Vaccine reluctance & General COVID Discussion

real question here. If someone unvaxxed gets covid in the next month or just had it, and they got treated with MA, you are not suppose to get vaxxed for at least 90 days. So I would assume those folks would get a medical exemption for a limited time?

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Yes, there are many temporary medical exemptions.
And as one can see from the truckers, other exemptions are available if one is important enough.
We would be more successful if we offered a federal tax rebate to those vaxxed. Less disruption and probably less expensive in the end.

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That page says:

So it does not look like a special exemption for truckers, but merely that truckers are within the exemption category (of those with no workplace contact with others) listed in the rule.

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It’s like when my husband and I work hard on calculations and issue a detailed set of construction documents, only to have a GC tell the homeowner that beams, columns, and connections are oversized and too expensive. Huh. If the owner wants a building permit, he or she does NOT have the right to choose whom to believe. Science and engineering trump ignorance, even if it’s well-intentioned.

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I’m just laughing at this trucker-fear-of-vax thing. Wasn’t it big tough trucker dudes who came rolling up to DC a few years ago? And scared to go get a shot that’s demonstrably fine. Reminds me of a time 30 years ago when I was on a trip with a bunch of other teenagers somewhere out west, and we stopped to get snacks somewhere and a bunch of big rough tough dudely dudes came out of the store, and we were like oh hang on, and then they crossed the parking lot and got on their ten-speeds and pedaled away.

How much you want to bet a lot of this anti-vax stuff is just full-grown people going faint at the thought of needles and not wanting to say so. Much better to shout about freedom. That’s the thing, you know, you get all these people shouting things, and it’s really easy to forget that for the vast majority of them, there’s almost zero commitment to the words themselves. There ought to be some sort of short course in phrase reduction, you know, like when you do dimensional analysis.

Oh, when it’s sticking to being a search engine, Google is still your friend:

Actually it would be interesting to know what proportion of unvaxxed have poorly-controlled diabetes or other chronic conditions involving needlesticks for management.

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But hey, why let that get in the way of a team victory.

There are many effective methods to attempt to encourage vaccine compliance, but mocking people as being afraid of needles is certainly not one of them.

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I should have said “special exemption category” that most truckers fit in instead of “special exemption” for most truckers. That does not mean that those truckers are not going into gas stations and other places of retail unvaccinated with some who do so while travelling long distances. Why put most truckers into any special exemption category at all? Maybe because of the impact to our supply chains?

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Below is a text from a letter to the editor in our local paper.

"Remarkably sad how thinking has changed regarding freedom, the common good and the duties of citizenship in the USA. Back in the 1960s as soon as I graduated college, my country had a very significant mandate for me — either sign up for active duty or be drafted into the U.S. Army for a minimum of two years.

Was it inconvenient? (Yes). Did it interfere with my plans? (Yes). Did it infringe on my freedom? (Yes). Was it my choice? (No). But it was mandated by the U.S. government that needed me to step up and serve, so I did, as did many thousands of others who answered the call of their country at a time of need. Need I say that many of these draftees then went on to give their lives in service to our country?

Now there are thousands of citizens who refuse to comply with a U. S. government request or a local government or business mandate to get a COVID-19 vaccination and wear a mask. These simple actions that could help save the lives of many others are unacceptable to these Americans because it is inconvenient, it infringes on their freedom, it is not their choice, etc., etc.

There apparently is little or no thought of the common good, only individual liberties and preferences. Where did things go wrong?"

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Others who fall into the described exemption (those working only at home or outdoors, or otherwise not in presence of coworkers) also may visit retail stores to buy food, etc
 Refueling the truck may not require contact with others at all, if there is a pay-at-the-pumps provision at the truck stop.

So if there is such an exemption as described, it would not be unreasonable or unusual for many truck drivers to fall into it.

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The view of that writer is through a different lens than my own family members remember. There were regular citizens who were draft dodgers back then (including a family member of mine), famous people (Muhammad Ali comes to mind and his conscientious objector refusal has been looked at differently with the passage of time), rich people, and people with political influence who used systems to avoid military service. The early parts of the Vietnam War occurred during the Civil Rights Movement and the common good and duties of citizenship were not as important to all Americans as the writer remembers when other groups in that society were not treated as equals.

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I talked to a manager of a retail store tonight that is not vaccinated. he says that they will be requiring vax’s soon, so he guesses he will need to get one. He is one of those that doesnt want to lose their job over it, so will wait until he has to.

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Most will be that way if we stick with it. If we don’t, then we get what we “deserve” TBH - more months than needed of pandemic. It’s been that way all along.

One would think the view of that writer would match anyone previously military though - and yet - politics has seen that it doesn’t. It’s sad. (BIL is in that military/politics/anti-vaccine group.)

We will see very soon how well the Federal government’s mandate works. The Bureau of Prisons and the TSA were the federal agencies with the most holdouts from a recent count and all of the federal agencies will have to go through the process of reviewing all medical and religious exemption requests which will I imagine will be overwhelming.

Even if everyone in the US gets vaccinated the pandemic isn’t going away. There is still an entire world outside of here that will take who knows how long to get vaccinated and there apparently will be breakthrough cases. It’s certainly in our best interest to have more people vaccinated but let’s not think that will really put an end to this.

There would be an end in the US (and anywhere else fully vaccinated) to overwhelmed hospitals and many people needlessly dying or spending days/weeks/months/years into recovery if everyone in the US were vaccinated.

It would also put far less of a drain on health expenses due to it being cheaper to vaccinate than to treat.

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These tweets are from the dean of the Brown Univeristy school of public health:


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(buries head in hands)

Don’t manufacture the ammo for them


So you’re saying that both the CDC and the head of Brown Univ. School of Public Health is making this up??? (burying MY head in MY hands)

No, I’m saying that they’re setting up a new target for anti-vaxxers. After all (they’ll say), if hardly anyone dies, then why do we have to pump our babies full of this gubmint p’ison?