In many states the demand exceeds the supply. Everyone I know wants to get one but we're expecting it to be possible by summer at the earliest. There are even people flying to Florida and other places to get them. Why in the world would you need to pay anybody?
Let me rephrase the question. There's a vaccine shortage, how is there even an OPTION to have to pay people? The waitlist in many states is over three months for people over 65 or with specific conditions.
There isn't currently an option. They are telling their employees that they will pay them for getting vaccinated, a separate issue from when the employees become eligible for the vaccine.
This is very much state-by-state, it definitely isn't true here. In fact "Essential Workers" aren't even carved out as their own group here, just general pop/everyone else.
I would imagine that as we get further into the effort, most/all states will end up doing something like this. And in any case, the companies in the article will be prepared for rollout to general population.
Oregonian here. We saw that and said no. 65+, educators, then all others from the last update I saw. Also, retail is open and workers aren't considered essential-that's just wrong on so many levels.
In some places, it is still 70+. The original CDC guidelines put workers in firefighters, grocery store workers, postal workers, and other essential jobs in front of more elderly workers. Most states aren't strictly abiding by this guidance, but it does mean that these workers are eligible in some states.
In NJ you can be a smoker and automatically qualify.
Yes, we know that smoking increases dangers from Covid-19. There is, however, a self-induced aspect that makes it at least worth discussing as a valid policy.
And let me add that anyone can suddenly become a smoker right beforehand to qualify.
You can't deny it's at the very least awkward social policy.
at this point who really cares? the amount of doses given is like 35% of the inventory. we should give it to anyone who wants it before these lots expire
In particular, the current NYC vaccination phase includes all "public-facing" grocery store workers (but not restaurant workers!)
Not sure how that plays with stores like Dollar General, which carry some groceries. Don't believe there are any Dollar Generals in NYC, but what about the bodega workers?
It seems like February will have a bit of a vaccine supply drought. But Pfizer and Moderna are scaling up, and hopefully the Johnson & Johnson vaccine gets approval and gets past initial production hiccups.
So, maybe hope for March for jabs for “front-line” workers? Warehouse workers, bus drivers, cashiers…
hoping the Johnson and Johnson one gets approved quickly and can ramp up. 1 shot versus 2 is a serious win in terms of getting more people fully vaccinated.
I think this is a California policy. Other states are doing it differently. And even here in California, some counties are doing a better job then others in getting it out. I knew one person who had an appointment to get the vaccine in Los Angeles County, and then showed up to be told the wait time was 8 hours. Orange County seems to be doing a better job at the distribution.
I don't get the idea of requiring people to take vaccines. If people don't want to catch the thing, then they take the vaccine. However, taking the vaccine does little to prevent others catching the vaccine unless you go for a draconian 'everyone must vaccinate' measure. But then we are back to 'if you don't want the thing then vaccinate'. The logic doesn't make a lot of sense to me.
Note: I am not an antivaxer. I think vaccines are great, and it is a good idea for people to take them, just like working out and eating healthy. I just don't understand the logic behind mandatory vaccinations to protect other people. It doesn't make sense to me when people believe others not taking a vaccine is somehow a significant threat to them.
And I am not saying the logic is incorrect, merely that I do not understand the logic.
Because businesses don't want to deal with the hassle of having outbreaks in their workforce causing business operations to halt, slow down, or fail? And don't want to be vulnerable to lawsuits claiming they spread the disease to their customers, or didn't adequately protect their employees safety?
For employers, I think it's mostly a matter of avoiding the lost employee-hours and corresponding lost revenue. For instance (though only an anecdote), a local Starbucks had to close for a few days as enough employees had symptoms to make appropriate staffing impossible.
Yes, that logic makes a bit more sense. However, if an employer can control an employee's personal decision to maximize their work hours, why stop at vaccines? Require everyone stop smoking, drinking, drug use, work out consistently, eat healthily, etc. Vaccines, even against covid-19, are the least likely to impact work hours.
Many employers already provide incentives (including cash) to participate in "wellness" programs, and many often will perform drug tests prior to and even during employment.
For most of the things you mention, it's possible for the employee to control the impact it has on their work hours. You can drink while ensuring you're not drunk or hungover at work, for example. For COVID, it's not possible to control the impact; if you have COVID, you do not work. Additionally, you can spread COVID to other employees prior to a positive test or symptoms and consequently affect the business outside of your personal availability. That's not really the case with drinking or a refusal to exercise.
