A Texas hospital system will require employees to get the Covid-19 vaccine

Subduction Zone said:

Probably not. And for good reason. The average person is not at the same risk to spread the disease. If you only see ten people a day you are a much lower risk to spread the disease than if you see one hundred people a day.

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Twilight Hue said:

Does frequency really make a difference in terms of vulnerability?

Patients are exposed by just being there overnight and visitors often make frequent visits.

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Twilight Hue said:

Does frequency really make a difference in terms of vulnerability?

Patients are exposed by just being there overnight and visitors often make frequent visits.

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Subduction Zone said:

He also has the reasoning backwards. He is thinking that we want waiters to get vaccinated for their protection. Though that is part of it, it is far more important to get waiters vaccinated for the protection of others. If one is vaccinated the odds of being a "superspreader" are greatly reduced. An unvaccinated waiter could easily become a superspreader.

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Gentlemen, gentlemen! To your corners, please!

I'm not seeing any fundamental difference, here. Vaccination protects both the vaccinatee and her contacts. It's all of a piece.
You seem to be advocating the same thing from different perspectives; attacking the same enemy, with the same weaponry, from different directions.

Twilight Hue said:

It makes me wonder if the employees are all mandated to get the vaccine, should patients and visitors also be held to those same mandates?

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Methodist Hospital specializes in cardiac and cardiovascular care, so many of their patients arrive in serious/critical condition … without having the luxury of scheduling a vaccine to prepare.

This isn't speculation. I showed up in the Methodist ER in June 2020 (during the beginning of the local Covid spike). I was having a heart attack. Under those circumstances, every minute counts. So it's really not feasible to insist that patients get vaccinated in advance. Even for slightly less urgent cases, they start getting scheduled for diagnostics and procedures, usually within days of the doctor's visit that set events in motion. Even if they got the vaccine as part of the process, it wouldn't have time to set in.

Because the typical patient has heart disease, they're in a high-risk category (unless they were caught by surprise by a heart attack … like me). These were the same people who were lining up for hours, outside, by the thousands in January to get their Covid vaccines. So for the ones with chronic or pre-existing problems, a large percentage leapt at the chance to get the vaccine.

As for visitors … What visitors? My wife was allowed to stay with me in my ICU for the remainder of the night after my heart attack and stent. After that, I saw her when she picked me up (outside the hospital) two days later. I've heard the local hospitals have gotten slightly more lenient about visitation in recent months, but it's not like it was pre-Covid. Not anywhere close.

As Mestemia pointed out, flu vaccines have been mandated for years at many of the institutions in Houston's medical center (including some institutions that weren't on Mestemia's list). TB tests are also mandatory. These are health care facilities. What's the big surprise?

Mestemia said:

A Houston hospital has suspended 178 staff members who have refused to abide by its mandate that employees be fully vaccinated by Monday.

Nearly 25,000 of Houston Methodist's staff members have been fully inoculated against Covid-19 as part of a vaccination requirement announced in April, Houston Methodist's president, Dr. Marc Boom, said in a statement Tuesday.

But 178 unvaccinated employees who did not get religious or medical exemptions were suspended without pay, including 27 who are only partly vaccinated.

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Amanda Rivera, an emergency room nurse, told NBC affiliate KPRC that she is one of the suspended employees and faces termination if she refuses to comply.

"I feel like they kind of bullied us into this little corner, like you have to do it or you don't have a job. This is my only source of income," Rivera said.
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Houston hospital suspends 178 employees who refused Covid-19 vaccination​

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I work in Duke Hospital and I overwhelmingly approve of requirement of health care workers must be vaccinated. They are in contact with vulnerable patients and visitors all the time, and the pandemic is not over.

Subduction Zone said:

What? This is a very strange reply.

Do you not understand how this disease is spread? Once again people tend to be asymptomatic early on in their infection. This appears to be when most of the cases are spread. The obviously ill are rarely out in public. A waiter is far more of a threat because if one catches the disease he or she will see far more people daily then a recluse that only goes to the grocery store occasionally does. And then there is the nature of their contact with other people too. The recluse is apt to get only close to a cashier that is behind a plastic shield. A waiter is going to be up close and personal and handling your food.

This should not be that hard to understand.

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It is extremely unlikely for covid to be spread through food or food handling...


COVID-19 and Your Health

InChrist said:

It is extremely unlikely for covid to be spread through food or food handling...


COVID-19 and Your Health

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It does not spread through food or food handling.

shunyadragon said:

It does not spread through food or food handling.

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But you can get it from a toilet seat, right?