Ok ok, I wrote too quicky. That’s definitely worse than over here. Though even over here where vaccination degree is quite high the hospitals covid ward is filled up way more than the same period last year (probably because there are no strict lockdowns now) and the hospitals have problems with overworked staff. They don’t really publish the vaccination degree of the people in the ICU here, so I must admit that I don’t really know how that pans out over here.
All in all I’m quite pessimistic about the whole situation, but I do agree you have it way worse over there.
Yeah, I think we’re all (at least those of us who have been doing everything we’re supposed to do to get through this) just fucking exhausted. Where I am, we did really good at first, keeping case rates down, etc. Now we are hovering somewhere btwn 60 and 70% of eligible population vaccinated, which is great, but case rates are higher than ever bc (my guess, anyway) people are just sick of it and going out to eat again and stuff. I mean, it’s worse than ever here, but there are basically none of the public health measures in place anymore aside from masking in some schools and healthcare facilities.
Specifically, please note that the US Government has the authority to put you in a uniform and send you oversea to fight wars, while getting you forcibly vaccinated as you are forcibly conscripted into the military. If it can do that, it can mandate for you to just get vaccinated too.
He’s expected to mandate the vaccine for Federal employees, which the Federal government can absolutely require as a condition of continued employment. He’s also expected to require any healthcare providers to mandate vaccination for employees as a condition of receiving medicare and medicaid funding.
This is essentially the same way the Federal government desegregated American hospitals in the 1960s: by announcing that the new mountain of medicare cash would only be available to healthcare providers who complied with anti-discrimination policies.
I fear this is going to be a wild ride. I’m all for vaccination mandates. The fear is that, due to the stupid politicization of the pandemic, vaccine mandates are going to lead to a segregated work ecology…it’s going to get weirder before it gets better.
This is my uninformed opinion, but I think it has to do with saving face. They made a wrong choice, and they can’t admit it, so they are desperate for anything, no matter how crazy, to protect them from COVID. It may have something to do with the absolutism found in Evangelical doctrine, and the risk of total epistemological collapse: if they were wrong about the vaccine, what else were they wrong about?
Evangelicalism doesn’t seem to have as many safety valves available to adjust doctrine to accommodate new information that contradicts prior beliefs. The Catholic church figured this out a while ago, as did more moderate strains of Protestantism. A loose coalition of religious absolutists centered around localized personality cults? Not so much.
The cognitive dissonance would be crushing: COVID is real; masks and vaccines work and are the only way out of the pandemic; Biden won fairly, definitively, and by a resounding majority; mediocre white people are no longer as important as they used to be; racism isn’t acceptable any more; women are full human beings; POC are full human beings; God is omniscient and you didn’t have to wake up at 7:00 am every Sunday to pray, and he 't certainly doesn’t need your money. And the world isn’t going to end if things change.
If your personality and world view is centered on always being right and infallible, admitting you were wrong and changing your behavior accordingly is mighty tough.
You’re right, but it’s a shame that Jacobson v. Massachusetts has such a complicated legacy as a precedent. It was the sole case cited as precedent by Oliver Wendell Holmes in the awful eugenics-supporting Buck v. Bell decision.
Here’s a quote from his majority ruling:
(In case it’s at all unclear I definitely disagree that the principles of public vaccination vs. sterilization are at all equivalent)
Some companies have been complaining since last year that they can’t find enough employees. Those employers who didn’t want to pay a living wage, provide benefits, or ensure workers’ safety are the ones probably becoming more desperate now. To force people back to work, some members of the GOP/GQP want to eliminate unemployment and pandemic assistance. I can’t help but wonder if they’ll do another flip-flop on the social safety net when large numbers of their anti-mask/anti-vaxx supporters end up unemployed as a result of this.
Yeah, the federal program I work for has ongoing workforce issues, even with decent pay and benefits. And we’re expecting a huge influx in funding. And we send workers out into homes of our most vulnerable citizens. Seems like a mess coming.
I feel kind of guilty for my plan to step away next year (at least for a bit), but also relieved to not be putting myself through it again. 2009-14 was hectic and stressful enough to last me a lifetime.
“Even Fox News has a vaccine requirement for its employees” was an excellent burn that predictably incensed the talking heads at Fox, not least because their talking heads had to express performative outrage while carefully avoiding a denial.
Well, I was wrong about the scope of what he could do and I’m glad that he has made these mandates. Whether or not the Supreme Court will decide that he can is the next hurdle. I honestly don’t know with the current court how they will rule, but fingers crossed.
I mean, it’s worse than ever here, but there are basically none of the public health measures in place anymore aside from masking in some schools and healthcare facilities.
