No, but when the HIPAA Privacy Rule is overridden, I don't think that sets a good precedent - at least not under these combined conditions:

- in the states, anyone who wants a vaccine can get one

- people vaccinated who contract covid very likely have mild to no symptoms

- if non-vaccinated people start carrying forged cards (CDC had a printable card on their site, so the cat's out of the bag) and get hospitalized with covid and refuse to, or are unable to indicate that the card is forged, then this may potentially skew the data for vaccine breakthrough cases

If the goal is to restrict access to things in order to encourage people to get vaccinated, then I don't think this is the way of doing it; if it's to protect myself and others who are vaccinated from the non-vaccinated, then I'm not too worried about it.

People are going to do them. I know of a guy that was holding out for JJ because he was untrusting of the safety of mRNA's, and now he's in the hospital with covid. The irony.

I'm not really of a mind to ask stores to enforce policies to check vaccination status, but I think it's a big stretch to say that doing so would be overriding HIPAA.

It would be a minor, but vaccinations are protected medical information. I guess you're right, though, being that a grocery store, for example, is not a medical or health insurance provider and the person showing the card would be considered to be voluntarily disclosing his or her protected medical information, but I'd argue that would be under duress if all grocery stores mandated it. Still, I think it peaks opens a door that shouldn't be opened.

Maybe I am being harsh, but why are we making any policies that are just to,protect the unvaccinated from their own idiocy? Who cares if someone is lying about being vaccinated and not wearing a mask?

I still say we should make anyone who chooses to not get vaccinated sign a waiver to pay for the health and life insurance overages, and a Medicare surcharge, and be done with it. **** em and let us get on with our lives.

Nope, the responsible always end up paying for and supporting the irresponsible and stupid.

I'd be ok if it were a one time cost, but nearly all of these stupid ****ers will get better and subsequently do something else dumb to incur more expenses for the rest of us to pay.

That's not how HIPAA works.

All HIPAA does is require health care providers not to reveal protected health information to third parties without the patient's consent.

Anyone can ask you for your info. And you can choose to give it to them or not. And if you choose not to and they decide not to let you into their establishment, that's fine and HIPAA has absolutely nothing to do with it.

Now there might be other laws that prevent certain people (e.g. employers) from asking certain things. But those laws are separate from HIPAA (for the most part, there are probably some edge cases where someone works at a place where they also receive health care services).

I don't even think there is any legit discrimination claim here as I'm pretty sure vaccine status isn't a protected class. I guess someone could gin up something by claiming that getting vaxxed is against their religion, and turn it into a discrimination claim. But once again, we're very far from HIPAA.

EDIT: After reading your next post, it looks like you came to this conclusion on your own. I'll just leave this here for anyone who might be confused.

At my church this morning, half the people were not wearing masks and scowling at the people that were. Meanwhile, the other half were scowling (I'm assuming under their masks) at the people who weren't wearing masks. And the priest was up front asking everyone to please respect each other.

There was lots of hair on edge.

And I was home watching the drama online.

I hit up the grocery store this morning. The retailer (Meijer) still had their masks required signs up, but of the first six customers I saw while walking in only one had a mask. That wasn't typical of the rest of the store, but there were also a number of people not making much of an effort to cover their covid holes.

Couldn't begin to guess how many of them are vaccinated and how many are just resistant and don't know that I really care that much.

My local Meijer (which also had signs up; there's still a county mask mandate) had a handful of people unmasked throughout the store tonight. Most were wearing masks.

The unmasked people are jackasses since they're willingly putting the store workers in a bad spot for no good reason.

Not true. According to the CDC if they are vaccinated and the store workers are vaccinated, there is no reason for either to be wearing a mask. If the store worker isn’t vaccinated, he or she should be wearing a mask.

No good reason?

That's their freedom you're talking about.

Big if true

The CDC doesn't make the laws. Locally, the mandates are still in place. Most companies, especially large ones, are going to comply and give their frontline employees the task of enforcing it. For that matter, companies are free to keep these mandates in place even after regulations get lifted.

If the company has signs out front demanding that you mask up while in their place, the only decent thing to do is to either comply or to take your business elsewhere.

Whether ongoing mandates are sensible is beside the point. I don't believe they are sensible at this point, though this just dropped a few days ago and obviously I'm understanding of the fact that there is likely to be something of a lag before bureaucrats take official action to lift mandates even if they plan to.

Sorry I misunderstood your point, I get it now - thank you for clarifying.

They removed the directional aisle arrows from my local grocery and I hate it.

I never saw anyone ever pay attention to those things.

I'll be interested to see how it unfolds in places where the state and local mandates have been lifted and masks are just company policy (which I think is the case here). I can see it being strictly enforced in smaller settings but I dunno about major retailers.

Probably will be like everything else, some employees will enforce fully and others won't care at all.

Purely speculating, but I would think a company's bottom line is better served by only enforcing mandates where legally required. It's going to be a clear majority of the population not wanting to deal with masks anymore.

Where I am the mandates are lifted but some major retailers require them. They won't enforce it, though. They just let them do their thing rather than risk some "constitutionalist" going postal on a worker. They were doing that even when there was a mandate in place. It's pretty clear that the employees were instructed to not enforce the policy - they just announce the policy on the loudspeaker every hour or so.

Feel so bad for all the retail/CS workers that have had to deal with this **** for over a year. They don't get paid enough in the first place, let alone paid enough to enforce mandates on maskless idiots that might end up shooting them.

I would just like to extend a huge FU to people who don't want a vaccine without a medical exemption. I have heard some of the dumbest reasons not to receive one over the past few weeks. I am seriously considering these people among the dumbest morons to have ever existed. If it is upto them this would rage forever.

And I'm in toronto ffs, I don't even wanna imagine what's going on in those states I fly over on my way to sweet sweet rio, where I am finally going again in a few months

natural human selection

Mutations, bro.