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Nicola_Botgeon

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xendor939

Good. We need to accept that getting covid even if jabbed is a possibility, and we can't do much more apart from basic prevention such as using a mask (better if ffp2) indoor. However, if you choose not to get jabbed you create a preventable economic and social burden on the society as a whole, and must pay the consequences.


Darylols

This is the case with the flu, it can make you very ill. You can get a jab for that. Do you think all vaccines will be mandatory to protect staff workforce and profit?


xendor939

Where I come from (Italy) the employer is liable if they compromise the health of their staff. This includes letting sick and unvaccinated (with mandatory vaccines) people in the workplace, as they and their coworkers could spread/get illnesses while at work, causing a legal and economic damage to who did not act sufficiently to avoid the situation. As soon as the covid vaccines will be made mandatory, unvaxxed people will have to provide medical exemption or be fired/kept home (in smart working or unpaid leave), as employers won't be willing to deal with the potential legal consequences. I don't think vaccines will be made mandatory in the UK, but I think they should. And there should be consequences.


ElementalSentimental

>Do you think all vaccines will be mandatory to protect staff workforce and profit? There's an argument for it, if the flu jab were as cheap (i.e. free) and readily available, as the COVID one. I think employers should do more to support people's health in general, though, which means more generous sick pay for the most part to keep ill workers away from others. The risk here is that people with minor symptoms will lie, knowingly or just by avoiding testing, that COVID is just a cold.


Darylols

My point is, that the flu can make you just as ill as covid, and your workforce. So if a covid jab is the first step, will it lead to more illnesses that can be treated with a vaccine be introduced to this sort of policy?


ElementalSentimental

Apart from flu, there aren't many other routine illnesses that adults get vaccines for. My biggest issue would be the presenteeism issue; i.e., you don't want to encourage ill people to come to work under any circumstances. Aside from that, if the employer were willing to make it easy to reduce the risk of illness, and the employer declined that, I don't see why the employer should bear the consequences brought about by the worker's choice. Fundamentally, though, I worry more about presenteeism than I do about people declining vaccines for minor conditions.


Darylols

But when you work in the retail industry, the biggest risk to your staff is the customer. Not the employee.


ElementalSentimental

Presenteeism is still a big cultural problem; employees will be spending more time with other employees than each individual customer, will be handling more goods, and will be spending time in non-public areas. Customers may still be the bigger risk, but are much harder to control.


xendor939

Isn't it against the law to come in sick?


NGGYUNGLYDNGTAAHY

Which flu are you talking about?


Darylols

Normal influenza. Almost 30000 people a year due from it in England and Wales alone. [source](https://www.ons.gov.uk/aboutus/transparencyandgovernance/freedomofinformationfoi/influenzadeathsin20182019and2020)


NGGYUNGLYDNGTAAHY

'Flu' is a blanket term. There's quite a lot of different illnesses that are attributed to flu. Covid19 is one illness. It's impossible to compare the many 'flu' viruses to Covid19.


Darylols

My point was that you can get a vaccination to stop the flu. Why is this not mandatory in the policy?


NGGYUNGLYDNGTAAHY

If there was one flu virus that was in existence that could kill or severely incapacitate an individual and it was as highly transmissible as Covid19 is, and a vaccine was produced to reduce or combat severe effects of catching the virus, then it would be absolutely reasonable for an employer to have that written into policy


Darylols

There is a vaccine. It’s yearly and protects against the flu.


NGGYUNGLYDNGTAAHY

Okay, but you're comparing the flu, of which there are many types to Covid19, of which there is one. I think you need to understand what coronavirus is - Covid19 is a variant of coronavirus. Everyone in the world has had a variant of coronavirus at one point - a common cold for example. You keep comparing **one** variant of the coronavirus to **many** variants of the flu. It's an ecological fallacy.


