30% of health workers refuse to be vaccinated

Of all the panoply of measures that the US Government implements to contain the pandemic, especially in light of the new omicron variant, the partial obligation to get vaccinated It is the most energetic and the one that causes the most friction. A mandate that tries to overcome the resistance of those 60 million Americans who have not yet received a needle stick; including the resistance of those who least, ‘a priori’ and given the scientific studies that prove the safety and reasonable effectiveness of the inoculations, it could be expected. Around the 30% of US healthcare workers, according to him Center for Disease Control and Prevention, has not been vaccinated yet. And some have mobilized in the street and in the courts.

“This is the foundational freedom to choose what goes into our bodies. If we give this up, we lose everything, “said Susan Walker, a participant in one of these demonstrations, to the television channel KSLA. Walker claimed that the protest was not against vaccines, but against the obligation to get them.

Walker’s position is not anecdotal. Some hospitals, such as the University Medical Center of Texas, are at risk of losing up to 40% of its employees, since their refusal to get vaccinated would make them lose their jobs. One perspective, that of having a medical center unable to operate in the midst of a pandemic, which is entering the front line of the political debate.

“I have sympathy for them too,” said Republican Dustin Burrows, a Texas state representative, referring to these demonstrations by health workers. “They have been put between a rock and a hard place. They are going to lose many employees to this, potentially putting safety, access and patient care at varying degrees of risk. ”

Judicial challenge

The challenge to Biden’s mandate, which would encompass healthcare workers, federal government personnel and the Armed Forces, as well as employees of companies with more than 100 people, and which was preceded by similar obligations at the state level, also has a legal aspect. A series of demands that are prospering.

Last week, a federal judge preliminarily suspended the law that obliges hospital and nursing home employees to be vaccinated, which would come into effect this Monday on pain of losing their job. “There is no question that getting 10.3 million healthcare workers vaccinated is something that has to be done by Congress, not a government agency,” said Justice Terry A. Doughty of Louisiana. “It is not clear that even an action by Congress making the vaccine mandatory was constitutional.”

“A year ago I was treated like a heroine. Today I am treated like scum.”

In New York, 17 medical workers sued the state for imposing a measure they considered unconstitutional and that violated their religious freedom. The plaintiffs, who are almost all Catholic, alleged that the vaccines, by containing cell lines originating from aborted fetuses, went against their beliefs (despite the fact that both Pope Francis and the American Catholic hierarchy have endorsed vaccines). The complainants have preferred stay anonymous, they say, so as not to be “vilified as outcasts” by the media.

Other health workers encourage public protest and post their statements on Facebook. “If you had no problem resuscitating your father to save his life (…). If you had no problem washing your brother’s infected wounds due to constant drug abuse,” Stephanie Wahne writes repeatedly, Oregon Nurse, on your personal account. “Now you have no problem discarding me, discarding us, as if we were garbage, because we believe that we have the right to have a choice in our healthcare. “Her message received 1,316 comments on the social network and was shared more than 150,000 times. Becca Pitts, a 21-year-old nurse, says in the Substack Common Sense account that” a year ago she was treated like a heroine. Today I am treated like scum“.

Constitutional and very ‘American’

The medical system tries to order these employees to get vaccinated. They remind them that vaccines have been shown to be effective in preventing the worst effects of COVID, that there is an irrefutable correlation between COVID hospitalizations and unvaccinated people, and that mandatory vaccinations are not something new, but rather a measure that It has been practiced since the very founding of the United States.

The US reopens its doors to the world and puts an (informal) end to the pandemic

Argemino Barro. New York

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“The opponents [al mandato de vacunarse] they call it unconstitutional, a violation of personal liberty, and even ‘un-American’ “, writes Dr. Lawrence O. Gostin in the medical journal ‘JAMA Health Forum‘. “The truth is that vaccination mandates are legal and deeply rooted in history and US values. They constitute a ‘wider freedom’ so that everyone in society can feel more secure where they work, learn, pray and live. ”

Gostin recalls that George Washington, the first president of the United States, forced his troops to get vaccinated against smallpox in 1777. Massachusetts passed the first state immunization mandate in 1809, and immunization in schools has been common since the mid-1800s. As recently as 2018 and 2019, authorities turned to mandatory vaccinations to tackling a measles outbreak here in New York. A series of decisions justified by the Supreme Court several times in the last century.

Pandemic polarization

Today, however, the vaccine, like other anticovid measures such as the mandatory use of a mask in closed spaces, is prey to the political polarization and the “culture wars”. Expressions that already generate fatigue, but that continue to swallow, like a whirlpool, any public debate. A centrifugal force that makes unanimity of opinion among Americans impossible.

Von der Leyen asks to open the debate on compulsory vaccination in the European Union

Nacho Alarcón. Brussels

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According to a survey by Axios-Ipsos, only six out of 10 workers Americans support your company forcing vaccination. The proportion of who defend dismissal as punishment for those who are not immunized it is much lower: 14%. The obligation to show your vaccination certificate to enter a movie theater or restaurant, as is the case in New York, also causes sparks. Some public figures, such as the supermodel and actress Doutzen Kroes, the singer Nicki Minaj or the American football player Aaron Rodgers, have protested against these requirements.

Meanwhile, the omicron variant is being detected every hour that passes in more states of the country. Scientists from several countries are still analyzing whether, as is often the case with mutations, the strain will be more contagious or harmful, and what the level of defense provided by the different vaccines would be. A challenge that will put to the test, more than science and the Government, the political temperaments Americans.

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Of all the panoply of measures that the US Government implements to contain the pandemic, especially in light of the new omicron variant, the partial obligation to get vaccinated It is the most energetic and the one that causes the most friction. A mandate that tries to overcome the resistance of those 60 million Americans who have not yet received a needle stick; including the resistance of those who least, ‘a priori’ and given the scientific studies that prove the safety and reasonable effectiveness of the inoculations, it could be expected. Around the 30% of US healthcare workers, according to him Center for Disease Control and Prevention, has not been vaccinated yet. And some have mobilized in the street and in the courts.

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