vaccinations/health care and product promotions.

Well, ok then! 😁

I'm for it...especially in hospital and care giver settings because....c'mon!

SuzySunshine99 wrote: »

AnnPT77 wrote: »

glassyo wrote: »

I work for a small company but we're all vaccinated. My boss probably wouldn't have but clients got on him and he has to travel.

I'm kinda wondering if losing your job for not being vaccinated is legal, tho. Can they do that?

In the US, unless a state manages to make it illegal, at this point it's legal under federal law to require vaccination as a condition of employment.

The employer must make reasonable accommodations for people with religious objections to vaccination, and to those who medically cannot be vaccinated.

The definition of "reasonable accommodation" is likely to vary situationally . . . at least what counts as "reasonable" for accommodating certain disabilities in certain jobs varies depending on how central a particular ability may be to a particular job.

Don't know about outside the US.

My employer indicated that there would be very, VERY few exceptions granted.

They are requiring a documented medical condition that prohibits vaccination, complete with a doctor's confirmation of your condition.

For religious exemptions...you can't just say, "I have a religious objection." You have to prove you are a member of a religious community that prohibits vaccinations as part of their doctrine..ie Christian Science. Testimony from your religious leader confirming that you are a part of this community is required.

Yup. There's a whole level of formality about what's required and allowed. There are specific legal provisions an precedents that apply to reasonable accommodations under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act (which prohibits discrimination based on religion, among other things). There are some other federal provisions that apply, but I think those are the biggies.

WRT religious exemptions, in other scenarios (like flu vax), the definition of "religion" has been interpreted broadly, i.e., doesn't have to be theistic, can be moral principles as long as sincerely held. If that standard applies here, I think requiring one be part of a formal religion that has a religious leader . . . well, that might not hold up in court. I'm sure we'll find out.

Reportedly, some vegan somewhere was held to be due an exemption from flu vaccination as an example of a sincerely held belief that qualified under Title VII . . . I don't think there is a "head vegan" who can sign something for a person. Not sure one way or another whether the Covid vax has a vegan issue associated - but the point about not needing to be a recognized formal religion may still apply. That's above my pay grade. I needed to know the basics about applying these laws in practice as a manager in large organization, but any edge cases or complicated stuff got referred to HR and/or our general counsel's office.

Perhaps one of our MFPers who's an attorney knows something about this.

My employer sent out a voluntary anonymous survey a while back asking us to disclose our vaccination status (or intent, for the unvaxxed). At first I wasn't going to bother, then I thought that maybe if they find out that a high enough percentage of us are vaccinated they won't bother thinking about implementing a mandatory policy. Odds are that our vaccine uptake is high because we have a LOT of people who like to travel.

I thought of this thread today as I was reading a semi-related article on CBC about Alberta's current crisis. Alberta recently started offering a $100 incentive to get vaccinated and are now looking at a passport system. Some expert was interviewed and said generally that incentives are only mildly successful at motivating behaviour and that mandates/restrictions work a lot better. I'm in Ontario and our passport system comes into effect on the 22nd. Every time I'm in the pharmacy there are at least half a dozen people in some stage of vaccination hanging around there, so a few of the previously-hesitant are taking the plunge. (This pharmacy is definitely not the only place in town giving vaccinations but I've never seen that many people coming in on a walk-in basis before)

SummerSkier wrote: »

My company is now offering 8 hours of vacation time and entry into a drawing for vaccination. However, to me, it slightly stinks of "data mining" since they want a copy of your vaccination card whereas before you could just enter into the HR system that you had been vaccinated. I guess it is good they are promoting it but I am not sure that the incentive will be enough to change a lot of people's minds? Perhaps?

You probably gave your employer all the important information when you applied and accepted your job. Name, address, SSN, bank account (if you use direct deposit), copy of your signature....

This is what the US vaccine card looks like:



The only things on the card that a normal US employer wouldn't already have are the patient number, and the type/lot number/date/site of vaccination.

The patient number is intended to be used for the number the vaccination site uses to identify the person, not their social security number (which the employer has, of course) or medicare ID number. Medical record number is a standard term for that: It'd be the number that (say) a hospital system uses to keep track of my medical records in their affiliated facilities. The IIS number is related to consolidating vaccination information in an electronic record, so all info is available to doctors/clinics/etc. about all the vaccinations a person has had.

As a generality, the records associated with those numbers (at the health care provide/data aggregator facility) are protected health information (PHI) under HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act). That does *not* mean the number itself, or other data on the card, when you give it to your employer, is HIPAA protected (because one's employer is not typically a HIPAA covered entity). Other privacy protection regulations will likely apply, though - some complicated set of both federal and state regulations.

On my card, the patient number is left blank.

I think that using the term "data mining" in this context may be misleading, and it's a term that's often used imprecisely.

I'm not saying, in any of the above, that one should not be concerned about invasions of privacy, by one's employer or others; or should not be concerned about data aggregation (i.e., with whom your employer might share that data, and how it might be used by the employer or others). There are certainly legit concerns people could have.

"Data mining" is maybe a more scary-sounding term, but technically it means something more like statistical pattern recognition in large collections of diverse data. If your employer aggregated the vaccination information for employees, augmented it with other information they hold about those employees, maybe even sought out outside information about the same people and included it in some data analysis to figure out patterns in who was or wasn't getting vaccinated (statistical trends), or something like that, that last analysis bit would maybe be data mining, in the technical sense. Most employers aren't going to spend money on doing something like that, realistically.

