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Should Disney Require Its Employees To Be Vaccinated?
HughPickens.com writes According to Joanna Rothkopf Disneyland is already a huge petri dish of disease with tired children wiping their snot faces on Goofy and then riding log flumes through mechanized rivers filled with the backwash of thousands of other sweaty, unwashed, weeping toddlers. Now John Tozzi reports at Businessweek that five workers at Disneyland have been diagnosed with measles in an outbreak that California officials trace to visitors at the theme park in mid-December. The measles outbreak is a publicity nightmare for Disney and the company is urging its 27,000 workers at the park to verify that they're inoculated against the virus, and the company is offering tests and shots on site for workers who are unvaccinated. One thing Disney won't do, however, is require workers to get routine vaccinations as a condition of employment. Almost no companies outside the health-care industry do. "To make things mandatory just raises a lot of legal concerns and legal issues," says Rob Niccolini. Disney has been working with public health officials, and they've already put some employees on paid leave until medically cleared. "They recognized that they were just a meeting place for measles," says Gilberto Chávez. "And they are quite concerned about doing what they can to help control the outbreak."
because I am not anti vax, but i am pro choice. in that people should be free to do as they wish with their own bodies
on the other hand, I do believe that an employer can mandate a safe working environment. I think the issue is not should they be forced to be vaccinated, but to what extent. For example, im not a flue shot kinda guy, i just dont get those. on the other hand, I got all my childhood vaccine, as well as a lyme vaccine in my teens (major tick area and my aunt got lyme)
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
Snot is a noun. The adjective is snotty.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Would this be mitigated by Disney *always* providing paid sick leave? The quote in TFS suggests that this might be the exception rather than the rule. If you encourage employees to come in to work while they're sick, or even hide their symptoms, then I guess you're more likely to see illnesses spread...
You're that one eighty-year-old chain smoker that each of us knows. You are proof in your own mind that smoking has no effect on health.
Oh, and drone the terrorists wherever we may find them.
If you aren't going to vaccinate your children, then you have no business taking them to a highly international, very crowded space on the East Coast. It's about as stupid as living in DC which has a huge, very cosmopolitan population and not vaccinating. What might be ok in small towns where the population isn't very mobile is utterly insane in such an area.
Sounds like you feel entitled to that job...
Innocent until proven guilty is for specific parts of the legal system only - the police and prosecutors have to believe you are guilty to bring a case against you, so its obvious it doesn't apply to everyone, everywhere, for all things. So a company doesn't have to assume you are innocent at all, as neither does your friends, family or random person in the street.
A drug test isn't an assumption of guilt in a court of law. The entire guilty until proven innocent is for criminal and civil trials, not for employment. Mandatory drug tests are pragmatically stupid for many reasons in many industries (they are much less likely to catch the hard drugs like cocaine which go out of the system fast than marijuana which lingers, they cost a lot of money), but in the case of Disney where the employees are working on and maintaining rides with many passengers and where people could easily be killed if something goes wrong, drug tests aren't as unreasonable. In general, the real silliness of drug tests is when they are used by things like fast food restaurants or worse when they are used as a condition of welfare (where the evidence is that they cost far far more than they save the state).
so where do we draw the line? should we allow an employer to have access to our bank records? to ensure we arent funding terrorists? Should we give them our passwords to all our accounts online? to ensure we are not bad mouthing the company?
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
To avoid looking like an idiot and asshole, it might be worth looking up Flu-Related Complications.
Log in or piss off.
The protection you get from vaccinations is on the "herd" level and not the individual. If the majority of the herd is not vaccinated, the vaccine itself provide very little protection to an individual....
Factually incorrect for most vaccines, which provide a high degree of protection for individuals
I would guess that a doctor is a better person to ask than /.
The entire guilty until proven innocent is for criminal and civil trials
Actually, it's only for criminal trials. Civil trials are decided on the basis of "the preponderance of evidence."
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
i consider myself a libertarian, but at the same point i believe that what one does on their own time is of no concern to an employer. as such, one should be judged on the merits of their work, not their recreation
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
Draw the line wherever you like, you don't have to work for them. I don't work for companies that want to pay me less than I want to be paid - it doesn't take any laws or rules for that to work.
Employers should not be put in a position where they are giving medical advice or direction. If there is a reason that large, public centered facilities or parks should have required vaccinations, then that needs to be public policy, not corporate policy.