Sounds like the same restrictions can apply to covid. People die from flu and numerous other diseases, but I've never worked anywhere that has mandated such vaccinations. The only exception I know of is meningitis in Texas, and that is really bad, a person can be infected and dead in hours and it is quite infectious. Not at all comparable to covid.
> Require everyone stop smoking, drinking, drug use, work out consistently, eat healthily, etc. Vaccines, even against covid-19, are the least likely to impact work hours.
I'm curious, are you not in the US?
Many workplaces routinely test employees for drugs, even drugs that are legal in their states. Employment at many places is conditioned specifically on not using drugs.
Similarly, employees at many firms must maintain an adequate credit rating or risk termination. So the slippery slope you describe...we've already slid down it.
>Many workplaces routinely test employees for drugs, even drugs that are legal in their states. Employment at many places is conditioned specifically on not using drugs.
Outside employers who have the federal government as a direct customer and employees who have to deal with DOT rules (truck drivers) drug testing is incredibly rare. Employers aren't dumb enough to voluntarily restrict their talent pool in that manner.
These are just spot checks of the top 10 largest employers. Obviously, sectors such as transportation and finance also have broadly embraced drug screens.
Based on my experience in IT, they are not outliers. As a contractor, I've even had to submit to drug testing for contract gigs in the past.
As a person who has worked a couple low-wage jobs (warehouse, retail), drug tests were the norm. Employers are trying to avoid flaky workers or ones likely to quit.
I would imagine that if you look at the current state of the COVID-19 pandemic... we have a vaccine and we've been able to give first doses to maybe 5% of the U.S. right now.
It is estimated that herd immunity, or basically infection frequency / transmission dropping low enough that you are unlikely to get COVID-19 requires about 75% of everyone to be fully vaccinated (both doses for the two leading vaccines).
So to have the vaccine or not have the vaccine is not a binary choice for every person at this time. Lots of 64 year olds could walk into a grocery store, wishing they had a vaccine, but they don't. Ideally, every store employee at such a store is low or no risk for that 64 year old, just in case. Masks help but are not 100%. Catching it from surfaces is, I believe, presumed to be low on incidence, but I would not assume it is 0% either.
So the best bet for 64 year olds that are not yet eligible for the vaccine is that employees at places people have to go contain largely vaccinated employees as soon as possible. Also don't know the numbers, but there are probably a lot less grocery store workers than say all people between 50 and 64 years of age.
(I'm also not 100% clear on when a 64 year old with no underlying conditions and no front-line worker qualification will otherwise be eligible.)
>(I'm also not 100% clear on when a 64 year old with no underlying conditions and no front-line worker qualification will otherwise be eligible.)
It depends on the state. But in Massachusetts, that 64 year old is part of the general pool, i.e. they're eligible at the same time a healthy 20 year old is. It depends on how many people are willing to get vaccinated and whether vaccinations can be tamped up above 1 million per day (so 2 million jabs for the 2 dose vaccines). But it could easily be 6 months out, though hopefully closer to early summer.
Added: Though Biden is only promising to get 50 million people vaccinated in the next 100 days.
Besides the impact on business (from sick workers, contamination or even fines¹), herd immunity can be leveraged by vaccination. Nobody really want to talk anymore about herd immunity because of how to concept was used during the first wave earlier this year. Herd immunity is not a magic bullet and will not make those who decided not to be vaccinate immune. It is just with a higher threshold, you reduce the probability of infection inside the not immune population. The concept was distorted during the first believing on the self immuninity response to the virus and that the immunity will be a "once for all" scenario. The damage is done in the public view about how the concept is perceived and tossed away. However, the main logic about massive vaccination is mostly about herd immunity (and the hypothesises that the vaccine will have a lifetime/long enough action and no mutation of the virus will change it enough to render the vaccine useless).
So to answer,
> taking the vaccine does little to prevent others for catching the [virus]
Yes, with a high enough threshold, herd immunity will reduce the probability of others in your environment to get the virus. You can see it like a network effect where nodes that could be infected finish by being surrounded by nodes preventing infected nodes to reach high-risk ones modulo the hypotheses stipulated above.²
Besides that they are also social, economic, politic reasons to push to massive vaccination programs. But for me, herd immunity reasons are the why, I tend to be in favour of a nation-scale vaccination program.
