It hurts when you are in the unlucky part of an equation, but sometimes the math just works that way.
Shortly before my mother died, she was in a trial for a new cancer drug that is now saving lives. My mother was randomly assigned to the control group, and received standard therapies. Her fourth yahrzeit was 8 weeks ago.
But looking at the big picture, more people lived than died because of the study she was in.
It might be that if there were no vaccine mandate, and the nurse had remained in her job, but unvaccinated, the OP’s father would still be live; however, three people who are alive right now would be dead because they caught COVID from the nurse.
Then there’s also the scenario where the nurse remains employed and unvaccinated, but herself dies of COVID, and exits the OP’s father’s life that way.
The only scenario where everyone wins is the one where the nurse is vaccinated (whether by choice or mandate, so I guess really two scenarios), and remains employed at the father’s nursing home.
Nurses are leaving the profession and student nurses are switching to different career paths because of this mandate. Nursing homes are extremely short staffed and hospital workers and other health care workers are burning out.
How many more people who have dedicated their entire working lives to helping people with medical problems will it take until there aren’t enough nurses left to take care of you when it is your turn to get sick? Perhaps we should consider school teachers, warehouse workers, truck drivers and many other essential workers before we decide to just fire huge numbers of them. Unintended consequences are still consequences.
And BTW, my previous mentions of Ivermectin have absolutely nothing to do with this thread – they are outright high-jacks aimed solely at discrediting me and my concern for the looming shortage of health care workers (any many others).
Because they haven’t dedicated their lives to helping people. If they did, they would get the shot unless medically ineligible. They feel that standards of disease prevention don’t apply to them and don’t care if they make their patients sick.
I guess we could solve the staffing problem two ways – allow them to stay unvaccinated, and also let them kill off the folks they are meant to help by bringing in all kinds of disease. It’s a win-win!
Why do you think hospital workers and health care workers are burning out? It’s because of awful anti-vaxxers like that nurse who refuse to protect themselves and others by getting vaccinated, causing this pandemic to be never-ending.
Nurses that care for vulnerable patients and won’t get the vaccine are shitty nurses. It’s a shame they made the choice to be shitty nurses, but it is what it is.
I’ve seen several large medical systems that are starting to fire people are at like 97-98% vaccinated workforces, so TBH I think it’s easily worth taking hits of a few percent. In some rural areas with low staffing in general it’ll be worse.
We need to get anti-vax health professionals out of the profession, just like we had to get doctors and nurses who didn’t believe in germ theory and refused to follow sanitary procedures despite the known benefits of washing their hands before and after touching patients out of the profession. A necessary winnowing of the ranks in order to improve patient health.
My daughter and SIL are currently in Tennessee, hiking in the Smoky Mountains, de-stressing. When their bosses told them they could not take vacation time at this particular time they said fine, if they are fired on their return they’ll get other jobs. They’d be far less cavalier if their employer had mandated vaccination instead of being wishy-washy.
ISTM that a big part of the problem is that many nurses and other healthcare workers are underpaid and overworked, especially in the current pandemic. And now we’re seeing aggressively hostile behavior towards many medical professionals by antivaxxers who harass and doxx them for not treating critically ill patients with the quack remedies that the antivaxxers espouse.
So I’m not surprised that many burned-out nurses are quitting, and I’m not surprised that some of them may be using vaccine hesitancy as their tipping point and/or their excuse.
The loss of antivax nurses who get fired from vaccine-mandate workplaces will definitely stress an already stressed system, but hopefully it will have a few beneficial side effects:
As QtM says, it will get anti-science types out of a profession in which understanding of science is crucial, and will reduce the harm they can do by their spreading ignorance and needlessly endangering patients.
It may give nurses’ organizations a stronger position to push for improved working conditions and recognition, rather than just patronizingly being called “heroes” by a society that continues to exploit them as workers.
Long shot, but it may inspire more vaccine resisters to get vaccinated if it increases awareness of the strain the healthcare system is under, and how much your risks increase if you have to be hospitalized in overcrowded and understaffed facilities.
I have had a father and father in law die in nursing homes at the end of their lives. They spent several years in the nursing homes before passing away. I was a constant in their lives. I was there every day at the same time. I visited, I brought them toiletries and snacks, we were friends.
I will repeat myself. I made time in my life to be with them every day. I was working and I had other obligations but I made the time for them and why not? They made the time for me and for the man I love for many, many years it was the least I could do.
Nursing staff came and went, I was a constant. It was inconvenient, tiring, boring, heart breaking and sometimes maddening, but I was there every single day.
If I had thought that someone I loved died of sorrow that an anti-vax nurse had left, I would have considered myself to have failed because I could have done more.
So, when reading the OP and answers, I can’t focus on the nurse because she’s not the important point in this story. IMHO, the important part is that shut in elderly need stimulation and visitors. Folks shouldn’t think they can just write a check and visit once a week and that makes everything hunky dory cause it just doesn’t work that way. My heart goes out to the OP’s poor father who died of loneliness.