Who is tracking me on my devices?

[Soloist]

Hospitals generally have always allowed exemptions to be granted for the flu vaccines to my knowledge and I don't think I've heard of a hospital asking for proof of vaccines but I have heard of wanting titers for Hep-A and B. I think they generally don't allow you to work in cancer wards or the ICU but I could be wrong.
Maybe a hospital nurse knows more, I avoid those places

[Falco Underhill]

Here is an example from the pre-Covid area in the place where I teach. It doesn't actually mention it in the article but school staff were also required to be vaccinated with MMR as a condition of employment with the same exact exemption process as exists today. I had to find a copy of my shot record and upload it to the District HR web site in order to keep working. Or else go get the shot. I guess that part of it was so uncontroversial that it didn't even make the news at the time. https://www.columbian.com/news/2019/feb ... ed-school/

Some states have required flu shots of hospital employees for years, long before Covid. Here is a list. Here in WA the state doesn't require it but my wife's employer does anyway so she's had to get her flu shot every year as a condition of employment: https://www2a.cdc.gov/vaccines/statevac ... =Influenza

This, for example, is the Colorado law as referenced on the CDC site above:



Those are two pre-Covid examples for you right there.

Okay, schools and hospitals were probably considered part of the public sector. What's new is the government is making mandates with respect to private businesses. I do not regard that as a negligible difference.

In terms of government reach that's massive.

I haven't the time to check into it more at the moment but thanks, that's a significant difference.

Most hospitals are private sector. Very few are actually government run outside of the military and VA systems.

It went from hospitals and schools - two specific institutions - to any and all private businesses - and nobody's supposed to notice. It's just "all the same". Somehow I don't think so.

[Ken]

Hospitals generally have always allowed exemptions to be granted for the flu vaccines to my knowledge and I don't think I've heard of a hospital asking for proof of vaccines but I have heard of wanting titers for Hep-A and B. I think they generally don't allow you to work in cancer wards or the ICU but I could be wrong.
Maybe a hospital nurse knows more, I avoid those places

My wife's employer (a major clinic and hospital group on the west coast) doesn't need to ask for proof of vaccines because they are the ones who give them. They already know whether you got it or not. And they also have access to the state vaccine database so if you happen to have gotten it at some outside clinic or pharmacy they can sync their records with the state data and get the update that way.

The exemption rules for the Covid vaccine are the same as for the flu vaccine and any other required vaccines. As far as I know, nothing has changed or is uniquely different for the Covid vaccine other than the fact that it has obviously gotten a lot more attention. I don't recall anyone ever quitting over being required to get the flu vaccine or the Hepatitis vaccines. Maybe they did and it just didn't make the news.

[Ken]

It went from hospitals and schools - two specific institutions - to any and all private businesses - and nobody's supposed to notice. It's just "all the same". Somehow I don't think so.

You asked for examples and I gave you some. We could also look at the military which has always required lots of different vaccines depending on theater of operations and deployment. When I worked overseas in the 1980s I was also required to get vaccinated for Yellow Fever as well as MMR, tetanus, and polio or demonstrate that I had already been vaccinated for those things.

I will allow that yes, widespread vaccine mandates for private employers is a new thing. I don't think anyone has said otherwise. But we are also in a uniquely severe public health emergency that is more deadly than anything else in the past 100 years since the Spanish Flu. In fact we passed the Spanish flu death total back in September. This is NOT the Chicken Pox which only kills about 100 people per year in the US. That is basically 1 hours worth of Covid deaths.

[Szdfan]

It's interesting that when people warn about Covid as an excuse for authoritarianism, they point to other countries' public health measures, which doesn't seem relevant to here.

Fine, ignore what's going on in New Zealand, Germany and Austria, Australia, Canada, the European Union, China, etc.

I actually pay attention to what is happening overseas with Covid, but to me it seems really weird to harp on how other countries are responding to Covid as a harbringer of what's going to happen in the US.

[Ken]

It's interesting that when people warn about Covid as an excuse for authoritarianism, they point to other countries' public health measures, which doesn't seem relevant to here.

Fine, ignore what's going on in New Zealand, Germany and Austria, Australia, Canada, the European Union, China, etc.

I actually pay attention to what is happening overseas with Covid, but to me it seems really weird to harp on how other countries are responding to Covid as a harbringer of what's going to happen in the US.

This is a world-wide pandemic and it has actually given us a real-time opportunity to explore and compare virtually every single possible pandemic response from the most laissez faire to the most highly regulated in terms of their different effects on Covid infections/deaths, national economies, and any other metric you want to measure.

So yes, it is definitely worth comparing different countries in terms of what they are doing and how effective their methods have been in terms of limiting Coid deaths and maintaining national economies. So we can understand the pros and cons and tradeoffs involved.

[Josh]

There hasn't been an endpoint to any vaccination program except for smallpox which ended in 1972 I think, after the disease was completely eradicated in the US and most of the rest of the world. We still have mandatory vaccinations for many diseases that are now very rare like polio. I'm pretty sure my kids needed to get a polio vaccine to attend school. Why would Covid be any different?

Can you point to exactly what vaccines were mandatory in 2019 in order to:

- Work
- Grocery shop
- Have family visit you at your house for Christmas

Meanwhile, Oregon's executive branch is announcing that face masks will be a "permanent" requirement. After being enacted under "emergency" measures they plan to require them permanently. And they're bypassing the legislature to do this.

[Josh]

It's interesting that when people warn about Covid as an excuse for authoritarianism, they point to other countries' public health measures, which doesn't seem relevant to here.

As an Australian citizen with family in Australia, I consider what goes on in Australia quite relevant.

And as a church member where 5,000 of our members are Canadian, I consider what goes on in Canada quite relevant too.

Places matter besides just the United States.

[Josh]

Can you show me where the government ever shut down the economy and put restrictions on buying and selling before for the measles or the chicken pox? Or made getting a vaccination a condition for employment, as Biden is pushing for and what's going on in New York?

I did post this story earlier about Mifflin County PA being completely shut down during Christmas 1941.

In the 1940s, we also placed Japanese people in internment camps; had federally-mandated segregation; and had a military draft.

Over in Austria and Germany (which are now about to enact fines and prison sentences for people who won't get vaccinated), they set up concentration camps and sent people by the millions there to die.

So, no, I don't really want a re-enactment of the 1940s, a time when minority rights were trampled on.

[Falco Underhill]

This is NOT the Chicken Pox <snip>

It isn't the Black Plague either.