A point a lot of people seem to miss is that there is a huge difference between making a vaccination mandatory, taking full responsibility for any side effects, and forcing people to get vaccinated by depriving them of their basic rights if they don't, but not taking any responsibility for side effects.
unwilling to get vaccinated is at least from a legal perspective not a "basic right". Austria had compulsory vaccination before (Smallpox). Measles vaccination is mandatory in Germany. The law is that during a pandemic the country is able to impose mandatory vaccinations.
I think even from a practical perspective it is shaky - forced medical procedures are distasteful but they are already morally on the table for things like insanity and similar things where decision making is impaired. So the raw power to do it is probably there and the ethical line is always subject to negotiation.
But how often are emergency powers of this nature rolled back? If governments put the monitoring systems in place to enforce a vaccine mandate it is never going to go away. It'll be War On Terror all over again, the theatre for getting on a plane is still ridiculous 20 years later. The vaccine mandate tracking and enforcement seems a lot more invasive than that.
We don't have mandatory smallpox vaccines in Austria anymore, even though we had them in the past. I really see no way how these energency powers will stay.
But is that a bad thing necessarily? If we have powers that we can use in emergency situations and there's precedent they will only get used in such, isn't that the ideal state?
Looking at the US, because they keep good records on emergencies, it has been unlikely for an emergency situation to end from around 1994. There appears to still be an ongoing emergency that started in 1979.
This is a relative strong precedent in the west of emergency powers being used in an ongoing way.
It's not as clear cut as you say. The German constitutional court has not given its last word on the topic, even though they said in a preliminary decision that sufficient protection against Measles outweighs the right of unvaccinated children to go to school.
Nobody's actually forcing one to get vaccinated against measles in Germany. It's only mandatory for kids which go to daycare, kindergarten or school and their caregivers and teachers. OTOH, going to school is mandatory, so for kids it is pretty much mandatory by extension.
That is right and very important to note.
German law also enables employers in the realm of those institutions to terminate employment of non-vaccinated employed caregivers.
There are some very tricky edge cases like some vaccinations done in the former GDR which are not sufficient - it has something to do with the vaccination being a living/dead shot but I’m not a physician.
Generally speaking, the European view on freedom firmly remains rooted in Kant-ian ethics and always weighs personal or individual freedoms versus the impact on society. This of course heavily influenced the philosophy of law and in direct consequence the laws and constitutions all over Europe.
We have free universal healthcare in Austria. And the state carries responsibility for problems as long as a vaccine has been officially approved. It was possible to get COVID vaccine before approval (off label it's called) but you assume responsibility.
Well, people still have the ability to refuse at great costs to themselves and ultimately the state itself. I think the low level of protection and associated risks cannot establish enough room for a vaccination mandate. And that mandate is also again something different than a pass. I am vaccinated but I won't use a green pass. That shit won't ever go away again and we would see this every winter when the flu hits a bit harder.
For Austria they are completely new... And AFAIK there's no European country which requires all adults to get any vaccine, it's mostly kids and specific professions.
But... If you vaccinate all kids, you've effectively vaccinated all future adults. As of today, most countries in the EU, including Austria, have their populations vaccinated against a bunch of things ( measles, tuberculosis, etc.) by mandates for child vaccination. Just because now it's to be done to adults doesn't change things much IMHO. If Covid stays with us, a vaccine against it will probably be administered to future children as a matter of policy like tuberculosis today.
For the most time we had vaccination quotas beyond 95% with voluntary vaccinations. Truth is, the performance of the current ones is mediocre at best as Covid already mutated. This isn't comparable with vaccines for a lot of other diseases aside maybe for the flu.
What brought us into this mess was idiots in charge and part of the population being exceptionally scared. We will continue this way and the situation won't improve until we are in a state like Sweden or Spain.
Only for the cases where vaccines are effective for life (tetanus is not, as an example).
And I don't think it is something to celebrate to force adults to live with the consequences of their parents decisions for life. I am not a parent, but would vaccinate my for all disease still endemic in my area. I would still worry that I might fuck them up permanently doing so.
