They risk their lives cleaning hospitals. Now, they are getting vaccinated
latimes.com
latimes.com
These people are possibly the most important staff in the hospital: nobody else would be able to do a thing without them, as everything would be an unsanitary mess.
I find this viewpoint a little confusing, because that’s true of almost everyone working there. No one gets treated if there aren’t doctors and nurses even if all the equipment is sparkling. No one gets treated if the back office isn’t procuring supplies.
The only way to split things along these lines that I’ve heard that makes sense to me is “could the hospital run without these people?”, where you say “not at all even briefly” for the most important group (as opposed to “yes” or “yes for a little bit”).
Its cute but it's basically populism...
It sounds like they think vaccination is a bad thing? It seems completely sensible to vaccinate these people early but the title is worded like 'they did something good, now something bad happens to them'.
‘I want people to know that we exist’
I think the idea is to highlight the existence of an group of people whose role in society is important, hazardous (particularly during a pandemic), and often overlooked.
"They risk their lives cleaning hospitals. Now, they are (finally) getting vaccinated"
...vaccination as their due for being on the front lines.
I think vaccination is a positive thing, and my reading of the title was positive.
(there are some other orthogonal uses of quotes, of course, my favourite being when we’re talking about words themselves rather than about the things the words normally signify. For example: My favourite type of animal is dog, but my favourite word is “dog”. The quotes signify that I’m talking about the literal three-letter word “dog”, and not about the type of animal)
In general, people (including people who work for the media) put words or statements in quotes when they’re doubtful of the veracity of those words or statements, and aren’t willing to put their own reputation on the line by making the statement themselves. Instead, they just report that other people say those things.
And so maybe it’s not surprising that a high percentage of stuff which gets communicated to people in that kind of quote structure eventually turns out to be untrue (and often is just laughably untrue on its face).
Since people aren’t stupid and since English is a living language (apologies if you’re a linguistic prescriptivist, but that’s not a fight that can be won), then it probably isn’t surprising that people have learned to associate that syntactic structure with falsehoods.
That’s just how it’s used in the real world. And has been for quite a long time.
Take this headline
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-55382212
> Covid: WHO in 'close contact' with UK over new virus variant
The BBC aren't doubting that the WHO are in close contact with the UK - they're just quoting a source and aren't expressing an opinion either way.
For example the early data for HPV vaccination was enough that as public health policy it made sense to immunise boys. The men would not spread HPV and thus contribute to reduced cancer in any future female partners. But that would be unethical because it's no direct benefit to the boys you're vaccinating. So they waited until they had data showing it would likely also prevent some cancer in men, bingo now it's both ethical and good policy.