¹ For example in the Netherlands if a worker is contaminated at his workplace, the company have to close their offices during two weeks and pay a fine.
IF you catch COVID non-vaccinated I'm fairly sure you remain sick and contagious for a far longer duration. In the case (like most) where you're asymptomatic, you are thus risking other people catch it more than you would be if you got vaccinated. That's enough justification in my mind.
Being vaccinated does not provide any guarantees. You may remember the headlines about "95% effective". What more is there to understand? If I am infected, I'm a risk to you, whether you're vaccinated or not.
You speak like the risks are the same. They aren't. Your statements don't talk about how the risk change with vaccination - and change even more when more folks are vaccinated.
If you are vaccinated, you are vastly less likely to get the infection you are vaccinated against. It is kind of like car accidents - you are vastly less likely to be in any sort of car accident if you are walking (vaccinated) than if you are driving a car (unvaccinated). Most folks will be protected.
Since most folks will be protected and won't get the disease, it means that - with enough vaccinations - the risk for those who don't get the vaccine or who are unlucky enough not to have full effectiveness are more protected as well. This situation is more akin to most folks taking public transport instead of driving cars: Since there are fewer cars on the roads, everyone's risk of getting into a car accident drops significantly.
The number was measured by giving a placebo to X number of people and the vaccine to X number of people. Then you find out that Y number of people with the placebo got COVID, and Z number of people with the vaccine got COVID. Compare Y and Z to get the effectiveness. I think X was like 10,000 or more.
Mandating safety is not new or draconian. We do this all the time with regulations and laws because people can't always be trusted to make decisions that aren't selfish. Vaccines fit into a category of things that seem to be personal decisions but negative impacts are communal. I'm all for personal freedoms, until yours damage mine. I know many immuno compromised people and the antivax crowd is their second biggest medical problem, after the diseases themselves. Vaccines aren't to protect you anywhere near as much as they are to protect us from you.
I'm 100% in favor of requiring vaccines and keeping the antivax crows in a silo, away from the general population. (That includes my family members who are antivax.)
>Mandating safety is not new or draconian. We do this all the time with regulations and laws because people can't always be trusted to make decisions that aren't selfish.
It's not as clear-cut like you make it out to be and there are real ethical questions here. So let's Steelman OP's argument. This vaccine was developed very quickly and there are potential side-effects. And like OP said, the vaccine doesn't necessarily prevent transmission (though in fairness, it must have some effect because it does reduce the viral load). So you're mandating a healthy individual (who may not even be in the at-risk group for COVID either) get inoculated with something that did not follow traditional healthcare protocols for vaccine development, can cause adverse reactions, and doesn't prevent spread.
Are we OK with signing off on that kind of policy without some debate? What complicates it for me is that dissenting opinions from credible virologist and epidemiologists and clinicians is routinely suppressed and blocked by social media right now.
>I'm 100% in favor of requiring vaccines and keeping the antivax crows in a silo, away from the general population.
I know you say that, but you're not because you're never going to fully trust health authorities with your health (remember, health authorities are people and they make mistakes, see what happened in Flint when the State was telling people water was safe to drink when it wasn't).
For example, let's say there are reports[1] of clusters of really major adverse reactions - do you fully trust health authority's guarantees that vaccine is perfectly safe? Are you really really sure this wouldn't be a repeat of the 1970s flue vaccine fiasco - another vaccine that was rushed into production? And again, the context here is also important. There is a higher risk factor associated with this specific vaccine than a traditionally developed one.
[1] Again, social media has decided to editorialize on this point. That is, even if credible reports come out against the vaccine, they will suppress these reports if it goes against health authority guidelines. Which, paradoxically, leads to reduced trust.
Are unvaccinated individuals the biggest, or even significant, threat to immuno compromised individuals? I think even the common cold is deadly for such unfortunate people.
Sometimes a cold is so much worse for this group of people, sure. It can be deadly, but just as often (or more) raises the chance of complications.
The diseases we tend to vaccinate against aren't the common cold, though. They are worse. So much worse. As in, they can be deadly or create lifelong complications in healthy folks. It can be a quick death sentence for compromised folks - much worse than the common cold.
