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Comment by DyslexicAtheist | Hacker News Reader

unwilling to get vaccinated is at least from a legal perspective not a "basic right". Austria had compulsory vaccination before (Smallpox). Measles vaccination is mandatory in Germany. The law is that during a pandemic the country is able to impose mandatory vaccinations.

see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaccination_policy#Compulsory_...

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I think even from a practical perspective it is shaky - forced medical procedures are distasteful but they are already morally on the table for things like insanity and similar things where decision making is impaired. So the raw power to do it is probably there and the ethical line is always subject to negotiation.

But how often are emergency powers of this nature rolled back? If governments put the monitoring systems in place to enforce a vaccine mandate it is never going to go away. It'll be War On Terror all over again, the theatre for getting on a plane is still ridiculous 20 years later. The vaccine mandate tracking and enforcement seems a lot more invasive than that.

We don't have mandatory smallpox vaccines in Austria anymore, even though we had them in the past. I really see no way how these energency powers will stay.

But you're using that precedent to mandate another treatment, so in a way they did stay around.

But is that a bad thing necessarily? If we have powers that we can use in emergency situations and there's precedent they will only get used in such, isn't that the ideal state?

Looking at the US, because they keep good records on emergencies, it has been unlikely for an emergency situation to end from around 1994. There appears to still be an ongoing emergency that started in 1979.

This is a relative strong precedent in the west of emergency powers being used in an ongoing way.

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

I'm not sure the US counts as precedent for Austria or that Austria even counts as "The West" seeing how it's a constitutionally neutral country

It's not as clear cut as you say. The German constitutional court has not given its last word on the topic, even though they said in a preliminary decision that sufficient protection against Measles outweighs the right of unvaccinated children to go to school.

Nobody's actually forcing one to get vaccinated against measles in Germany. It's only mandatory for kids which go to daycare, kindergarten or school and their caregivers and teachers. OTOH, going to school is mandatory, so for kids it is pretty much mandatory by extension.

That is right and very important to note. German law also enables employers in the realm of those institutions to terminate employment of non-vaccinated employed caregivers. There are some very tricky edge cases like some vaccinations done in the former GDR which are not sufficient - it has something to do with the vaccination being a living/dead shot but I’m not a physician.

Generally speaking, the European view on freedom firmly remains rooted in Kant-ian ethics and always weighs personal or individual freedoms versus the impact on society. This of course heavily influenced the philosophy of law and in direct consequence the laws and constitutions all over Europe.

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