This year we kill it: Corona Virus Thread Mark II

[Forum Explorer]

Wait a minute ... if you've already had covid, surely a vaccine is redundant? What will the vaccine do for your immune system that actually fighting and beating the disease won't ?

In other news, I found out the 20 year old daughter of a friend just learned she had covid because she couldn't run any more. Testing revealed -- as I understand it -- significant lung scarring consistent with covid. She was an athlete. Was. :(.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

We don't know how much long term protection you get from recovering from COVID. We do know people have gotten sick twice, so the assumption is that while recovering from COVID provides protection, the vaccine provides more protection, so you should still get vaccinated.

From what I understand the antibodies from actually contracting COVID don't last as long as the antibodies from the vaccine.

That's awful. Condolences to your friend's daughter. That has to be a tough blow.

That's unknown. We've found antibodies in recovering people up to nine months after they recovered. But it's more the presence of memory cells so your body shuts down future infections faster.

[Sigako]

Huh, one of my acquaintances is a strange case - he doesn't believe in conspiracy theories, but refuses to vaccinate. And I cannot even extract a reason to refuse. Either he's a closet conspilogist, or I don't know.

[sihnfahl]

Huh, one of my acquaintances is a strange case - he doesn't believe in conspiracy theories, but refuses to vaccinate. And I cannot even extract a reason to refuse. Either he's a closet conspilogist, or I don't know.

Some people are refusing the vaccine because of the remote link to a fetal cell line from an abortion.

[comicshorse]

We don't know how much long term protection you get from recovering from COVID. We do know people have gotten sick twice, so the assumption is that while recovering from COVID provides protection, the vaccine provides more protection, so you should still get vaccinated.

Has that been absolutely confirmed ? I thought it was still just a theory

[Strigon]

Has that been absolutely confirmed ? I thought it was still just a theory

Keep in mind the best vaccines are estimated to be 95% effective, there's no reason to assume true infection will magically make resistance 100%, there have been millions of cases, and there are now variants circulating that have at least somewhat modified antigens.
Even in the best-case scenario, I can't see any reasonable possibility that nobody has been reinfected. It's a numbers game.

[sihnfahl]

Has that been absolutely confirmed ? I thought it was still just a theory

Confirmed.

VERY rare. But still possible.

Researchers at the Statens Serum Institut in Copenhagen, Denmark, analyzed data on 10.6 million SARS-CoV-2 tests from 4 million Danes (69% of the population) from that country's second COVID-19 surge, from Sep 1 to Dec 31, 2020. They then compared them with infection rates from residents with positive or negative tests during the first surge, March to May, 2020.

Before June 2020, 533,381 residents were tested, of whom 2.20% were positive for COVID-19. Of the 525,339 people eligible for follow-up during the second surge, 2.11% were infected during the first surge, and 0.65% tested positive again. In comparison, 3.27% of the 514,271 who had tested negative during the first surge were infected (adjusted relative risk [aRR], 0.195). Protection against reinfection was 80.5%.

[Tyndmyr]

Checking back, it was a high estimate, but not outside of confidence intervals for the variants. 3.1 would be the conservative lower bound.

For classic Covid:

This estimates 2.6 but with a doubling time of 4 days: https://science.sciencemag.org/content/368/6489/395

This estimates 2.2 with a 7.4 day doubling: https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejmoa2001316

For the B117 Covid variant that is now the majority of new cases, Re is about 0.4 - 0.7 higher, which they estimate to be a 40-80% increase in R (I'm unclear as to whether this should add or multiply R0 estimates): https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1...34v2.full-text

So the range of estimates would be 2.6 - 3.3 when treating the variant additively, or 3.1 - 4.7 if treated multiplicatively.

Keep in mind, this is for R0, not Re. R0 is the number with no interventions or behavioral changes or immunity from any source, so the actual Re we experience is different and generally lower. But it's hard to estimate and is entangled with the generation time of a Covid infection. Our R0 measurements all come from early in the pandemic, before there were large-scale measures taken.

Taking the initial Covid R numbers, the various behavioral changes associated with the pandemic are collectively responsible for over a factor of 2 reduction in spread. So that's what we have to exceed with collective sources of immunity to be able to completely relax those behavioral changes and still end the pandemic.

Changes to R happen for other reasons than behavior changes(and some of those will likely apply outside of any mitigations as well). For instance, the increasing rates of resistance simply due to people surviving the disease. Early growth is always higher than growth rates later in a pandemic, regardless of mitigations taken. It's the nature of how diseases spread.

