if you want them, we'll only have them for another month and then we're sending all our supply to Mexico or whatever! Far more likely to actually use them that way, and it'll get those who are holding out for no real reason to step up and get them.

Why not both? I assume your talking internationally about those that desire the vaccine, and domestically in the US for those who are reluctant. Can't we donate vaccines overseas while still pushing those who are here to get the vaccine?

You can walk into any pharmacy and get vaccinated. We are long past demand exceeding supply. That's why vaccination rate graphs are plateauing and the numbers for 1-shot and fully vaccinated are converging.

Possibly dumb question, what about the people who have been told by their doctor to NOT get a covid vaccine because of specific pre-existing conditions or medical history?

My neighbor has been told by his doctor to not get any vaccine because of his medical history. Are those people just SOL, or am I missing something?

THX

I feel for the people that had covid and now they are being lumped in with the unvaccinated if they choose not to get the shot on top of that.

I've seen this objection a few times and I'm really not sure why anyone that had COVID would be all that fussed about getting the shot. We don't know how long antibodies from having already contracted it last for, so why not get the vaccine?

OK, but we need to make the vaccine passport thing work better, and fast.

California has

https://myvaccinerecord.cdph.ca.gov/

and I can't get that to recognize that I've been vaccinated. I was vaccinated at Stanford, and their health record system, which I can access online, shows that. But the data didn't make it to the state system. Stanford customer support blames the state. State customer support says "contact your health care provider".

Ok here's one poll on vaccine mandates:

https://www.thetrafalgargroup.org/news/nat-issues-vaccines-0...

If we believe these results, vaccine mandates are about as unpopular as TARP was back in 2008 (opposition to which was largely responsible for the "Tea Party" movement). You can expect even stronger opposition to vaccine mandates - because this issue is far more personal.

Bring on the downvotes.

You should probably supplement that with at least one other survey. Trafalgar is by far the most right-leaning polling group and got the 2020 election predictions the most wrong based on their polling. 538 has some more info on their methodical issues.

An alternative, market-powered fix: lift the regulatory statues that prevent insurance companies from raising the cost of coverage of their unvaccinated customers.

400 people died of Covid...out of 350 million yesterday.

How much do you think the actuaries would increase insurance cost for numbers like that?

Doesn't seem like that's a huge risk increase.

And 90% of those are in the above 75 years old age group with the highest maximum risk calculated in already.

I bet there's not a single actuary that is worried about Covid.

I'm pretty tired of all this. If folks want don't want to get the vaccine, under the argument of personal responsibility, let them do what they want. However, if they willingly or negligently transmit covid, they should be civilly and maybe criminally liable. If they end up needing medical care, make them pay for it out of their pocket. Make them financially responsible for their decisions.

People who smoke or live an unhealthy lifestyle should pay medical care out of their own pockets too then.

> they should be civilly and maybe criminally liable

They should. But, how could this be enforced without even-more-draconian measures?

Should Pfizer be liable for side effects?

You can still transmit the disease after getting vaccinated. Maybe if it was like the flu vaccine I'd understand, but it's not. I much prefer the mask mandate and the mask mandate is the only thing that makes sense, at least until they come out with a better vaccine. As it stands right now you have people getting the vaccine lulling themselves into the belief that they can't transmit to anyone, it's impossible to know the stats but easy to see it is just as bad as people who don't have symptoms thinking they don't have the disease and can't spread it.

If the goal is still seemingly to cut down spread this law does absolutely nothing but increase hubris and cause more cases as more people walk around without a mask. Walked into a CVS the other day and both the clerk and some customers had no mask on simply because they got the vaccine. So I'll stick with my mask for now.

I totally agree. You can still transmit COVID with the vaccine. People who want to be protected from dying of COVID get the vaccine (90% less likely to die), and those who don’t will not get the vaccine. Seems simple to me.

It is much more effective than the flu vaccine and you can still transmit with the flu vaccine, as neither are purely sterilizing.

I’m vaccinated and don’t agree with this. Out of curiosity is there precedent for something like this for non governmental organizations (schools are governmental).

Honestly, I would just prefer everyone mask up and everything be locked down again. The amount of bickering is maddening.

I'm in australia - masked up and locked down again, like most of the east coast at the moment, it could be worse. Though Sydney seems intent on killing some of the population.

