B and C for sure. Probably not A, but would encourage private venues to do that. There is an option you left off - public employees who come into contact with the public. I guess it's ok for a call center rep to refuse a vaccine (for some version of ok) but police officers who can pull me over should be mandated.
Also, corrections officers - even though prisoners aren't "the public".
B and C.
D seems unrealistically broad. But I would want the mandate to cover first responders (police, fire, paramedic, etc) and public school teachers.
A and E would be completely untenable (in a USian context, I mean), and not worth the backlash.
I agree it feels like A and E are more risky, but we are kind of in unprecedented times. I might do them all regardless.
Possibly once you require it for the front-line occupations it gets more socialized and you can expand easier.
Great question. My impulses are the same as BG in 2, but I'm a little bit cautious because I have one coworker who is opposed to the vaccine (I don't know exactly why. There hasn't been a good opportunity to ask, but I am curious), and I'm aware that in that case a vaccine mandate would not improve the situation.
B, C, and D. Plus empowering employers to implement their own employee mandate. D is important because it sets the example that this is something other employers should do.
A is trickier, in large part because the logistics are much trickier (just to give one example, I know someone who is French who had a visiting position in the US last semester and got fully vaccinated here this summer before returning to France, and the system they have set up currently can't handle this scenario). My inclination would be to not require any of A (except maybe flights?) and hope that the other ones got vaccination levels high enough.
Another advantage of B, C, and D is that these are all rather traditional and uncontroversial requirements that have been in place for other vaccines for decades, whereas A or E would be more of an innovation. We beat smallpox without requiring vaccine apps to go to a restaurant, I don't think we need to start doing that for covid.
Also, I'd be inclined to make broader moves while being somewhat flexible in allowing exceptions (e.g. only work-from-home, or partial work-from-home with an annoying testing requirement, or whatever), rather than being narrower and more rigid. Requiring all public employees to get vaccinated unless they go through a bunch of tedious paperwork to apply for an exception should be enough to get vaccination levels quite high.
Also, get employers who are requiring vaccination to offer vaccinations at the place of employment!
5: I mean, it would improve the situation, because that employee would be fired and all the other employees would be safer.
FWIW, my employer is requiring all employees to be vaccinated, but those claiming medical or religious exemptions may mask up on site and submit to weekly Covid tests rather than be fired. I realize not everyone has the resources to provide weekly testing though.
We're all required to get vaccinated but the "if not" is pretty vague.
Just socially, it would be really awkward at our office to be the guy wearing a mask because they were unvaccinated. I think everyone will do it and if they don't they'll just lie.
I'm fine with doing all 5 and accepting the backlash. This isn't going to end until we can keep the virus from spreading, and the longer we indulge unhelpful assholes, the longer it goes on.
I'm very worried about the backlash because the number of extra deaths I think are worth control of the Senate is way higher than I'm willing to admit aloud, especially when they will often be "volunteers".
5: I mean, it would improve the situation, because that employee would be fired and all the other employees would be safer.
Maybe. It's possible that forcing a decision would help, but the downsides are:
1) He's working remotely at the moment, which seems to be working out (but isn't a great long-term plan).
2) We're a 10-person company, so losing one person would be stressful.
3) If you look at the WA guidelines on "verifying vaccination" I think a mandate would result in a number of people lying: https://www.lni.wa.gov/forms-publications/F414-164-000.pdf
I'm very worried about the backlash because the number of extra deaths I think are worth control of the Senate is way higher than I'm willing to admit aloud, especially when they will often be "volunteers".
Also, if you believe that delta-variant is sufficiently contagious to sustain community spread even in a fully vaccinated population (and I'm not at all sure about that), that may effect the calculations.