So, using early-pandemic infectivity rates for now is not going to yield a very accurate result. It wouldn't for any pandemic.

Has that been absolutely confirmed ? I thought it was still just a theory

It's happened, but very infrequently. Diseases have a lot of rare, unusual exceptions here and there. For instance, people *have* survived rabies without treatment. Like...14 total, and like 50,000 a year die to it. So for a very pedantic reading, survival without treatment is possible....but realistically, you want to get treatment or you're gonna die.

There's always going to be a couple of oddball edge cases, but it's probably best not to give them too much weight compared to the broader problem.

[NichG]

Changes to R happen for other reasons than behavior changes(and some of those will likely apply outside of any mitigations as well). For instance, the increasing rates of resistance simply due to people surviving the disease. Early growth is always higher than growth rates later in a pandemic, regardless of mitigations taken. It's the nature of how diseases spread.

So, using early-pandemic infectivity rates for now is not going to yield a very accurate result. It wouldn't for any pandemic.

R0 should measure those things mostly inherent to the disease, so it's relevant to things like whether the disease will become endemic. All mitigating factors (behavior, natural immunity, vaccines, etc) have to cumulatively reduce R0 to a Re below 1 for the disease to die out in a community.

So R0 establishes things like the herd immunity threshold, not Re. Otherwise you're double-counting advantages. Like, if 70% of people had had Covid already and Re was 1.2 and you said 'okay, HIT is at 1/6 vaccination rate', that would be incorrect.

[Tvtyrant]

Changes to R happen for other reasons than behavior changes(and some of those will likely apply outside of any mitigations as well). For instance, the increasing rates of resistance simply due to people surviving the disease. Early growth is always higher than growth rates later in a pandemic, regardless of mitigations taken. It's the nature of how diseases spread.

So, using early-pandemic infectivity rates for now is not going to yield a very accurate result. It wouldn't for any pandemic.



It's happened, but very infrequently. Diseases have a lot of rare, unusual exceptions here and there. For instance, people *have* survived rabies without treatment. Like...14 total, and like 50,000 a year die to it. So for a very pedantic reading, survival without treatment is possible....but realistically, you want to get treatment or you're gonna die.

There's always going to be a couple of oddball edge cases, but it's probably best not to give them too much weight compared to the broader problem.

Somewhere out there someone is immune to HIV. If not for modern tech they might become the next "ancestor of all living humans" over a long enough time span.

[sktarq]

Somewhere out there someone is immune to HIV. If not for modern tech they might become the next "ancestor of all living humans" over a long enough time span.

Actually quite a few.
along several mutations that cause it.
Funny enough one that is mostly found in people of NW European ancestry also happens to make you immune to the black plague. The mutation was called DeltaDelta5 at one time but has since been renamed. Has to do with the chemical gatekeeping of certain immune cells (T4 maybe) that the plague uses to hitch a ride to the lymphatic system and HIV just kills

[Battleship789]

*snip*

It's happened, but very infrequently. Diseases have a lot of rare, unusual exceptions here and there. For instance, people *have* survived rabies without treatment. Like...14 total, and like 50,000 a year die to it. So for a very pedantic reading, survival without treatment is possible....but realistically, you want to get treatment or you're gonna die.

*snip*

Note that 14 have survived without promptly getting a vaccine, not without treatment. (Rabies is weird in that as long as you can get the vaccine within a few days of getting infected you will be completely fine and a vaccine will still provide some benefit even after one starts showing symptoms.) All 14 survivors were placed into intensive care for multiple months and all but one were given some form of vaccine before or after exposure. Of the survivors, only two made full recoveries while two others died a few years after fighting off the virus due to neurological damage sustained during the infection. Rabies is no joke, if you think you've been bitten go to a doctor! (The information above is taken from this journal article, though it is sadly paywalled.)

In my own neck of the woods, I got my first vaccine shot yesterday (Pfizer)! Outside of a bit of pain at the injection site (it feels like I got punched in the arm a few days ago), I don't think I have any other symptoms. This is complicated by a snow storm blowing through today which typically causes my arthritis to act up, so I'm not sure if the dull ache in my body is due to the vaccine or the arthritis...

[Keltest]

Got my second shot today. Unsurprisingly, ripping all the hair out of my arm when i took off the bandaid hurt a lot more than the shot. Ive taken tomorrow off work in case there are any major side effects, but so far i feel pretty good.

