> Doughty said the CMS lacked the authority to issue a vaccine mandate that would require more than 2 million unvaccinated healthcare workers to get a coronavirus shot.<p>> "There is no question that mandating a vaccine to 10.3 million healthcare workers is something that should be done by Congress, not a government agency," wrote Doughty.<p>That's a good point. You can agree that its within the federal authority to mandate vaccines, but it really should be a decision made and explicitly endorsed by elected representatives rather than some agency (Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services) that I have never heard of until now and whose head is appointed by one person.<p>[EDIT]<p>Too often we look at the end results (e.g. will this increase vaccination rates) rather than the means of getting there. You see it on the left and right. If their guy is in power, they want to expand the scope and reach of their office. Everything is a crisis and someone can solve it if they're just given the right permissions.<p>And this eventually leads to dishonesty and loss of trust. Even news is reported through a utilitarian lens. Many journalists today think they're doing advocacy rather than reporting. They're not assigned topics but talking points. Someone could be the 'tech bad' guy and his stories are nominally about tech but about how big tech is subverting democracy, bad for the environment, you name it.<p>Could you imagine a news report about how the much touted vaccine efficacy of 95% didn't really pan out? It's true. Everyone was around 6 months ago and remembered the efficacy levels being thrown around. Now people are being gaslit to thinking they didn't hear what they heard and its about hospitalization. All because being honest could hurt the cause. And yes, vaccine efficacy was 95% and yes it does mean what you think it means [0]<p>/rant<p><a href="https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099(21)00075-X/fulltext" rel="nofollow">https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3...</a>
> All medical procedures should be voluntary, or we go back to the times of lobotomy and forced sterilizations of minorities (and that's not as many decades back as you may think).<p>Just wanted to add this comment from the middle of this discussion.<p>There is so much irrationality these days that we need to have a solid foundation for our decision making and not based on the whims of the panicked masses.
What I find most interesting is the private-sector scenarios and how they're playing out.<p>I have relatives who work in healthcare and refuse to get the vaccine. They're at risk of losing their jobs because regardless of external pressure, the hospital employing them is incentivized to let them go by the <i>patients.</i> They're a hospital focused on physical therapy, which is does as much elective business by volume as prescribed... And very few patients are willing to work with a physical therapist who isn't vaccinated, so they're simply losing business as word-of-mouth gets around that they don't require vaccines and patients sign up for their PT regiments with other hospitals in the region.<p>By the same token that the government (absent a law from Congress) perhaps can't force organizations to employ vaccinated staff, the government may have no say if an individual employee is fired because an organization <i>requires</i> vaccinated staff of their own accord.<p>This would be a good time for Congress to show some leadership and lay down some legal guidelines.
This is a temporary injunction not a ruling on the merits. Just like Democratic judges doing this to Trump, it's far more likely to be influenced by politics of the particular Judge or Court of Appeals that any meaningful statement of the law (which it is not).
I worked on changing CMS regulation once and 80% of the time was spent <i>proving</i> CMS had the authority to do so.<p>Not surprised by this ruling at all.
Wow... I thought it was just tinfoil hat types that were avoiding this vaccine because they were afraid Bill Gates was using it to implant a tracking chip inside them. But if healthcare workers - who actually know what's in this thing - are so vaccine-hesitant that the government has to mandate it to them, I'm suddenly worried whether or not I should think twice about getting a booster (or worse, giving it to my children).
Original title is much more accurate "Courts block two Biden administration COVID vaccine mandates", the edited one here "Courts block Covid vaccine mandates for healthcare workers nationwide" implies something much larger in scope.
Please fix the headline to match the one on the article. The Hacker News headline is deeply misleading, because vaccine mandates imposed by US states and cities are not affected by this court action.