15: Given that under-12s still aren't eligible, I think it's pretty likely that you'd still get community spread even with fully vaxxed population. I think it's something like 8.5% under-12, 15% breakthroughs, plus 5% unvaccinated even with reasonably "full" vaccination, means if R is bigger than 4 you still have community spread. It seems like Delta should clear that pretty easily. (That said, there's a second order effect that breakthrough cases may be less contagious, so maybe that gets it back under control?)
Honestly if your goal is to completely wipe out community transmission of some disease, flu seems like a much easier target. It's not at all clear that breakthrough covid is more dangerous than the flu.
Everyone. Literally everyone. The price of living in a society predicated on the actions of dense groupings of other humans is vaccination, full stop.
Some will complain that we're forcing them to bear a risk they didn't agree to. Too fucking bad, the horse has long since abandoned the smoking ruins of that barn. Literally by breathing the air we allow to be polluted, you're taking risks that society is forcing upon you.
If you believe 16/17 that seems like that makes it harder that it's worth firing somebody who won't get vaccinated -- we wouldn't fire people who refused to get the flu vaccine.
(though I'm waiting for more information about the frequency of "long covid" among breakthrough cases before I decide that the risk is comparable to the flu)
That should have been, "harder to argue that it's worth firing . . . "
B and C are basically, more or less, the standard for the vaccines for polio, tetanus, and MMR, right? Add in D, maybe just limited to those with public-facing jobs, and an exemption for religious or medical reasons but some actual scrutiny applied to it, and it sounds good to me.
14.3 is a problem I'd want addressed better before waving any such wand, though. It would be really easy to forge my vaccine card and as far as I know there are no better records of it out there.
19.1: The problem is that unvaccinated covid is much worse than unvaccinated flu and it's destroying our healthcare system. If we could credibly say "get vaccinated or we'll let you die on the street and not admit you to the hospital" then I'd be more willing to let people do what they want.
19.2: Yeah, that's a reasonable concern, though I kinda suspect that post-viral syndromes are more common for other viruses and that they just don't get much press. If half of "chronic fatigue" is actually long-flu would we know that?
Recently we had to up our scrutiny and enforcement of Mumps vaccinations because we kept having outbreaks, but now pro-covid republicans passed a law that I think is going to force us back into a lower scrutiny approach to Mumps.
When I go back to the office, I'll be close enough to clinical areas that I'll have to mask. In meetings outside of clinical areas, it's not required if you're vaccinated, but I'll still wear a mask for a while. (Mandate for vaccination won't go into effect until officially approved.). My personal comfort zone, is mask off indoors only around people who are vaccinated AND covid careful I.e. - they aren't unmasked indoors around unvaccinated people until we get kids vaccinated and like 90% vaccination rates.
I think right now is as good as it'll ever get from the viewpoint of my personal safety so I'm not still taking precautions that I'm not willing to sustain forever. (That said I liked not getting sick for a year and hate the flu, so I may take more precautions going forward in terms of masking during flu season.). If numbers go up significantly like it looks like they will then I'll take a little more precautions for public health reasons rather than personal safety reasons.
All that said I did just abandon my plan to stay at a coffee shop for a couple hours because the barista has a persistent cough.
(That said I liked not getting sick for a year and hate the flu, so I may take more precautions going forward in terms of masking during flu season.).
My allergies were awful last year, so all I did was confirm that I'm going to feel bad fairly often even if I'm not infected. And I'm like 90% sure I had at least one standard-issue cold.
The hand-washing has worked out though. I'll keep doing that.
We are still doing pickup from the grocery store. We will continue to do that at least as long as it remains free, and possibly forever.
My wife likes that but they keep giving us shitty produce so I go do the shopping.
I'm also horrified by the amount of plastic that comes with frozen foods that way.
31: Yeah, we kind of have a mixed system where sometimes I go to the little fancy grocery and pick up produce mid-week (and beer which you can't do through pickup, and a few other things they don't have at the big store). Switching more of the produce to in person while keeping everything else pickup seems like a direction we might go towards.
You can get beer delivered to your house by the case here. That turned out to not help my stomach.
