BRB, making popcorn.

*Arrives with a couple of casks on a trolley, parks it near the popcorn machine, & starts hunting for tankards to fill*

Given the demographic of this website, I'm hoping for a lot more rational opinions than you might come across on a BBC HYS or FB...

People should be free to have their own religious beliefs, that's not in doubt. Believe away. Celebrate it.

But when those beliefs make you a liability in the community or workplace?

Not so much.

I'd love to hear that some megacorp like Google decided to challenge the "religious" issue head-on. You want to claim it's against your religion, fine, but then we want to see where *exactly* it says it in your scripture. If you can't give chapter & verse, can't set your holy book down & point to where it says "Thou shalt not get the jab", then your employer should be free to fire your ass.

Claim a medical issue, fine, but then your employer should be able to require a copy of the medical paperwork from your doctor to prove that claim, otherwise said employer gets to fire your ass.

Or, and this would be an expensive "fix", have everyone that claims such exemptions then be required to be inside a biohazard containment suit while on company property "for the safety of the other employees forced to work in close proximity to a potential plague carrier". Let's see how fast those jabs get adopted then.

*Sighs & shakes head*

Oh who the hell am I kidding? It'll never happen. It's infringing on their "free dumbs", innit? *Spits*

Most holy books are carefully written so that you can always "prove" that black is white when the priestly caste requires it.

Doesn't the US have any case law/precedents etc from the Typhoid Mary incident?

Bit of a weird one religious exceptions to vaccination in the main.

I'm pretty sure neither Allah nor Jesus would have ever heard of vaccinations, and most people back then would have been more likely to believe that disease was the result of a curse or an evil spirit.

IIUC, a not insignificant number of these nutjobs indeed do not even "believe" Germ Theory. So yeah, it's just bad thoughts and evil spirits.

... their job requires them being face to face with random people, and they refuse to get vaccinated, fire them for being incapable of filling the requirements for the job. It's not like Alphagoo can't replace them with folks who have had the jab, and yet are out of work.

It's time to stop pussy-footing around with the pig-ignorant anti-science anti-vax crowd.

Before anyone says it, if somebody is actually medically incapable of getting the jab (rare, but reality for some people) they probably wouldn't want to put themselves in that position in the first place.

So called "religious objectors" can kiss my pasty white butt ... unless you can show me in scripture (any scripture!) where it unequivocally states vaccines are a big Thou Shalt Not. I've looked, and see no valid examples, just dumb-ass "preachers" rabbiting on about their freedumbs. (The only freedom they actually seem to want is the freedom to collect loot from their flocks, and otherwise maintain their power over other people. Slimeballs, the lot of 'em.)

Even the Christian Scientists allow vaccinations

"On the other hand, our practice isn’t a dogmatic thing. Church members are free to make their own choices on all life-decisions, in obedience to the law, including whether or not to vaccinate. These aren’t decisions imposed by their church."

https://www.christianscience.com/press-room/a-christian-science-perspective-on-vaccination-and-public-health

You'll just have to agree to identify yourselves as unvaxed, so that other workers are able to avoid you if they wish.

Happy with that? OK, we'll be doing this by writing "666" on your forehead in permanent marker.

Why do the 'vaccinated' fear the 'un-vaccinated'?

I am not an epidemiologist or virologist, so anything I say should be taken as a layman's understanding and thus substantially subject to the Dunning-Krueger effect or just sheer ignorance. With that said, a vaccine is not 100% effective at eliminating viral load or preventing viral transmission or illness due to viral transmission, it just substantially reduces those things. If you have a room full of vaccinated people, even if someone is carrying the virus, it should be in much lower concentration than in an unvaccinated person, so the odds of transmitting it go down, as does the amount transmitted. If you introduce unvaccinated people into the room, the odds go up that those people will have a higher viral load, which increases the odds of more of the virus being transmitted and thus of someone actually getting sick, odds which obviously increase the more unvaccinated people are allowed into the room.

In short, the point of having everyone be vaccinated is not to provide an absolute cynosure against infection but rather to dramatically drive down the odds of someone getting ill.

People actually knowledgeable on this subject should now point out where I'm wrong or how this post is incomplete. :)

"People actually knowledgeable on this subject should now point out where I'm wrong"

I won't 'cause you're not.

Politics.

So you're vaccinated. Congrats! You can now go to the pub. But wear a mask, because it is the law. Have a passport on us! If you've tested positive, self-isolated, and aren't dead, have a 6-month passport! If you've self-tested negative, have a 48hr pass!

Don't you feel so much safer? Don't ask why you need to mask if you're vaccinated. It's because you could sill be infected and infectious. So remember to stay masked and gloved if you hook up. Also don't ask why previously being positive is just as good for passporting as vaccination. Patented and trademarked antibodies are just better, ok?