You're more than welcome to mask up and stay locked in your home if you're concerned.

This is the first hn thread I’ve been unable to finish due to bias fatigue (usually it’s oh, I guess I should be working) I don’t feel that I’ve learned anything new, but I feel a schism with no resolution.

I can see an Alcohol Prohibition-like black market emerging. Exciting times!

How would this be enforced? What if a business just does not ask you for proof? Will they take your word for it or is it required to show actual proof?

It could be a good advertising campaign: Come on in, we trust you.

Some of the comments in here about the vaccine and the pandemic are shocking to me. I guess I was wrong, we have become a society of selfish and narcissistic people.

I guess this pandemic will go on forever.

There shouldn't be a debate about it in the first place. If you want an even higher chance of not dying if you manage to catch the virus, get the vaccine. If you care about reducing the spread, wear the mask. I don't see why either of these things need to be mandated as they sound like pretty clear cut personal decisions in my eyes but I digress.

What I am seeing are a lot of people that conflate wearing a mask to being protected from the virus' side effects, or that getting the vaccine makes it impossible for them to transmit, and that they are morally/ethically superior to those who take neither of these decisions.

I have the vaccine and still think this is absurd and a slippery slope. If you havent noticed, society tends to run with things they can get away with to the most extreme direction.

Kids cannot get the vaccine. So, are they all banned?

No, the article states they are not.

Imagine showing this article to people pre-pandemic, it'd be near universally reviled. We collectively lost our minds in March 2020.

Don't forget the part where 600,000 people died and literally every single measure to combat that was instantly turned into a political wedge issue, and then when the literal Science miracle cure arrived, people wouldn't take it because they are selfish, confused, afraid of needles, and hate each other.

> The program is modeled after the vaccine passport programs rolled out in France

... which resulted in riots

https://www.france24.com/en/france/20210731-france-sees-thir...

Protests, not riots. And there are protests all the time whenever a controversial decision is made, it's our national sport. Another confounding factor is the very aggressive calendar set up, where due to the span between the doses not everyone has a way to be fully vaccinated before the measure is active.

I wish Americans had more of a revolutionary tendency like the French do. Instead of rioting and pissing off the government at its doorstep, we head for the hills, hoard guns, and dare the government come get us out there.

It appears to me (based on Providence breakthrough infections) that vaccinated people are actually more likely to spread the (delta) COVID because their symptoms allow them to continue daily activities while at the same time they shed the same amount of virus as vaccinated.

Do you have to have vacinne if you had covid?

I don’t know the answer in this context, but in Europe the “immunity certificate” treats vaccination and recovery as equal.

Anyone looking into providing the coronavac vaccine to the US?

It appears to have the same effectiveness in terms of hospitalization benefits, and appears to be a traditional vaccine.

This from the same policy makers who proclaim Voter ID laws to be racist.

This is ID to eat food.

There's a book called why the West still rules and in it it talks about the history of human civilization and discusses the idea that there are sort of theories that can predict the major directions and major players at each stage of history as the meaning of technology and geography alters over time in response to the level of development and interconnectedness of society.

In that book there's this concept called the advantages of backwardness and it's this thing that crops up often after a crisis where the previous major player, having collapsed as a result of whatever forces brought them down, surrender some of their former glory to previously more backward regions whose backwards methods, in the new climate or situation, set them up for success.

Here's a quote from Ian Morris the book's author discussing the advantages of backwardness in an interview:

"And as cities, states, and industry spread, they entered new geographical niches where the old ways of doing things didn’t always work. People on these frontiers were forced to tinker, to make old techniques work in new—and eventually better—ways.

The best example might be in the origins of agriculture: Seven-thousand years ago, farming first developed in the hilly lands around the edges of what we now call Iraq. When farmers moved down to the plains of modern Iraq, they found that to make farming work, they had to develop irrigation agriculture.

We saw the same thing happen again with the spread of industry in the 19th century. Industry was invented in the British Isles, but as it spread outward into Germany and North America, people in these places had to create new ways of making industry work successfully. As they did so, Germany and the United States began to replace the British Isles as the center of industry. And we see the same process continuing to work in our own day. In the last 20 years, we’ve seen the meteoric rise of China. We should expect the “advantages of backwardness” to continue being one of the major motors in world history."

