Demonstrably untrue. Many vaccines are well over 99% effective.

Wrong again. If vaccines did not work on an individual level then there would be no herd immunity. Vaccines don't have to be 100% effective to create herd immunity but they do have to be effective on an individual level in a substantial portion of the population. Herd immunity protects those who cannot (or will not) get vaccinated for whatever reason.

You first since you clearly have no idea how herd immunity works.

I have no quarrel with that. Problem is that I, as an employer (which I am), cannot be certain that your recreational (and probably illegal) drug habit will not present a safety or liability problem for me on the job. I have no problem ethically with an adult getting high on their own time provided it doesn't harm someone else. That last bit is the key though. As an employer I cannot afford to take avoidable risks of people getting harmed. If I don't test for drug use and someone gets injured with drugs as a contributing factor then I have several problems now. First, someone was needlessly injured due to my negligence. Second, there will be a lawsuit that follows and the lawyer is going to ask me "why did you hire someone with a drug problem?" And they will be right and I will lose and very likely have to pay a large settlement. Third, I run a company which operates heavy machinery and someone who is impaired runs a higher than normal risk of getting injured or causing injuries to others.

I cannot make these safety and liability concerns go away just because I want to respect what people do on their own time. Some people probably can manage a drug habit safely and without problems but many more cannot. I genuinely do not care if someone wants to smoke weed or do some other drug on their own time. None of my business. But what IS my business is the risk that potentially presents to me and my employees and I can't waive that away, like it or not.

So you think it is a better plan to hire a truck driver who is taking substances that impair judgement/performance, wait for an accident which has a good chance of people getting killed, wait for the inevitable lawsuit that will follow asking why you didn't test a drug problem, and only then bother to see if the person was impaired? I don't think you have a future in risk management or insurance. How about you just pee in a cup and we prevent the accident in the first place saving a lot of pain, suffering and money in the process.

If I'm testing you for drugs I'm not assuming you are doing anything but I'm also would be stupid if I didn't confirm that fact. No, your word does not mean anything. People lie all the time. The problem is that I KNOW for a fact that some percentage of people will do drugs and I do not know which ones they are. Literally over half the temps who apply for work at my company fail a drug test. (Yes I can prove it) Many drugs demonstrably impair judgement and/or coordination. Someone who uses recreational drugs also is indirectly telling me something about their mental state and lifestyle which may present a problem for me as an employer.

I run a business that requires operation of dangerous machinery and uses hazardous chemicals. If I didn't check for drug use and someone was injured with drugs as a contributing factor, the very first thing a lawyer will ask in the lawsuit that follows and accident is "why did you hire someone who used drugs?" And they would be right and I would lose. Judgement for the plaintiff... [/gavel] It's no different than doing a background check to find out if someone has a conviction for embezzlement before hiring them for an accounting job. If you want to use drugs there are jobs that will not test you or you can work for yourself.

I genuinely do not care if you want to get high and I'm not making any moral judgment. I also respect the position that you do not want to be tested but understand that doesn't obligate me to hire you. I'm just not willing to take needless risks on your behalf or risk the safety of others so you can get high. That's your problem, don't make it mine.

Way to go straight to the absurd and irrelevant extreme.

Spare me. Nobody applying for a job at Disney is in a position where they have to get a job there or they will become homeless and die. There are plenty of other jobs out there and even if there aren't (finding work can be hard sometimes) there are other social safety nets for almost everyone. Yes some people are in better circumstances than others. Opportunity is not equal for everyone and never will be. Welcome to the real world. We all make choices that open some doors and close others. If you want to choose to not get a vaccine and you are an adult then that is your choice. But do not expect your decision to come without consequences. Possibly quite serious consequences.

While the most common cause is usually bacterial, that doesn't rule out other causes. You claimed quite wrongly that pneumonia is solely caused by bacteria which is demonstrably untrue.

Since the only thing I'm seeking to establish is that bacteria are not the only cause of pneumonia, the Wikipedia article is as accurate is we need right here and now. If you want to prove that with a different source, knock yourself out but the answer will be the same.

Furthermore I just shouted down the hall to my wife who is a MD and asked her if she thought it was "misleading". She declared it to be fine. Since she is a physician and more informed than you and me put together on this topic, I'll just go ahead trust her opinion if it is all the same to you.

The CDC reccomends everyone over 6 months get the vaccine with certain exceptions. They are better informed on this subject than you are.

Consider yourself lucky. The flu can be quite unpleasant. In fact it sometimes can be so unpleasant that it kills young and healthy people. Your choice to get vaccinated or not but the notion that the flu only affects the weak and frail is demonstrably nonsense.

