But people–so many people–are dying every single day. I fully agree with Biden, do whatever it takes. I applaud all leaders that are taking a hard stand against the “my choice” group.
And frankly, it is such a shame that it has come to this. How can it not be enough to just do your part to help others around you (if not worried about yourself).
Seems a little harsh. Employers of 100+ can have vaccine or test. VA should have same option, no?
I’m OK with this. The data is so overwhelming. We have to get serious about this. I’m just sorry people have to be forced to do the right thing.
Delaware Ohio News is a joke site. That is not a real article or policy
Oh wow thanks for sharing that!
Feel better now
You don’t have to receive care from the VA. It’s a perk from your years of service. By mandating the vaccine, the VA costs are sure to be less.
If not vaccinated, then you can utilize Medicare or private insurance. At least that’s my opinion
met a friend. Her husband finally got vaccinated after having a friend that has been in the hospital for 6 weeks. he was one of the reluctant ones. i did meet a woman in her 60’s the other day who believes washing hands all the time will prevent her, and so far has, from covid.
Here’s what a Facebook friend posted: “Facebook is flooded with vaccine mandate post. My choice to not get the vaccine isn’t political. It’s because I don’t want to take chances with how my immune system responds to anything. It’s pretty great and I don’t want to chance messing it up. And I don’t want anyone to take my ability to choose away.
We are supposed to work, pay our taxes and live our lives. The government is supposed to collect our taxes, run the government and military, not our day to day lives.
Who would have ever thought they’d lose their business or livelihood because the government wouldn’t allow them to open or go to work? Giving up your freedoms and allowing the government to micromanage your life is a slippery slope. What about when they decide the government can’t support the huge population and they limit the number of children you can have like in china? What if they said because of staff shortages in healthcare they couldn’t afford to have women out on maternity leave and mandated IUDs for all female employees? Would you be ok with that? It sounds extreme and we think, that could never happen here. But there are a lot of unimaginable things happening.”
Sigh. “My immune system is pretty great and I don’t want to chance messing it up.” How do you argue with illogic? Her son had COVID and was in the hospital for awhile. He’s still not doing well.
In theory, assigning unvaccinated health care workers to COVID-19 wards could still be done within the specialty / skills constraints. For example unvaccinated ICU nurses can be preferentially assigned to COVID-19 ICUs, while vaccinated ICU nurses can be preferentially assigned to ICUs for non-COVID-19 patients (if there are any left).
Yes but then you run into legal issues if something bad happens. Punishing a patient who was simply looking for care? A hospital is going to lose that battle in court easily.
I totally support putting unvaccinated at the back of the line. But they don’t deserve inferior care.
It may be that there are few unvaccinated ICU nurses and respiratory therapists. And many of the unvaccinated work primarily without seeing Covid patients.
When the vaccines first came out, my opinion was that physicians and those most clearly aligned in treating Covid patients were thrilled to be vaccinated. The most resistant were those in long term care facilities and support staff at hospitals.
It would be interesting to see how many of those involved with treating Covid patients remain unvaccinated. I’m not sure there would be enough to staff the ICU’s
Huh? How does this punish the patients? Seems that (for example) non-COVID-19 ICU patients may benefit from having a higher percentage of vaccinated ICU nurses, while COVID-19 ICU patients are not harmed by unvaccinated ICU nurses who may bring COVID-19 to them (which does not matter since they already have COVID-19). Of course, if there is an excess of either vaccinated or unvaccinated ICU nurses relative to non-COVID-19 and COVID-19 ICUs, the excess still gets assigned to the other ICU.
Because most of the healthcare workers in the ICU are vaccinated, I don’t remember the exact number, but they were very eager to get the vaccine once it came out to protect themselves and from bringing it home to their families. There’s a higher percentage of unvaccinated outside the ICUs. So by saying you’re going to pull the vaccinated healthcare workers (those with the expertise) and replace them with unvaccinated who don’t have experience, that’s inferior care. Unless I am misunderstanding your post.
Sorry, I was reading your post to imply, for instance, labor and delivery nurses who are unvaccinated to move to the ICU floors to take care of COVID-positive patients. I know that’s not what you meant (you meant moving people within the ICU). Not enough ICU staff for that (ratio of vaccinated to unvaccinated staff and patients would be flipped).
Ok, so it would not make much difference in the ICUs if almost all of the ICU staff are vaccinated… but would it make more of a difference in non-ICU parts of the hospital, where unvaccinated staff can be preferentially assigned to the COVID-19 parts when possible within their skills and specialties versus what is needed? Obviously, the total staffing levels (including for any skills and specialties) need to be kept to what is needed in each given area, so that does not mean that only unvaccinated staff work in the COVID-19 parts or that only vaccinated staff work in the other parts.
Yes, you are correct, as usual. But, and I am not saying you are supportive of this, an unvaccinated healthcare worker being moved to take care of COVID-positive patients does nothing to protect the rest of the patients in the hospital. Which is why, IMO, if you are an unvaccinated healthcare worker at this point in time, you are in the wrong field and need to find another occupation.
Include me in the camp of “if you choose not to be vaccinated then we owe you nothing in terms of medical care.”
Folks that claim “I’m scared because of immune response” can piss off and join the back of the line.
If U and V are two health care workers with similar skills and specialties, but U is unvaccinated and V is vaccinated, would there be an incremental difference in these two scenarios?
I.e. would scenario 1 be incrementally less risky than scenario 2 for patients in the non-COVID-19 part of the hospital, in terms of whether the patients are potentially exposed to COVID-19 from a health care worker? If so, and a hospital has a scenario 2, then would swapping the work assignments of U and V provide an incremental reduction in risk in the non-COVID-19 part?
It depends. At the beginning, the vaccine prevented transmission of the variants but that changed with Delta. If the vaccine prevents transmission, you want vaccinated healthcare workers to take care of COVID-positive patients to help prevent spread.