Vaccinations to made a legal requirement in Austria from Feb 2022

[littlelordfuckleroy]

Days after Austria imposed a lockdown on the unvaccinated, it has announced a full national Covid-19 lockdown starting on Monday.

Chancellor Alexander Schallenberg said it would last at least 10 days and there would be a legal requirement to get vaccinated from 1 February 2022.

Jesus. I'm shocked by that. I'm not an antivaxxer but I still very concerned that a country could make any vaccine a legal requirement! I feel it's a step too far.

@JassyRadlett a better ‘risk minimisation’ would be to require everyone to test. Nothing is going to completely eliminate the risk.

[quote bumbleymummy]@JassyRadlett a better ‘risk minimisation’ would be to require everyone to test. Nothing is going to completely eliminate the risk.[/quote]
As you know I’m intentionally resisting policy debates and discussions of what’s better/worse.

Sticking to points of fact only - one of which is what I stated above about whether exemptions for the vaccinated are pointless. There would be discussions to be had about the degree of impact, but relative to the unvaccinated, the vaccinated as a group present a lower risk.

Jesus Christ, how can a vaccine, which doesn't stop you catching or transmitting a disease in any meaningful way possibly wipe out that disease??

One of the reasons I'm so opposed to vaccine passports is because I think they could be discriminatory

I've mentioned this before, and atill worry that it almost certainly would be discriminatory in effect if not intent
The last thing I can find is a Lancet article from July, and while I appreciate things may have shifted a bit since, it underlined that there was still a marked reluctance around vaccination among ethnic minorities

Leaving aside for a moment why they're reluctant, that still creates a potential scenario where exclusion lands on people already perceived to be marginalised - and if it does, I wonder if many will still be quite so keen to cry "selfish bast*s" and "If they don't like it that's their lookout"?

@doublemonkey

Jesus Christ, how can a vaccine, which doesn't stop you catching or transmitting a disease in any meaningful way possibly wipe out that disease??

Stops the majority of infections (and thus transmission chains) even with waning and delta. As high as 88% infection prevention after boosters.

Jury still out on secondary transmission impacts. Could be flat with delta, could be significant on top of primary impacts. Need more data to be sure.

But let’s stop pretending the vaccines don’t have a significant impact on transmission. By preventing the majority of infections - and much better with boosters - they do.

Still not getting into policy debates. Just the facts, ma’am.

Maybe I should change my username to Joe Friday?

Suspect it would be just one more thing to explain to people though.

Could it stop Covid though? If as pp said everyone was vaccinated

With variant it stands and vaccine as it is, and age range

Obvs changing variables might be different

Actually wipe out was the term used

Could it stop Covid though? If as pp said everyone was vaccinated.

There doesn’t seem to be scientific consensus on this with delta, and with current known vaccine performance.

However my comment was simply about the incorrect statement that the vaccines don’t stop you catching or transmitting the disease in any meaningful way. A reduction in infections of at least 50% would seem to meet the ‘meaningful’ threshold.

@JassyRadlett except, as a pp pointed out, unvaccinated people are not all the same. Many unvaccinated people are immune after infection so would be low risk irt infection/transmission.

[quote bumbleymummy]@JassyRadlett except, as a pp pointed out, unvaccinated people are not all the same. Many unvaccinated people are immune after infection so would be low risk irt infection/transmission.[/quote]
I haven’t suggested otherwise.

(That’s why I referred to them ‘as a group’, given that there will be wild variations in immunity between individuals in both the vaccinated group and in the unvaccinated group.)

@beastlyslumber

For me, the line was crossed ages ago, at the start, with connecting vaccine take up to lockdowns at all. I am completely against people having to have the vaccine in order to be employed, vaccine passports, any of it.

I appreciate that there are lots of arguments on the other side. But if this doesn't cross a line for almost everyone, I think we are truly fucked.

Yes, I agree with this. People have walked into this in small steps, and some still aren't waking up.

As soon as people start using this logic - if you make a choice you must suffer the consequences, even if it includes entirely legislated consequences - the battle was lost. This is how authoritarian governments in every country justify their actions. You choose to talk publicly about religion, buy food on the black market, don't register in the proper way, say something critical about policy - these are bad for society and you can make that choice but must accept the consequences. Which are prison/gulag/job loss/disgrace/death.

It shocks me how many people accept this logic today. And it's mainly progressives!

I fully expect my country to become more and more punitive. They've painted themselves into a corner in terms of their goals for controlling covid and are increasingly 1984 in all ways anyway.

I hold out some hope for the UK, or at least England, not so sure about Scotland and no idea what's going on in Wales or NI. But I've been pleasantly surprised about how much people there have really resisted these kinds of attacks on basic rights in a lot of areas recently.

@ollyollyoxenfree

Well that's even better isn't it? Showing any kind of medical status to get into a pub is ridiculous, isn't it?

Ok so now you're saying it shouldn't be needed?

In the context of a pandemic, no not really. A COVID status passport would reduce transmission - it means that people who don't want to be vaccinated have the alternative of demonstrating they have immunity from infection, or alternatively, a recent negative test.

I'm not sure of the rationale of someone who would refuse to be vaccinated and refuse any compromise such as that described above, unless they do not think COVID is a problem and want to pretend it's not happening.

And if you do not think COVID is an issue, and no suppression measures are needed as it'll just disppear if we pretend its not happening, then I don't think a rational conversation can be had.

I think the argument here is that vaccine passports of any kind, at least for general usage, is a bad idea.