Hospitals require testing and proof of vaccination as a condition of employment. I've worked in one in the past and they wanted proof of certain vaccinations, a TB test, and provided any needed vaccinations free of charge. (I got a booster for MMR and tetanus) I think if a place like a hospital it would be insane not to require the employees to be reasonably secure against likely communicable diseases. At a place like Disney where they have to deal with the general public I wouldn't have a problem with public health policy mandating vaccination as a condition of employment. I don't think people should be forced to accept a vaccine if they are adults and really don't want to (and of course if they cannot due to allergies etc) but I have no problem with certain jobs being closed to them if they are not vaccinated. I think all children should be vaccinated or have proof that they cannot safely be vaccinated before attending any public school.
Draw the line wherever you like, you don't have to work for them. I don't work for companies that want to pay me less than I want to be paid - it doesn't take any laws or rules for that to work.
Hope you like living in a tent and scrounging for food in garbage bins.
There are clear lines between what is personal and what affects the job. If you take drugs it'll likely affect your work and health costs (still somewhat paid for by the company) - that means the company has a valid interest. OTOH, your private emails (or facebook posts) between family and friends has very little to no affect on the company - therefore they don't have any valid need for access to it.
Rule of thumb: It's not a free choice, if there is a big "or else...." attached.
Free choice does not mean choice without consequences. I am free to speak my mind but that does not mean I shouldn't expect consequences for doing so. I can choose not to vaccinate my children or myself but that doesn't mean I should be allowed to endanger other people by making that choice. I can choose not to be tested for drugs for philosophical reasons but that might mean that certain jobs are closed to me.
Choice almost never comes without consequence.
If your immune system "stormed" after a flu shot, then you are in bigger trouble than you believe.
Anyway, there is no scientific connection between flu shots and pneumonia.
Are you sure you behaved "healthy" after the flu shot or did you live on your "I'm strong as an Ox" card?
If you believe that a flu shot caused, increased or influenced in any way your pneumonia (and you might be right) then I heavily suggest you consult a hospital next time as soon as you feel to get a flu.
Sorry, 8 month illness or recovery after a pneumonia is insane. Without any medicals you recover after 2 weeks, max 3 weeks. If you had trouble 8 month then it likely was resistant to antibiotics which indicates you got it when you got the flu shot. Either by contaminated needles or any other circumstances at the place where you got the shot.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Healthcare workers are required to be vaccinated because they work with people who are highly vulnerable both to giving & receiving diseases. It's not just vaccines, even health workers who catch the common cold will be required to take time off, as it could be deadly to their patients with poor immune systems.
How could anyone work in a place like Disney without being heavily drugged?
I kept returning to the UN pledge to build a drug-free world. There was one fact, above all others, that I kept placing next to it in my mind. It is a fact that seems at first glance both obvious and instinctively wrong. Only 10 percent of drug users have a problem with their substance. Some 90 percent of people who use a drug—the overwhelming majority—are not harmed by it. This figure comes not from a pro-legalization group, but from the United Nations Office on Drug Control, the global coordinator of the drug war. Even William Bennett, the most aggressive drug czar in U.S. history, admits: “Non-addicted users still comprise the vast bulk of our drug-involved population.”
link - http://boingboing.net/2015/01/...
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
There are clear lines between what is personal and what affects the job. If you take drugs it'll likely affect your work and health costs (still somewhat paid for by the company) - that means the company has a valid interest.Â
Those lines are not all that clear. What if you are overweight? That too takes a toll on one health. Can a company mandate you exercise regularly and eat only healthy foods? What about medical conditions? Do they have the right to know about a congenital heart condition? These things may be just as likely, or more so, to affect job performance and insurance costs than someone smoking a joint on the weekend.
It's-a smallpox after all.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Because not everyone has the option of simply "working somewhere else".
I've got a WAIS 3 combined cognitive function test score of over 180 (that's all you need to know), and I am against vaccinations where they are not necessary.
Ok, I don't get what the needless bragging about your IQ score is about but most health care professionals would agree with you on this point. If you aren't going to Africa there probably isn't a need to get some of the more exotic vaccines out there since vaccines can have unfortunate side effects. Perfectly reasonable.
Influenza mutates every ten days, rendering vaccinations useless before they're even distributed. My wife got a flu shot in October, she had influenza over xmas. I've not even had so much as a cold since the last time I had a seasonal shot back in 1993 which resulted in me developing pneumonia thanks to influenza. Eight months it took me to recover from that.
