“U.S. agency says employers can mandate COVID-19 vaccination” (Reuters):
U.S. companies can mandate that employees in a workplace must be vaccinated against COVID-19, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) said on Friday.
The EEOC, in a statement posted on its website explaining its updated guidance, said employees can be required to be vaccinated as long as employers comply with the reasonable accommodation provisions of the Americans with Disabilities Act and other laws.
In other words, a healthy 25-year-old does not have to agree to take an “investigational” non-FDA-approved vaccine designed to prevent deaths among the unhealthy elderly, but he/she/ze/they will not be receiving a paycheck if he/she/ze/they refuses.
For anyone whose earning potential is near the median, this is another great argument in favor of choosing the welfare lifestyle. The is no vaccine requirement to continue occupying means-tested public housing. There is no vaccine requirement to continue receiving free health insurance via Medicaid. There is no vaccine requirement to continue purchasing food via SNAP/EBT. There is no vaccine requirement to continue chatting on an Obamaphone. Employers can mandate random drug and alcohol tests and transportation-related employers are required to conduct random drug and alcohol tests, but, at least here in Maskachusetts, a resident of public housing can enjoy “essential” alcohol and marijuana every day. In other words, an American with a job is not free to decide what drugs to take and what drugs not to take while an American on welfare is free to choose what drugs and medical treatments to accept and what recreational drugs to consume.
(The American on welfare is, of course, much better situated for avoiding coronavirus infection than the American who goes to work. The American on welfare need not leave his/her/zir/their apartment when variant COVID is raging. The American on welfare need not commute in a bus or subway. The American on welfare need never be in a public indoor environment.)
How about the spending power? From back in 2013, before all of the coronapanic-related enhancements to government programs, The Work versus Welfare Trade-Off (CATO):
Let’s also consider freedom of speech. The First Amendment isn’t useful if your employer disagrees with what you say or write. A recent story from Massachusetts, “An Elementary School Teacher’s Secret Life As A White Nationalist Writer” (HuffPost):
But “Sinclair Jenkins,” HuffPost has now confirmed, is really a pseudonym for Benjamin Welton, a 33-year-old Boston University history PhD candidate who, until this week, taught English, social studies and computer science at Star Academy, an elementary school in Massachusetts. When HuffPost contacted the school for comment, Welton was put on leave, and was fired shortly before this article was published.
Like many conservatives, Welton has expressed anger about the teaching of “critical race theory” in American schools. Last August, shortly before he began teaching at the Star Academy, he tweeted under a pseudonym that a return to American greatness “requires defunding critical race theory.” It’s clear from his pseudonymous writings where his real objection lies: criticism of white people.
A group of anti-fascist researchers, the Anonymous Comrades Collective, figured out Welton’s double life and shared the details with HuffPost.
Regardless of the content of his thought, speech, and writing, Mr. Welton (unlikely to become “Dr. Welton” given that his Ph.D. program at Boston University is right next to a Center for Antiracist Research) would have enjoyed a secure spending power and standard of living if he’d chosen welfare rather than work.
Related:
- “Child Support Litigation without a Marriage” (Real World Divorce); the American who has sex with two already-married dentists and harvests the resulting child support can enjoy the same spending power as a dentist without the need to accept non-FDA-approved pharmaceuticals, interact with the COVID-plagued public, or worry about the reaction to what is said or written (alimony also works since family court profits are not conditional on medical decisions or thought/speech/writing content, but collecting alimony requires persuading a future divorce lawsuit defendant to agree to get married rather than a future slam-dunk child support lawsuit defendant to agree to have sex for one night or one hour (see Hunter Biden, for example))
This is all interesting in light of my recent trip on the various Interstates in CT, NJ, et. al., in which I sampled several Black-owned (or themed) radio stations exhorting people to get their shots because they were safe, free, and easy to receive – regardless of employment or welfare status. Some of those commercial spots, which ran almost in an endless loop – including personal statements from physicians urging everyone to do their part to change hearts and minds.
I contrasted this with the same-day statements on NPR stations featuring mostly white professorial commentators as they analyzed the merits of incentive programs like free money, lotteries, free donuts, $50 rewards, etc., to urge resistant or “fence sitting” people to get their shots. These things were necessary because minority communities and communities of color were underserved and lacked the resources of their own to “get the word out.” None of them ever mentioned that Blacks may be more resistant for reasons of their own.
In the same thread here, someone responded that the history of experimentation and exploitation of Black communities. It turns out that USA Today had a piece about it in February:
“Perhaps the most notorious example of experimentation on Black bodies was the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, in which 400 sharecroppers were denied treatment for syphilis over 40 years. In 1932, U.S. Public Health Service employees recruited hundreds of poor, uneducated African American men with syphilis and watched them die avoidable deaths over time, even after a cure was found. The discovery of the experiment made front-page news in 1972. The study participants won a $10 million class-action settlement in 1975 and an apology from President Bill Clinton in 1997.”
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2021/02/16/black-history-covid-vaccine-fears-medical-experiments/4358844001/
That was 400 people, surely a terrible thing, but given the fact that this is a worldwide pandemic and most countries in the world regardless of race, color, creed, religion, gender identity, etc., etc., are scrambling to vaccinate their populations, wouldn’t we think that by now that argument would have been shot down by, for example, International Socialists and “trained marxists” like Patrisse Cullors? Shouldn’t they be telling all the Black people in the United States: “It’s your duty to get the vaccine and the State’s duty to require you to have it?”
