Headline:
"Oregon Nurses Association: Over 80 nurses to leave Asante after Oct. 18 deadline"
Comment e-mailed to me:
"Don't let the door hit your butt on the way out the door."
A month ago I mentioned I got a haircut. About the time she was finishing, the stylist said she wasn't vaccinated. "I did the research," she said. "Vaccinations are dangerous and COVID is a hoax." I observed here in this blog that I probably shouldn't have gotten a haircut, at least not from her. She wore a mask but haircuts are close work. She stands right next to 20 or 30 people every day and she isn't vaccinated. She is a risk to me. Breakthrough cases happen. It is important I not bring something home to my wife. Next time I get a haircut I will ask if the person is vaccinated.
I have also written about a neighbor who opposes the COVID vaccination. His job is to deliver and install major appliances for a local company. That puts him in people's kitchens for a hour. I now know to insist that workers who come to the house be vaccinated, and in any case for me to stay well away from them. Are they COVID infected? Who knows? That is the point. Their being vaccinated improves the odds for me.
We have seen protests on the side of people opposing vaccination requirements. There was a rally in Medford Saturday, billed as supporting workers' rights.
Employers are caught in the middle, but it is not clear they are hearing from both sides. Do they hear from customers who are hesitant to do business with people and organizations that are lax about mask requirements and who employ people at higher risk for spreading COVID? There are some like me out there. And what about employees who want safe working conditions and prefer not to share an office or delivery-truck van with someone who won't get vaccinated. Those workers have rights, too.
The e-mail correspondent who sent me the comment about nurses said,
"I wouldn't want to be working next to a guy who won't get vaccinated against COVID during a COVID epidemic. I also wouldn't want to be working next to a guy who won't get vaccinated for typhoid during a typhoid epidemic."
Asante, Southern Oregon's regional hospital group, is insisting their employees be vaccinated. It is the Governor's order and they are complying. It is controversial. The County Administrator informed the local County Commissioners that Asante welcomed that order as a legal justification for requiring something they believed was good policy for the health and safety of patients and employees. Hospital employees who won't get vaccinated are placed on unpaid leave. The Jackson County Commissioners oppose vaccination mandates and questioned Asante's decision, given the nursing shortage.
I am happy with Asante's position. I applaud them. I have discretion on whether to get a haircut or to allow installation of an appliance, but if I am admitted to the hospital it probably won't be discretionary. I will likely have a "co-morbidity" at that moment, and breakthrough COVID would be a complication. Doctors, nurses, respiratory therapists, phlebotomists, all get up close to do their work and they all exhale. Their being vaccinated reduces my risk of their infecting me. My correspondent said,
If nurses don't care about spreading COVID to the people in their care, then they are in the wrong profession, and should damned well get out of it. Peter, you can put them to work picking melons in the wide open outdoors of a melon field, but get them the heck away from sick people.
Customers and co-workers have an interest in avoiding high-risk people. Some employers are doing it willingly, and before the federal mandate. My former employer, Morgan Stanley, requires all employees who come into any office to be vaccinated. If I were still working there, I would appreciate the policy, and as a client of that office I appreciate it now. Unvaccinated people are more likely to get and spread the disease and I prefer to avoid that risk. I avoid Coastal, the handy farm supply store near my farm, because, although the employees wear masks, the store doesn't enforce the mask rule on customers very well, so many go unmasked. Will I catch COVID there? Probably not, but the odds are higher than if I shopped at a place where customers were masked and vaccination rates were high. I am not making a fuss about it. I just shop elsewhere.
Employees may not feel comfortable speaking out to say they want co-workers to be vaccinated. I liken it to smoking in offices 40 years ago. A person made uncomfortable by a co-worker's smoking just kept his mouth shut and put up with it. The smoker's right to smoke had priority. Their freedom. That was then.
Now no one would insist on the right to smoke cigarettes in a hospital. It would be understood that their smoke risks and bothers others. Employers are more likely to feel empowered to require vaccinations if they understood that there is support for a vaccine requirement by customers and co-workers. The support is there.
We need to speak up.
Deliberately raising risk of illness for people you treat or work for sounds like malpractice: or where did these medical personnel train? I just spoke with a man about a job inside my house who told me when I asked that neither he nor his crew were vaccinated. I wish him luck with that, sincerely.