28: I think standard- issue colds have more fomite transmission than COVID. So even with masking you could get one.
Then maybe washing my hands was useless.
It's probably because I never did learn how to stop touching my face.
I'm slowly doing a bit of in-person shopping - usually setting up a big-ish online order for pickup and then walking in to get a few items directly as well, so I reduce the amount of time I'm in the store. I'm feeling a little grumpy about it now, since my most recent order had three things refunded, I thought because they were out of stock - but then when I was in the store an hour later I found all three exactly where I would expect them to be.
Gig-economy capitalism being what it is, I feel like I shouldn't even complain about this, since the person who did the shopping was probably under absurd pressure to work quickly, and any complaint I make will end up focused on that person, and not on the organization or its incentives or overall performance.
Today, SF: https://twitter.com/LondonBreed/status/1418278281934114817
vaccine mandates for city employees. Dept of Public Health guidance urging businesses to mandate documented proof of vaccination (not self-reporting) from employees.
It's not enough. But it's better than a lotta places.
I'm kind of feeling ambivalent about having gotten J&J, now that they're saying it's less effective against the delta variant.
And the American Hospital Association is now supporting mandates for hospital workers.
There can't be very many hospital employees who haven't been vaxxed already.
Has anyone said anything about having the J&J people come back in for Pzifer or Moderna?
I've seen it mentioned as a "booster".
There are a few COVID threads but I haven't seen this and assumed it would be posted somewhere here.
Our company policy is same as 9. Somewhere over 95% have certified that they're vaccinated and I guess they could be lying but pretty much everyone on site is vaccinated. Some people still wear masks in some situations.
We pulled the 8yo from her camp in a couple weeks because we asked about masking policy and their response was "Our governing organization doesn't require masks, and while the facility we use does require it they don't enforce it, so we can't say if other kids will be masked. Safety is our first priority!"
Our city testing center is overwhelmed. They had a great drive through system but shut it last month because no one was using it, and now it's only twice a week and you have to wait indoors with everyone else. The line was 100+ people today.
This isn't perfectly on topic, but AJ's stepfamily had its first breakthrough case. One of the stepsiblings is dating a fellow who doesn't believe in vaccines. He got it (in a month where our caseloads are stunningly low!) and she got it, too. Her kids tested negative, and AJ's mom only had contact with the kids, I think, but we're supposed to take a multi-hour car trip, and my brain is just like, "NONONONONO" about this whole thing despite there not being any solid reason to worry. For those counting, that's 3 of 4 stepsiblings now.
I had a visitor at work, someone I genuinely like, who's ex-military. He told me he spent enough time getting vaccines in the Navy and that he felt the anthrax vax was responsible for his Parkinson's disease. I had no idea what to say to that. He reeled off some stats about veterans and Parkinson's/neurodegenerative diseases that I found unverifiable at best, but then, it seemed not impossible. I suspect his employer will start mandating soon - they work in hospitals often.
As far as waving a wand, I figure no one should force you to get vaccinated, but we should make it very unpleasant and inconvenient not to be. I want apps and verification and wristbands and for those assholes to find normal life increasingly challenging. It's not like those people were voting Dem anyway. I suspect in fall when we add 6 months and up, that will help a lot. Maybe peds can get parents at the same time.
42: I thought Imposted a comment urging heebie to look into that? Dan Barouch's lab published a study about antibodies from the J and J vaccine. Two people went out and got a Pfizer booster. Some had a J and J booster. The people who combined J and J with Pfizer had by far the highest level of antibodies.
At some point all these goobers are just going to get the covid and we'll reach herd immunity irregardless, right? There may be some advantage in not drawing that out.
45.2: Father-in-law was at Camp Lejeune. He doesn't have anything, but lots of the guys who were with him do now. Nothing to do with vaccines, but very much to do with having been in the service.
