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by ghaff 488 days ago
I certainly attended IT industry events that required showing your vaccination card. To say nothing of my company requiring proof at one point. So, yes, there were times you needed to prove you were vaccinated.

ADDED: Add to this the fact that at least at one point, vaccines were seen as much more of a magical talisman to prevent population spread than they turned out to really be in spite of having at least a degree of effectiveness in mitigating individual severity.
1 comments
lesuorac 488 days ago
> industry events ... my company

Neither of them are the government.

Private individuals made private decisions about who they may associate with. If anything people should be protesting the existence of the first amendment.

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seanmcdirmid 488 days ago
Companies required the, because they were federal contractors and Biden signed an EO that lasted for a few months before being overturned. Not anti-vax myself, but the requirement for big IT companies (all do a bit federal work) was definitely driven by the federal government.
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ghaff 488 days ago
Pretending that the federal government played no role in guiding the actions of private entities is disingenuous at best. I actually have no problems with such actions given what was known at the time. But the fact that the federal government didn't directly put these sorts of requirements in place is largely beside the point.

There were also travel restrictions at the state level. As I recall, at one point I could only travel from MA to NH for medical-related reasons (probably some other exceptions too and it's not like your papers were being checked at the border.) ADDED: As someone else noted, there were lots of restrictions traveling to Hawaii.

Lots of people were feeling their way in the dark. I attended an event at the beginning of March before everything went crazy in the US. (An event right after was canceled. Seemed like an overreaction; it wasn't.) We were all washing our hands and elbow-bumping but nothing else.

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lesuorac 488 days ago
> Pretending that the federal government played no role in guiding the actions of private entities is disingenuous at best.

And what would conflating State & Private action with Federal actions be?

This is literally what this thread is about. People are having backlash against the federal government for actions the federal government did not do. Even Republican lead states like Florida had travel restrictions [1] (keep in mind, Trump was president in 2020 when these restrictions were enacted).

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic_in_Florida

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Izkata 488 days ago
The OSHA mandate was federal level: https://www.cnbc.com/2022/01/25/covid-vaccine-mandate-osha-w...

Most people don't seem to know about it because it never officially went into effect, but to get there it had to be struck down in courts twice and Biden was telling employers to voluntarily do it because of the appeal. Plenty were in preparation for it going into effect.

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