The national government is providing the drug for free and thus no one is allowed to charge for it. The provider can bill for the administration of the vaccine. If a patient has insurance, the admin is billed to the insurance. If not, it's billed to a government program called HRSA. At my hospital I have been told that if any insurance company tries to pass on a portion of the administration as copay/coinsurance/deductible that we need to flag that payment to call the insurance company because they aren't allowed to do that.
In the US it's a bit of a mess. Right now most states are focusing on high risk people first. So medical staff, essential workers (I think) and those 65 and over.
My parents fall into the 65 and older category and can't find a vaccine anywhere local.
It'll be months I suspect before these groups of people get their shots. Then they move into another group and it'll repeat. I don't anticipate getting my shot until summer at the earliest.
The reason I say it's a mess in the US is each state is sort of doing their own thing. And some areas are getting very little vaccine.
Everywhere is short on vaccine relative to population. My county is on track to have doses equivalent to about 10% of the population administered this month, so enough 2 dose vaccines for 5% of the county, not a lot. They aren't sitting on much if they get those doses administered.
The US was founded with such a design that the "the power of the state to police public behavior" is incoherent, as an idea. In America, the state is public behavior. The government is at best a time-average of the will of the people. When you ask for the government to flex its muscle, you are asking for the people to exercise self-control, and if they were doing that, the government would not be necessary. At most, a large majority can police the behavior of a small minority - but to be honest, given the history of when that has happened, we might be better off if even that was not possible.
> The grocer also promised workers receiving vaccines that they would not lose pay for missed hours from work
It's not just the time to get the shot.
I've seen reports (both in the news and from a friend who has been vaccinated) that the second dose frequently triggers really miserable flu symptoms that last a day or so.
I'd be prepared to take a sick day or two.
And it's probably best for a team -- or a family -- to not all get the shots on the same day.
Apparently, since I was an infant, I would get some pretty heavy duty reactions to any vaccine: fever, swelling, being miserable for a few days. As a child, my DPT vaccine was given in the morning and by the afternoon, they had to cut my sleeve off my shirt due to swelling in the arm where I got the injection. As an adult, even the flu vaccine is something I schedule for a Friday because I know that I will be worthless for a few days.
I am two days past my first COVID vaccine dose and still feel lousy, although I can finally lift my arm up ninety degrees now without a lot of pain and the swelling is mostly gone. I'm dreading what Dose #2 will do.
I know, everyone perkily says "That means your immune system has noticed!" but good grief, I often wish they would make vaccine variants without adjuvants.
I know exactly two people who have gotten both doses. Both reported significant symptoms after the second dose which would have precluded them working for 1 day in one case and 2 days in the other.
Yes, 100% of those in my network who have received both doses (sample size of 6) have all experienced this. Mostly Moderna, but a couple Pfizer as well.
From the US Center for Disease Control: What to Expect after Getting a COVID-19 Vaccine. Common side effects include Fever, Chills, Tiredness, Headache [0].
This is not unusual for some types of vaccines, however my spouse is a medical professional and we know many PAs, nurses, and doctors that have already gotten the vaccine and it does seem that the rebound effects of the vaccine are more severe than other vaccines. That said, they also reported feeling better in 24 hours or less.
Other gave sources. Just adding it’s not a concern. It’s the body’s immune reaction. That’s how the vaccine works, and it’s pretty common with vaccines.
There's already a potential bad batch of over 1 million vaccines already distributed [1]. I really don't know why anyone would trust getting the v1 of a novel type of vaccine.
That's weird. Because it's the same shot twice. At work my entire team has had the pfizer vaccine (Noone sick). A few vaccines have a two shot dose. Is this like the flu shot gives you the flu type of FUD?
No, it's like the “shot designed to produce an immune reaction gives you an immune reaction” story. Which is true. Also true for the flu shot.
Which doesn't give you the flu, but can give you (shorter-lived, milder) flu symptoms, because “flu symptoms” are mostly symptoms of the immune response to the flu.
I know around 20 people who have gotten the vaccine and this is consistent with what they experienced too. Most of them reported some flulike symptoms that were somewhat worse than the flu shot.
In the US, the EEOC (Equal Employment Opportunity Commission) has basically said that employers can require employees to get vaccinated. (They have to accommodate when possible but obviously a grocery cashier won't be allowed to work from home so the accommodation is that they don't get paid.)
I would not be surprised if this becomes a contentious topic once vaccines are widespread and workplaces, airlines, etc. require proof of vaccination.