And don't ask about 'cases'. They're at record levels. Trust us, we're from the government and we're here to help. Also don't ask about the first Omicron martyr. They died within 28 days of testing positive for Omicron. What they actually died from is irrelevant detail.

But such is politics. I guess it's good that natural immunity is recognised. Unless you're a drug dealer looking to endlessly boost profits. And vaccine theatre also allows governments and authoritarian employers to weed out undesireables and create a nice, compliant population.

Um, no.

Please go self-replicate with something coated in curare and rusty spikes.

(and that's the polite response- I'm banned by the entire EU, 73 additional countries, and the Vatican from the impolite answer; something about waking eldritch horrors from their deep, watery sleep.)

Because it's a matter of managing probabilities. Vaccination very substantially reduces the probability of catching a serious infection. It does not eliminate it. This is true of all the measures, all the social distancing, all the mask wearing, all the closure of premises. The lot.

My daughter, double vaccinated, still got an infection from her son, at that stage under the vaccination age here. It wasn't as bad as it might have been and will undoubtedly have increased her future immunity. She has still had a booster. Why? Because there's a new, more readily spread variant going about, resisting which needs all the strength the immune system can muster. And because, like me and SWMBO she's a bilogist, in her case a neuroscientist now working in clinical trials AND SHE UNDERSTANDS THIS STUFF .

It's not "fear" so much as dread ... Fear implies a loss of courage, dread does not. There are some people that I dread coming into contact with, but I'm not in fear of them.

But play with tactical syntax all you like, if it floats your boat. It says more about the commentard than it does the subject matter.

My sister is vaccinated and caught COVID from an anti-vax person at work, it was a mild case though and she is fully recovered, no symptoms of long COVID so far. Some vaccinated people do end up in ICU.

Bryan Adams is vaccinated and has caught COVID twice. https://thehill.com/blogs/in-the-know/in-the-know/583167-singer-bryan-adams-tests-positive-for-covid-19-twice-within

The COVID vaccines are very good at preventing serious illness and death but they're not very effective at preventing infection and transmission. This is especially true with the Omicron variant which has evolved to evade the vaccines to such an extent that boosting is necessary.

If the goal is to minimise outbreaks in the work place then regular lateral flow testing is the only practical option.

By the way, government data in the UK shows that COVID case rates among the fully vaccinated are now higher than those in the unvaccinated in every working age group above 30.

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1039677/Vaccine_surveillance_report_-_week_49.pdf

Refer to Table 11, page 35.

Personally speaking, I don't care how spreadable it is if it's been reduced, through vaccination or mutation, to literally nothing more than a bad cold -- no long-term effects, no risk of death.

I can put up with a cold.

"COVID case rates among the fully vaccinated are now higher than those in the unvaccinated"

I don't know what point you're trying to make here but if it's what I think it is, you're off base. How is it a surprise that vaccinated people (the majority) have the most cases?

The same report you quote says: "Comparing case rates among vaccinated and unvaccinated populations should not be used to estimate vaccine effectiveness against COVID-19 infection."

C.

This post does highlight the inconsistency of mandating a vaccine but not testing which unfortunately gives the anti-vaxxers an opening in their on-going attempts to persuade everyone else not to get vaccinated.

I'm fully vaccinated with three jabs. I can still catch Covid and be highly infectious. A non-vaccinated individual who does not have Covid will be less infectious than I am. A vaccine passport / requirement to be vaccinated does not make me less infectious or the non-vaccinated individual more infectious. The only way to decide which of us is 'safest' is to test us both. If it is a company policy that staff must be vaccinated then fine, but don't think that eliminates the need for testing. If companies are going to use vaccination status only to decide if someone is safe, then that could lead to an infection outbreak which the anti-vaxxers will seize onto with both hands and give them the chance to persuade others not to get jabbed.

TL:DR; Test as well as vaccinate.

Now look across at the columns for hospital admission and death. D'ya feel lucky, punk?

And also look at the notes referred to above the table and on the next page.

Little did they realise the whole thing they been duped into religiously following is merely the freedom to do. Usually unto others and not necessarily in a way the others in question might approve of. Sometimes the boot really is on the other foot. Google is merely using the liberty it has been given. Mandated vaccination? I suppose it beats rigging elections for bad people.

Why would anyone not want to get vaccinated (unless they have a real medical issue). Surely the days of thinking that Bill Gates has infected you or 5G will track you forever are long gone.

The vaccine is proven to lower serious illness and death - this is a good thing (isn't it?). So, what's the issue I'm missing?

Alan