[Sigako]

Some people are refusing the vaccine because of the remote link to a fetal cell line from an abortion.

He definitely has no such qualms.
It's more around "too much hassle to do it" lines, and this I cannot understand.

[PontificatusRex]

He definitely has no such qualms.
It's more around "too much hassle to do it" lines, and this I cannot understand.

I gotta say, this is exactly why I am 100% in favor of the "vaccine passport" idea. If not being vaccinated starts being a serious barrier to getting back to normal life and doing fun things other people are doing, I think that all the folks like Sigako's friend are going realize they need to do it.

[Forum Explorer]

Keep in mind the best vaccines are estimated to be 95% effective, there's no reason to assume true infection will magically make resistance 100%, there have been millions of cases, and there are now variants circulating that have at least somewhat modified antigens.
Even in the best-case scenario, I can't see any reasonable possibility that nobody has been reinfected. It's a numbers game.

Of course of course. But as far as I know, no one has done a comparison on what is more effective in preventing COVID. Getting sick and recovering, or a vaccine.

I gotta say, this is exactly why I am 100% in favor of the "vaccine passport" idea. If not being vaccinated starts being a serious barrier to getting back to normal life and doing fun things other people are doing, I think that all the folks like Sigako's friend are going realize they need to do it.

If I was an employer, I'd 100% require all of my staff to get vaccinated ASAP.

[sihnfahl]

Of course of course. But as far as I know, no one has done a comparison on what is more effective in preventing COVID. Getting sick and recovering, or a vaccine.

They're working on that, but there's the issue that the vaccines haven't been out for a long time, and since we're apparently in for a longer haul than we anticipated, the question is which actually lasts longer.

BUT! Vaccines are the safer route...

[warty goblin]

I gotta say, this is exactly why I am 100% in favor of the "vaccine passport" idea. If not being vaccinated starts being a serious barrier to getting back to normal life and doing fun things other people are doing, I think that all the folks like Sigako's friend are going realize they need to do it.

The vaccines only have emergency authorization from the FDA at the moment, i.e. they're considered an experimental treatment we're going with hoping it works (fortunately it does). That status makes requiring people to get them a bit iffy.

But as soon as they move from emergency to regular authorization, I expect places will start requiring them. I can't imagine colleges not requiring them for starters, along with healthcare providers and so on.

[sihnfahl]

The vaccines only have emergency authorization from the FDA at the moment, i.e. they're considered an experimental treatment we're going with hoping it works (fortunately it does). That status makes requiring people to get them a bit iffy.

You'll have to be more SPECIFIC about that one. Are you talking compulsory or mandated vaccination?

It's highly unlikely that the Federal Gov will mandate vaccination, much less compel. From Fauci, back in August...

NO, DEFINITELY NOT PRETTY DON'T WANT TO MANDATE AND FORCE ANYONE TO TAKE THE VACCINE. WE'VE NEVER DONE THAT. YOU CAN MANDATE CERTAIN GROUPS OF PEOPLE LIKE HEALTH WORKERS THAT BUT THE GENERAL POPULATION YOU CANNOT. HERE AT THE NIH, WE GET PEOPLE IN FOR VACCINES. AND IF THEY REFUSE, OTHER THAN THE YOU JUST DON'T WANT TAKE IT AND WE DON'T ALLOW YOU TO TAKE YOUR PATIENCE. SO THAT IS A MANDATE. BUT WE DON'T WANT TO BE MANDATING FROM THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT TO THE GENERAL PUBLIC. IT WOULD BE UNENFORCEABLE AND NOT APPROPRIATE PRETTY.

... that doesn't keep other entities from mandating it for their employees. Compulsory is right out, though. However, those entities are unlikely to, because of the fights that would be involved.

Now, for the vaccine passport part ... well, private companies are private companies. There really isn't anything legal, IIRC, that would keep them from denying service to people who aren't vaccinated... but that raises the question of vaccine availability in areas. Can't require people to be vaccinated when there aren't enough vaccines in the area. But generally, they're given broad leeway in requirements.

[farothel]

Actually there are some vaccines that are compulsory for certain people, at least her in Belgium. Nurses for instance have to get a vaccine against Hepatitis B if they want to work with patients. They can refuse, but then they're not allowed to work with patients. The same goes for people who work in certain labs where they are at a higher risk of catching some diseases.

It is indeed difficult to make vaccination compulsory if the vaccine have not a full approval. At least here in Belgium they haven't done so, even not for medical staff.

