Opinion on Vaccinations for Hospital Workers

[Max_S]

@Great_Antibob

As you noted, here in the Houston area, the Methodist system publicly fired a handful of employees who refused. And good riddance, I say. And that’s in Texas no less.

I have mixed opinions on this. As you cited Houston Methodist, I wonder how short they are on nursing staff? It looks like they dropped 151 hospital workers, while giving some 600 employees exceptions (out of maybe 22,000 employees across eight hospitals).

On a purely utilitarian basis if the nursing shortage is too severe it may not be worth it to fire unvaccinated nurses; with proper PPE and regular testing the risk of an unvaccinated nurse spreading the disease may be less than the risk of a facility being unable to save a patient due to lack of staff. The fact that there are hundreds of staff exempt from the rule - more than those fired for noncompliance - indicates that the hospital is confident in their ability to provide care even when an employee is unvaccinated.

I will copy something from the breaking news thread,

@Johnny_L.A

Texas Hospitals Are Already Overloaded. Doctors Are ‘Frightened by What Is Coming.’ (yahoo.com)

[T]he vast majority of patients hospitalized in Texas are not vaccinated…

To help manage the surge, Abbott appealed this week to health care workers outside the state to travel to Texas and help the overloaded hospitals.

Here’s an idea: Let unvaccinated health care workers (nurses, etc.) who refuse to take the vaccine care for the unvaccinated patients who refused to take the vaccine.

~Max