There can't be very many hospital employees who haven't been vaxxed already.
You'd think. And if 153 out of 24,947 were willing to lose their jobs over it, I'd bet at least ten times as many were successfully coerced by the vaccine.
And in San Francisco, with all the opportunity and social encouragement in the world, 5% of city employees voluntarily reported they were not vaccinated and 40% declined to report.
And so the conversation turned
Until the rates went down
And many statisticians churned
In those times
Keep feeling vaccinations
Masking learning
Viral loads
49: our system (not just hospital employee but corporate etc.) is 85% vaxxed, and that's on the higher end of the spectrum. New York City public hospitals are only 80%. Usually, it's close to 100% of doctors are vaccinated, but the percentages for other role groups are lower.
48: Thanks. I looked around a little. His stat was 16% of veterans have Parkinson's or another neurodegenerative disease, which seemed impossibly high (and nearly impossible to verify), but I know chemical exposure and resulting health problems is a big deal. At any rate, I was sympathetic to his hesitancy and wished I had something better to say. I did tell him I'd looked into the science pretty hard and AJ and I were eager to roll up our sleeves. have a lot less patience for most people.
I thought Imposted a comment urging heebie to look into that? Dan Barouch's lab published a study about antibodies from the J and J vaccine. Two people went out and got a Pfizer booster. Some had a J and J booster. The people who combined J and J with Pfizer had by far the highest level of antibodies.
You did. At the moment I'm wondering if Texas has a functioning database that flags you if you try to get it twice, though. My dad looked into it in Florida, out of curiosity about boosters, and he is prevented from getting a second shot there, by their database.
Could be sign up again as "Heywood Jablome"?
By their database they shall know you.
42. From WebMD: "In fact, nationwide, 1 in 4 hospital workers who have direct contact with patients had not received a single dose of a COVID-19 vaccine by the end of May, according to a WebMD and Medscape Medical News analysis of data collected by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) from 2,500 hospitals across the U.S."
Huge number of Hospital Workers Still Unvaccinated
I couldn't find anything more recent, but I know that here in true-Blue MA the SEIU is opposed to mandating that hospital workers get vaxxed.
We tried to find a nursing home for mom that required all staff be vaccinated, but failed.
45.last Unvaxed correlates with low education, which means mostly Republicans among *white* people, but not in general. Alabama has very low vaccination rates among all races, but actually white > black > hispanic. There are tons and tons of unvaccinated Democrats.
Could I wave my magic wand and require all employers to provide 1 week of unpaid sick leave annually to all full- and part-time employees? I think a lot of the vaccine-hesitant are just terrible at assessing risk (as most of us are if we rely on our guts alone). I read something in the Atlantic not long ago about vaccine rates dropping as incidence rates of Covid infection dropped. Some may think, why should I risk one or two days of flu-like symptoms to guard against something that seems to be going away on its own? That calculation is even more loaded against vaccination if you have to give up income for sick days, or worse, lose your job if you miss a day or two.
I think requiring vaccinations in workplaces will probably mostly work even if enforcement is weak; most people who are on the fence rather than hardcore anti-vaxers would rather not risk their jobs in favor of continued waffling. If I were thinking about ignoring a workplace policy, I would be worried that developing full-blown Covid down the line would blow the gaff. Even some anti-vaxxers can change their minds if the perceived risks change. My sister, for example, wouldn't vaccinate any of her kids for anything because of internet nonsense about how harmful vaccines could be (while only guarding against diseases the nobody gets anymore anyway). However, she has COPD and was expecting to get Covid and die all of last year. She got her Covid shots as soon as she was able.
To 11, about half of my coworkers are still wearing masks on site out of an abundance of caution, so at the moment it is not socially awkward at all to still wear maska. It will be interesting to see if that changes when the deadline for providing proof of vaccination passes in a couple of weeks and we know for sure that most of us are vaccinated. (My employer has told us not to quiz others about their vax status, or their mask use). The one coworker who was a vocal anti-vaxxer is leaving pretty soon after the deadline, though it's unclear how much that was prompted by the policy change.