You may be smart but you are quite ignorant on this point. Influenza isn't a single virus. It is a family of viruses and yes they mutate fairly often. Every year the CDC looks at the strains of flu viruses out there and how they are spreading and determines the 5 or so most likely strains to be a problem in the US. They then develop a vaccine to cover these strains. This vaccine does NOT make you immune against all strains of flu and you still might catch a strain not covered by the vaccine. And the CDC is often wrong about which strains actually prove to be most problematic since they are really just making an educated guess. If you get the flu vaccine you are more likely to be protected than if you don't against a few strains of flu but it does not and never did mean that you won't get the flu.
Furthermore if you choose not to get the vaccine you might actually encounter the virus but not become symptomatic but still carry it and infect others. The more people that get the vaccine the stronger the herd immunity benefit.
Finally it is highly unlikely that the vaccine caused you to get pneumonia. You seem to be unfamiliar with the latin phrase post hoc ergo propter hoc. Just because the pneumonia followed the vaccine doesn't mean the vaccine caused the pneumonia.
Or have we abandoned personal responsibility?
Do you mean have we become like Wall Street and expect the government to bail us out when we are greedy, stupid and incompetent?
Why is Snark Required?
Pneumonia is caused by bacteria, the flu by a virus.
Pneumonia is a description of symptoms relating to inflammation of the lung and can be caused by bacteria, viruses, other micro-organisms, drug reactions and autoimmune conditions. It is an inflammatory condition, not an infection by a specific type of organism.
It would help you to read how and why vaccines work before arguing against their efficacy. As it is you are reinforcing the "science-ignorant anti-vaxxer" stereotype with such childish errors. Actually, that's pretty mean, as plenty of children understand how vaccination works, having been taught about Edward Jenner and his work in 1796, and the subsequent discoveries and developments in the field of immunology.
Or are you happy sounding like an under-educated person, cheerfully spouting abject nonsense like some massive beacon of ignorance for all to see?
If you work for me, you work for me at my pleasure. If it is my pleasure that you not potentially cost me millions of dollars by infecting the children of my customers with dangerous diseases, I will require vaccinations as a condition of employment. If it is my pleasure that you not potentially cost me millions of dollars by driving my truck into minivan loaded with kids because you nodded off at an inappropriate time, I will require that you occasionally prove that are free from drugs that might cause such things.
If it is your pleasure not to work in such an environment, you may choose to work elsewhere. You are not compelled to do anything against your will.
Flu is known to mutate very often. That is why the vaccination is redone each year. There are also multiple strains of flue active at any one time. Flu vaccinations protect only against the most common strains, which is due to technical limitations of the vaccine breeding process.
As a rule of thumb, with a flu shot you are immune to 80% of the current flu viruses going around. This number may change if a previously unimportant strain mutates to be more virulent.
I remember a few year ago a Slashdot article on a new vaccine effective against all flu viruses that does relies on a property of the virus that does not mutate at such a high rate. (If it does mutate, the resulting virus is ineffective anyway.)
Science, bitches. It just works.
-- Put crudely, the world is an extremely large problem instance. (Russel/Norvig Artificial Intelligence)
yes, but should it not be your employers right to do with his capital what he will? it's his money.
Because finding out the dude was high when he forgot to check the safety harness on Space Mountain after someone flies out and dies makes it all better. Suuurrre, he's the one they are going to sue for millions of dollars over negligence and Disney has no right, reason, or interest in ensuring the safety of their customers..
Look, ganjadude, it's FINE that you want to toast your brain. Rock on, dude. Just don't do it at a time or place where your impaired state is likely to affect me in any way whatsoever. In exchange I promise not get wasted on single malt and drive around in your neighborhood.
"Unheard of means only it's undreamed of yet,
Impossible means not yet done." ~~ Julia Ecklar
Look, ganjadude, it's FINE that you want to toast your brain. Rock on, dude. Just don't do it at a time or place where your impaired state is likely to affect me in any way whatsoever
This times 100 is what I am saying. What one does in their off time is not of any concern to others
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
If I HAD to get something from a Disney employee, I'd rather get the clap from one or more of the several Princesses they have running around there.
Lots of fun and then just a shot!
One of my main issues with mandatory drug testing, especially before one even has the job, is it's still unfairly selective. Lets say you had 3 job candidates:
#1 - An alcoholic with a real issue. They sober up the night before the interview/test.
#2 - A cocaine addict who stopped using a few days before the interview/test.
#3 - An occasional marijuana user who smoked a joint 2 weeks ago.