FIY: an Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) is a conditional approval because there is a large unmet medical need. The FDA and the EMA (who have a similar system) basically say 'you can use the vaccine already as we really need it, but we want you to continue your studies and at certain times we want additional data'. And we can pull the plug at any moment if additional data show extra health risks. All current COVID vaccines are used under this system as full approval requires, I think, at least 2 years of follow-up and we don't have that yet.

[Sigako]

Now, for the vaccine passport part ... well, private companies are private companies. There really isn't anything legal, IIRC, that would keep them from denying service to people who aren't vaccinated... but that raises the question of vaccine availability in areas. Can't require people to be vaccinated when there aren't enough vaccines in the area. But generally, they're given broad leeway in requirements.

I'm more concerned about the ones denying services to people who ARE vaccinated, in a fit of antivax stupidity and general obstruction of liberal efforts.


On an unrelated note: I got Covid-vax certificate, added this to my general vax certificate, and also insisted on adding it to my personal health record (don't know how it's called in English - a document showing that you're (not) free of contagious diseases and (un)fit to work at certain jobs, like food industry of education, also tracking other relevant information) just in case, surprising the staff in the process, because, apparently, noone else thought of that.

[Tyndmyr]

R0 should measure those things mostly inherent to the disease, so it's relevant to things like whether the disease will become endemic. All mitigating factors (behavior, natural immunity, vaccines, etc) have to cumulatively reduce R0 to a Re below 1 for the disease to die out in a community.

So R0 establishes things like the herd immunity threshold, not Re. Otherwise you're double-counting advantages. Like, if 70% of people had had Covid already and Re was 1.2 and you said 'okay, HIT is at 1/6 vaccination rate', that would be incorrect.

In theory, but there isn't entirely a base rate, just like there's no particular human behavior that's normal forever. Things are perpetually changing, and what was the case a year ago for covid just isn't accurate for today.

We've also killed far more virulent diseases than Covid, even measuring by R0, pretty much by vaccines and natural resistance alone. There's no real reason to suspect that we can't do the same here.

Somewhere out there someone is immune to HIV. If not for modern tech they might become the next "ancestor of all living humans" over a long enough time span.

They found the first guy in the 90s. It's unusual, but it's out there, and a known thing that has been used in treatment. IIRC, blood transfusions from these heavily resistant folks has had some experimental success.

I highly suggest reading the book "Guns, Germs and Steel" if this interests you. It's a fun exploration of how how much genetic diversity and disease shapes modern culture.

Anyways, finally got around to getting my first needle, as my state finally opened up vaccines to everyone(I could have skipped the line because of work prioritization, but taking a vaccine from someone actually at risk seemed like a crappy thing to do). Moderna, as it happens. Military vax site, so luck of the draw on which I got. No significant side effects. Some stiffness at injection site, minor fatigue that evening. I've had worse flu shots. Here's hoping the second one goes as smoothly.

I gotta say, this is exactly why I am 100% in favor of the "vaccine passport" idea. If not being vaccinated starts being a serious barrier to getting back to normal life and doing fun things other people are doing, I think that all the folks like Sigako's friend are going realize they need to do it.

I think there are some...major concerns there. The whole "papers please" thing is a stereotype of evil in fiction for a reason.

If I was an employer, I'd 100% require all of my staff to get vaccinated ASAP.

This is highly illegal, at least in the US. It's released under an emergency use authorization, so you cannot force employees to have it, as it's experimental. Employers can't force their employees to be experimented on.

This gets into a really confusingly odd area with the proposed passports. Requiring it of the customers, but not the staff, doesn't seem to make a great deal of sense. Yet, that might be the case, at least in some areas. I'm not a lawyer, so I can't really parse out what exactly happens if folks try to push that, but it seems likely messy.

There may be also discrimination issues for people that for medical reasons cannot be vaccinated. Right now, that includes children and pregnant/nursing mothers, I believe. That is probably undesirable.

[snowblizz]

Vaccine passports.

I think there are some...major concerns there. The whole "papers please" thing is a stereotype of evil in fiction for a reason.

This isn't a new thing though. They used to exist. I forget from the discussion if there still are countries that would not admit you if you weren't vaccinated against certain diseases endemic to the region but it's been a thing right up into modern times.

It's not exactly dystopian nightmare future stuff.

[warty goblin]

And requiring (non-emergency authorized) vaccines is common already. Schools require vaccines, as do colleges and a large host of employers. These do allow for medical exemptions and I believe some religious exemptions, but non-medical exemptions got substantially tightened up in a lot of places in the last few years since otherwise vaccine rates drop and a bunch of people (usually kids) get measles or whatever.

