Vaccine reluctance & General COVID Discussion

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6933

Most childhood illnesses are not picked up from dirt, but from other kids. Kids who are at daycare tend to have a lot of colds and other illnesses, but have fewer as they grow older. On the other hand, kids who are are not sent o daycare get everything when they start kindergarten. Homeschooled kids will often be more susceptible to all sorts of viruses when they hit colleges, unless they interacted with many other kids in other ways.

Then, of course, the more crowded a location is, the more exposed kids are to novel viruses, and similarly, if the local population or school has many newly families which are newly arrived from other places.

So kids in NYC will get sick much more often than kids in a small town in Idaho, no matter what happens. Even kids who are kin the suburbs will be exposed to far more pathogens, as will kids who grow up in a college town.

Also, we should remember that earth has some REALLY bad pathogens, such as tetanus, bubonic plague, anthrax, melioidosis, and others. So letting kids play in the dirt is good, but one must remember to clean and bandage cuts and scrapes (soap and water, antibiotics if itā€™s deep). Our kid also grew up playing in the dirt, but she had to go on oral antibiotics after a scrape in her knee kept on having infections pop up, and topical antibiotics were not getting rid of it.

That being said, a sterile house is not healthy. It should be reasonably clean and safe, but wiping down everything with Clorox on a regular basis is not healthy (and it messes up furniture as well). Also, playing in the dirt is also good psychologically. A pathological fear of dirt and/or of the outside does not make for a healthy life.

Back to Omicron

It looks as though DC may have peaked, which makes me hopeful that things will peak within the next 10 days or so, or even earlier.

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6934

donā€™t forget that contributing to 'hospitals being overrun" is short staffing, 1) due to their own staff has covid and has to stay home and quarantine, and 2) they are being terminated for not being vaxxed.

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6935

Such terminations represent a minuscule percentage of healthcare workers, and are by no means driving overrun conditions. For example, at Houston Methodist only about 0.5% of healthcare workers (150/26,000 were fired or quit because of the vax requirement. Thousands of workers are getting fired for refusing the vaccine : NPR

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6936

They could be. Those workers were performing a job within their organization. Why would they be deemed disposable and the effect of their sudden absence negligible?

For example, the Mayo Clinic fired 700 people. When there are so many articles bemoaning The great resignation, millions of unfilled jobs and how the healthcare industry in particular is suffering from burnout and short staffing I imagine the loss of those workers will have some detrimental effect, atleast in the short term.

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6937

Mayo Clinic employs about 73,000 workers. And given the danger unvaccinated workers present to themselves, the patients, and other staff, keeping the unvaccinated 700 workers may have had some ā€œdetrimental effectā€ as well.

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6938

Maybe but employers are electing to allow or even require COVID positive employees to return to work. It does undercut the ā€œunvaccinated are dangerousā€ mantra, especially if those unvaccinated arenā€™t even COVID positive.

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6939

Itā€™s amazing how these discussions go. Hospitals are overrun by covid cases, and yet somehow we are blaming this on the termination of the tiny minority of healthcare workers who donā€™t care enough about those around them to get vaccinated?

Distractions aside, hospitals are being overrun by covid cases, the vast majority of which are unvaccinated patients. The unvaccinated are indeed dangerous. To themselves and others, whether patient or staff.

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6940

Why are you presenting this as an all or nothing proposition?

Yes unvaccinated people make up the majority of patients hospitalized for Covid. Has anyone disputed that? And yes some of the short staffing situation can be attributable to the firing of unvaccinated workers. Those two things can coexist and both be true.

My point was that most organizations have people working in positions that contribute in some beneficial way to the overall effectiveness and efficiency of the corporation or organization. When you start firing those people there will be at least short term effects. Iā€™m not commenting on whether or not I agree with the decision to fire them. Iā€™m simply pointing out itā€™s a contributing factor. Those companies presumably have done the analysis and are fine with it.

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6941

I disagree. Unvaccinated covid patients are driving the shortages in hospitals. The terminations are negligible in comparison. As for ā€œshort termā€ disruptions, these terminations have been in the works for months, and hospitals have had ample time to prepare. Given the risk that these unvaccinated employees pose to other staff and patients, getting rid of them may help with conditions more than hurt.

Further, focusing on the firings is a distraction. It has little or nothing to do with the hospitals being overrun by unvaccinated patients.

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6942

If the Mayo Clinic fired 700 out of 73,000 employees, thats 0.95%ā€¦not even 1%!!

Now how many of these were non-medical personnel, like custodial, food services, etc?

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6943

Amazing how dismissive some people are of these workers and their contributions. If any company had fired 700 workers all at once pre-COVIDā€¦ā€¦ā€¦.

How times have changed.

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6945

The week I graduated from architecture school a major architecture firm let 300 people go (architects not the custodians) it was barely a blip in the news.

6946

@mathmom and @88jm19 And you agree those employees deserved to be fired?

And since this whole employee discussion is off topic, this is my last comment on it. We are not going to agree.

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6947

My SIL is a nurse manager with a PHD in a large top urban hospital. She has been out of work the past 2 weeks because her daughter had covid and then the following week her husband had covid so she was considered a close contact for both of them. She needed a negative PCR to go back to work. Many of the staffing shortages are not just staff picking up covid in the hospital, it can also be attributed to family members testing positive as well.

Also, according to her, the hospitals in our city are no more ā€œoverrun in the ERā€ than they were prior to covid. Her hospitalā€™s ER has always been at 95%+ capacity. They have almost always had patients in the hallways because there werenā€™t enough rooms and wait times have always been 2+ hours to even get a bed. Staff shortages are making things more difficult but the actual number of patients being admitted has not really increased.

Also in MA, we are starting this week to differentiate between patients in the hospital for Covid and patients that are in the hospital for something else and just happen to have covid. Only patients getting a certain drug for severe covid will be counted in the former group. I think this is a step in the right direction.

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6948

If itā€™s like the few who got dismissed where my guy works, almost all of them. He said that part didnā€™t make a difference at all and the majority of workers were glad to see them go. If I recall correctly, he knew of one nurse, but that was it for actual medical personnel where he is.

There may have been some he didnā€™t know about, of course, but it was definitely too small to make a difference.

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6949

All but one employee at our local hospital who got dismissed was non medical staff. The one medical employee who got fired was an LPN.

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6950

If they canā€™t adhere to safety protocols, vaccinations then yes. Bye bye. It IS a hospital, a place that sick people go. They donā€™t need ANY employee there that could infect them. If you donā€™t want to get vaccinated, get another job to share your germs at.

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6951

Any employee can infect them. Vaccines donā€™t stop transmission. And according to people here most if not all of those fired arenā€™t interacting with patients.

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6952

Times have changed. There is a global pandemic, and these 700 (of 73,000) were terminated for cause. They refused to take the required steps to protect themselves, their colleagues, and those who they were supposed to be helping. Pardon if I am more concerned with those who these people chose to endanger.

@MAmom111 you put ā€œoverrun in the ERā€ in quotations, but I donā€™t think anyone is referring to the ER. Rather it is hospitals generally, including ICUs, that are being overrun.

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