That's not quite the same as saying vaccination is ineffective though on a population level I think many people are realizing it's not as effective as they thought it was going to be.

But there are two big questions about POV. The first being whether it really has a significant effect as a policy, and that's totally separate to whether vaccination is effective. The second being, is it a good idea, or even ok within the context of democratic rights, to require medical information of people to enter normal spaces accessible to the public like shops, cafes, sports teams, etc.

The two questions are related too. If it's not effective, or only slightly effective, that doesn't justify the infringements on privacy or freedom of movement and association.

It is very rare but I don’t think you should mandate something that has resulted in death

I’m pro vaccine, and will get booster etc but that is my assessment based on what I know so far.

Someone who is very low risk from Covid shouldn’t be mandated for those higher risk when they have fatalities against them

It’s a new(?) ethical discussion and one worth having

[quote bumbleymummy]@JassyRadlett a better ‘risk minimisation’ would be to require everyone to test. Nothing is going to completely eliminate the risk.[/quote]
Requiring people to take a Covid test doesn't give them "body autonomy" though, does it? The swabbing is quite invasive, which is why my kids end up in tears every time; even for an adult it's very unpleasant.

[quote TheReluctantPhoenix]@Battenburg77,

You cannot know that.

All it takes is an r number below one for a disease to die out, not the prevention of every single case.[/quote]
No, it doesn't, where did you get that idea?

So far, only onehuman disease has ever been eradicated. The WHO and epidemiologists think maybe we could possibly eradicate six. Covid, flu, etc, are not on that list. The ones that are all have certain things in common - low rate of mutation, vaccine prevents disease altogether, short incubation, no asymptomatic people, no animal reservoirs. None of those apply to covid.

@JassyRadlett

Could it stop Covid though? If as pp said everyone was vaccinated.

There doesn’t seem to be scientific consensus on this with delta, and with current known vaccine performance.

However my comment was simply about the incorrect statement that the vaccines don’t stop you catching or transmitting the disease in any meaningful way. A reduction in infections of at least 50% would seem to meet the ‘meaningful’ threshold.

If the vaccines are working in a meaningful way then there will be no need for vaccine passports or further lockdowns, or indeed any other measures.

If they aren't working as expected, which is obviously the case, then we need to be having a conversation about where to go from here.

Doubling down on a treatment that has limited efficacy is not the way out of this.

If the vaccines are working in a meaningful way then there will be no need for vaccine passports or further lockdowns, or indeed any other measures.

That definition of meaningful (and all, including mine) are matters of debate. There do seem to be very high expectations of what vaccines can and cannot do, and in what timeframe.

Right now we have an R0 of just over one, with a virus with an R of 6-7. We are undoubtedly still below pre-pandemic contact levels but few other NPIs remain in place, it seems difficult to me to argue that vaccines aren’t playing a significant role in stopping rapidly exponential growth in cases, and therefore in hospitalisations and deaths which are still linked, though at a much improved ratio.

I don’t take the same ‘all or nothing’ approach to vaccines as some seem to; I think they have a very useful role to play and are already playing that role.

If they aren't working as expected, which is obviously the case, then we need to be having a conversation about where to go from here.

How do you define ‘as expected’? Before trials, most scientists were saying that they would be impressed with much lower reductions in severe disease and death, and that any reduction in infection wasn’t a given.

Doubling down on a treatment that has limited efficacy is not the way out of this.

Again, we have different views of what limited effectiveness is. (Efficacy generally refers to performance in controlled trial conditions; effectiveness to real-world performance.)

The alternative to vaccination is lockdown after lockdown after lockdown. Can you really not see how damaging this is

Lockdown is damaging but why is it the only alternative to injecting people with something they don't want to be injected with?

Requiring people to take a Covid test doesn't give them "body autonomy" though, does it? The swabbing is quite invasive, which is why my kids end up in tears every time; even for an adult it's very unpleasant

I agree. I'd (almost) rather have a smear test. But other countries have covid tests which are much less invasive so we could have them too.

The alternative to vaccination is lockdown after lockdown after lockdown. Can you really not see how damaging this is

Vaccination is the way out of this but we can avoid lockdowns without making them mandatory

@MarshaBradyo

The alternative to vaccination is lockdown after lockdown after lockdown. Can you really not see how damaging this is

Vaccination is the way out of this but we can avoid lockdowns without making them mandatory

Yes, this.

There's a whole suite of measures that can be utilised before harsh things like mandatory vaccination or futher lockdown restrictions are considered.

All the money wasted on tests could have helped the NHS services so much more. More funding should be pumped into that, instead of it being allowed to be ran into the ground

I don't see how mandatory vaccination can be justified considering the increasing data which suggests that the efficacy wanes so quickly.

Also I read that the vaccines are being monitored by the European Medecines Agency (due to their special Conditional marketing authorisation status) and have to show efficacy rates of at least 50% in the wider population in order to continue to meet approval criteria.

I don't know exactly what that 50% figure applies to in terms of durability / transmission / severity of disease / etc. But how can an EU country mandate a vaccine why increasingly appears to be borderline in meeting approval criteria??

www.google.com/amp/s/www.latimes.com/science/story/2021-10-04/pfizer-covid-vaccine-waning-not-deltas-fault%3f_amp=true

I don’t think it’s that bad tbh, Covid isn’t just like the flu. People should be vaccinated and we are lucky in the UK that most people want to take the vax. I totally understand that it puts a massive pressure on your healthcare system if the majority don’t want to vaccinate