The decision to terminate unvaccinated individuals reeks of bureaucracy, not an understanding of science or medicine.
There’s a long history of this type of sanction. If you are a provider or nurse in a hospital who fails to get a measles, hepatitis, or rabies (after exposure) shot, you’ll be terminated for cause in many places.
The reason why recovery doesn’t “count” the same as vaccination is that immunity doesn’t last very long - 60-90 days typically. Some countries, such as Israel will recognize a single Pfizer dose and recovery as immune, if you have a negative PCR test.
In a vacuum, that makes sense. But in the midst of genuine shortage of healthcare professionals, it's myopic foolishness. And I'd guess your comment about the lasting effect of actual recovery is going to turn out to be very wrong and already contradicts most everything I've seen recently regarding the immune response to reinfection after Covid recovery.
edit: Here are a few links that contradict your statement that immunity doesn't last very long:
https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research-matters/lasting...
https://www.futurity.org/covid-19-survivors-immunity-viruses...
Initially, those folks are “super immune”, but it fades much quicker than expected last summer. Around November data started indicating that those individuals were much more likely (10x iirc) to contract COVID than a person fully vaccinated in the same timeframe.
Because you have a better understanding of this than they do?
That seems like a strange position to take.
I would take a different position, like "what do these highly qualified health care workers understand that I don't?"
I’m all ears. On the face of it, getting vaccinated is a no brainer. I’d love to hear a medical reason for healthy individuals not to get vaccinated.
So far I’ve only heard arguments about vaccine mandates infringing on peoples rights, even though they never batted an eyelid at other vaccines. Why is this one a problem?
So far looking at the death rates, cases of severe illness, vaccination is the way to go. So I’d love to hear a compelling argument why you’d avoid it.
(Aside: it is worth noting that vaccination also induces "natural immunity", as it introduces viral units [via various mechanisms depending on specific vaccine type] that cause the immune system to work more or less the same way as it would if presented with a regular viral infection. So using the term "natural immunity" when what you really mean is "prior infection" smacks quite heavily of chemophobia.)
>I would take a different position, like "what do these highly qualified health care workers understand that I don't?"
Examples?
Even though over 99% of practicing doctors and something like 99.9% of hospitalists are vaccinated, they hold up that 1/1,000 as some sort of “truthsayer”.
If 999 experts in a field told you they trusted something and 1/1,000 said they didn’t —- you’d have to be an absolute fool to blindly follow the 1 and I'm a bit surprised how common this argument is on HN.
So, that's more than one.
I think that the vast majority of doctors that have taken the vaccine to protect themselves are probably smarter than the tiny minority that have refused, yes.
https://www.businessinsider.com/delta-variant-made-herd-immu...
Note that this is not like not hiring someone who likes to go mountain biking and therefore are more likely to hurt themselves and not work. Hobbies like that have real benefits. Vaccine denial not.
EDIT: Sorry that might have come off a bit blunt. But the entire pandemic response has been frustratingly insufficient in my opinion. A variant like Omicron was long predicted and expected. How are we not prepared with a plan to end lockdowns?
And blaming unvaccinated or anti-maskers is not a good answer. Modeling of acceptance should’ve been done. It’s not like these contrarian sentiments were surprising either.
All together it feels like this response to omicron is a public health failure.
So we got what we wanted, the best nurses are making $300/hr in COVID hotspots and leaving new grads and understaffed facilities in their wake.
CDC is taking cues from places like South Africa and Israel now. It’s pathetic.
How would socialized medicine help in this specific case? More power to the government? The government already has plenty of power to influence outcomes through spending. However, that power has been applied poorly.
We need mass repeal of old government regulations and the appointing of technocrats (as in people concerned with low level details of regulations). Additionally we need new highly adversarial independent regulatory bodies to prevent capitalistic interests from causing market collapse.
The current agencies are too in bed with industry, and it’s not beneficial to the public.
Giving more power to the current government systems which rolled out this poor response seems like the wrong answer.
https://www.personneltoday.com/hr/uk-lacks-nursing-staff-to-...
* Spend tens of billions training new medical staff so you can save hundreds of billions / trillions on not having to lock people down
* Stop admitting COVID patients at government subsidized hospitals when there is a shortage of hospital beds, with the exception of essential and frontline workers, so that hundreds of millions of people don't need to be locked down
* Make those who are not vaccinated, or do not have recent booster shots, ineligible for care for COVID at government subsidized hospitals, when there is a shortage of hospital beds, so that hundreds of millions of people don't need to be locked down
But the go-to solution seems to be: massively violate the civil and economic liberties of the entire population, to prevent COVID surges from causing a shortage of hospital beds.
We barely ever had anything approximating lockdowns and they ended long ago. We don't generally make plans to do things after they are already done.
We don't have lockdowns, and haven't had lockdowns in America
> And blaming unvaccinated or anti-maskers is not a good answer
Blaming the unvaccinated, who comprise the overwhelming majority of those that get hospitalized, spread it and die, is a good answer. I think a lot of this is solved by deprioritizing them at triage time or letting them recuperate at home.
Due to EMTALA, hospitals in the US are required to treat unstable patients regardless of vaccination status. Changing that would require an Act of Congress. Also note that there is no 100% reliable way for hospitals to determine a particular patient's vaccination status; the registries have some data quality and record linkage problems.
Poor leadership only plans for things going how they want.
As far as lockdowns are concerned, we have had the mass shutdown of in person school and work, as well as the forced closure of many restaurants and entertainment venues.
I was using the shorthand.
That is correct, and that's why they proposed the OSHA rule for mandating vaccinations after months of incentives. I think some % of non-compliance is understandable, but the remaining unvaccinated seem to be doing it for political reasons over anything else.
> As far as lockdowns are concerned, we have had the mass shutdown of in person school and work, as well as the forced closure of many restaurants and entertainment venues.
Right, we had those last year. Not since, in America at least.
https://www.ama-assn.org/press-center/press-releases/ama-fun...
Aren't 99% of unmatched, graduates of sketchy overseas medical schools?
https://www.ama-assn.org/residents-students/match/if-you-re-...
As for overseas medical schools, the National Committee on Foreign Medical Education and Accreditation is supposed to ensure they meet the same standards as domestic schools. I haven't seen any real evidence that they're sketchy.
Nursing is hard and takes years of training, but 2 years would have been long enough to teach people how to manage the average case of 1 disease.
There have been a lot of people sitting around doing not much, they could probably use the work.