Pneumonia is a description of symptoms relating to inflammation of the lung and can be caused by bacteria, viruses, other micro-organisms, drug reactions and autoimmune conditions. It is an inflammatory condition, not an infection by a specific type of organism.

Ok, I don't get what the needless bragging about your IQ score is about but most health care professionals would agree with you on this point. If you aren't going to Africa there probably isn't a need to get some of the more exotic vaccines out there since vaccines can have unfortunate side effects. Perfectly reasonable.

You may be smart but you are quite ignorant on this point. Influenza isn't a single virus. It is a family of viruses and yes they mutate fairly often. Every year the CDC looks at the strains of flu viruses out there and how they are spreading and determines the 5 or so most likely strains to be a problem in the US. They then develop a vaccine to cover these strains. This vaccine does NOT make you immune against all strains of flu and you still might catch a strain not covered by the vaccine. And the CDC is often wrong about which strains actually prove to be most problematic since they are really just making an educated guess. If you get the flu vaccine you are more likely to be protected than if you don't against a few strains of flu but it does not and never did mean that you won't get the flu.

Furthermore if you choose not to get the vaccine you might actually encounter the virus but not become symptomatic but still carry it and infect others. The more people that get the vaccine the stronger the herd immunity benefit.

Finally it is highly unlikely that the vaccine caused you to get pneumonia. You seem to be unfamiliar with the latin phrase post hoc ergo propter hoc. Just because the pneumonia followed the vaccine doesn't mean the vaccine caused the pneumonia.

Free choice does not mean choice without consequences. I am free to speak my mind but that does not mean I shouldn't expect consequences for doing so. I can choose not to vaccinate my children or myself but that doesn't mean I should be allowed to endanger other people by making that choice. I can choose not to be tested for drugs for philosophical reasons but that might mean that certain jobs are closed to me.

Choice almost never comes without consequence.

Hospitals require testing and proof of vaccination as a condition of employment. I've worked in one in the past and they wanted proof of certain vaccinations, a TB test, and provided any needed vaccinations free of charge. (I got a booster for MMR and tetanus) I think if a place like a hospital it would be insane not to require the employees to be reasonably secure against likely communicable diseases. At a place like Disney where they have to deal with the general public I wouldn't have a problem with public health policy mandating vaccination as a condition of employment. I don't think people should be forced to accept a vaccine if they are adults and really don't want to (and of course if they cannot due to allergies etc) but I have no problem with certain jobs being closed to them if they are not vaccinated. I think all children should be vaccinated or have proof that they cannot safely be vaccinated before attending any public school.

Innocent until proven guilty only applies to the State regarding criminal proceedings. It has nothing at all to do with private sector employers. You are free to decline to be tested so nobody's rights are being infringed. Yes, there may be consequences to that decision including not being hired. If a private sector employer determines that use of illegal drugs could cause the company problems (liability and safety in particularly), why shouldn't they have the right to require a drug test as a condition of employment? Use of many illegal drugs can demonstrably impair judgement and coordination in ways that are not always immediately obvious and have demonstrably caused injuries in many a work place. In my company we work with multi-ton presses and other dangerous equipment and we would be idiots to hire someone without taking reasonable precautions to ensure safety and to reduce liability.

There are plenty of employers who do not test for drug use. If you think a drug test is a problem for you (even philosophically) then seek out employment where they don't test. Plenty of companies don't care enough to bother.

The hell they are. Tire noise accounts for 70-90% of overall noise energy when travelling over 50mph.

I will notice the car getting louder and louder as its speed increases. What's your point?

The problem is that silent is never obnoxious but the "good rumble" often is. I can comprehend that some people enjoy a loud car (I do not) but I think the default should be silence. Make them quiet and people who make them loud should have to pay extra for the noise pollution they create.

No you hear audio engineering. I had a Mercedes SLK230 some time ago. Supercharged 4 cylinder. Growled deeply like an old V8 because the Mercedes engineers tuned it to do that, not because it needed to. Now they are actually using the speaker system to emit sounds because some people (not me) for whatever reason like obnoxious noises. (Harley riders I'm looking right at you) They could make even relatively high horsepower cars much quieter than they do. They purposefully choose not to and they even try to make cars sound louder and more "impressive" than they really are.

It is a perceived safety issue and I don't buy the arguments in favor of mandating noise pollution. If it really were a problem we should expect to see cars that are quieter than average involved in proportionally more collisions that cars that are more noisy. I've not seen one speck of evidence that quiet cars get in more accidents due to their sound levels. It is to my mind a completely nonsensical argument with no evidence to support it.