[FreakyT]

Exactly -- people are still free to not get vaccinated, but they're not free to go to aggregate settings where they might infect everyone there, which seems like a reasonable compromise.

It's the same approach as with antivax parents -- don't want your kids vaccinated? Then you'll need to homeschool them.

[epicureanideal]

But if others are already vaccinated, how does an unvaccinated coworker infect a vaccinated coworker?

[Spooky23]

Vaccination doesn’t mean you cannot be infected, and cannot spread it once infected. It lowers the chances of infection and presentation of symptoms.

So when your unvaccinated coworker exercises his selfish right to be stupid, you’re putting others at risk. The difference here is that your exposing your coworkers children and others who cannot be vaccinated to infection.

We socially tolerate people like this who choose to infect an entire office or daycare with rhinovirus, flu or the cold, because the impact is generally lower. COVID is different, and frankly, people don’t want to be around unvaccinated people just as they avoid people who display bad judgement in other ways.

[version_five]

That's how you know it's not just a public health measure. For other vaccines, we rely on the majority being vaccinated so that any isolated outbreaks are naturally contained. I assume google doesn't ask you to prove you're vaccinated against measles for example. If one person is not vaccinated, it's to their detriment and irrelevant to everyone else. There are weak arguments about vaccine efficacy etc that some people could still get infected, but the point is that majority voluntary vaccination contains disease to the point that there is no justification of invasive personal measures (in this case disclosing personal health information to an information predator, but its unacceptable regardless of the employer). It seems to me this is much more about signaling to their various stakeholders about their politics rather than an actual public health campaign.

FWIW I think (I think) they should be allowed to enforce this if they want, even if i dont like it. Although I might support measures to make this kind of discrimination illegal, I'd have to think more about that. Despite having my vaccine, I would not work for a company that asked me to prove it, however. I've got no beef with the vaccine, only with giving state or corporate actors power over my health choices.

[osigurdson]

Think of yourself at the center of a circle with a series of concentric rings. If you are vaccinated with a 90% effective vaccine, your chance of catching the bug is 10% from anyone in the first ring. However, if everyone in the first ring is vaccinated, the chance of catching the bug from anyone in the second ring is only 1% (i.e 0.1*0.1). Thus with enough people vaccinated even a crappy vaccine works pretty well.

Perhaps a rather simplistic model, but somewhat illustrative.

[paxys]

- Vaccines aren't 100% efficient

- Lots of people cannot get vaccinated due to medical reasons

[throwaway9980]

The same way that my friend who is vaccinated was infected by his unvaccinated wife. Close quarters with an infected person is going to increase risk for some one who is vaccinated. The Pfizer vaccine is 38% effective [1] at preventing infection on average. It’s obvious that spending 8 hours next to someone who is actively infectious will reduce that efficacy rate.

[1] for the Delta variant, which at this point is what matters

[rad_gruchalski]

What if there are many unvaccinated in between the vaccinated?

[FreakyT]

IIRC, unvaccinated are more likely to get infected and also typically have higher viral loads, which corresponds to higher infectiousness.

[bigmattystyles]

Breakthrough infections and questions about transmissibility even if vaccinated aside, consider this: a second unvaccinated coworker.

[mbeattie]

Does this apply to the flu, varicella, meningitis, etc as well?

[standardUser]

The vaccination rate for vericella (Chickenpox) is over 90%, so our society has herd immunity and cases are rare. Same with measles, mumps, diphtheria and polio. I don't know the vaccination for meningitis, but cases are rare and mostly in children not old enough to be vaccinated.

If an officemate wanted to be a free rider on one of those they could, and it would be very unlikely any harm would come from it.

If we had a 90% vaccination rate for this coronavirus we would not be having this conversation (and several hundred Americans would not be dying daily from a preventable illness).

As for the flu, its not especially dangerous, not prone to exponential spread, pre-symptomatic transmission is rare and the vaccines are not especially effective. So the flu shot is in a different class than the others.

[abeyer]

Several of those are essentially required to get a university degree already... so for many people I'm not sure an additional requirement would significantly help things, but it also couldn't hurt.

Less transmission of disease in the office would be a good thing as we return.

[DrBenCarson]

I hope so

[blub]

It's not exactly the same, since the only mandatory vaccine I'm aware of is the one against measles, a very infectious disease which can kill kids and batter adults. It has sequelae which can appear years later. The vaccine has been in use for a long time and is well understood.

So as long as it can be ensured that the unvaccinated won't infect others (e.g. through testing), they should not be forbidden from participating in society. This is not justified by the current course of the pandemic. Maybe if we discover in a few months that the vaccines don't work any more because of the low vaccination rates this becomes more critical.

[throwawaysea]

> Then you'll need to homeschool them.

This would be fair if the equivalent public school spending for that student were instead given back to parents as a voucher to spend on homeschooling or on a different education provider of their choice with different vaccination requirements. But otherwise there is a financial coercion into divulging health choices or giving up bodily autonomy that doesn’t feel right to me.

[derkster]

I don't understand the concept of fairness when we're talking about something that has killed more Americans than every war since the Civil War combined. I would consider every death caused by the asymptomatic much more unfair than someone having to pay for a charter school for the luxury of being a liability to the general public every time they step outside their home.

Every one of us will end up having to pay for the problems caused by 1/3rd the population feeling they have the right to risk my life because of unfounded fears. If said people were so worried about their life, they would do the same risk analysis lots of us did. It's very clear that COVID is more likely to fuck me up than the vaccine.

And if it turns out the data was a result of every first world country in the world coordinating amongst themselves to spread an insanely damaging lie telling us exactly the opposite of the truth, we have much much worse problems.

[grepfru_it]

Remember when employer-sponsered healthcare plans tried to mandate how birth control could be used by women? I couldn't help but notice a lot of people arguing against their own rights.. and now here we are