The connection with the present topic I think is the following. In a sense we've denied our immune systems the advantages of backwardness by the very same advanced technology we designed to augment and protect them. In other words by rushing to create and deploy a vaccine we've prevented our collective human immune system from cultivating defenses to this virus. In that sense I think the policy from a high-level strategic point of view is a weakness and possibly fundamentally flawed, because it opens the possibility the we've made our immune system dependent on vaccinations to deal with further and related infections in future. The other side of the coin is the advantages of backwardness for the virus: we have applied such a strong selective pressure so universally and quickly that in order for the virus to survive it is forced to evolve to become more transmissible, and possibly more dangerous. The more dangerous point is contentious but I argue it as follows because the more dangerous a variant is is correlated with the strength of our measures against it we are selecting for more dangerous variance to evolve more transmissibility. In effect this could be one of the first times in human history that our advanced technology has seriously thrown a natural system previously in equilibrium, in other words the equilibrium between our collective immune system and the collective microbiome of bacterial viruses on Earth, out of balance. nearly many natural examples of how we've done this but they're localized to particular regions like oil spills or Forest clearing we're throwing ecosystems out of balance left right and center but this might be the first time we've done it on a global scale. (And if we release the prophesized mosquito nuclear bomb that's going to wipe out mosquitoes around the world that will be another example of throwing a global ecosystem out of balance). In this pandemic topic, as we keep throwing more fuel at that fire thinking we're solving the problem we may end up simply be providing fuel for future conflagrations that could lead to our collective demise.

I don't want to be too dramatic here and I admit the choice of words has a little bit of that effect but we are talking about a massive global scale thing which we are right to take it seriously and while there may be many motivations for getting a large proportion of the world vaccinated, this line of thinking is not one I've seen elaborated very much so I wanted to add it here.

Your body NYCs choice.

Everyone has to be vaccinated and we must all prove it to exist in society ( even people who had covid )? So, it isn't about herd immunity anymore? It isn't about stopping covid, but getting everyone the vaccine and forcing them to carry identification everywhere?

"It’s time for people to see vaccination as necessary to living a good and full and healthy life,” de Blasio said during his daily press briefing."

That's what people were saying was going to happen more than a year ago and they were attacked for being conspiracy theorists...

Whatever happened to needing 60 or 70% of the people vaccinated to gain herd immunity and stop this pandemic?

So 100% vaccination, even for those who had covid and you must carry documentation/id at all times? Why now? Why for this disease? Especially considering the mortality rate is far lower than what was originally projected.

When the projections were 5%+, I can understand erring on the side of caution, but the mortality rate is lower than 1% last I checked. So odd.

Delta variant necessitates a higher level of herd immunity because it's so much more transmissible.

> Everyone has to be vaccinated and we must all prove it to exist in society ( even people who had covid )? So, it isn't about herd immunity anymore? It isn't about stopping covid, but getting everyone the vaccine and forcing them to carry identification everywhere?

No, it's very obviously about stopping covid. Don't be obtuse.

Does anyone believe this will be expanded to grocery stores, pharmacies and other basic services come fall? My job is already close to pushing mandatory vaccination and I'm trying to decide whether I should pack up my things and leave?

30 year resident and heartbroken.

Do you really believe that mandatory vaccination is the start of some expansion of government checking on everything? I'm seriously asking, like you already need a drivers license to drive, you put in taxes and the government keeps those in a central database, if you have kids in school they need to be vaccinated in most places I read in this thread. Why would covid vaccination suddenly trigger some government panopticon? they already have so much information on you, why would this be the hill you die on?

Getting ready to leave my blue state home. Born and raised in California, but the autoritarian writing is on the wall, and I'm making my preparations.

Probably inevitable, although this fall seems a bit too early. Also probably unenforceable in many areas of the city.

It's a serious question. Why downvote? Because you think it's coming but don't want to warn people?

Nice going New York City, banning 60% of Black residents from participating in life.

Fond memories of the days this was the sole domain of paranoid conspiracy theorists. Now, at the exact same moment that we are getting evidence of the mRNA vaccines' rapidly waning efficacy[1] and ineffectiveness at reducing transmission of the Delta variant, the screws are being tightened and the unvaccinated are being scapegoated. Never mind that this variant arose in India where there was never any possibility of the entire population being vaccinated all at once.