FWIW, as recently as a week ago, the Canadian PM has said that there are no plans (in Canada) for a federal vaccine passport— it may still happen on a regional or industry-specific basis, or they could change their minds, but this is where they're starting from:
“I think it’s an interesting idea but I think it is also fraught with challenges — we are certainly encouraging and motivating people to get vaccinated as quickly as possible but we always know there are people who won’t get vaccinated and not necessarily through a personal or political choice,” Trudeau said during an interview at the Reuters Next Conference.
“There are medical reasons, there are a broad range of reasons why someone might not get vaccinated and I’m worried about creating knock-on, undesirable effects in our community.”
It's effectively a passport, regardless of what you want to call it— it's a document which is government issued, gives you certain movement privileges, and probably needs to include a photo component and be difficult to forge.
Vaccine passports for COVID are a pretty different situation. It's not "get this established and well-tested vaccine so that you can go on a safari adventure in Africa," it's "get this very new vaccine that you might have read horrible conspiracies about on the internet so that you can go back to eating at restaurants and attending sporting events."
The incentive to forge proof of a COVID vaccine is way higher, and in some jurisdictions there may even be political and/or media cover for doing so (because it's about your "freedom").
It'll be interesting if private businesses start demanding vaccine proof (at the point when vaccines are widely available) or refuse service. I guess one solution would be to make such a refusal illegal..
I have read their opinion, their statement is more unclear. They say that their is nothing in employment law that prevents requiring an approved vaccine but that it was up to the FDA and other bodies to make the call regarding EUA vaccines. It was confusing and misreported in the press. Their release would have been better rid they said upfront "we don't know if employers can require you to take a EUA vaccine".
These payments to take it might be a form of risk reduction from the companies perspective, as you can get a waiver in return for the payment.
There are quite a few weasel words/phrases in their statement but I would assume it would be enough air cover for any organization who wanted to do so to be able to claim they believed they had the power to require a shot. And any employee disagreeing would have to go to court--and maybe get a judge's ruling in a year or two after paying a bunch of legal fees. Not very practical for a fast food worker or cashier. And there are precedents for vaccines being required.
> In the US, the EEOC (Equal Employment Opportunity Commission) has basically said that employers can require employees to get vaccinated.
Once they're FDA approved, sure, but none of the vaccines currently being distributed are approved yet so I doubt this will be enforceable for another two or three years.
> What is the difference between FDA approved and an emergency use authorization, from the perspective of the law?
> Under an EUA, FDA may allow the use of unapproved medical products, or unapproved uses of approved medical products in an emergency to diagnose, treat, or prevent serious or life-threatening diseases or conditions[1]
The difference is that something pushed out under EUA is _not_ FDA approved. So any laws related to approved medicine, devices, vaccines, etc do not apply automatically to EUA products.
For what its worth, VICP is funded by an excise tax on each vaccine dose. Compensation is also "no fault", and no party is presumed liable.
In the specific case of the COVID-19 vaccines, they are explicitly NOT covered by VICP, but rather the CICP.
[Countermeasures Injury Compensation Program (CICP) | Official web site of the U.S. Health Resources & Services Administration](https://www.hrsa.gov/cicp)
Employers are currently liable if workers get covid on the job. Its one of the things Trump wanted to get out of in the last relief package. If they're liable it makes sense employers can enforce vaccine.
They’re only (potentially) liable if they’re reckless or negligent in implementing safeguards. An employer who makes a good-faith effort to follow best practices is exceedingly unlikely to be held liable for sick employees.
Yes, low-wage workers are famously litigious and apt to bring frivolous and endless claims unless the government steps in to protect the negligent employers.
I’ve seen low margins small businesses destroyed by litigation. The exact probability of low wage workers taking legal action is irrelevant, but it’s above zero and scammy lawyers don’t mind initiating claims in hopes of settlements.
I’m not commenting about whether or not business should or shouldn’t be shielded from covid liability. I just wanted to make it known that liability of legal costs, from low paid and high paid employees, and poor and rich customers, is a material risk to a business, especially ones that don’t already have lawyers on staff.
A vaccine isn't for the customer's benefit, it's for the worker's benefit (and society generally, because you can't be a profitable business if society is still shut down).