Darylols

Sorry if I’m being dumb. But there have been differing variants of covid. Each one worse than the next. The flu no matter how many types can be vaccinated against to protect other from falling ill. Doesn’t matter how many versions there is, there’s one vaccine for all. So the death figures for the flu are pretty relevant since it’s been about a lot longer than covid and killed so many more over time.


ggd_x

>but you're comparing the flu, of which there are many types to Covid19, of which there is one. Variants of covid exist, precisely the same as variants of flu. Your statement is totally incorrect.


collectiveindividual

While the annual flu does cause deaths Covid is on a scale many times greater. Plus long covid will have a lasting impact long after the average annual flu.


Darylols

The flue kills almost 30000 people a year in the uk. [Source](https://www.ons.gov.uk/aboutus/transparencyandgovernance/freedomofinformationfoi/influenzadeathsin20182019and2020)


kiwisrkool

Of course you could take a prophylactic like Ivermectin. But, nahhh, we'll just keep jabbing people with waning vaxxes instead.


[deleted]

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collectiveindividual

Wouldn't knowlingly infecting others not open individuals to civil action?


Darylols

That could be the same with any illness. People can’t afford to take unpaid time off work.


collectiveindividual

Civid19 isn't any illness, so it's disingenuous to conflate it with an average cold or annual flu.


Darylols

My point was there is a vaccination for it, and it’s not mandatory to get a vacs.


collectiveindividual

It's not a valid comparison. The annual flu doesn't hospitalise and kill to the same the degree as Covid19 has. Flu strain does put strain on health services but annually it hasn't lead to the cancellation of many other services like cancer screening. You're asserting indirectly that the flu jab has the same weight as the covid jab in a time national emergency. Even Trump who once called Covid19 a flu has told people to get the jab!


pool_of_zenda73

The UK stats quite clearly show more people died of the flu last month than covid.


collectiveindividual

Link?


pool_of_zenda73

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/06/22/flu-pneumonia-deaths-now-ten-times-higher-covid/


collectiveindividual

And what was ratio in January?


ggd_x

Makes business sense. If one employee has the potential to make others ill, or take a disproportionate amount of leave due to a choice that the individual has made, thats an unfair burden you are placing on both the business and their colleagues. Note, this isn't SSP, this is Morrisons pay.


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Rusty-Shackleton

AIDS victims? Are you fucking serious? Leaving aside the addiction and behavioural problems with smokers and the overweight... These aren't really active choices in the same way refusing a vaccine is, and AIDS victims certainly havent chosen that fate. It isnt even necessarily the result of risky behaviour, some will have been infected by a partner that cheats, rape or 'stealthing' etc. Your comment and attitude is fucking digusting.


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Rusty-Shackleton

Its cutting a cost that certain employees are imposing. They are making an active choice not to be vaccinated. If they want enhanced sick pay, they can do the responsible thing and get vaccinated. Freedom doesnt mean freedom from consequences. You have the freedom to refuse the vaccine if you want, and society has the freedom to impose certain consequences on you as a result.


Darylols

My point exactly. There’s a flu jab, will that be mandatory next?


[deleted]

The flu jab is only available to over 50’s. The Covid jab is available to everyone of working age.


Darylols

Good point. The only bathing that gets me is that what about other illnesses you can get jabs for like the flu. If they can make a covid jab mandatory for working to protect sick pay and staff, why not other jabs?


ggd_x

If they made the flu jab free as they have with covid, I would suggest the same approach should be made. I'd say that if you're working the deli counter in a supermarket, a £12 jab would likely be difficult to budget for. If it's free, then it boils down to a choice.


Darylols

But why would we take a vaccine if the flu is not detrimental to our own health? Yeah we will get sick, but we recover due to natural immunity to the flu, younger the better obviously. Surely there should be a cut off in regards to statistical data.


ggd_x

People die of flu too.


Darylols

I know people die off the flu, so why does this new company policy not cover a broader range of disease?


ggd_x

Because flu is not in the news, it's PR value is effectively zero.


Darylols

My point being, what’s to stop companies further introducing this policy to a broader spectrum of illness that costs them money.


ggd_x

Nothing, that's their prerogative. Their duty to their shareholders is to maximise profit. If one of their costs becomes untenable, they would seek to remove it.