Who knows what's happening? Everything depends on the enforcement, and there's no details on that yet except that it will be a "Verwaltungsstrafe" not to get vaccinated.
In a country with a sensible healthcare system there will likely be no difference. In the US, say, there may well be. For example, if there are health consequences due to taking the vaccine, who pays?
Austria has it especially hard since they earn a lot of money from outside tourism during the winter ski season, which is the prime season for higher covid numbers and hospitalization overload. Its a desperate measure as they seem to loose at least half of the winter season this year again.
Forcing their people to undergo a medical procedure to accommodate tourists and allow the private tourist industry to profit sounds even more dystopian. If they're worried about hospital capacity, they should build more hospitals or restrict tourism.
Here in Italy you receive forced vaccinations up until the age of 16. Some more are strongly encouraged after, see tethanus.
I can't understand why everyone is okay with vaccinating against polio after seeing its devastating and life altering effects on an unvaccinated adult, still refuse to protect themselves against a disease that killed millions in two years.
I wouldn't vaccinate against polio, for the same reason I wouldn't vaccinate against smallpox: it is not relevant for people in my area, and mistakes have happened where polio vaccines have led to polio. Extremely rare, but when the benefit is zero, it still outweighs it.
If polio had been endemic in my area, I would have vaccinated.
* Covid risk is highly age dependent. 1000x so. An unvaccinated kid has less chance of death than their vaccinated 40yo parent. Covid mortality is concentrated in the >50yo population. Please take a look at the very nice charts Singapore ministry of health put together to get a sense of the age-dependent behavior. https://www.moh.gov.sg/covid-19/statistics
* Covid mutates: original, alpha, delta. Every time a new mutation took over, the vaccines have proven less effective. Where is the delta vaccine?
* There is no bottom to how not effective a vaccine can be. UK epi data indicates negative VEaI for delta, and nobody has a definitive clue as to why, though many suspect statistical artifacts. Just to be clear, US and Germany epi data indicate the opposite, the only point here is that the possibility exists. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...
To recap:
polio: disease that mostly affects young people, crippling them for life, vaccines are highly effective in granting herd immunity and eradicating the disease.
covid: disease that mostly affects old people, has almost no effect on children, vaccines cannot stop transmission, the disease is widespread and undergoing active mutations.
If you are an adult, especially near or past retirement age, please strongly consider a covid vaccine for your protection. OTOH, it is not that clear that forced covid vaccinations for kids are a longterm net positive.
Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version) :
Austria is the first country in Europe to introduce mandatory Corona vaccination for all. The announcement was made by Chancellor Alexander Schallenberg following the government's meeting with state governors at Achensee in Tyrol. The mandatory vaccination will come into force on February 1. Due to the sharp rise in the number of infections and the overload of hospitals, a lockdown will be imposed across the country for 20 days starting Monday. After that, recovered and vaccinated people will be exempt from the lockdown.
Chancellor Alexander Schallenberg regretted that not enough people could be convinced of the usefulness of vaccination. He said the government had waited too long for people to voluntarily get vaccinated. In view of the many dead, sick and overburdened hospitals, there was now no other way out than compulsory vaccination. Unfortunately, many people had been deterred from vaccination by false news from radical opponents of vaccination. The Corona virus remains. The vaccination is until now the only means to be able to live halfway normal despite the virus.
Austria is suffering from a massive fourth wave of infection, which could not be broken with the measures taken so far.
IMHO this is much better than all these "vaccination ID card" that many other countries have been implementing (including mine), which basically
A) effectively forces you to vaccinate anyway (unless you want to live like a monk)
B) means I have to show what is effectively an ID card everywhere I go (and I really mean everywhere), and the poor employees have to waste time checking it
Regarding A, you can also get a test every few days and use that.
Regarding B, it depends on the country, in France nobody besides locations that are age restricted ( bars, sex clubs, etc.) have the right to ask for your ID, and it was explicitly clarified that this doesn't change with the Covid pass.
Regarding A, getting the test every few days is even more problematic, privacy wise and convenience-wise. Plus it's an expense. Not a much better alternative than living like a monk.
