Hacker News Reader

Comment by ceejayoz | Hacker News Reader

At no point did the Federal government institute a vaccination requirement for the general public, let alone for "healthy children". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_vaccination_mandates_...

Even if you weren't lying about that bit, non-mRNA vaccines exist and were approved in the US right alongside the mRNA vaccines. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janssen_COVID-19_vaccine#Unite...

Same for the elderly; largely, no requirement. Workers in nursing homes and other healthcare facilities were sometimes subject to requirements; many similarly have required flu shots for decades.

View on HN

> Even if you weren't lying about that bit, non-mRNA vaccines exist and were approved in the US right alongside the mRNA vaccines.

From your own source:

> In April 2021, the CDC and the FDA issued a joint statement recommending that use of the Janssen vaccine be suspended, due to reports of six cases of cerebral venous sinus thrombosis—a "rare and severe" blood clot—in combination with low levels of blood platelets (thrombocytopenia), in six women between the ages of 18 and 48 who had received the vaccine. The symptoms occurred 6–13 days after they had received the vaccination, and it was reported that one woman had died and a second woman had been hospitalized in critical condition.

Not exactly a great "alternative".

And a little further.

> In April, the FDA and the CDC determined that the recommended pause regarding the use of the Janssen COVID‑19 Vaccine in the US should be lifted and use of the vaccine should resume.

There are other non-mRNA vaccines on the list, too.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_COVID-19_vaccine_autho...

The effects were never resolved, they just updated the fact sheets to include the risk of developing thrombosis...

> In April, the FDA and the CDC determined that the recommended pause regarding the use of the Janssen COVID‑19 Vaccine in the US should be lifted and use of the vaccine should resume. The EUA and the fact sheets were updated to reflect the risks of thrombosis-thrombocytopenia syndrome (TTS).

> The effects were never resolved, they just updated the fact sheets to include the risk of developing thrombosis…

Sure. No medical intervention is risk free. Not even the over-the-counter stuff. Tylenol will happily kill you.

For every vaccine, we balance the rare side effects against the disease it's mitigating. I assure you there were more than six cases of severe clots from COVID.

And yet, at the time (and still now!) the vast majority of government and health officials stated that developing conditions and side-effects from the vaccine was either impossible, or so rare it wasn't worth mentioning.

Where anecdotally, I know more people in my own personal life (including myself) that developed far worse conditions from the vaccine (granted, usually Pfizer and Moderna, though other offerings don't appear to have fared much better) than what they ever received from a COVID infection.

Sure it's possible the vaccine made that the case, but that's the kind of thing that needs to be said up front, not obscured and downplayed until years after the fact finger-wagging about "well technically the *government* never required you to get it! Only everything else did, at the strong recommendation of the government!"

> And yet, at the time (and still now!) the vast majority of government and health officials stated that developing conditions and side-effects from the vaccine was either impossible, or so rare it wasn't worth mentioning.

I don't doubt some politicians give black-and-white assessments as they are prone to do, but from Fauci on downwards the scientific/medical folks were always quite honest about this. Everything has side effects; I distinctly recall them being discussed at Trump press conferences. They were (and remain) rare. We've given billions of doses of the COVID vaccines, with a good safety record.

> Where anecdotally, I know more people in my own personal life (including myself) that developed far worse conditions from the vaccine (granted, usually Pfizer and Moderna, though other offerings don't appear to have fared much better) than what they ever received from a COVID infection.

That's the entire point of a vaccine, yes. You feel shitty for a few days instead of dying.

I know people who were fired for refusing the Covid shots. I even know one who was fired for refusing a "voluntary" daily testing program.

No, these were not caused by a federally mandated vaccination requirement for the general public, but they happened anyway. The Biden admin wrote an OSHA mandate which pressured businesses into mandating the shots for their employees, even though the mandate clearly wouldn't (and didn't) survive legal scrutiny. President Biden posted to the official @POTUS account, among other things: "The rule is now simple: get vaccinated or wear a mask until you do."

I pointed out to people at the time that none of these threats were actual laws, but there was a clear effort to convince people that they would have no choice but to get the shots eventually, and threaten and browbeat them until they did, and it wore people down. A lot of employers jumped the gun and complied, forcing it on their employees, because they didn't want to wait until the last minute to deal with the mess it would cause.

To tell people now, "Hey, it was all voluntary, bro" is to be unnecessarily crappy to people who were just trying to keep their jobs so they could feed their families.

> President Biden posted to the official @POTUS account, among other things: "The rule is now simple: get vaccinated or wear a mask until you do."

So, we agree; no Federal vaccination mandate for the general public, let alone one "requiring mRNA shots for healthy children" as claimed by the parent poster.

The entire rest of the parent's comment was spent explaining why the context of the situation was not as black-and-white as a government "mandate".

The upthread post claimed the Biden administration was "requiring mRNA shots for healthy children".

That is a black-and-white falsehood. (Twice over in a short phrase.)

If someone wants to argue the administration heavily promoted vaccination, I'm entirely prepared to agree. The same is true for the current President, at least for a while, until the booing at rallies made him shut up about it.

keep rewriting history and moving goal posts

many states and municipalities had vaccine requirements to keep your job or go in public

many universities required healthy teenagers to get covid vaccine to go to the school

additionally there was a vaccine requirement for all employees of companies that did business with the federal government, i was ready to lose my job over it but they rolled it back at the last minute

"many states and municipalities..." is the exact goalpost move you decry.

The parent post stated "previous administration overplayed its hand by requiring mRNA shots for healthy children, teens, and adolescents".

That is a falsehood.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com