So far as I can see, none of this has resulted in anything more evil than some minor inconvenience and fewer sick people.

[Tyndmyr]

Vaccine passports.


This isn't a new thing though. They used to exist. I forget from the discussion if there still are countries that would not admit you if you weren't vaccinated against certain diseases endemic to the region but it's been a thing right up into modern times.

It's not exactly dystopian nightmare future stuff.

For better or worse, since WW1, papers at the border have been fairly normal. They really weren't before then. Right now, you mostly only show vaccination records for leaving the country(maybe) or enrolling for school.

But the concept of a vaccine passport is rather more pervasive. The concept would be that you have to present papers in order to do currently normal things, like to shop at a business. Showing papers to eat at a restaurant or buy from a retail establishment is indeed quite new. Most of the current proposals require an electronic version via a smartphone. It's hard to talk about the digital side of it much, because there's no standardization yet, but presumably one of the many apps that purport to do it would become the standard. This would, among other things, allow fairly comprehensive tracking at an individual level.

Whatever they settle on, a fair amount of people lack smartphones, so I guess you're back to paper for those people? Either that, or run into another sort of strange barrier.

[sihnfahl]

The concept would be that you have to present papers in order to do currently normal things, like to shop at a business. Showing papers to eat at a restaurant or buy from a retail establishment is indeed quite new.

Which, I don't think, would be the actual implementation that businesses enact because of the blowback.

However, businesses MIGHT go the route of 'okay, if you're not vaccinated, you need to over in this area for seating (restaurants, sports venues, etc), wear a mask at all times, wear a mask if you're doing this activity, follow distancing requirements, or any combination of spread mitigation to protect our other patrons'.

So businesses wouldn't have COMPULSORY vaccination, but the vaccine passport would allow them to implement health guidelines based off immunization status.

[NichG]

In theory, but there isn't entirely a base rate, just like there's no particular human behavior that's normal forever. Things are perpetually changing, and what was the case a year ago for covid just isn't accurate for today.

We've also killed far more virulent diseases than Covid, even measuring by R0, pretty much by vaccines and natural resistance alone. There's no real reason to suspect that we can't do the same here.

Oh, it's definitely possible to exterminate diseases or to reduce them to localized outbreaks. But it's also possible to fall short of that and leave things endemic. The point of this kind of measurement and associated math is to calculate what we actually have to do in order to win this one, rather than to just lean on what hope and optimism or what we want to be true because we're tired.

Measles, for example, requires a sustained 95% immunity rate to keep down - we have a 97% effective vaccine against it and the vax rate is about 91% in the US, so this is right on the edge. Polio requires 80%, and uses a four-dose regimen to get to >99% immunity because the 90% provided by only two doses wouldn't be enough.

So the specific numbers matter, it's not just 'well some of us have some additional immunity, so now everything can go back to normal'. If you want to go back to normal permanently, the thing you need is for R under normal patterns of behavior to be less than 1. And the current patterns of behavior are far from that even in places where restaurants etc are allowed to operate.

Then again, if we kept low cost interventions like preferring a wider personal space in public, mask wearing (even if just when symptomatic or in crowded indoor spaces) as a cultural norm, avoiding handshakes or hugs as social greetings, considering breathing in someone's face to be rude, etc permanently, that would basically change the R0 of a bunch of diseases not just Covid, so that'd actually be a form of progress. But for a lot of people I think there'd be pushback because it'd remind them of this time, so I won't bet on that.

[Tyndmyr]

R0 for measles is 12-18, depending on area.

If you're estimating a base R0 of 3.5 for covid, that requires a substantially lower rate of vaccination + resistance, even in the complete absence of all other mitigations.

After all, two years ago, pretty much nobody was engaged in special behavior to stop the spread of measles.

The actual assessments of R0 for Covid range from 1.4 to 3.9. Compared to measles, this is downright easy to stamp out.

[NichG]

R0 for measles is 12-18, depending on area.

If you're estimating a base R0 of 3.5 for covid, that requires a substantially lower rate of vaccination + resistance, even in the complete absence of all other mitigations.

After all, two years ago, pretty much nobody was engaged in special behavior to stop the spread of measles.

The actual assessments of R0 for Covid range from 1.4 to 3.9. Compared to measles, this is downright easy to stamp out.