If the worker takes fewer overall sick days because they've been vaccinated against the virus, the company benefits by having a more stable workforce than if employees were taking time off to naturally recover from infection.
There's also a legal liability question here -- could an employee sue their employer if they contract COVID-19 at the workplace? I don't think that's been decided conclusively yet.
And for what it's worth, scientists are trying to figure out what kind of vaccine we have -- we just don't know yet, because of how fast this vaccine was developed.
Do we have a "reduce symptoms so people survive the disease" vaccine or do we have a "completely block infection" vaccine? The latter would indeed hamper infection.
But my amateur understanding is that while there are vaccines that don't fully eliminate transmission, they all do it to some degree, and on average the numbers are quite good.
Happy to be corrected by someone with actual knowledge!
What about it doesn't make sense? Companies can mandate wearing safety gear in dangerous environments (e.g. fall harnesses when working at heights) or for public safety (e.g. hairnets to prevent food contamination). Countries can mandate public health requirements (e.g. disposing of human waste through sewers). What makes vaccination any different?
There's plenty of precedent to requiring vaccinations, especially in schools. And the US government has already stated that employers requiring a vaccination in this case is generally OK.
A number of African countries require proof of yellow fever vaccination to enter. The vaccine certificate is issued by each country but conforms to a WHO standard.
Most employers are reasonable and don't make you do dumb things like wear full PPE for a job that really doesn't deserve it in a poorly ventilated space on the hottest day of the year and other common sense things like that.
However, the kind of people who do safety for unreasonable employers (usually process driven BigCos, mines and shipyards are good examples) and the kinds of people who's only exposure to industrial environments is the mandatory safety training they took once upon a time for their internship tend to dominate internet discussions about PPE and safety. This results in some real gems of insanity.
Having worked in an enormous heavy manufacturing facility at a company with a very good safety record, I disagree. In the case of working on the hottest days of the year in full PPE, additional mandatory breaks and hydration are required. Additional airflow should be added if in a poorly ventilated space and compatible with the work being done. PPE used should match the risks presented, which should be well documented before starting work. Shortcuts to the standard process, failure to identify when things start going wrong, etc. cause injuries and deaths.
Safety culture is super hard to build, taking years of collaboration between management, workers, and unions if applicable. Every group wants nothing more than for the employees to go home the same way they went to work.
Any one time you do a task with less than required PPE, probably nothing will happen. But over the course of a career, those "this one time" instances add up and eventually will cause an injury or death.
Specifically coming from the assumption that it should be up to me what I put in my body. I understand there are exception e.g. vaccines mandated by the government (and conversely it is illegal to ingest substances), but that is very far cry from an employer requiring a vaccination. Especially for something like covid. Why not flu shots?
Oh, but they do require flu shots in some places! You know, when you could make others very sick indeed.
But more importantly, Covid is not the flu, and comparisons start failing pretty quickly. Not only do more people die of Covid, but more people have long-lasting symptoms, life-altering, after their infection.
If you don't want to, don't work for someone that requires it. It might severely limit your employment prospects, but that is your choice (obviously, exceptions should be made for those that cannot get it for medical reasons. They do not have choice).
No one is forcing you to put anything into your body. But at the same time, no one is forcing any employer to keep you employed. That seems fair.
And there are employers that require flu shots, especially in the healthcare/long term care industries. Hell, many (most?) public schools and universities require certain vaccinations to be allowed to attend.
> I don't think that is how it works, we have labour laws for a reason.
It's absolutely how it works, because the labor laws we have don't generally prohibit requiring vaccinations, especially where that mitigates danger to yourself, other employees, or the public that come from you doing your job. Lots of jobs require certain vaccinations now.
> If vaccines can be mandated by companies where to draw the line?
Typically, at conditions which unreasonably endanger workers or the public, not ones that protect them.
- require routine drug testing, even for drugs that are legal in your state
- require routine credit checks
- mandate attire standards
- dictate grooming standards
- require employees to routinely expose themselves to hazardous materials
- require travel to hazardous locations
- perform duties that are known to result in serious injury or loss of life
- require vaccines for things like the flu
- require employees to sit still in front of a computer for 8+ hours at a time, for months on end.
The remedy in the US for people who do not like these factors is to not work for employers that have different tolerances for physical safety than does the employee. I don't see how conditioning employment on receiving a vaccination for Covid is materially more dangerous than requiring an employee to work on sea-based drilling rig or in a coal mine.
