In the UK, all workers in certain parts of our health service are required to be vaccinated against certain bio-hazards - you can’t work in ER or theatre without the various Hepatitis jabs - there are other jabs but this will do for example.
In other occupations such as prisons and police you are offered such jabs - but not flu - and if later on you suffer any ailments through not having those jabs then your claims for compensation - enhanced sick retirement - will be reduce to the lower level of sickness innefficiency (currently unable to offer efficient attendance and perrformance)
In other words, those staff who are in close contact with vulnerable patients cannot be part of their health safeguard if they have not or are unable to accept the vaccine - there should be consequencies and choices for the workers.
Yup, I totally agree. The messaging has been really haphazard and almost certainly has been trying to placate people (eg. before Christmas, Quebec was told they could get together with family in small gatherings over a couple of specific days if they promised to isolate before and after, using the honour system? but then that was rescinded as numbers continued to rise: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/quebec-christmas-covid-legault-1.5826939 ) and it’s just confusing overall.
People likely still got together over the holidays despite the new rules, and who knows if this lockdown can slow the numbers, given that elementary schools are apparently being reopened next week…sigh
Is there a defined list of vaccines the health workers are required to have or is it a general statement like “You’ll have to be vaccinated with any and all vaccines we decide at anytime”?
I do not know the exact mechanism for this, I used to work as a sparky in a UK hospital and it was routine for us to be offered vaccinations without going to our GP. We also had to declare which ones we hadn’t had - we were not compelled to have those jabs but its not hard for the employer in the case of compensation claims to discover that we had declined offers. Frankly you’d be completely mad not to have hep jabs in hospital maintenance due to the high probability of needlestick injury.
It also works the other way too, we used to have our hearing assessed and also if we had any work acquired infections such as MRSA then we would have proof of declines in hearing or other health conditions. (I can think of one person who had a very specific bite from a Rogets Ant that caused infection and nearly cost him his leg - those ants are very uncommon except in one area of the hospital undercroft so it supported his compensation claim )
Medical staff have differant rules, so I don’t know what happens if they decline certain vaccinations, but likely it would simply disqualify them from specific fields - even if they had genuine medical reasons for declining said vaccinations - due to the risk to patient safety.
What are the current theories in the public health/medical communities about why some people breeze through a mild case of COVID and others die, sometimes quickly, and still others (even those who have had a mild case) suffer long-term after effects?
^It’s also interesting how clusters of severe disease are happening. My sister’s husband’s family spread COVID-19 amongst themselves. Although they all survived, every one of them had hospital stays with severe illness and guarded prognosis’s.
I don’t know, except getting a bigger initial viral load is bad.
What you write is, in broad stokes, common with deadly diseases. It is certainly true of other viruses including smallpox and polio. As for the flu, what you write isn’t so true when the victim is middle aged, but probably is true for people 85 and older.
No cite, but there’s a cartoon pointing out that Switzerland, who is not part of the EU, is even worse than France.
R is staying above 1, and finally the federal government has decided to step in again and implement a federal rule, instead of letting each canton earn the right to have restaurants open.
The Swiss government said on January 6 that nationwide measures imposed on December 18 – closure of bars, restaurants, sports and cultural facilities – would likely be extended until the end of February. A final decision on the extension, and on possible further measures, will be taken on January 13. The government also said it supports uniform measures across cantons.
One of the scientists in the task force has gotten fed up with the politicians and has quit.
Meanwhile epidemiologist Christian Althaus says he is quitting the government’s expert advisory group on Covid-19. In a Tweet on Saturday announcing his departure, Althaus criticised politicians, saying they should learn to treat science on an equal footing.
No link, but there’s a number of restaurants which are planning to open, illegally, on Monday the 11th. The constantly changing rules are making it difficult for the restaurants to plan, and they end up wasting food.
Bad news is that the Pope’s personal doctor just died of Covid. Better news is that the Pope will be vaccinated soon.
Bad news is that Japan found a new strain of Covid distinct from UK and Africa strains. The better news is that the vaccine will likely work against that strain too, and so far, it’s not deadlier.
Another study showing that children have the disease in numbers unexpected, but the transmission part of the study is not very strong.
States reporting record high daily reported cases (seven day average) over the weekend (Jan 8-10 2021)
Vermont
Massachusetts
New York
New Jersey
Delaware
Maryland
Virginia
West Virginia
District of Columbia
North Carolina
Kentucky
Georgia
Alabama
Mississippi
Arkansas
Louisiana
Oklahoma
Texas
Arizona
California
Nevada
That’s twenty states and D.C. I realize that this is across the span from Friday to Sunday, but a.) it’s still over only one weekend and b.) it’s worth recalling that this isn’t reporting a rising rate of new cases, or higher cases than the previous day. These are record highest-ever daily cases (seven day average). We need to stop setting new records every week before we can see cases start to decline. In several of those states (including Massachusetts, where I am), the rate appears to be shooting up rapidly. Even Hawaii, which has not had a record number in a long time, appears poised to set a new record soon.
It’s scary that, even after the start of distribution of vaccines, and despite what appeared to be a dip, the worldwide number of new daily cases, as reported on the Johns Hopkins site, still appears to be rising.