NY hospital to pause baby deliveries after staffers quit over vaccine mandate | Hacker News Reader

NY hospital to pause baby deliveries after staffers quit over vaccine mandate

kiro7.com

49 pointswalterbell91 comments

Side story:

In the school district where I work all employees are now required to be vaccinated or take a weekly test.

Our district hired a nurse to do weekly testing in the district main office to any employees that were not vaccinated.

The day before we were to begin testing the state informed us we are not allowed to test on our own premises.

Employees must schedule their own covid test on their own time. It also must be the full long nasal test (not the outer swap or spit test).

So now we have lots of bus drivers, food service workers, and maintenance staff who will resign since they don’t have the time, money or transportation to get their own weekly tests.

Something is amiss in the world right now. It really seems like plans, expectations, regulations are constantly shifting ….almost like by design to cause systems/organizations to fail.

Sorry for long comment just frustrated on the shifting protocols and shifting narratives.

The brilliant thing about this strategy is you have a bunch of unvaccinated people who probably aren't infected and a bunch of vaccinated people who have a larger likelihood of being infected

> It really seems like plans, expectations, regulations are constantly shifting ….almost like by design to cause systems/organizations to fail.

James Lindsay - of the hoax grievance studies [0] fame - talks about this in a lengthy series of netcasts [1] based around Herbert Marcuse's "An essay on liberation" [2]. According to his explanation these irrational and often counterproductive policies are part of an attempt to provide the conditions which would enable the creation of a new society based on "stakeholder capitalism" along the lines of Schwab's "Fourth Industrial Revolution" [3].

Read the essay - it is quite dense - and listen to Lindsay's thoughts on what Marcuse means to current affairs. Do it in that order to make sure you know what he is talking about, he sometimes stumbles over sentences and does not really know the German language at all while the original is written in that language and this translation still contains a number of German words. Form your own conclusion as to whether Lindsay is right in seeing Marcuse's take on the future of Marxist ideology reflected in current affairs.

[0] https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/10/new-sokal-...

[0] https://areomagazine.com/2018/10/02/academic-grievance-studi...

[1] https://newdiscourses.com/2021/06/biological-foundation-soci...

[1] https://newdiscourses.com/2021/07/herbert-marcuses-new-sensi...

[1] https://newdiscourses.com/2021/08/marcuses-subverting-forces...

[1] https://newdiscourses.com/2021/09/herbert-marcuse-catastroph...

[2] https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/marcuse/works/196...

[3] https://www.weforum.org/about/the-fourth-industrial-revoluti...

Thanks for sharing, very thought provoking. In short yes “ Form your own conclusion as to whether Lindsay is right in seeing Marcuse's take on the future of Marxist ideology reflected in current affairs.”

It's not that surprising - this hospital is in a rural area in a tiny town (~3500 residents.) Rural folks are more likely to be anti-vax.

This really isn't newsworthy.

Ran out of sympathy months ago.

From the sentiment on display so far; I'm wondering how long before we get advocates for involuntary vaccinations among the "essential workers" without whom our society will not function.

If half the Post Office quits over this, that system isn't going to restart quickly or easily. Multiply that by many others.

The postal workers union is apparently opposed to the mandate.

https://www.apwu.org/news/apwu-statement-mandatory-vaccinati...

I encourage everyone to get vaccinated if they can, but coercive government mandates aren't a good solution.

No one is arguing for forced vaccinations.

Arguing to absurdum, does not make a logical argument.

Six months ago "no one" was arguing for coerced vaccinations, either, and people like you mocked us for suggesting it was going to happen. Who's the absurdum here exactly?

Slippery slope fallacy. Also, six months ago, there were plenty of people advocating for vaccine mandates for healthcare workers/etc... myself included.

Let's start providing federal assistance to medical degrees and certificates. People deserve better than to be treated by the purposefully ignorant.

US govt funds tons of low-cost or free schools, gives huge grants for tuition (especially to military), and subsidizes loans.

The shortage of medical professionals is likely due to it being a difficult field and people not attending college at all, rather than cost.