If the vaccines work, why are we talking about vaccine passports and domestic travel bans? If the vaccines don't work, why are we talking about vaccine passports and domestic travel bans?

Also worth noting, this is de facto racial segregation, because blacks and Hispanics are by far the highest population of unvaccinated in NYC. Funny how a lifetime of having your health and well-being actively ignored and sabotaged by public officials raises doubts when they suddenly show up with shiny new injections and start pushing them with lotteries, free ice cream and donuts, and all the rest.

[1] https://swprs.org/covid-vaccines-the-good-the-bad-the-ugly/

Got a better source? This website contains misinformation.

https://swprs.org/face-masks-evidence/

> E) The facemask aerosol issue

> In the following video, Dr. Theodore Noel explains the facemask aerosol issue.

https://factcheck.afp.com/doctor-expired-license-falsely-cla...

https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2021/feb/08/facebook-p...

the fact that we have accounts on here with large amounts of reputation reposting facebook-based misinformation does not give me faith that leaving these choices up to allegedly informed individuals is a good idea. as others have pointed out, 99.99% of people are in no way qualified to make such determinations.

Those are very good points. Totally agree, the vast majority of people are gonna be careful and display caution staying at home etc.. I think covid vaccines should be compelling by their efficacity and safety. This is all so stringent for something so rightly divisive

"The program is modeled after the vaccine passport programs rolled out in France and other European countries, officials said."

Because that's working out well (also in Australia). I suppose de Blasio doesn't mind swarms of people protesting in front of Gracie Mansion, none of which will be wearing masks, mind you. And then you'll hear the same spiel about how the unvaxxed are to blame again for the Zeta variant as the local pride parade marches by in the background.

"Additionally, the mayor said the city is examining expanding the vaccine proof requirement to other indoor activities, such as shopping."

Of course they are. This is the thin end of the wedge. It always is.

"“If we do not take a strong stand and say ‘you have the right to your body, of course; but you do not have to kill other people.”"

Will they give it a rest? You have no right to force someone to take an experimental vaccine large segments of the population don't even need. And those living in glass houses shouldn't throw stones. Even IF I grant you that you can become a transmitter of the disease to someone vulnerable (a possibility that is always with us for any disease), it is not intentional whereas what he has in mind (abortion) is.

"“We’ve got to shake people at this point and say, ‘Come on now.’ We tried voluntary. We could not have been more kind and compassionate. Free testing, everywhere you turn, incentives, friendly, warm embrace. The voluntary phase is over,” de Blasio said on MSNBC last week."

What an absurd statement. That's like saying "I've tried consent, but since you didn't agree to my request, I'm going to eschew consent and coerce you." Then it wasn't consensual to begin with!

"“Given everything we’re learning, all options are on the table,” he said Friday. “I keep saying we’re climbing the ladder in terms of more and more mandates.”

"And on Monday, the mayor hinted at the Big Apple moving toward a “reality” in which those who do not get vaccinated are barred from certain settings.

"“More and more, there’s going to be a reality where, if you’re vaccinated, a world of opportunity opens up to you. If you’re not vaccinated, there’s going to be more and more things you can’t do,” de Blasio said during his virtual press briefing, when he announced that the city will only hire vaccinated workers and advised all New Yorkers to wear masks in indoor, public settings.

"“I say that to say, go get vaccinated, so you can fully participate in the life of this city, because that’s where things are going.”

How gracious of him. Again, thin end of the wedge. Why are some people being so credulous?

It's all quite simple:

1. The vaccine is not FDA approved.

2. It is an experimental vaccine.

3. COVID is not dangerous for the vast majority of the population, especially those under the age of 30.

4. There is mixed evidence about the safety and efficacy of he vaccine as well as its relation to new variants.

5. The suppression of expert debate is, at the least, suspicious as all hell.

Taking all factors into consideration, there is NO REASON to force anyone to take it. None. Especially not those in the cohorts that aren't affected. If you're at risk (e.g., the obese), then it is up to you to make the calculation for yourself.