It looks as though our government’s “answer” to this question has been in the works for some time, and they’re having problems with execution and message discipline. The President thought he had his answer ready just a couple of days ago, but he confused the Syphilis Study with the Tuskegee Airmen.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuskegee_Airmen
Well, with solid, historically correct information coming straight from the top like that, who can blame Blacks for being worried?!?
https://www.air.tv/watch?v=V1ZS8GtdTUKb47ArBV7uRw
Alex: Why do you believe that there is any difference in vaccination rate by skin color after taking out factor such as occupation (teachers, who are mostly white, went to the head of the line, for example)? Why do you believe that race is being measured or reported correctly by vaccine clinics? Is there an automated process by which someone getting a vaccine has his/her/zir/their skin tone measured with a color temperature meter?
Remember that white journalists and politicians love to talk about how stupid Black Americans are or how Black Americans need charity and pity from white saviors. I would be skeptical about a statement from a white say-gooder that Blacks who would benefit from a vaccine are not getting a vaccine. Maybe some 25-year-old Blacks are saying “no thanks” to a vaccine that might protect 82-year-olds, but that’s not a sign of low intelligence or irrationality.
@Philg: “Maybe some 25-year-old Blacks are saying “no thanks” to a vaccine that might protect 82-year-olds, but that’s not a sign of low intelligence or irrationality.”
Exactly! I should have been a little clearer – when I contrasted the NPR “nannies” and their incentive analysis with the Black-owned radio stations, what seemed to be missing from the professorial NPR commentary was any notion that Blacks might be refusing an experimental vaccine for reasons of their own – because they were intelligent and informed enough to decide not to be injected (or have their children injected) with an experimental-use product. Frankly that possibility was completely lost on both the radio station ads and the NPR folks.
Since I have self-selected to be a participant in the experiment and received both of my Pfizer shots, I could very easily say to people: “If you don’t get the vaccine, you know, you’re stupid.” But morally, I won’t do that, because I know that they are experimental, and the person who administered both of my shots made me sign a piece of paper stating that I understood they were experimental. In fact she congratulated me for pointing that out when I got my shots!
Given my other health problems and circumstances, I weighed the risks and decided it was worth it, but that’s *me.*
I’m saying that you should doubt that “Blacks might be refusing an experimental vaccine” (or at least that someone who identifies as Black is more likely to refuse the current batch of vaccines any more than someone who identifies as white)
@Philg: That’s a good point, and I haven’t seen any credible data about it. Does anyone know if people who identify as white are more or less likely to refuse than people who identify as Black? My proof-of-vaccination card does not indicate my race or ethnicity, for example, and it’s unclear to me whether that information is even being accurately recorded – anywhere!
https://i.ibb.co/120YPTd/VACC-CARD.jpg
Separately, since you brought up the topic of race… remember that demanding an ID as a condition for voting is racist while demanding a vaccine ID as a condition for working, traveling, shopping, learning, etc. is not racist.
They taught me in college that the more educated you are, the easier you are to fool. That black folks would notice that something ain’t right with this thing and avoid it does not surprise me. ‘Educated’ white women are probably number one on the sucker shot list.
baz: Political opinions and autonomy for one’s own body should be protected in general. Perhaps requiring medical staff to be vaccinated with a *non-experimental* vaccine is reasonable.
Comparing these freedoms with the requirement to wear a tie in some restaurants is silly.
The last comment is in the wrong subthread, sorry.
> U.S. companies can mandate that employees in a workplace must be vaccinated against COVID-19, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) said on Friday.
But yet, U.S. public schools cannot mandate teachers to go back teaching in school. Go figure!
“The First Amendment isn’t useful if your employer disagrees with what you say or write.”
What ever gave you the idea it could? You have the freedom to express any ideas you want, not consequences from that speech.
baz: Like in Stalin’s Russia! Soviet comrades had the freedom to express any ideas that they wanted to, but there might be consequences from that speech (including the loss of a job).
What remedy do you propose? Force people to do business with parties they disagree with?
Would you buy dog food from a company that advocates for the death of all samoyeds, or some other viewpoint you fundamentally reject?
I do business every week with people I disagree with on matters unrelated to the transaction at hand. I use an iPhone, though I disagree with Apple’s whites-only executive policy and their sanctimony (see https://philip.greenspun.com/blog/2015/03/30/guy-with-a-whites-only-sign-in-his-conference-room-tells-others-not-to-discriminate/ ). I buy from Amazon though I disagree with their decision to deplatform those who were enthusiastic about Donald Trump. I use Facebook to a limited extent despite their manipulation of public opinion. More than half the people with whom I work on a daily basis here in Maskachusetts are passionate advocates for a larger government, something that I oppose. Roughly the same people advocate for government and private industry to treat people differently based on their skin color, which is again something that I oppose.
Sounds like you’re saying you have zero principles you would stand up for and expect everyone else to be the same.
If you’re against “large government” how do you square that with the government forcing people to buy services from someone?
I guess the “free market” is only good when its on your side, otherwise you prefer the planned economy of Stalin’s Russia.
baz: Firing an employee who has a different political opinion than one’s own is not “standing up for a principle.” I used to manage about 80 people. They didn’t always agree with me regarding matters of technology, marketing, or business. Certainly I wouldn’t have expected all of them to agree with me regarding politics and I never fired anyone for expressing an opinion, inside or outside of the office, that was different than mine.
(The whole point of a market is that you can do business with people whom you might not love (though I guess soon it will be Pride Month and we should love everyone and be proud to do so!) and with people who you wouldn’t want to be friends with.)
Sounds like you want the government to regulate the market – very far from a “free market” or indeed freedom at all. Freedom *to do* business with someone you disagree versus government mandating you do business with someone. No shoes, no shirt no service is now illegal in your view?
Hospitals and health industry owned employers has been forcing vaccinations on their employees for a long time. I guess that with new EEOC (equality? not for those who are allergic to experimental temporary effect “vaccines”!) decision such practice may extend beyond those who voluntarily decided to work in health industry and will end up in court system and maybe eventually go up to Supreme Court.