While in general I agree, there are some cases where all employers make the same requirements. In that case, there is no choice the worker can make that doesn't result in the condition being there, and so there is no choice. As an example, since binding arbitration clauses were found to be enforceable in court, they have since been added to nearly all contracts. As a result, there is no choice that does not result in being locked out of the legal system.
That said, I do not think that vaccination is an unreasonable requirement.
How about smoking as a comparison? Most states forbid smoking in bars/restaurants, because it creates a public health hazard for others. Similarly, lack of vaccination causes a public health hazard for others. As to where to draw the line, I would say when it starts adversely affecting the health and safety of workers. Requiring workers to work in a smoke-filled environment is damaging to health, and may not be a condition of employment. Requiring workers to be vaccinated is not damaging to health, and is in fact beneficial to health, and therefore may be a condition of employment.
What do you mean by "something like covid"? Covid-19 has resulted in over 2 million deaths, 400k of which are in the US. It has brought the US life expectancy down by a full year. The death rate varies by age, but is roughly equivalent to a full year's worth of mortality risk, concentrated into a single event. And we fundamentally do not know what other long-term risks there are from it. The vaccine carries less risk than the disease.
"Something like Covid" is exactly the sort of disease that should be vaccinated against. The only reason why this is being done at an employer level rather than at a government level is because the federal government under the previous administration plugged its ears and refused to acknowledge the severity of the disease.
This is basic law: Stuff is allowed unless forbidden. Because of that, employers generally have the right to require things of employees, and the exceptions are what's specified in law.
So if your employer wants to require of the people in your team that they know C++, speak Swahili or carry photo ID, that's allowed because not forbidden. But the law does have provisions for religious discrimination (in most countries, perhaps all) so requiring your team to be Pastafarians is out (if that's what the law says, the law might make an exception for the Pastafarian Church).
Requiring vaccines might also be forbidden by your employment contract. But is it? I doubt it.
Your contract also could say "the employer cannot permit you to take paid sick leave if you're ill on the day after a vaccine" or "the employer cannot permit you to get a vaccine on company time" but both sound far-fetched to me.
I think some countries require that the terms of employment be somewhat related to the nature of the work. Contraceptives might be banned by that. (IANAL, just someone who's had this explained by a lawyer.)
In a fully remote company, where you never meet customers, vendors or other employees, requiring vaccination might be viewed by a court as unrelated to the work. If you're supposed to meet customers or other employees and there's a pandemic going on, though...
There was a case her in Denmark (which, normally, have much stronger employment laws than the US) where it turned out that a company could require its workers to exercise (and they were computer programmers, so it wasn't directly related to their job) provided that it happened in working hours.
The military and sports teams certainly mandate exercise (explicitly in the military's case and at least implicitly but very likely explicitly for sports teams).
Military pilots are also issued "go pills" (dextroamphetamine) for long combat and long single-pilot transit sorties.
> The grocer also promised workers receiving vaccines that they would not lose pay for missed hours from work and that it would help pay for the shots.
This is actually the more important bit. If your country is so dysfunctional as to not provide free vaccination for this, and the employee is stretched so thinly that they don't have time to get it without losing pay, then both of these are required.
So, COVID vaccines will be free in the US. As for other vaccines, it’s highly variable. But at least, for once, for medical stuff, there’s a price list!
And there are vaccine clinics and discounts and blah blah blah. The cost, as in what you pay at the register, is manageable.
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What’s less manageable, and is actually the point in what you quoted, is getting time off to go to the damn clinic. Oh my god, the grocery store is not going to put me on probation for missing a shift to get a shot? And they’re actually going to arrange it so I don’t have to fight my way through public health red tape? That’s the big deal.
Vaccines are only paid for by the government in the USA for low-income, uninsured kids. If you're insured, you likely have a copay and if you're not medicaid-eligible and high-income, you likely have to pay out of pocket.
If you're insured, more likely than not you don't have a copay for general vaccines like flu shots; they're considered preventative care and most health care plans are required to cover them for free.
This is wrong. In the U.S., the COVID vaccine is covered by health insurance if you have it (at no cost to the patient), or by the government if you do not.
Are the vaccines really free in the US or will hospitals still catch you with copay, deductibles and other stuff?
A lot of people in US retail don’t have sick leave and make very little money. For them taking some unpaid time off to be vaccinated would be a big problem.