(Also, since this mandate will disproportionately affect black and Latino New Yorkers, wouldn't this make it systemically racist according to the standards of today? Wouldn't you be punishing them for refusing to be vaccinated? Yes, reason has long exited the scene.)

>(Also, since this mandate will disproportionately affect black and Latino New Yorkers, wouldn't this make it systemically racist according to the standards of today? Wouldn't you be punishing them for refusing to be vaccinated? Yes, reason has long exited the scene.)

Yes, 88% of blacks would be excluded from restaurants by this policy while 80% of whites will walk right in.

https://covid19vaccine.health.ny.gov/vaccine-demographic-dat...

I'm curious how this hasn't made the news...

We’ve had nearly two years to expand our hospital resources. Why didn’t we do that instead of taking away bodily autonomy?

I don't think many people care what NYC does. That city is a joke. And a dump. (A few videos from Louis Rossmann and I never want to visit, let alone live there.)

You people can argue all you want. I voted with my feet and I not only left New York City, I left the U.S.S.A . Even a blind man could see whats coming next!

Countries such as Italy and France have instituted this policy as a national level.

Many countries have/had lockdown policies far more strict than the strictest locale in the US.

I do not like the government placing the burden of enforcement on businesses. It will lead to a backlash from the anti-vax crowd, waste of employee resources, and lax oversight will give a false sense of security.

imagine i’m metaphorically blind. what’s coming next?

Where’d you go?

60% of African Americans will be excluded from these business due to vaccination rates among African Americans in New York State.

https://www.kff.org/coronavirus-covid-19/issue-brief/latest-...

So they're requiring vaccination in "many indoor settings", which just includes restaurants, movie theaters and gyms... Those are luxuries.

What are people up in arms about then? Its like another take on the mask mandate outrage, where people conflated selfishness with freedom, except this time you can still do everything you need to while being non-compliant.

The government does not have carte-blanche authority to strip people of any liberty that isn’t strictly necessary for survival. The government stripping life of all its “luxuries” just looks like being in prison (except at least prisoners are allowed to go to the gym).

Given the current attitudes towards vaccines and individual rights, it's doubtful we'll be able to have another achievement like the elimination of smallpox and polio.

What happened in the last few decades? Increased mistrust of government? Shift in the views of individualism? Or is my assessment wrong and if something like smallpox popped up today we'd be able to work together to eradicate it?

The vaccines don't prevent transmission and had less than a year of testing. It's perfectly rational to be "hesitant" about them.

I think it's because you don't understand quite how powerful the smallpox and polio vaccines are. I can walk around wherever I want with 0 concern of transmitting some dormant smallpox or polio. I don't see why people are comparing the COVID vaccine to either of these as you can still transmit COVID. In an absolute sense, all the COVID vaccine does is make your life more bearable, but those around you still have a non-zero chance of getting it from you. When you take that into account I start to wonder why some are so obsessed with treating it like the smallpox and polio vaccines when it is anything but.

covid and smallpox are two very different beasts.

“Everyone is going to get Corona. Whether you’re vaccinated or not, whether you’re old or young, whether you’re tested or not, whether we lock down or not. This is a fact of life now.

The vaccines will protect against severe symptoms only for a time, and Corona is always changing. Slowing the spread will prove counter-productive particularly to those who have sought the protection of vaccines.

Your best hope of continued immunity is infection while your vaccine still protects against severe symptoms. The best hope that children have of mild infection in adulthood, is low-risk infection now, while they are at no risk. There is no more point in slowing the spread.

That will only make us immunologically naive to this virus for a longer period of time. Many, many viruses infect and reinfect billions of humans throughout their lives, with barely any notice. It is time we made Corona one of these viruses.” End.

[0] https://twitter.com/eugyppius1/status/1422789917873262595

If you doubt this: consider that Israel is nearly fully vaccinated, yet they are, right now, making plans for lockdown in September.

Are other viruses that I can interest you in being infected with? Let's see here, we've got HIV, HPV, Ebola, Rabies, Smallpox, Chickenpox, Polio, Hantavirus. Don't we need some time to...ehm, get "evolutionary familiar" with them, or whatever? I mean, why stop at viruses? Interested in some lovely bacterial infections like Lyme disease, staph, E. coli, Candida auris (oh, I love that one, I had it on my face!)

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