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Comment by theodorejb | Hacker News Reader

Unscientific mask and vaccine mandates should be dropped regardless of the opinion of someone on Pfizer's board.

Science seems to be a rather stretchable concept lately.

What about "unconstitutional"? No people want to know your medical status, that used to be protected privacy. Also how can we block people from going outside or gathering?

Maybe for 10% deaths that's a reasonable thing to ask, but for <1% this is waaaay out of proportion for my taste.

Unconstitutional seems to be a rather stretchable concept lately. Here are all the vaccine mandates in the US today: https://www.immunize.org/laws/

USA states make their own laws. Sometimes those laws are challenged as "unconstitional" and then the Supreme Court evaluates and maybe tells them to stop. Most of the time not though. They prefer to "leave it up to the states". The recent OSHA ruling (attempt at broad vaccine mandates for Americans) for instance. The Supreme Court said they can't do that.

Those are states laws. Generally when someone says Unconstitutional without a state qualification they mean Federal Government.

That's a rather pointless quibble. State laws that violate the constitution are challenged as unconstitutional, and overturned on that basis. There were antivaxers when the Smallpox virus was rampant. Smallpox is gone, because of vaccine mandates. Public schools require a whole panel of vaccines, both of their employees and students. Until now, that hasn't been seen to violate the constitution. But now, there's a supermajority in the Supreme Court, so really, who knows what the constitution says?

Not quite. Often the reason that a law is unconstitutional is that the federal government lacks the authority to regulate this, but the same law would be constitutional if created by a state government.

That's what I meant, the basic ones like.. right to privacy, freedom of assembly, bodily autonomy.

It’s notable because the board member will lose financially with this statement.

It’s in their interest to keep quiet or push more vaccine mandates; especially as they have the “best” one as of now.

That's not true. Every treatment of Paxlovid the company will sell is going to make a lot more profit that vaccines.

You never know, maybe he invests heavily in hospitals and respirators.

I think OP is right.. since you can also make the claim the member is promoting unhealthy habits to sell a cure.

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