Originally published at: Houston Methodist Hospital suspends 178 employees for failing to get vaccinated | Boing Boing
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If they fail to do so they should publish their names for the sake of letting other health care providers know who they are.
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The number of religious exemptions seems high. How many Christian Scientists or similar work at a hospital?
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This is a hospital. This a place of science. If you deny science in a way that endangers our patients, this is not the place for you. Get out and consider whether healthcare is the field for you.
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It is almost as if actions and inactions have consequences.
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my mom almost died from COVID she picked up in a rehab hospital so: yeah, this is a literal matter of life or death
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Just read about this on another article, seems like for some of these employees their “excuse” as lame as it is is that they are waiting for the vaccine to get full FDA approval because they do not trust that the vaccine is safe so they’d rather not take it. Flimsy and shitty excuse, there’s enough evidence that it is effective and safe.
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They probably got it from some anti-vaxxer / sovereign citizen “list of magical things to say” page.
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Pfizer is allready fully approved for 18+ and Moderna has just filed for it–expect it shortly.
The difference between the emergency use authorization and full approval is two months of safety data vs four months. That’s it. These are vaccines, any complications with regards to safety will be found in the first week or two. So, two vs four months of data makes no difference.
The people who say they won’t take an experimental (it’s not) vaccine simply don’t understand the science nor the approval process. Stop getting medical advice from Fox News.
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To those curious, the memo is from 04/14/2021. This isn’t a memo from June 9th asking employees to get two shots by June 21st.
I’m also hoping there are some people who either got it or have a valid reason not to who just haven’t done their paperwork on time.
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That number is the combination of medical and religious exemptions. I don’t think the number of religious exemptions was published separately, was it?
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have decided not to put their patients first
Willing to bet that a majority of these unvaccinated staff are not medically qualified and see those seeking healthcare as something other than ‘their patients’. Cleaners, porters and other ancillary staff. And we know how that demographic skews. We have a similar issue in UK. I do not know what it is that means certain demographics (yeah, it’s a catch-all euphemism for various groups that also overlap - POC, less educated, lower incomes, and so on and on) are less willing to get the vaccine, but it is a statistical fact that those in authority need to pay attention to, investigate, and take actions to try to address.
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Specifically for the pregnant employees, I do have some sympathy for their initial hesitation because pregnant people were excluded from the first clinical trials. Pfizer only just started a clinical trial for pregnant women in February. Yes, preliminary observations indicate that it’s probably safe for that group, but at this point in time nobody can honestly say that there’s rigorous placebo-controlled trial data that shows that. There will be such data available very soon though, and the NIH did just release an encouraging (but non-placebo-controlled) study about a week ago:
A key takeaway from that article:
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Personally know ‘medically qualified’ people refusing to take vaccine. Anti-science/anti-vaxxers span political/educational/income ranges.
Education/degrees have nothing to do with this.
I also know US Air Force PILOTS who are flat-earthers.
Generalities offer little clarity while yielding much division. We need less division and more connection.
Take a look at Japan’s vaccination rate.
Or vaxx rate for African-Americans…AND read about their history of medical abuse. Get familiar with the “father” of “modern” gynecology and his experiments on pregnant slaves.
I’m 110% pro-vaccine and rec’d shots as soon as possible…sometimes people have legitimate reasons to found their beliefs upon.
We disagree on decision to refuse vaccination which is relatively short-term issue. Long-term is our engagement, understanding and appreciation for each other’s humanity.
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Wow, they live on the edge.
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I am sure there are many like those you list. I did say that I was talking about a majority of the vaccine-hesitant here - not all, by any means. I did not say it was not the case that medically qualified, highly educated, better-off, etc, people were not included here.
In places in UK the black population is sitting at a percentage in the 70s for vaccinated when their equivalent white demographic is in the 90 per cents. And our ancillary hospital staff population has a very significant overlap with that demographic.
Some GPs are taking positive action to go into these communities and talk directly to the vaccine hesitant in ways that govt/mainstream media propaganda (in the nicest sense) does not talk to them. And having success in driving up the rate.
I’m slightly confused because you also seem to recognise this in your comment about vax rate in African-Americans, and mistrust of centralised medical authorities is a similar issue in related communities here in UK.
I don’t know how you inferred, from my comment, that my position on ‘decision to refuse vaccination’ is one you disagree with. I doubt very much we disagree.
You seem to take it as read that all these people must be vehement anti-vaxxers. Many are just hesitant and only need the right approach to tip them in the right direction. We have had several local news articles on exactly this, here. (One of which was about the GP I noted above.)
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To the employees failing to get the vaccine:
Meanwhile, there are Christian hospitals and Christian “healthcare” ministry plans that might incentivize employess and customers to not get the vaccine: 
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And yet they’re allowing religious beliefs as a valid reason for not getting vaccinated? What the actual fuck?
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The blogger I’ve been following for a while for my Covid news just noticed that we got extraordinarily lucky with the way the various vaccines actually work.
The way this virus, like all viruses, was understood to damage the human body was by colonizing our cells and turning them into factories to make more of the virus. It was this replicating function that was understood to be harmful. The Spike protein doesn’t replicate. Removed from the replicating engine of RNA in the core of the viruse, the Spike protein was understood to be benign.
It turns out, the Spike protein is not benign. The Spike protein, all by itself, is destructive of certain human tissue: tissue with ACE2 receptors. Recent research shows, or at least very strongly suggests, that a considerable amount of the disease that is COVID-19 is caused directly by the Spike protein itself, binding to the ACE2 receptors in lungs and the circulatory system.
This, happily, is not the catastrophe it sound like it could be, because, first and foremost, you don’t have a lot of ACE2 receptors in your deltoid muscle (your arm) where you get the shot. Your deltoid, it turns out, is an excellent place to teach your immune system about the horrors of COVID. Secondly, when the mRNA or adenovirus vaccines work, they induce bodily cells to temporarily make Spike proteins, which they do on the cell surfaces, where the Spike protein are firmly attached, and can’t go anywhere and get into mischief.
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