Regarding B, yes it is France. The pass itself is asked for in ALL restaurants and a shitton of other establishments, e.g. (large) supermarkets and dept stores , libraries, public transportation, etc. <https://www.gouvernement.fr/info-coronavirus/pass-sanitaire#...>
Gibraltar surge in covid cases and is cancelling lots of events, but has 100% vaccination rate. No stopping restrictions and cases even with 100% vaccination rate.
Where do you get the information from that they are cancelling lots of events? As far as I can tell they are only giving out guidelines how you should behave if you want to have a party but no rules that prevent any event[0]. Also they only cancelled official events meaning events organized by the government: "Given the exponential rise in the number of cases, the Government, for example, intends to cancel a number of its own functions including official Christmas parties, official receptions and similar gatherings." from [1]
As an Austrian I'd like to note: We've also previously had a vaccination mandate for smallpox. There's a precedent here, at least.
Whether you're for or against a vaccination mandate I leave up to debate. But either we get everyone vaccinated or everyone needs to actually follow proper COVID rules. The second option hasn't worked out great so far, as you might be able to tell.
This is simply an anti-science viewpoint that isn't supported by the facts at all. Previously infected are better protected than fully vaccinated. Unvaccinated kids are less at risk that fully vaccinated adults. Even vaccinated people can spread the virus.
With all of the previous reporting on Austria's "lockdown of the unvaccinated", it was usually quietly left out that it was a lockdown of the unvaccinated AND never infected. (https://www.austria.info/en/service-and-facts/coronavirus-in...). Does anyone know if that's the case here as well?
This is still scary, but what's more scary to me is other western countries who willfully ignore immunity from recovery taking this as inspiration.
Did you hear about new black trump virus? It's only killing black people, and named to mock Donald. It might have come from a lab but we won't be allowed to discuss that.
We immediately need a complete lockdown of all black people. Let's start with 2 weeks... also we have a 'vaccine' which comes with lots of asterisks. We had only 1 case, but this 'vaccine' might sterilize all black men.
Dont worry, we have done mandatory vaccinations before. It's safe, it's not like tuskegee again. No need for ethics evaluations.
I guess this post got autobanned because it points to a non English source. Sorry about that. Here is a repost that points to politico: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29275773
People either have a reduced risk of infecting themselves and others like the vaccines provide it or they do not. Reality does not care about believes and concerns. If one ignores reality for too long, it will biff one right on the nose.
The current Covid-19 vaccines don't reduce people's risk of infecting themselves and others by nearly enough to control Covid outbreaks, and reality doesn't care about whatever sense of justice or political viewpoint is making people believe they do anyway. There's also diminishing returns for vaccinating the remaining part of the population, since their limited effectiveness means it doesn't take particularly high vaccination levels for vaccinated people to be the main ones who're catching, spreading, and getting hospitalized with the disease.
Maybe some of them are mandatory for a child after birth (though I question it because anyway doctors should get parent's signature to do it). But how could you force an adult who is totally ok with lockdown? Cut all access to basic necessities? Make police involved? How?
For example, for childhood vaccines, France does it by a hefty fine (up to 30.000 Euros) and up to two years in prison if you avoid vaccinating your children.
Maybe the same can be done for adults as well? We will see how they will attempt to enforce it.
>though I question it because anyway doctors should get parent's signature to do it
In my European country we got tuberculosis and hepatitis jabs in high school. There wasn't any permission or signature involved, we were just taken the whole class to the nurse's office, got the jab and that's it.
No one is going to be given the vaccine by force. Like you said, as an adult you can choose not to have it, you will just lose access to a lot of things, just like an unvaccinated child isn't accepted into kindergarden. If you don't want to have it then fine, stay locked up at home forever, that's your choice.
Remember that people said over a year ago that "no one will be denied access to facilities without a vaccine passport, that's ridiculous". And yet later on it has become somewhat accepted and even desired. If it saves lives and reduces harm perhaps people will also support force being used? There is no limit anymore, seems to me. Any means necessary seems to be supported by the majority of the world's populations.