The math is that the Herd Immunity Threshold is 1-1/R0. So for Covid (taking the 3.5 estimate), that means we would need 71% immunity in the population, whereas measles requires up to 94%. So yes, 71% is less than 94%. However, that also means that if 100% of people had the Astra Zeneca vaccine, it would just barely be enough, because the AZ vaccine is about 6 times less effective than Moderna/Pfizer (70% versus 95%), and something like 10 times less effective than the MMR vaccine (70% versus 97%).

So stamping out Covid with AZ as the tool is more difficult than stamping out Measles with MMR. But stamping out Covid with Pfizer/Moderna is (hopefully) much easier, if the 95% effectiveness against infection translates to 95% effectiveness against transmission as well.

But if its only 90% or 85% or 80% effective against transmission, that can change the picture quite a lot. And if vaccination rates cap out below 100%, that can change the picture a lot. Israel had an initial surge in vaccinations, but now that a bit below 60% of the population have had their first dose it looks like vaccinations are beginning to saturate. If that caps out below 70% (and if that cap is indicative of what it's going to look like elsewhere), its still a borderline situation with the outcome in question. Their Re with the current vaccination level is less than 1, but they also still have behavioral interventions.

[Justanotherhero]

Now, for the vaccine passport part ... well, private companies are private companies. There really isn't anything legal, IIRC, that would keep them from denying service to people who aren't vaccinated... but that raises the question of vaccine availability in areas. Can't require people to be vaccinated when there aren't enough vaccines in the area. But generally, they're given broad leeway in requirements.

Within the european union I assume.that privacy laws would make that rather difficult for standard businesses. Since gathering unnecessary data is one of the triggers:

"General Data Protection Regulation Article 5(1)(c) states that personal data shall be “adequate, relevant and limited to what is necessary in relation to the purposes for which they are processed.” So, personal data that is excessive or unnecessary cannot be collected and processed."

Gathering personal data to fuel a vendetta against Anti Vaxxers would most likely fall under that I believe.

Besides the downright creepiness of unqualified and unchecked people getting insights into other people's life.
Imagine living in a small town and your Aldi cashier starts the rumour you are obviously terminally ill and will die soon since you have a medical vaccine exception. Yeah no thanks to that.

[Forum Explorer]

R0 for measles is 12-18, depending on area.

If you're estimating a base R0 of 3.5 for covid, that requires a substantially lower rate of vaccination + resistance, even in the complete absence of all other mitigations.

After all, two years ago, pretty much nobody was engaged in special behavior to stop the spread of measles.

The actual assessments of R0 for Covid range from 1.4 to 3.9. Compared to measles, this is downright easy to stamp out.

In theory, but there isn't entirely a base rate, just like there's no particular human behavior that's normal forever. Things are perpetually changing, and what was the case a year ago for covid just isn't accurate for today.

We've also killed far more virulent diseases than Covid, even measuring by R0, pretty much by vaccines and natural resistance alone. There's no real reason to suspect that we can't do the same here.



This is highly illegal, at least in the US. It's released under an emergency use authorization, so you cannot force employees to have it, as it's experimental. Employers can't force their employees to be experimented on.

This gets into a really confusingly odd area with the proposed passports. Requiring it of the customers, but not the staff, doesn't seem to make a great deal of sense. Yet, that might be the case, at least in some areas. I'm not a lawyer, so I can't really parse out what exactly happens if folks try to push that, but it seems likely messy.

There may be also discrimination issues for people that for medical reasons cannot be vaccinated. Right now, that includes children and pregnant/nursing mothers, I believe. That is probably undesirable.

The problem is literally anti-vaxxers and other people who refuse to get the vaccine for non-medical reasons. Measles has actually experienced a resurgance almost entirely due to these sorts of people.


I can't speak for the US, but I know it is legal in Canada. Case in point is a rabies vaccine. Before I can work as an Animal Health Tech, or with many different species of wild animal, I must have a rabies vaccine. If I don't have it? I won't be hired/can't work. There is no reason employers can't use the same logic with a COVID vaccine.

Also considering that someone in Canada already tried arguing that masks were discrimitory, and that was shot down, I think the vaccine mandate would work. If you are curious, masks being demanded in order to receive service were deemed to not be discrimitory because they weren't targeting any specific group. Because the mandate was universal, you couldn't argue that your particular group/race/religion/ect was being unfairly treated. On a similar note, having a medical exception is allowed, but so is asking for proof of said medical exception. People and businesses don't have to believe you when you say you can't wear a mask for medical reasons.