Imagine you’re taking an elderly family member to the hospital to see a physician about a serious underlying condition. She’s been vaccinated but being elderly and having underlying comorbidities, the vaccine offers less protection than the 40-year-old doctor who’s treating her. As you find the doctor’s office, you walk by an orderly, a security guard, and several nurses who have refused vaccination because…reasons. One of them comes to work and infects your elderly family member. She thought she was protected but is now fighting off a more lethal variant and ends up in the hospital and requires oxygen. She survives, but the whole ordeal was traumatic, not to mention costly.
Meanwhile you get it, too, and come home and pass it on to other family members. At first it just seemed like a bad flu, and after a few days, you fight it off, only to get persistent fatigue and brain fog, forcing you to take days off from work.
And here you were thinking that people ordinarily go to the hospital to get treated.
I don’t know if I think healthcare workers need to be fired over this; it’s probably wiser to create some incentives or to have someone consult with them one on one about their trepidations. But yeah, implementing a temporary furlough as a last resort is probably appropriate if nothing else works.
A good friend had to have a hip replacement; it got delayed about a year thanks to Covid. Her surgeon operates at two different locations; she chose the further away one due to overall lower Covid rates at the second.
I should find 70% shocking but at the hospital I work at the vaccination rate is even lower, a little over 50%.
The numbers for staff providing direct patient care are not much better, still around 50%. The exception is our doctors and mid-level providers; rumor has it they were told to either get vaccinated or hit the bricks.
Howard Levitt was on the radio daily back when lockdowns started, coming down heavily in favour of employees claiming that employers laying off staff or modifying working conditions would be open to huge settlements at the end of this. He changed his position fairly quickly, realizing that many companies wouldn’t be solvent if they couldn’t adjust quickly.
California has set a mandate for state employees and healthcare workers and my hospital immediately emailed the same to all of us. It’s as if they had it all written up and ready to go. Vaccinate or biweekly covid tests or you don’t work. Personally, I’d make them pay for there own covid tests, but I doubt that’ll happen. My company has 2 hospitals in the county, one reported at 22% unvaxed, the other at 30%, SMH.
I will say that if you are a family member or a friend and you want to visit, you will wear a mask, vaxed or not. We have children, pregnant women and immunocompromised people in the next room, at any given moment.
Recent data shows asymptomatic or mildly symptomatic vaxed people infected with covid have as much viral load in their nose as unvaxed, and, presumably, as much ability to infect others, so yeah, masks aren’t going away in the hospital.
While I agree, I saw an article about the same problem with workers at nursing homes. The problem is that these jobs are hard to fill, and firing the idiots might cause the places to be understaffed. Maybe the threat would help especially if the firing was considered for cause.
BTW my daughter is having her second child as I write, and she got vaccinated a month or so ago at the advice of her doctor.
Yep. That’s why I’ve been amused and gratified when the local hospital systems have been mandating vaccinations and firing people who don’t comply, and they get on the news and bitch about it, making themselves look even stupider than they already did.
Beyond that, I don’t see what the difference is between getting vaccinated and washing one’s hands. Both are simple preventative measures for preventing the spread of infections between patients and/or staff. Yeah, one involves an injection, but who cares? It’s your choice to work there, and if you don’t like it, take a fucking hike.
I personally have MUCH larger philosophical problems with no-refusal DWI blood testing as far as invasiveness and that sort of thing goes, than private employers mandating vaccinations.
Thanks for this. I am relieved to see that the hospitals I am most likely to visit are requiring vaccination. Not a huge surprise, as they already required flu vaccines. I’m sure they have some process to deal with the tiny number of people who actually have medical reasons to avoid being vaccinated.
Yeah, hospitals are supposed to heal you. Hospital-acquired infections are all-too-common, but they should take all reasonable measures to reduce that, including requiring vaccination of staff.
Yesterday, on public radio, I heard that Walmart was going to require vaccinations for office employees but not for retail and warehouse employees. That seemed odd to me, as the retail employees are exposed to the general public to a greater extent. The reporter suggested the reason for not requiring the vaccine was because people might quit.
Yeah, this is quite true. I think the most effective solution might be to offer some carrots and sticks. Hospital admins could then prioritize which staff are most essential and then furlough the less essential employees - that might possibly send a message to staff who aren’t willing to fall and die on their own sword.