Working from home today, and Word for Mac has Franklin Gothic Condensed Demi. I’m going to call it good. Here’s the result.
The vaccine hesitancy of workers in UK care homes for the elderly has already been noted. Here’s a new development - it’s in this BBC Live Reporting thread, so I guess the content of the thread is subject to change, but here’s some current text:
Staff in care homes in England with elderly residents may be required to get a coronavirus vaccine, the government says.
The Department of Health and Social Care has launched a consultation on making Covid vaccination a condition of deployment for care home workers.
The government says experts from the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) advise 80% of staff and 90% of residents need to be vaccinated to provide a minimum level of protection against outbreaks.
Only 53% of older adult homes in England are currently meeting this threshold.
My bold. It’s a five week consultation period; what happens after that should be … interesting. I presume new legislation would be required to enforce this and enable care home managers to dismiss staff who still refused to vaccinate.
j
Nice!!
Thanks for the assist.
At least in the US, the government oversight of care homes is so spotty that even if such legislation could be passed (fat chance), practically speaking in many areas of the country it would simply be unenforced. And since following the new law would obviously impose a hardship on care home owners they would therefore roundly ignore it.
How would you compare these aspects of the problem to the situation in the UK?
I think you have to take into account that compliance in the UK has been… well, excellent, really. At least compared to the vast majority of other countries - take a look at this
So when in comes to care home workers, we’re coming at this from a perspective of If we did this, why can’t you?
Most elderly persons have younger (but probably old enough to have been vaccinated) relatives who care about them, and have expectations about the level of care their older loved one receives. I think care homes will be under increasing pressure to comply, even if there is no legal threat hanging over them. New legislation gives relatives the ability to insist on compliance, I guess.
j
If anyone wants to tweet the meme, here it is:
I don’t understand this talk about vaccine refusers. No one I know, literally no one, is the least bit hesitant. We’ve all either had the shot already or want it ASAP. My social circle must be quite different from other people’s.
Maybe you don’t live in an area with a lot of White, male, Republican/Trump supporters, White evangelicals, people under 45, or a rural population?
True, I live in a suburb of San Francisco. Mostly Asians and Latinos here, at least 80% Democrats. But even all the people I know in Ohio and Texas want the vaccine. What they have in common: they are all highly educated.
My SIL is an x-ray lab tech, and she refuses to get vaccinated.
White, Republican/Trump supporter, …
I am waiting for the hospital she works for to say that being vaccinated is a condition of employment.
It might come to that.
There are a couple of people in my extended family who are at least hesitant. They claim that it’s for safety reasons and I sort of believe them. They’ve heard from a friend of a friend that someone died from the vaccine and yet they ignore the daily reports of near 600k deaths. It astounds me.
There’s a woman at work who is so cool it’s crazy. Scubas, skydives and just took a leave of absence to do a gig making sure some fancy way backwoods cabin are stocked over the summer. She doesn’t like the blood clot news and figures she’s safe in the middle of nowhere until it all shakes out.
At the rate we’re going, COVID will be a significant issue for humanity for decades, if not centuries.
I hope your cool friend did a really excellent job stocking her cabin.
Oh no doubt. She’s also former Navy.
I didn’t argue with her but it was clear I wasn’t impressed.
The current most common non-genetic cause of intellectual disabilities at birth is cytomegalovirus, which is usually asymptomatic in infected adults. It also causes hearing damage in many babies who were infected in the womb.
Which I didn’t mention in that post, but did mention in an earlier post about virusus and birth defects.
Another thing about virusus and birth defects is that it’s usually an initial infection in pregnancy that is problematic. Some virusus that become latent in you once you are infected don’t harm fetuses, but can cause harm if you are infected for the first time while pregnant, I think CMV is like this.
One of my fellow engineers at work is refusing to get vaccinated. I haven’t heard a reason why; when asked, he just loudly states his intention to not get any vaccine and shuts down the conversation. The guy started out wearing a full respirator to work instead of just a face mask, but now he wears one of those flimsy plastic face shields. His wife is a nurse, and he’s carrying on like this. 
I heard rumors earlier this year that he was sick with something; maybe he tested positive, and figures he’s immune now?
Either that or his wife is a total denier & she’s persuaded him. Or QAnon did.