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AUSTRIA IS SUSPENDING a law making Covid-19 vaccinations mandatory for all adults, the government has said, just a month after the legislation took effect in an EU first.
The Alpine nation of nine million people was among few countries in the world to make jabs against the coronavirus compulsory for all adults.
The law took effect in February and called for fines up to €3,600 from mid-March for those who do not comply.
But Minister Karoline Edtstadler said the law’s “encroachment of fundamental rights” could no longer be justified by the danger posed by the pandemic.
“After consultations with the health minister, we have decided that we will of course follow what the (expert) commission has said,” Edtstadler told reporters after a Cabinet meeting.
“We see no need to actually implement this compulsory vaccination due to the (Omicron) variant that we are predominantly experiencing here.”
The highly-contagious variant is widely believed to be less severe than previous strains of the virus, and so far Austrian hospitals have been able to cope with a surge in cases.
Calls to review the law have become increasingly loud, especially as Austria has dropped almost all coronavirus restrictions in recent weeks.
As of yesterday, Austria has recorded almost three million coronavirus cases and more than 15,000 deaths since the beginning of the pandemic in 2020.
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DNA matching is nothing new to the Irish dating scene. Something we’re trying to move away from you might even say.
@Winston Smith: LOL
@Winston Smith:
True.
The gene pool in my parent’s homeplace was shallow enough to paddle in.
Everybody seemed to be a cousin of some sort to everybody else there!
@Michael Kavanagh: “Kevin Bacon” six degrees of separation!!
@Colette Kearns:
Believe me – when it come to acquaintance (especially knowing the bad news) their colective Bacon Number there is a big fat one!
It sounds like another marvelously inventive way for companies to get access to your DNA profile. Be very wary of parting with this information!
@Sean: if a big pharma company bought millions of people’s DNA and then used that to research and find a cure for say, cancer, would you find that unethical? I wouldn’t
@niamh ryan: you believe their goal is always to cure everything…. interesting..!!!
@niamh ryan:with or without permission?
@Bluey: in an ideal world with permission. Specifically for medical research purposes. But I suppose once you hand it over you lose control of it
@Ian Scott: and you think their goal is……
@niamh ryan: to be fair their goal is to generate as much money as possible for as long as possible. Whoever thinks pharma companies are looking to make the world a better place is naive.
@niamh ryan: big pharma finding a cure for something they make millions off…lol…
@David Daly: they are a business of course they are out to make money. They invest billions in research and have a right to charge for their products. Certain types of cancer are no longer an automatic death sentence, people living full lives with HIV, huge breakthroughs in parkinsonism ect. They are making the world a better place for profit. It would be naive to think that anybody would do it for free
@niamh ryan: The Pharma company would would need to know who got cancer and what type of cancer they got in the DNA sample population for it to be useful. You have presented something of a false but meaningless argument here. What is more likely is that the data would be bought by a life insurance company which could then have very real implications for your children or grandchildren. They could be refused a mortgage (based on being refused life cover) because of an increased risk of certain inherited diseases in your DNA. Why not?
The millennials are to busy flicking between pages on their phones as to flicking between the sheets
@dick dastardly: ah sure you’re still pining over Penelope Pitstop.
@Keelan O’neill: now there’s a cartoon character u cud hang ur wet duffle coat on……….(or words to that effect)
They need DNA testing as the amount of people in towns who have the same biological father is crazy now… That was a joke once but no longer…
@TamuMassif2019: are you speaking from experience??
@TamuMassif2019:
You the Daddy?
Some enchanted evening , you may see a stranger,
You may see a stranger, across a crowded room,
And somehow you know, you know even then,
That somehow you’ll see her , again and again…..
Much more romantic way to meet.
@Aine O Connor:
Yup.
Then you go and spoil it all
By saying something stupid like
I’ll swab you.
Genetic profile for romance, hardly. However what a genetic profile App will do is flash warning lights as regards inherited problems, like for instance both parties being CF carriers. That doesn’t need to kill the romance, but it does give the option of going I.V., and screening the embryos before implantation, thus leaving the problem behind. Likewise various of the genes that pre dispose to cancers of one sort or another.
Tinder or what ever app. If you want to meet a serial killer, I’d say it’s a pretty good way.
This country is so inbred it’s new DNA we need!
have your say