Covidiots that have wound up in hospital ICUs and on ventilators aren't the only covidiots in hospitals. Some actually work there, and refuse to get vaccinated. On the day that the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine received full approval by the Food and Drug Administration, there is yet another report of renegade hospital workers -- nurses, therapists, general staff -- refusing to get vaccinated against the virus, this time at the Staten Island, NY University Hospital:
"Outside Staten Island University Hospital this week, as passing cars and fire trucks honked supportively, employees chanted, 'I am not a lab rat!'
The aggressive opposition to the vaccine, and even regular testing, at a hospital in New York City — the epidemic’s onetime epicenter — shows the challenges of reaching the unvaccinated when some of the very people who could serve as role models refuse vaccination.
Some medical workers at the Staten Island hospital are so fiercely opposed that they call themselves “The Resistance” after the rebel faction in 'Star Wars.' They are defending what they view as their inherent rights, and their leader is gathering hospital workers from other states in an attempt to create a nationwide movement." (our emphasis)
Few if any occupations are free from partisan wingnuts or conspiracy followers, including the health care industry. As late as the end of June, roughly one third of hospital workers had declined to be vaccinated, despite the wide availability and their daily exposure risks to contracting COVID-19's surging Delta variant. Their rationales vary from the usual "my freedumb" (to spread the virus) to concerns about the safety of the vaccines despite hundreds of millions of uneventful vaccinations here and abroad (check out this NBC report on four smug North Carolina health care workers). No doubt some workers, like the low information cultists that attend the former guy's Nuremberg rallies, don't want to give President Biden / Dems a "victory" over COVID, despite the danger to them and others around them (of course, he was booed by them the other day in Alabammy when he suggested they might want to get vaccinated).
Houston Methodist Hospital suspended 178 of their workers a few weeks ago for refusing to get a COVID shot. Getting vaccinated from a deadly respiratory disease should be a condition of employment at hospitals and other health care facilities, as some hospitals are. It's shocking that so many of the people we look to for health care are recklessly disregarding their health and the health of those around them.
(photo: A group of health care workers demonstrate in North Carolina. Newsweek)
BONUS: This surgical technician in Georgia was summarily fired after despicably comparing vaccination mandates to the Holocaust. More of this.