Assuming everything else about those candidates is equal only one of those people is going to fail the test and not get the job. All 3 of them could be perfectly fine at it and never present an issue but some common sense and risk analysis would tell you the one who failed is probably the least likely to present an issue down the line.
One of the things that "helped" the anti-vax movement early on was that herd immunity protected them. If one family in a town decided not to vaccinate because "vaccines have toxins", they could rely on herd immunity same as if their kids actually had medical conditions that rendered vaccination not an option. So the anti-vax kids didn't seem to get sicker than the vax kids and the anti-vax movement spread. Unfortunately, we're getting to (or past) the herd immunity tipping point. So many parents have gone anti-vax that the diseases are making comebacks. The good news is that nothing will bring back support for vaccination like an outbreak. The bad news is that a lot of children (both anti-vax kids and kids who couldn't get the vaccinations due to age/medical conditions) will get sick and possibly die.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Nearly all companies worth working for have drug testing requirements. So it's not as easy as "you don't have to work for them." You effectively can't work for anybody in entire swaths of industry for doing something that is so harmless, several states have decided to legalize it. Do companies check to make sure you aren't violating other laws? Certainly. Do they make you prove your innocence on a quarterly basis? Of course not. That only happens with drug use.
Some employers even have you sign agreements not to drink in public, drive 5 mph under the speed limit, stay under a certain weight, or my personal favorite-- back in to all parking spots. Let's not forget some companies (e.g. church schools) still fire people for being gay. My employer doesn't allow me to post negative comments about my company on forums. Should this shit be legal?
Seems to me that if a person is doing their job well, that a company shouldn't have the right to fire them. I live in an "at will" state. We can fire somebody because the sky is cloudy, and they can't do anything about it. That seems pretty fucked up to me.
to you perhaps, not to me any a large portion of the people here
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
Wow. Then I guess viral pneumonia is a myth.
"Pneumonia" is term used to describe a disease where the lungs start to fill with fluid. This can result from a wide range of causes, many of which are bacterial infections, but it can also be caused by viruses, fungi, parasites, or other causes.
Some 90 percent of people who use a drug—the overwhelming majority—are not harmed by it.
But those 10% of caffeine addicts will do anything for just one more shot of espresso.
Thats seriously fucked up. Have you considered emigrating to a free country?
How about NO? What I do in the privacy of my home, outside of working hours should not be the concern of my employer. If a worker fails to perform up to standard, sure, fire him. But recreational drug use alone as grounds for dismissal or refusing a hire is ridiculous.
All that "hippy stuff" may well have some relevance to flu, but vitamins won't do anything to stop you catching measles if you are exposed and not immune.
There are good arguments against flu vaccine, but measles should be a no-brainer. It is safe and effective. Nothing else is.
perfectly spherical unemployed in a vacuum.
How dare you slander the capitalist utopia that guarantees your freedom to work ANY crappy job you want.
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
...but being a raging alcoholic is just dandy. They don't test for that.
I wonder if you would give the same answer for, say, mandatory hymen inspections as a condition for employment?
People are entitled to have their private lives, and accepting any kind of end run around that means no one's rights are every going to be safe.
If a company chooses to take upon itself law enforcement, it should bloody well expect to be held to the same standard.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
Keep in mind that such a level of freedom to reject work is an advantage a large percentage of Americans do not have. The idea of market forces being the best or only solution is of great appeal to people who have significant power (and low vulnerability) in that domain, but it is less useful to those who do not.
It is not that dissimilar from people who say that the political process is fine and that if you do not feel represented you are free to engage in personal lobbying or running for office. Theoretically anyone has the ability to steer the government, but realistically the utility of it is pretty minimal to most people.
That is what freedom looks like. Freedom unfortunately also includes the ability to use one's power to infringe the freedom of weaker people.
Don't get too snarky here. You are incorrect. Pneumonia - a state in the lungs with certain types of tissue damage and characteristic clinical findings - can be caused by bacteria, viruses, fungi, chemicals and the 'ol immune system all by its haywire self.
Hemophilus is a genus of bacteria that loves to infect the lungs AFTER a viral infection. Fortunately, there is a good vaccine for this and most Slashdot posters probably haven't even heard of a case of Hemophilus sepsis or encephalitis (truly awful diseases). Further, I think the poster you are replying to is referring to an 'allergy shot' (likely a strong dose of a general steroid to stomp on the immune system) caused his (?) immune system to weaken to the point where he got another infection. Possible, not terribly likely but possible.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
It's hard to take seriously a source that says:
Personally, if I have septicemia or bacterial meningitis/pneumonia, I will take whatever the sensitivities say I should. If you choose to treat your N. meningitidis with Vit D, please stay at home so that you don't force everyone else to take prophylaxis.