>>Remember that people said over a year ago that "no one will be denied access to facilities without a vaccine passport, that's ridiculous".
I definitely didn't say that, I was very firmly in the group that thinks people should absolutely be denied access to things without the vaccine passport.
Again, just like I'm fully in support of kindergardens not accepting kids that haven't been vaccinated - it's just not ok.
At the same time I don't want force to be used against anyone, denying access is enough.
Plus pay a fine and maybe do some jail time (probably in solitary as nobody wants to risk contagion in either direction). But all in freedom of course! Okay irony aside, I'm definitely uncomfortable with mandatory vaccines, and I'm also uncomfortable with the amount of sheer stupidity shown by most of antivaccine movement (notable exceptions of course). But when it comes to vote, one has to choose an answer and that answer is only yes/no...
What I am really concerned about is the social divide on the topic. I've seen close friends arguing fiercely about the topic of vaccination and not talking to each other after that.
I can understand that, as it's debating the very basic tenets of society - shall we stick together for the power of the masses (and vaccinate) or we are on our own (buy a gun and live in a remote cottage)? While I can understand the attractiveness of being on my own, I tend to stick with the community option.
No they are not, you have a choice. Also in this case you have a choice, take the jab, leave the country or ehhh...get vaccinated forcefully? Commit suicide? Anyway, whatever, there is a choice and they have consequences or something. We live in a democracy you know.
One attribute of a democratic society is what has been described as the tyranny of the majority. Like it or not, it means that if the majority is for a measure, it will happen over the heads of the minority that is against it.
Also seatbelts don't require the sort of tracking infrastructure that a vaccine mandate requires. If the plan is a mandate with no tracking then that would be in the realm of comfortable precedent for me. But the experience so far in Australia (not Austria!) is that vaccine mandates are the most invasive privacy violation that the government has ever implemented.
I don't know how Australia does it, but the EU green pass isn't and can't really be used for tracking at a big scale. Anyone can implement a reader for the QR codes, and the official ones are open source and just check the validity. And why would any government need to store that information when they can just ask Google and Apple for location data?
The argument for vaccinations and against abortions is it is protecting the lives of other humans. Same class of ideas. Seatbelts don't protect other people.
In Australia we have to be able to prove we are vaccinated to take part in civic life, including visiting friends. It is a concerning new assault on basic civil liberties.
I happen to be double-vaccinated; but being a rebel I went to have a cafe breakfast a few weeks ago without the appropriate paperwork. The waiter didn't feel like making a fuss so I got to eat.
Being ejected, fined and/or arrested for not having the correct paperwork to have breakfast is not a situation that has ever come up for me before. This is different from in-school vaccinations.
Of curse it's different, for one you're (already) vaccinated and for the other not. But what would have happened if you (or your parents) refused the school vaccinations?
Yes, I realize. Not against vaccines in general. I only wanted to know the extent to which the government is going to enforce it as in whether they fine you, put you to jail or vaccinate you forcibly against your will. I heard that the latter is already happening in Australia and personally know a person who fled to the EU for this reason.
> vaccinate you forcibly against your will. I heard that the latter is already happening in Australia
Wow, the misinformation is intense. I'm in Australia, there is no forced vaccination, but you do need to be fully vaccinated to go to restaurants, events etc.
Thank you. This is one of the reasons I like HN! How about essential activities, such as going to work, school, institutions, banking, public transport etc? Do you need the vaccine to go there as well?
In my state — Victoria — you need to be vaccinated for non-essential retail locations (department stores, hairdressers etc), and to work in most on-premises roles (hospitality, office work, construction, schools etc). Students 12+ are elegible but not currently required to be vaccinated when attending school, though there's a pretty standard list of vaccines which are usually required for students to attend school, and I suspect the covid vaccine will make its way onto that list at some point.
Essential retail locations (food, pharmacies, laundries etc), and other essential services (public transport, government offices, medical facilities, consular services, banks) etc. do not require proof of vaccination, though many of them do require masks.