Same happens with elections being done on Tuesdays. Many people simply can’t afford to go voting.
On one hand it's incredible that we can make effective vaccines in such short order.
But I'm worried about the iatrogenic risk of rapid, global vaccine roll-outs. Let's say in a few years someone identifies a virus with a similar threat profile to SARS-Cov-2. QUICK, vaccinate everyone... PHEW, dodged another lockdown/recession. Repeat, over and over, with ever greater efficiency. Until one day half the planet dies from some side effect.
That's a pretty crazy hypothetical you've got there. Any reason you think that might be remotely possible, despite the months of trials the COVID vaccines went through?
Yes, the option with the most safety data is to not contract a novel disease and not be admininstered a novel vaccine (of a novel type).
Any option involving contracting the disease or being administered the vaccine has unknowable long term risks; and it's foolish to argue otherwise. That doesn't mean you can't argue about short and medium term risks; but if someone is worried about long term risks, pointing to the months of studies doesn't help at all.
Given the known short and medium term risks, vaccination seems like a good plan, at least where there is community spread. In areas where the disease is controlled, the unknowable long term risks dominate, IMHO, and would make it a harder decision. Of course, lack of supply moots that question for now, there's more than enough people to vaccinate in areas with major caseload, so we don't have to think about vaccinations in places that are under control.
I am explicitly not saying the vaccine does this, but I am personally more concerned about it having effects on the fertility of young people - it is not something we would discover in a relatively short trial, but it could spell disaster in a few years.
Mind you there is no scientific reason it should do this, so why is my mind trying to make the worst possible scenarios?
Here’s a controversial prediction: in order to get adequate vaccination coverage / herd immunity, the USA (or states) will need to start paying people to get vaccinated.
While intent to get vaccinated is at least rising, it’s still only 60% [1]. The anti-vaxxers are out in full force over this one. Combined with the existing public skepticism about COVID, I think we are going to find it difficult to get enough people vaccinated without providing some kind of an incentive. We are going to have to fight fake vaccination cards, and more strongly fight fake medical exemptions from doctors [2]. We are going to see surpluses of the vaccine going to waste because states can’t find enough people in later “tiers” willing to vaccinate.
The virus is so contagious and so poorly contained in most places that those that do not vaccinate will gain immunity by just contracting the disease instead. Current estimates are of herd immunity by summer with half from vaccination and half from contagion. It sucks but that's where we've ended up.
Realistically that would mean vaccine passes so that you can only come into certain places if you can prove you have been vaccinated - and those can be made hard to fake if we set up a digital certificate system.
If each vaccine provider had a digital certificate signed by the relevant health authorities and then that was signed by a root US gov cert that everybody could download the public cert for, it would be virtually impossible to produce a fake one, and it would be pretty obvious which provider had faked the records.
We could even burn the entire system once enough people have been vaccinated, by publishing the secret key of the root cert.
Imagine your reaction if you read about "local warlords" distributing vaccines in some developing nation. How does anyone read a headline like this and not conclude that the USA is a failed state?
Trader Joe's and Dollar General aren't the ones distributing vaccines, they're simply incentivizing their employees the elect to receive one through the standard channels.
>Aldi this week became the latest grocery chain to offer employees compensation for getting vaccinated, saying it would provide workers with two hours of pay for each of the two vaccine doses.
so $100 for potentially serious consequences . sounds like a poor deal.
100% certainty isn't possible, so you must weigh risks. Covid is at least as likely, probably much more likely to have unknown future serious consequences. That's to say nothing of Covid's extremely known consequences.
Eh I've paid $100 or more to put a greater number of unknowns into my body for simple pleasure from less professional and less ethical strangers.
I always thought linking the vaccination to the stimulus or federal legislation of Marijuana would have been great for the economy. Sad it didn't gain more traction.
Your free choice to put a substance into your body is hardly an analog to "we will fire you if you don't put this substance into your body with the specific purpose of inducing an immune reaction".
(Not an anti-vaxer and I'll be getting the vaccine as soon as I'm able, if that context matters.)
It's just FUD. Trials show a good safety profile in a large population. A few people with severe allergies have had severe allergic reactions, but this is possible with any vaccine, and it's why the nurse usually has an epi-pen on hand when you get a flu shot. But again, this is very very rare.