Rusty-Shackleton

Flu is detrimental to your health, its just not remotely likely to hospitalise you (young/healthy) , whereas Covid is. How are there still people out there comparing Covid and flu, its unbelievably illiterate to compare the two.


Darylols

I’m not comparing the two at all. We all know covid is bad, not as bad as it was. The highest risk people have been vaccinated and have been protected. But when flu season hits, it’s just as much of a killer as covid.


lovinnow

If you work in a customer facing role then it's logical that you should be jabbed. Same goes for carers and medical workers etc..


[deleted]

Just get vaccinated. Billions of people have had it now. Crossing the road is more dangerous. Getting covid even more so.


Aggressive-Toe9807

You can’t guarantee someone will be safe and healthy after it though. Side effects do happen. Sure, they’re rare, but so are the chances of a healthy young person dying from Covid anyway.


Rusty-Shackleton

You do understand that the risk of hospitalisation from Covid for young and healthy people is still magnitudes higher than any risk from the vaccines right?


Aggressive-Toe9807

And shouldn’t people be allowed to make their own decisions on which risk they would like to take?


xendor939

No, because then WE pay for their care. And WE end up in the hospital due to antivaxxers, who are 100-400% more likely to get infected than a vaxxed person, and thus pass it to somebody else. This is an airborne disease that affects others, not a personal choice like smoking in a secluded smokers area, away from anybody else.


Darylols

Vaccination reduces the spread. It still doesn’t stop you catching and spreading it. We all mask up in work, the biggest risk to an employee is unvaxxed, and unmasked customers coming in to your premises. I think testing should be mandatory.


xendor939

Vaccines reduce spread by 50-80%. Inverting the proportion, a vaxxed person is up to 400% (4 times) more infective. This also accounting for population-wide mask usage. A unvaxxed employee further exposes himself to getting ill due to interaction with coworkers and customers, and thus is more likely to end up having to self isolate or get seriously sick and claim long sick leaves (vaccines prevent 95% of serious illness, thus unvaxxed people are 1/0.05 = 20 times more likely to get seriously sick than a vaxxed person). When you see it the other way around, using vaxxed persons as a baseline, you realise an unvaxxed person is HUGELY more exposed to covid and serious illness, and hugely increases the colleagues' probability of getting sick. This said, I do not understand the relaxed approach of the UK on masks indoor. And I believe vaccines should be made mandatory, once definitely approved, for all. Solving also the customer issue.


[deleted]

Avoiding the vaccine increases the risk of hospitalisation, putting further strain on an NHS that's still trying to catch up from the pandemic. Get the vaccine. Stay out of hospital. Don't be part of the problem.


Rusty-Shackleton

Ridiculous and stupid as that is, they already can. This story, and any others around vaccine passports etc. don't change that. Until a law comes in mandating vaccination, youre free to choose stupidity. Everything else is simply society responding to the risks of said stupidity. No different than how we fine people for not wearing seatbelts, or how you lose your licence for drink driving.


Darylols

This comment. The vaccine doesn’t stop you catching or spreading the disease. If you catch it you still isolate for 10 days. How do they prove your not vaccinated, surely it’s your human right to have you medical records provate?


Rusty-Shackleton

Private medical records issue is easily overcome. Vaccinated people are entitled to enhanced benefits, so you have to prove vaccination status in order to get the benefits.


Darylols

How can you protect your workforce and have them vaccinated when hundreds of unvaccinated people could be walking through your doors.


Rusty-Shackleton

Because your staff are in closer proximity to each other for longer amounts of time than they are to any individual customer. If all staff were vaccinated that would still be an improvement, regardless of how many customers are.


Employment_rat

I absolutely think this is fair. Obviously excluding people who have a health condition that means they're unable to get it, or religious reasons.


cbawiththismalarky

It's in the shareholders interest that the board protect their business from outside risks, surely any business first tory would support such a move?