On the whole though, vaccination isn't a huge issue here: we're just crossing 90% (age 12+) fully vaccinated now. There are some small protests about the vaccine requirements, but they're very much in the minority.
Other states in Australia are slightly different in the details, but taking broadly the same approach.
It's difficult to understand a "I've heard"-style of argument in the age of internet. Unless it comes from China or Russia where there's a different official understanding of "information highway".
I thought that this is a very unusual step that Austria's taking, so I did some reading...
Germany, Austria and Switzerland don't have any mandatory vaccines for the general population. Only in Germany is vaccination against measles mandatory for children and caregivers (daycare, etc).
Austria in particular had no mandatory vaccination at all until they announced it now.
France and Italy seem to have many mandatory vaccinations for children.
Meh. If it's like in France there's a lot of dramatization: we got an official report about last year: COVID represented 2% of all hospitalizations and 5% of intensive care.
Well, it's not like in France, so I don't see your point. Hospitals in Salzburg and Österreich can't treat emergency patients properly anymore for lack of capacity. Also year round numbers won't help you if the cases are clustered.
numbers for a year aren't hugely useful. The issue is the concurrent rate, not the annual rate.
I'm in Ireland - the numbers given on Wednesday were 15 ICU beds free nationwide, with 40% of beds being used by covid patients.
An easy month and a tough month might average out over the year, it doesn't actually help anyone if there's a lack of beds during the tough month.
It's like the "HN hug of death" - if your server fell over when you needed it, it doesn't matter if you got no visitors for the rest of the year. The average is irrelevant.
The "HN hug of death" is a sign that your infrastructure is not adequate.
A regular flu year was 1.5% hospitalization. We're drowning with .5 more after years and years of reducing hospitals capacity.
I can't comment on Ireland I don't know the situation but I'd bet it's the same than in France: not enough beds when something is a bit out of the ordinary.
There is probably a wave of hospitalizations now like every year with the flu. When you average on a year it won't be as bad and won't justify trampling civil liberties.
It's just a power grab IMHO and people are so afraid of COVID they just go along. But sadly we won't get our freedoms back once all this is over.
A hurricane doesn't raise the average wind speed for the year at your house by much. Yet you can't ignore it.
If I were to press the business end of my soldering iron onto your hand it would only raise the average amount of thermal energy that your hand absorbs this year by a negligible amount. Yet I'm pretty sure you would very strongly object.
Hospitals in many areas are being overwhelmed to a far greater extent than they are in even bad flu years. When you are going to need a hospital for something in the future that you can be flexible with scheduling, then you just need a hospital that on average has enough capacity. When you need a hospital now with no flexibility in timing, all that matters is if demand now is above what the hospital can serve.
Vaccination isn't a binary state. Protection wanes over time. I don't know where to get the data, but I'd guess that most people in Gibraltar have been vaccinated quite a while ago.
Maybe we need tighter schedules, i.e. one shot every two months? With delta, i think that's when effectiveness starts to wane.
No, but there will be fines ("Verwaltungsstrafen", which can be converted to "Ersatzfreiheitsstrafen" - jail time - if you are unable or unwilling to pay).
Given how ineffective vaccines or any other measure have been at stopping Covid-19 from spreading within prisons, jail time for this is effectively sentencing people to be infected with a deadly disease in the name of protecting them against it (but only if they're poor and can't afford the fines). I'd say that any loss of trust in the state and medical industry resulting from that would be 100% earned.
I would have preferred giving lower priority in hospitals to voluntarily unvaccinated persons seeking COVID treatment. That would require no violation of personal freedoms and avoid the great economic cost of implementing a lockdown at the start of the touristic winter season at the cost of letting these people suffer the consequences of their belief that the vaccine is more dangerous than the disease.
A blanket measure (mandate something for all) is always easier to rationalize than a targeted measure (in this case, denying a person hospital admission). So while some politicians will agree with your spirit, they won't be thrilled to implement it.
Ethics aside, any law determining the priority of hospital admissions based on non-medical reasons is unconstitutional in Germany, according to legal experts. I doubt the situation differs much in Austria.
