Menzo
3626
Is this just the first vote to advance it out of committee, or is this the vote to overcome a filibuster on the actual bill? If the former, there’s still plenty of time for that 17 number to drop to zero when the actual vote comes.
None
3627
A meerkat and a possum. She’s a silly goose. Or possibly a skinwalker.
Well, we DO know (from Trumpists) that there are lizard people in Washington.
This vote I believe takes it to floor debate. The thought is generally that if you’re going to filibuster a bill, you do it before debate, because once you’re on record engaging in good faith debate and then you’re all in on a last-second filibuster that the shit you said in debate can be very harmful for you in your next election campaign.
I just hope the Rs don’t decide at the last minute to introduce some unrelated “poison pill” provision like a 60-day mandatory waiting period for elective abortions or a prohibition on federal funds going to colleges which have Black Studies programs.
You know some of them are thinking these things.
Timex
3631
For federal employees, and onsite contractors, you will either need to attest that you are vaccinated, or you will be forced to wear a mask at all time, socially distance, and undergo weekly or twice weekly testing.
Federal agencies need to ask about the vaccination status of Federal employees and onsite
contractors—employees and onsite contractors must sign an attestation confirming their vaccination
status…
We’re just going to use the honor system?
Timex
3633
Generally, if you make a claim to the feds, sign it, and it turns out you lied? That is generally bad for you if they find out.
That’s bizarre. Everyone gets a vaccination card, right?
Alstein
3635
At work that’s what I was told. Which means the anti-vaxxers are just gonna lie. I’m pissed.
The ones here are completely immoral and evil (at least the head of the family is, the women seem to be fine just overly obedient) so that’s exactly what they will do.
I had to help design a system to review vaccination status for my employer (twice!). The whole situation is a mess. Since there is no standard for this, individuals even in the same town can end up with wildly different documentation of their vaccines. Lots of folks - most in my region - get CDC vaccination cards. Some have handwritten entries on them, including sometimes by the individuals who were issued the cards. Some have a mix of handwritten and printed or rubber stamped entries on them. Some have no CDC card but got whatever the pharmacy or other provider issued them, including paper tape receipts.
Our legal and risk conclusion is that we cannot effectively review vaccination records - anyone can create an effective forgery because of the lack of standards and variety of documents being issued. In the face of this, at first we paid a third party to do the document review, passing the legal risk of getting it wrong to a third party. Then when we concluded all employees had to be vaccinated we took it on ourselves as paying the third party to carry the risk was too expensive.
Ironically my own cdc card did not pass our internal review process as whoever rubber stamped the lot number onto it ran out of ink so double stamped it, making it almost completely illegible.
Some states are working to fix this by making their medical record system data available to employers, but the whole situation is a ridiculous joke in terms of the difficulty of actually assuring an employer that an employee is vaccinated.
Yes, but if you’re going to accept their word for it, why not just accept the vaccine card they present? If they’re willing to forge the card, they’re surely willing to lie about it.
Because then you have vaccine passports and that means the sky will fall.
It sucks that we can’t be more thorough, but it is a bit of extra pressure, at least. Hopefully some people with doubts may be persuaded to get the shots.
Canuck
3639
I don’t get the opposition to vaccine passports. I mean, I realize that it meant the possibility of creating a society of haves and have nots, with the rich being able to get vaccinated and enjoying the economic advantages of that. That is was a serious ethical dilemma. But that hasn’t been the case for several months now. Anybody who wants to be vaccinated has been able to be vaccinated for ages. There’s no possibility of discrimination here.
It’s a Republican talking point, so by definition it doesn’t have to be rational or make sense. Freedumb forever!
It’s part of evangelical heresy.
more of SInema’s bullshit. I have more respect for Joe Liebermann than I do Sinema at this point.
Yeah, this. If you’re a federal contractor and you say you’ve been vaccinated and then you get COVID, there’s a pretty good chance that they’re going to want to look at the batch numbers related to your vaccine dose. If your card then comes up as bogus… well, that won’t go well for you. Depending on what Federal agency the contractor is supporting, the extent to which that will not go well may be quite impressive.
This is not an argument for preferring a statement to an actual vaccine card. In either case, if you get sick, the government will want to follow up, and if you’ve given them a false vaccine card, you’re going to be in just as much trouble.
On the other hand, we know with certainty that people will lie about whether they have been vaccinated if they aren’t being asked to provide any evidence of it. Requiring them to be vaccinated but taking their word for it is, to me, just like saying they don’t have to wear masks if they’ve been vaccinated and hoping they’ll be honest about it. We know how that worked out.
It still boggles my mind that there is no reliable source for vaccination status in the US, even at the state level.
There is no national health system. There’s isn’t really any state-level health system. I got my vaccinations at a Walmart, because I couldn’t get an appointment at the county health vax facility and the federal-run vax centers in my state were a hundred or more miles away.