If you look up "data mining" on the web, look at sources with actual reason to know what the term means (vs. those with theories about questionable corporate behavior but no technical knowledge), like IBM, statistical software providers, etc.

There can be reasons to be concerned about data mining, too, but I don't think that giving one's employer one's vax card is really the same thing.

AnnPT77 wrote: »

This is what the US vaccine card looks like:



The only things on the card that a normal US employer wouldn't already have are the patient number, and the type/lot number/date/site of vaccination.

The patient number is intended to be used for the number the vaccination site uses to identify the person, not their social security number (which the employer has, of course) or medicare ID number. Medical record number is a standard term for that: It'd be the number that (say) a hospital system uses to keep track of my medical records in their affiliated facilities. The IIS number is related to consolidating vaccination information in an electronic record, so all info is available to doctors/clinics/etc. about all the vaccinations a person has had.

As a generality, the records associated with those numbers (at the health care provide/data aggregator facility) are protected health information (PHI) under HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act). That does *not* mean the number itself, or other data on the card, when you give it to your employer, is HIPAA protected (because one's employer is not typically a HIPAA covered entity). Other privacy protection regulations will likely apply, though - some complicated set of both federal and state regulations.

On my card, the patient number is left blank.

I think that using the term "data mining" in this context may be misleading, and it's a term that's often used imprecisely.

I'm not saying, in any of the above, that one should not be concerned about invasions of privacy, by one's employer or others; or should not be concerned about data aggregation (i.e., with whom your employer might share that data, and how it might be used by the employer or others). There are certainly legit concerns people could have.

"Data mining" is maybe a more scary-sounding term, but technically it means something more like statistical pattern recognition in large collections of diverse data. If your employer aggregated the vaccination information for employees, augmented it with other information they hold about those employees, maybe even sought out outside information about the same people and included it in some data analysis to figure out patterns in who was or wasn't getting vaccinated (statistical trends), or something like that, that last analysis bit would maybe be data mining, in the technical sense. Most employers aren't going to spend money on doing something like that, realistically.

If you look up "data mining" on the web, look at sources with actual reason to know what the term means (vs. those with theories about questionable corporate behavior but no technical knowledge), like IBM, statistical software providers, etc.

There can be reasons to be concerned about data mining, too, but I don't think that giving one's employer one's vax card is really the same thing.

Granted that data mining is the wrong term, in my experience personal information and medical information privacy rights are mostly honored only in the breach. I don't think once in my entire life has a medical care provider given me a copy of their privacy policy and my HIPAA rights without my asking, even though every one of them pretends to comply with the law by asking you to sign something saying you have been given a copy of that information. When I have pointed out politely that they have not in fact given me that information before asking me to sign, they're seldom remotely gracious about it. The attitude generally seems to be that I'm a trouble maker for asking and I should just shut up and sign the *kitten* thing.

And now my employer is asking for medical information that they won't be legally responsible for keeping private (because they're not obtaining it in the context of providing me with medical care), even though there is no practical reason for them to have it, since they do not maintain a physical facility that I have access to. I have no physical contact with any of my fellow employees. I don't share the same space with them.

I'm vaccinated. I think everybody who can be safely vaccinated should be. I have no objection to showing my vaccine card to anyone who wants to see it before I enter a building. Heck, if my employer made the case that they wanted to ascertain my vaccination status for purposes of differentiating insurance premiums based on risk, I wouldn't object (although it would seem a bit hypocritical, as they allow non-smokers to merely "attest" to their nonsmoker status for insurance purposes). If they were saying they wanted everyone vaccinated because they didn't want to deal with long illnesses and having to replace people who die, I'd shrug and upload an image of my vaccination card.

But they're not making those arguments. They say they want the image because they're not going to let unvaccinated people into the offices that they still maintain for some other employees -- offices I don't go to and was not welcome at even in pre-covid days (they basically reneged on the promise that we could call and reserve space if we needed to leave our homes and go to business meetings in the city; instead, if I need to go to a meeting, I have to "rent" space in a coffee shop by buying coffee whether I want it or not while I'm waiting for the meeting time or finishing out the day rather than lose time in transit during work hours).

And I'm sure that the people who are still provided with offices, lighting, electricity to power computers, HVAC, free coffee, etc., etc., are using company-provided scanners and faxers and whatever other equipment they might need to upload their documents, along with whatever tech support they might need if they're not familiar with the equipment or the process. Those of use who aren't worth office space will be on our own in terms of figuring that all out, including probably having to go to a business supply store and risk having our medical information saved digitally by their scanners and faxers.

And frankly, there are days when I'm tired of listening to people talking during company online meetings and in online chat spaces about how hard it has been working from home for most of the past year and a half, because it was hard for me before, and it won't stop being hard when covid stops having such an impact on our lives, and my company never acknowledges in any of its policies or statements that they made it hard for a subset of their employees before the pandemic, and won't be doing anything to make it less hard for us after the pandemic.

Also can someone tell me the avg age of the covid deaths?? Last time I saw a statistic i believe it was very late 70s. Very close to if not higher than life expectancy age. Not to make light of those deaths but just to add context to the conversation. Social media and media in general would have you believe that if you get covid that you may or may not live even if 15 years old and healthy. Too many people have been terrified by covid because the media will not frame this disease with hard data and sadly most people will not dig to find it.

MargaretYakoda wrote: »

JoPat409 wrote: »

3) What are you on about? The media has been reporting hard data since the beginning.

If they were focused on hard data, the present conflict would be about obesity levels rather than getting every single person vaccinated.