Fiduciary. Some jobs include a duty of care.

Not everyone has a well-functioning immune system. Colin Powell didn't. COVID tipped him over the edge.

I consider health care workers and police officers to be fiduciaries.

Readers of this blog skew older. We have a right to live. We have a right to be protected from people who would assault us by carelessly shoving us and knocking us down onto a sidewalk or store aisle.

There are some places where an old or ill person is likely to be by necessity--hospitals, for one. Much of the work of a doctor, nurse, or other attendant is done up close. A police officer, too, is likely to get close to a senior who is being helped or detained. In either case, people are in the control and care of the worker. 

Everyone exhales. That is how COVID spreads.

A word has become a familiar part of public discourse, "immunocompromised." Getting older in itself is a cause of reduced immunity. Other causes are chemotherapy for cancer, drugs to suppress rejection of transplants, and treatment of diseases including lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, Crohn's disease, celiac disease, multiple sclerosis, multiple myeloma, and more. 

Powell died from a combination of COVID and multiple myeloma. Tucker Carlson's monologue made the point that Colin Powell had been fully vaccinated, but got COVID and died. Readers who have difficulty understanding neighbors who refuse vaccination might take a moment to read closely and watch this talk, even if watching Carlson is not something one normally does. He said,

Like almost everyone his age Colin Powell was vaccinated against Covid, yet according to his family and doctors Colin Powell died of COVID. Of course that fact does not make his death any less sad, nor is it unusual. Many thousands of vaccinated people have died of COVID. Former CDC director Robert Redfield just today announced that about 40% of all recent COVID deaths in the state of Maryland, for example, are among those who have had both shots. So what does this tell you exactly? It tells you you have been lied to. 

Vaccines may be highly useful for some people, but across the population they do not solve COVID. That’s not speculation. It is an observable fact. People who have been vaccinated can still get the virus, they can still transmit the virus to others, and they can still die from COVID. Colin Powell is hardly the only example of that. So the question is, why are they telling us otherwise? And the answer is simple. They are telling us that to divide us from each other. To set the country against itself. It’s been going on a long time but it’s never needed to happen. There is no inherent reason that a virus should rip apart the United States. COVID easily could have brought us together. Shared suffering often does that. 9-11 did that. Yet from the very beginning demagogues like Joe Biden and many others have used this virus as a hammer, to smash the bonds that connect Americans to one another.

 https://www.mediamatters.org/media/3976741/embed/embed 

Carlson employs an adept switch in the vaccination frame. He left out the fact of Colin Powell's multiple myeloma, and he offered a misleading statistic about the effectiveness of vaccines. Readers should not let his cynicism and dishonesty distract from the skill of his message and presentation. He is indignant and confident. He is bold and shameless. He blames Democrats for what he himself is doing right there on screen. "Vaccines may be highly useful for some people" is a subordinate clause, a throwaway to the real point of the sentence, that vaccinations "do not solve COVID," as if anyone claimed vaccinations "solved" it. Carlson employs Powell's death to show vaccines don't work. People inclined to think Joe Biden is a demagogue now know the score. You are a victim of lies. Don't be a sap. There is a lying demagogue in America who inflames and divides, and it is Biden.

There are lots of old and immunocompromised people who do well--if they avoid a mistake. An older person who falls, or is shoved, sometimes breaks a hip and dies. A person who carries COVID endangers others with exhalations. Some of the people they endanger are immunocompromised. They have a right not to be shoved. They have a right to know the institution that person works for has taken every precaution.

Many people like what they hear from Carlson, and it helps explain why people quit jobs this week rather than be vaccinated. They don't want to feel pushed around by a "demagogue." Meanwhile, vulnerable people don't want to be pushed around, either, or be at higher risk of a breakthrough case of COVID transmitted by an unvaccinated person. Colin Powell died because he caught COVID from someone and that, when added to the existing disease, was enough to kill him.

How does one resolve the conflict between the two views of shoving? There is law and custom regarding fiduciaries. They have a duty of care. 

The news is full of people resigning their jobs this week. I am OK with them quitting. Go. If they don't want the duty of putting the vulnerable person's interest first, they should do something else.

City councils and hospital boards of directors are fiduciaries, too. People in control of police forces and health care workers have a responsibility to the people they serve and to their institutions. A vulnerable immunocompromised patient or police detainee who gets COVID after close exposure to an unvaccinated COVID-infected health care worker or police officer has a gripe, and maybe a lawsuit. 

A multi-million dollar lawsuit might give fiduciaries of institutions courage better to protect the people they serve.