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Comment by cletus | Hacker News Reader

What I find sad about this is how many who seem to be against it were just recently so in favour of private business autonomy [1].

No one's rights are being violated here. If you don't want to get vaccinated, you can. But those choices come with consequences, like just about every other choice we make.

It's worth noting that fully remote people won't fall under this policy (from my reading of it anyway) so this isn't a blanket policy.

It's also worth noting that a whole bunch of vaccines are required to attend public school already [2].

[1]: https://www.cnn.com/2018/06/04/politics/masterpiece-colorado...

[2]: https://www.health.ny.gov/prevention/immunization/schools/sc...

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The quality of the reasoning in these above opinions is a useful example of not believing in the standard of logic, consistency, or truth - technically nihilism of the most banal kind. A choice on the condition of consequences is not free or a choice. This deflection of responsibility by the company providing the "choice" is pure gaslighting, and the sadistic glee with which people repeat these slogans should be indicative of who you are dealing with.

It's very close to what is called Hobson's Choice (take it or leave it, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/Hobson's%20choice..., but it's really closer to Harvey's (Weinstein's) Bargain, where you are free to join him or not and if you don't, the part goes to someone else. It's not quite a quid-pro-quo, as the threat is to take something from you that you already have.

Companies appear free to offer Hobson's Choice, except they haven't been up until now, and the pandemic narrative has provided air cover for a political purity purge. Anyone who is sceptical of the internal passport system the vax is being used to implement probably isn't a culture fit at a platform company anyway, and they should talk to an employment lawyer about their options for getting a settlement for constructive dismissal.

Otherwise, you can't argue with a nihilist position, as it uses discourse to filter people through a lens of alignment to power and narrative, and has no interest in reconciling to truth.

My Dad has a big divot out of his arm from the vaccine gun when he joined the army. Everyone got a vaccine and that is how it was because the decision was science-based and not up for discussion. Same for when I went to school. Kid not vaccinated? You aren’t going to school. Somehow that got eroded by madness.

> science-based and not up for discussion

You realize this is a contradiction, right?

Science can be conclusive.

Sure, everyone was positive about a millenium ago that everything rotated around the Earth. It was not even up for debate, even among scientists.

We all know how that turned out.

That's a selective reading of scientific history.

What about the rest of our modern scientific knowledge base? Gravity. Electromagnetism. Chemistry. Biology. There are entire swathes of disciplines that are well nailed down by results, and used daily as though they were fact. Because they work reliably.

So I'm going to call BS on the idea that science can't be conclusive because of the definition of the scientific method. It's arguing in bad faith to point at the 1% and ignore the 99%.

Even when it's conclusive, it should never become "not up for discussion". That's the realm of blind faith.

Individual studies might be conclusive about a particular thing, but as a whole, science by definition isn't conclusive.

> Everyone got a vaccine and that is how it was because the decision was science-based and not up for discussion.

And that's exactly what GP was stating, which is why parent's quip against an out of context quote was unreasonably pedantic.

How is this being downvoted? The objective of science is to further knowledge with study and revise conclusions.

My dad told me about getting his polio vaccination during the public health drives of the 1960s. They did an entire grade school in a single day. And there were parents who were furious about it at the time. No progress happens without protest.

But personally, I'm pretty damn thankful for their sacrifice so that we live in a largely polio-free world today.

I'm not sure when "what you can do for your country" got so small that people aren't willing to take the minuscule risk of vaccination side effects in order to gift the substantial benefit to their neighbors. Used to be, selfishness like that made you an asshole.

Science is always up for discussion. A lot of people like making appeals to authority and calling that "science".

I say this as someone who is vaccinated and encourages others to be so as well.

1. It's really not about business autonomy. In many states businesses don't have the option to bring everyone back to the office unrestricted. Getting everyone vaccinated is just the path of least resistance within legal limits.

2. I can't believe people still parrot the "choice with consequences" argument. If abortion is persecuted in Texas, is that just a choice with consequences? The only premise that matters is whether threatening someones livelihood -- which is quite frankly a nuclear option -- is a fair and proportional response.

3. Last but not least, vaccine precedents cut both ways. Measles and smallpox don't mutate and require new vaccines. Covid does. Measles and smallpox don't discriminate by age. Covid does. Measles and smallpox vaccines don't have notable adverse effects on young people. The Covid vaccine does.

Covid has little in common with measles and smallpox, which are mandated. It does however have a lot in common with the flu, both the disease and the vaccine, which is not mandated in schools nor hospitals.

These are the same people who fought net neutrality on the grounds of "protecting private entities (ISPs) from government overreach" and then a few years later were petitioning their congressmen to write laws regulating speech on twitter.

> that choices come with consequences

But should it?

rights are are social constructs created by people, we are as such allowed to re-evaluate them, unless you are speaking in a specific context of law/convention(s).

Also, wrt to that [1]; refusing customer business and firing employees are entirely different things, even if they both fit the description "business autonomy".

> It's also worth noting that a whole bunch of vaccines are required to attend public school already [2].

Vaccines required at school while children don't get any kind of side effects of COVID19 anyway (and get more risks from the vaccine than anything else). This is so far from any kind of Science.

> Vaccines required at school while children don't get any kind of side effects of COVID19

Other than dying [1] you mean?

Dying aside, children can still spread the virus. I’m sure someone will make the straw man argument of “the vaccine doesn’t 100% prevent transmission”, which is true but no one claimed it did. It does however improve the situation.

[1]: https://data.cdc.gov/NCHS/Deaths-by-Sex-Ages-0-18-years/xa4b...

This is revisionist history.

https://www.businessinsider.com/who-says-no-evidence-coronav...

> Moderna's chief medical officer, Tal Zaks, said last month that he believed it was likely the vaccine would prevent transmission but warned that there was not yet "sufficient evidence" of it.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/01/health/coronavirus-vaccin...

> The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Thursday walked back controversial comments made by its director, Dr. Rochelle P. Walensky, suggesting that people who are vaccinated against the coronavirus never become infected or transmit the virus to others.

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