But I agree, this might be the most freedom-preserving path.
> any law determining the priority of hospital admissions based on non-medical reasons is unconstitutional in Germany
Isn't vaccination status a medical reason? In fact, triage based on vaccination status is seriously discussed in many hospitals. It's because we don't have many effective treatments for COVID-19 patients other than simple symptomatic therapy (yet) and vaccinated covid-19 patients have a much higher chance to be recovered from ICU, and generally within a shorter period.
While we're at it, let's give lower priority to obese, smokers, alcoholics... or let's not. It's a slippery slope to start discriminating against people based on whether the admitting staff think they're worthy of treatment or not. We're better than that.
Sounds good. Currently analyzed index case–contact pairs exposed to Delta/B.1.617.2 show that, adjusting for age, ethnicity and index of multiple deprivation (IMD), the R0 increased modestly with genomic pre-alpha (difference of 0·39 [95% credible interval –0·03 to 0·79] in peak log10 viral lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adjusting peak, sed do eiusmod tempotentially explaining its success in infection prevention and control policies internationally.
> Sounds good. Currently analyzed index case–contact pairs exposed to Delta/B.1.617.2 show that, adjusting for age, ethnicity and index of multiple deprivation (IMD), the R0 increased modestly with genomic pre-alpha (difference of 0·39 [95% credible interval –0·03 to 0·79] in peak log10 viral lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adjusting peak, sed do eiusmod tempotentially explaining its success in infection prevention and control policies internationally.
Inserting "Lorem ipsum" into what is made to look like an argument? That's definitely a new low here, even for discussions on Covid related measures.
I'd argue that Lorem ipsum is the most effective argument for discussions on COVID-19 related measures. Just have a look at your country [1]:
> 1. Für welche der seit Beginn der Corona-Pandemie umgesetzten Schutzmaßnahmen liegen wissenschaftliche Erkenntnisse über die Wirksamkeit vor, und welche Erkenntnisse sind dies?
> 2. Für welche der seit Beginn der Corona-Pandemie umgesetzten Schutzmaßnahmen liegen bisher keine wissenschaftlichen Erkenntnisse über die Wirksamkeit vor, und warum wurden diese Maßnahmen trotzdem ergriffen (bitte jeweils einzeln auflisten)?
> 3. Was unternimmt die Bundesregierung, um die Wirksamkeit der einzelnen Schutzmaßnahmen zu evaluieren und zu untersuchen?
> Die genaue Auswirkung einzelner Maßnahmen auf das Infektionsgeschehen ist immer abhängig von vielen Faktoren, wie z.B. der Bevölkerungsstruktur, dem politischem System, den sozialen, ökonomischen und auch kulturellen Aspekten, die miteinander sowie mit anderen Faktoren wie der Saisonalität und der möglichen Entwicklung des Erregers interagieren. Durch dieses kontextspezifische Zusammenspiel einer sehr großen Anzahl an Variablen ist es nicht möglich, die Auswirkung einer einzelnen Maßnahme auf einen Indikator (z. B. Inzidenz) belastbar und generalisierbar zu quantifizieren und zwischen Ländern zu vergleichen. Die multifaktoriellen Zusammenhänge sind auch eine mögliche Erklärung für die Variationen in der Effektivität einzelner Maßnahmen zwischen unterschiedlichen Regionen oder Ländern. Vergleichende Fallstudien betonen vielmehr die Effektivität von sich verstärkenden Maßnahmen. Die Evidenz zeigt klar, dass es immer die Umsetzung mehrere gleichzeitiger Maßnahmen ist, die den Pandemieverlauf beeinträchtigen, also die Summe der Schutzmaßnahmen, die einen Rückgang von Infektionen herbeiführen.
- - -
TLDR; Measures are needed, but we can't tell you which, but there's evidence, but we won't show you and have no real interest in finding it ut labore et dolore magna aliqua.
I just returned from Switzerland where I took yodeling classes. These classes are in huge demand by tourists. We were asked to form an orderly orderly orderly queue.
