Headline:
"Oregon Nurses Association: Over 80 nurses to leave Asante after Oct. 18 deadline"
Comment e-mailed to me:
"Don't let the door hit your butt on the way out the door."
A month ago I mentioned I got a haircut. About the time she was finishing, the stylist said she wasn't vaccinated. "I did the research," she said. "Vaccinations are dangerous and COVID is a hoax." I observed here in this blog that I probably shouldn't have gotten a haircut, at least not from her. She wore a mask but haircuts are close work. She stands right next to 20 or 30 people every day and she isn't vaccinated. She is a risk to me. Breakthrough cases happen. It is important I not bring something home to my wife. Next time I get a haircut I will ask if the person is vaccinated.
I have also written about a neighbor who opposes the COVID vaccination. His job is to deliver and install major appliances for a local company. That puts him in people's kitchens for a hour. I now know to insist that workers who come to the house be vaccinated, and in any case for me to stay well away from them. Are they COVID infected? Who knows? That is the point. Their being vaccinated improves the odds for me.
We have seen protests on the side of people opposing vaccination requirements. There was a rally in Medford Saturday, billed as supporting workers' rights.
Employers are caught in the middle, but it is not clear they are hearing from both sides. Do they hear from customers who are hesitant to do business with people and organizations that are lax about mask requirements and who employ people at higher risk for spreading COVID? There are some like me out there. And what about employees who want safe working conditions and prefer not to share an office or delivery-truck van with someone who won't get vaccinated. Those workers have rights, too.
The e-mail correspondent who sent me the comment about nurses said,
"I wouldn't want to be working next to a guy who won't get vaccinated against COVID during a COVID epidemic. I also wouldn't want to be working next to a guy who won't get vaccinated for typhoid during a typhoid epidemic."
Asante, Southern Oregon's regional hospital group, is insisting their employees be vaccinated. It is the Governor's order and they are complying. It is controversial. The County Administrator informed the local County Commissioners that Asante welcomed that order as a legal justification for requiring something they believed was good policy for the health and safety of patients and employees. Hospital employees who won't get vaccinated are placed on unpaid leave. The Jackson County Commissioners oppose vaccination mandates and questioned Asante's decision, given the nursing shortage.
I am happy with Asante's position. I applaud them. I have discretion on whether to get a haircut or to allow installation of an appliance, but if I am admitted to the hospital it probably won't be discretionary. I will likely have a "co-morbidity" at that moment, and breakthrough COVID would be a complication. Doctors, nurses, respiratory therapists, phlebotomists, all get up close to do their work and they all exhale. Their being vaccinated reduces my risk of their infecting me. My correspondent said,
If nurses don't care about spreading COVID to the people in their care, then they are in the wrong profession, and should damned well get out of it. Peter, you can put them to work picking melons in the wide open outdoors of a melon field, but get them the heck away from sick people.
Employees may not feel comfortable speaking out to say they want co-workers to be vaccinated. I liken it to smoking in offices 40 years ago. A person made uncomfortable by a co-worker's smoking just kept his mouth shut and put up with it. The smoker's right to smoke had priority. Their freedom. That was then.
Now no one would insist on the right to smoke cigarettes in a hospital. It would be understood that their smoke risks and bothers others. Employers are more likely to feel empowered to require vaccinations if they understood that there is support for a vaccine requirement by customers and co-workers. The support is there.
We need to speak up.
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7 comments:
People who don't trust the medical establishment enough to get vaccinated shouldn't be allowed into a medical establishment when they get COVID-19. They should have their own "alternative" establishments that base their treatments on the "alternative facts" these idiots base their decisions on.
Doctors and nurses too stupid to get vaccinated could staff those alternate establishments and administer horse dewormer and Clorox to the willfully ignorant.
You can't cure stupid, but as someone previously noted, maybe stupid is curing itself.
At the large telecommunications company where I work, they require all workers to be (documented) vaccinated to come to the office and everyone is "encouraged" to come back to the office by October 25th unless they have a valid medical or religious exemption. They don’t say outright that vaccination is a condition of employment but the subtext is clear that notwithstanding the fact that most work has been done remotely for the past 19 months- the new mode is in-person and vaccinated.
Several of my direct reports have filed religious exemptions based on the affront to their moral choice to not be forced to do what they don’t want to do. I suspect they will be denied. I reminded them all of the companies where their skills would apply also require vaccination, so their choice will likely be whether they want to continue in their current (well-paying) career. I suspect healthcare workers will face the same choice. Nobody can make you take it, but not doing so limits your career options.
The irony is that unlike union sympathizers who may not cross a union picket line, sick people with covid who had not been vaxed will likely have no problem crossing anti-vax healthcare protest lines to get healthcare to keep them alive.
This is a great message and I appreciate it.
However, you neglect to mention that it's Republicans who have sowed the seeds of mistrust, ironically to control their gullible and ignorant constituents.
That we even need mandates is absurd. The effectiveness of a vaccination policy is thwarted unless everyone gets it, and politicizing it as an individual freedom issue is despicable.
About a third of us are frankly a danger to themselves and others. This is why we need responsible government in times of crises. A mandate last Fall would have saved thousands of lives, but Republicans wouldn't, couldn't, do it because it would have cost them votes in November. Moreover, they were perfectly happy to push the pandemic onto Democrats in case of a loss.
Win-Win
I just deleted a post plagiarized from a conservative news website. The post bemoaned that some Massachusetts State Troopers are resigning rather than get vaccinated.
Good. Resign. That will save the taxpayers of Massachusetts pension money. It will allow some new blood into the departments. The new hires will be less expensive than the old people.
More important is the public safety. If someone is pulled over in a traffic stop the officer might stick his or her head in the window to see if there is a smell of alcohol or marijuana. The driver had darned well better be compliant. That is a close contact where the driver has a personal and public safety interest in the officer not being a COVID carrier. If a person is arrested, again the person had better be compliant in every way. One gets handcuffed and put into a squad car. Again, the arrested person has an interest in not catching COVID.
If police want to serve and protect they had better serve and protect. Otherwise, find another job. This vaccine mandate is a good way to clean out the bad apples.
Totally in agreement with you o.k n this, Peter. I have to go to a dentist this afternoon, and cannot imagine going to a Dentist where there is is even one unvaccinated staffer.
The best we can do to protect ourselves is to get vaccinated.
Despite the claims above, the anti-vaxers include Republicans, Democrats, non-affiliated, and others.
And don't forget that before the pandemic there was quite a contingent of anti-vaxers across the political spectrum.
Sure, leaders could have done more 2 years ago advocating the vaccinations. Even the candidates who won could have done better by avoiding those early statements that denied the efforts of Warp Speed.
Wife and I were early recipients of Moderna, and we got most of our neighbors jabbed, regardless of their political affiliation. We also got our 3rd, a booster, even though the administration has conflicting messages since their August proclamation.
Do I know the long term effects of the current vax options? Nope, nobody does. But I read what I could and determined that not being vaccinated likely could lead to worse outcomes.
All good points M2inFLA. Nobody knew what long te th m effects the Salk or Sabin vaccines might have when they were introduced, but we got the shots or tut he sugar cubes regardless, the alternative just too ugly to risk.
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