There's very little mask wearing here now. I feel like I watched the transition twice, once in Nebraska and once here.
Yeah. That was my problem in 58. It's kind of galling to have gone through the pandemic with very limited visits and then get to a vaccine that not all of the staff is taking.
California requires 80 hours' paid sick leave for COVID, broadly construed including vaccination recovery; for part-time workers, 2 weeks' worth of hours. Employers under 25 employees are exempted; I'm not sure how franchisees are counted.
And now the health officers of SF, Santa Clara, and Contra Costa are recommending all employers require vaccination.
I wonder how many of the refusniks among health care workers have already have Covid? They might think they are immune, and the posslble side effects of some Covid vaccines are reportedly more severe for people who have had Covid before. (And, how can health care workers, even low-level ones, not have paid sick leave? That is insane.) I always wonder if they can only get the craziest people to talk to them for articles like this, or if weird beliefs about Covid really are that common.
To 62, it is true, I have been watching the pandemic from within a deep blue bubble. Most of my family members are in Trump country, but I wouldn't really say I understand them anymore, so what do I know?
Once the mask recommendations started to come back I suddenly noticed a lot more people masking outside - disproportionately Asian (who are plurality where I am, as I think I've said).
goddamnit.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cnn.com/cnn/2021/07/19/media/fox-vaccine-passport/index.html
Fox news requires employees to be vaccinated.
Clearly the website wanted you in the 69 spot.
I was delighted by that thing about Fox, but on closer read it wasn't so much "requires vaccination" as "has always been requiring daily screenings (which I assume means basic stuff like temperature checks) and facemasking and now exempts you from them if you have given HR proof of vaccination."
Oops, not even proof - self-attestation.
Our trifecta Republican state government has just passed a budget that revokes all fines to business establishments that had been fined for not enforcing mask use. So the bar that held a karaoke night where 20 people got infected now gets to dodge the $2000 fine.
how did you get the line collapse in 68 ?
Not even when the Crash Test Dummies ask?
52 percentage for NYC public hospitals was wrong. I meant to write 70%.
65: my employer used to be generous with COVID sick time, but now through Sept it's through some state plan. After September or whenever the money runs out it's regular ok'd paid time off (or not).
The state plan covers $850 per week, but if your employer contributes $250 per week to health insurance, your cash payment will only be $600, and presumably that's taxed.
The spanning paragraph start and stop elements that surround other comments are missing for 68.
My boss just became an asymptomatic breakthrough case. He's vaccinated and resumed business travel recently. He had to get tested to board an international flight home from Munich. Now he's stuck in a quarantine hotel for at least 10 days, in a nation where he doesn't know anyone, doesn't speak the language, and doesn't like the food.
Being isolated with German food is a good time to learn to appreciate flatulence.
Just remember how to excuse yourself (saying "In meinen Gestank einweichen").
I mean, if he's shut up in a hotel room it doesn't really matter how much affinity he has for the country, right?
Tell him about Twitch streamers or something that can occupy him online.
it says something that being quarantined for exposure has always sounded a little heavenly for me. I would just feel bad for Jammies.
Being isolated in a closed room in a heatwave while munching carminative sauerkraut will certainly test the truth of the great Icelandic proverb -- "every man likes the smell of his own farts" -- while minimising the distress to others.
Heebie's take is right, but ACE at a minimum.
Covid rates peaking and decreasing rapidly in England right now seems like really good news. It doesn't seem to be caused by new mitigation efforts (since as far as I can tell there aren't any), so it looks like maybe they've hit herd immunity between vaccinations and natural immunity. Basically Delta quickly burned through all the unvaccinated young people and now they've got natural immunity at least for the short term.
Can I still make jokes about sitting downwind from the people who live in England?