I think it's time to have a national vaccine mandate for all that have been approved for it, including teens and younger children. And re-open all the special vaccination centers with the help of the National Guard if necessary. Biden-Harris should have been pushing for this months ago with the Flu & Winter seasons expected to be a rerun of last year. With Delta running rampant, we can't afford to go back to extremely high death and infection rates.
My grandmother took the initiative to get her booster on her own. Hubby and I traveled to her for her first two shots and were prepared to take her for her booster. She chuckled when I called to schedule it. "I got it scheduled weeks ago and there'll be a mobile van down the street end of the week!" She can't understand why anyone would either not get vaccinated, or fail to get a booster after getting double-dosed. She's in her 90s and uses a walker, yet got a booster with the help of GP during her semi-annual physical.
I really hope we're not going backwards, but a few weeks in semi-rural/suburban Virginia and even parts of Queens, NYC has me very worried.
I agree in sentiment, however I’m not sure a mandate coming too down from the government is ever going to stick. There’s probably always going to be a judge somewhere to block it. It happened with Biden and De Blasio. If this goes to the Supreme Court I suspect it will be knocked down.
I think Biden made the mistake of making his mandates look totally arbitrary- first with the federal employee/govt contractor granting a bunch of exceptions. Then with the second one arbitrarily mandating vaccines to employers with over 100 employees and requiring vaccinations and despite the emergency nature of his policy announced in September 2021, mandating employees be fully vaccinated by January 2022. It just creates bad optics and creates reasons for people to question the mandates legitimacy.
Even if government mandates did pass, how many of those opposed would just declare religious exemption? I’m not sure that can legally be challenged too hard by employers.
I also do think there is a danger in potentially having to fire off swathes of healthcare workers who refuse to be vaccinated, especially with the numbers where they are and general shortage of staff as it is. In September the CDC said 30% of “healthcare workers” are unvaccinated. At the time about 95% of physicians were vaccinated and 90% of RN’s- the people not vaccinated: mostly nursing assistants, nurses aids, etc who don’t have extensive medical training. But still, to loose 30% of hospital staff would cause problems. I imagine this 30% also includes administrative staff and other non-clinical workers.
I feel even the causal pondering of mandates drives those opposed to vaccines even deeper into their opposition. And I’d love to hear what the justification is now against vaccines now that billions have taken them, dating back almost a year now.
Frankly, I think the damage has been done and these people will not be changing their mind. It’s shameful how political COVID is in this country.
And don’t get me wrong, I just fired one of my employees this week for refusing vaccinatio despite Biden’s healthcare mandate in limbo. We hired this young man 2 months ago and he wasn’t vaccinated (and no natural immunity). We politely asked him many times to consider doing so considering he’s working in a residential psych program with 25 patients + a number of staff. He would shut down any non-judgemental inquiry as to what his hesitancy was about. Two weeks ago we told him he had two weeks to get his first dose or he’d be taken off the schedule. He did not get vaccinated. I asked if he had trouble getting an appointment he said he didn’t even try. So he was terminated.