-- The Genesis project? What's that?
Were you out sick from school when the immune system was taught?
Nothing (NOTHING) has a 100% infection rate on exposure, largely because your immune system fights off most of the crap that you are exposed to, often without you even noticing. Having a well functioning immune system will indeed improve your odds when you are exposed.
Vaccines work by boosting your immune system. They aren't a magic shield that turns away pathogens before they land on you; they help your immune system respond faster and stronger by teaching it, in advance, how to deal with a pathogen it hasn't seen previously. And they aren't 100% effective either. If they were, no one would give a shit if other people were vaccinated or not. If that last part isn't obvious to you, think about it for a minute or two.
So, in summary, vaccines are one thing, out of many, that help your immune system and reduce your chances of infection. If you assign liability, or worse, criminality, to not boosting your immune system in one way, why not the others too? Or why not to people that do things intentionally that reduce their immunity? (Keep in mind that there exists in the west a protected class of people, membership depending on choosing behavior that has astonishingly powerful negative effects on the immune system.)
See that "Preview" button?
This is why the CDC-type folks are running scared. Unlike Ebola and HIV which take a fair amount of work and / or bad luck to get, Measles is airborne and very, very contagious.
Yes, it usually is a relatively mild, self limited illness but once you get lots of cases, you start getting into the 1-2% of folks that get serious complications. It's very ugly.
And, of course, totally unnecessary but that's human stupidity for you.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
i consider myself a libertarian, but at the same point i believe that what one does on their own time is of no concern to an employer. as such, one should be judged on the merits of their work, not their recreation
I have no quarrel with that. Problem is that I, as an employer (which I am), cannot be certain that your recreational (and probably illegal) drug habit will not present a safety or liability problem for me on the job. I have no problem ethically with an adult getting high on their own time provided it doesn't harm someone else. That last bit is the key though. As an employer I cannot afford to take avoidable risks of people getting harmed. If I don't test for drug use and someone gets injured with drugs as a contributing factor then I have several problems now. First, someone was needlessly injured due to my negligence. Second, there will be a lawsuit that follows and the lawyer is going to ask me "why did you hire someone with a drug problem?" And they will be right and I will lose and very likely have to pay a large settlement. Third, I run a company which operates heavy machinery and someone who is impaired runs a higher than normal risk of getting injured or causing injuries to others.
I cannot make these safety and liability concerns go away just because I want to respect what people do on their own time. Some people probably can manage a drug habit safely and without problems but many more cannot. I genuinely do not care if someone wants to smoke weed or do some other drug on their own time. None of my business. But what IS my business is the risk that potentially presents to me and my employees and I can't waive that away, like it or not.
Define "working somewhere else". If you mean I have the option of quitting my reasonably lucrative position in IT to go work for McDonald's, ok. I do not think that is what most people mean when they say they do not have that option of working someplace else, and that is certainly what I meant when I said it.
Death is more likely to be caused by car accidents than being eaten by wolves. Therefore, being eaten by wolves doesn't cause death. Science, bitches.
An interesting anagram of "BANACH TARSKI" is "BANACH TARSKI BANACH TARSKI"
Great. Let's "get IT work elsewhere" shall we?
- oops, nothing available in my immediate area
- something available in the next town over, but I cannot afford the commute
- something available across the country but I cannot afford to sell my house
- something available across the country but I cannot afford the move
- something available across the country but that means wifey has to quit her job
- something available across the country but I can't move the ailing family member in my care
- I'd love that job in California but I'm putting my child through University and had to start bicycling to work to cut expenses
- I tried self-employment but I'm a horrible entrepreneur and lost my savings in my last, and only, venture
etc.
etc.
etc.
To be clear, I have been gainfully employed for 25 years and have never had problems finding work or moving from one job to the next. But I am not so naive as to think that the right work is available to anyone who wants it at any time.
take all the money spent on welfare programs, and cut a 1 time check to people to jumpstart their lives (bail out the poor)
That amounts to $20,610 for every poor person in America, or $61,830 per poor family of three.
Now give that money to the individual and let them get back on their own feet, cut the bureaucracy out, cut the reoccurring costs, and let people get back to their lives without interference
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
totally agree with you there. there is a time and place for everything. 90% of users are responsible users (sources in another post i made earlier) so 10% of the users ruin it for everyone??
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same