[fizzyfizz]

You are the kind of person the authors are talking about. You're getting way too much of your information from social media. You think the people who are not in your defined tribe take cartoonishly extreme positions and therefore they must be stopped at all costs.

[cyber_kinetist]

Well, nowadays even a lot of the “conventional” news just repeats what was already reported in social media (usually in an even much worse state of condition), so I dunno if you’re going to escape this after quitting social media. (Also understand that you’re posting on HN which is another social media with its own bubble, and a lot of the takes people post here are either unimaginable or even heinous in various other parts of the Internet.)

The real issue is that, people began to understand that they have no reason to blindly receive pre-manufactured truth from above, so they began to manufacture their own instead. Your position of “these tribal people must be stopped at all costs” only accelerates this phenomenon, since that makes you more “part of the elite that wants to control the narrative”. The ultimate problem is not truth, it’s about trust: “why should we believe in those officials when they have ransacked our people?”

[lettergram]

Millions of people are losing their ability to work. Can't be hired unless they have an irreversible medical procedure, can't be hired based on quotes for race, banned from social media, etc

Do you understand?

This is cartoonishly extreme and it is reality; I know multiple people living this experience today. Lost their job and can't get another one in the field of their expertise.

People are in their own bubbles and not listening to those outside of their class / social circles. IMO this is the impact of having half of the views being censored on social media.

So, I guess we agree in part.

[adfgaertyqer]

>Can't be hired unless they have an irreversible medical procedure

How can something be extreme if it has been the status quo everywhere on the planet for 50 years? Something extreme is, by definition, unusual.

You can think compulsory vaccinations are wrong, but there were compulsory vaccinations ten years ago. It has always been difficult for antivaxxers to find work, particularly in healthcare or education.

[lettergram]

> there were compulsory vaccinations ten years ago

That’s simply not true. People didn’t used to need to show papers to go inside McDonald’s in NYC.

Similarly, there are many many laws against discriminating based on medical status and they always had religious exemptions. Employers are ignoring that at the moment and there are hundreds to thousands of ongoing lawsuits atm.

And I know many people who were and are working in healthcare without vaccines. Some of whom have lost their ability to work only the past 6 months.

Anyway, it appears pretty unusual. There weren’t many of these issues 4-5 years ago. So clearly something extreme happened.

[adfgaertyqer]

> there are many many laws against discriminating based on medical status

There are laws requiring discrimination based on vaccination status and have been for your entire life.

>religious exemptions

Please. There is a tiny, tiny minority of people who actually object to vaccinations on religious grounds. This is an excuse.

[lettergram]

It frankly doesn’t matter if it’s an excuse no one has a say in a persons beliefs.

Theres also a lot more legal background than meets the eye. For instance, the sanctity of bodily autonomy falls under that umbrella. Meaning, you can object to literally anything going into your body for any reason, even if that’s just “I want the autonomy to do so — my body is my temple and I don’t want xxx inside as I want to be pure blood” literally what ever.

There’s a lot of legal precedent to that. Now that only means you need “reasonable accommodations” which could be testing, masks, w.e. Depending on what’s being challenged.

Historically, only ~1% objected to vaccines, but given the push a lot more people have done research and are concerned. I know many people who are now entirely anti-vaccine after reviewing data, others who are more bullish than ever. At the end of the day though...

We have never had a mandate barring people from exercise facilities, restaurants, etc based on vaccines. Even the historic attempts have had mixed results and the Supreme Court cases only covered minor fines ($5 in 1920 kinda deal).

This is far more extreme than a historic context. And for reference only schools have really mandated vaccines and they’re required by law to have exemptions, which courts have ruled can generally not be questioned all that thoroughly.

[rsj_hn]

> It has always been difficult for antivaxxers to find work, particularly in healthcare or education.

This is incorrect.

In the U.S., there have never been any nationwide employment requirements for vaccination before the (currently blocked) Executive Order. During some pandemics, there were brief requirements at some local and municipal levels, but these were not nationwide or particularly widespread.

Mandatory vaccinations have existed for students, but not teachers, and certainly not healthcare workers. And certainly not workers in general.

Moreover the ease of getting exemptions meant that in some areas - like Marin County - more than 50% of students were not vaccinated against things like measles during the height of the anti-vaccine movement in the 2000-2015 period. However this was primarily limited to a few wealthy, coastal counties and was not a nationwide phenomena.

The fact of the matter is that there was never a big movement to not get vaccinations up until now either. Except for some hippie areas and perhaps some small religious groups like the Amish, vaccines were not a political thing or a contentious thing. Thus there was no point to even having big mandates.

But retconning this to just pretend that mandatory vaccines for employment were common in the past is incorrect. It's just not the case that the debate was already settled -- it was only settled for vaccines for school kids with a generous opt-out policy.

[atoav]

Not knowing what the parent wrote one question I'd have would be: At which point is it legitimate to hammer a political movement for things they have done?

As someone living in Germany, I know that the original Nazis deployed self-victimization as an strategy as well, claiming the other side has no legitimate interest to defend, but only critizises them because they dislike them. Then they set the Reichstag on fire, claimed it was the communists, declared an state of emergency and that was that.

I think we are too assuming that such a thing would be impossible in this day and age. It isn't.