There is a nurse shortage unfortunately, so this problem of poor quality nurses isn't going away.

What will society do for those not a risk of covid (under 30, no commorbidity) who got vaccinated and had a life-lasting side effect?

What sort of monsters would willingly subject newborns to any additional risk of Covid?

A healthcare professional who may already have antibodies from prior infection, and who therefore does not need a vaccine, perhaps.

Is that situation well studied for it's risk profile?

So you are wondering if Covid might be the one and only virus in history where antibodies don't work?

How many colds have you had?

Cold only very rarely kills babies. If we're going to do analogies then let's go all the way.

Here on HN there was an article about how people who got through Covid were much more resistant to catching it again, compared to those who got a vaccine. It's almost as if their immune systems actually work!

I despair for the people who got surprised by this, as if our immune systems became a thing only during the last 2 years. And this forum is supposed to be full of educated people.

All this virtue signaling around having to take experimental vaccines is becoming very tiring.

The common cold is caused by dozens of different viruses (including at least 4 coronaviruses). Gaining immunity to one of those cold viruses doesn't do much to protect against the others.

https://www.webmd.com/cold-and-flu/cold-guide/common_cold_ca...

Healthcare workers routinely work under flu vaccine mandates even though they may already have effective antibodies.

I’ve heard that many (most?) hospitals require that staff either wears a mask or gets the flu shot every year. Do these hospitals waive that requirement for people if they come down with the flu?

My previous employer was a healthcare system. Despite my role as a software developer working in an office nowhere near patients, I was required to get the flu vaccine (which was fine with me). These sorts of mandates are nothing new for healthcare workers.

Influenza is special when it comes to mutations, so I wouldn't expect them to waive the flu vaccinations but I also don't think it directly relates to sars-cov2.

Yup, the healthcare system I work for requires Flu vax for everyone. Including back office folks like me. They have for years now.

So, somebody who has little to no understanding of COVID, its ability to reinfect, the higher contagiousness of Delta variant, and thinks their Facebook feed has better scientific knowledge than experts in the field? Got it.

There doesn’t seem to be any problem with vaccination after infection. It’s unclear if that actually translates into better outcomes, but it’s likely. https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2021/09/07/1033677...

I feel like if they tested positive for covid-19 antibodies, that might be a valid exemption - because it's a bit much to require vaccinations for them if we still don't even know that it makes much difference.

How many antibodies are needed? What level? What is the peer reviewed lower limit of antibodies to be safe? Oh? You don’t know? Well then.

Exactly, it's NOT known. ...which is why it's not ethical to require their vaccination in order to work when the benefit to their patients is unknown.

The burden of proof should be on the agency forcing vaccinations upon people to work.

But we DO know that vaccines prevent severe illness.

"Perhaps does not need the vaccine", even if debatable, is still less good than "is vaccinated".

From the CDC:

"Yes, you should be vaccinated regardless of whether you already had COVID-19 because:

* Research has not yet shown how long you are protected from getting COVID-19 again after you recover from COVID-19.

* Vaccination helps protect you even if you’ve already had COVID-19.

Evidence is emerging that people get better protection by being fully vaccinated compared with having had COVID-19. One study showed that unvaccinated people who already had COVID-19 are more than 2 times as likely than fully vaccinated people to get COVID-19 again."

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/faq.html

There are so many confounding variables that they can't make that statement without sounding like they're selling something.

Does it matter when people were infected? Does it matter if you got the shot after being infected? Hint: it probably does because you probably have more antibodies right after getting the shot.

In fact, they should do a study of uninfected vaccinated people who get infected. Do they have higher antibody counts after getting infected? They probably would. Does that mean that every vaccinated person should get infected too?

Right, but those CDC statements make it clear that the CDC is guessing and asking people to get vaccinated - not knowing if it's helpful or not.

You are wrong. We know Covid vaccination is helpful and saves lives.

To be fair, that's the same CDC that only 5 months ago was saying getting vaccinated meant "getting back to normal" -- no masks, distancing rules, etc. Their reputation as being authoritative on this topic is understandably tarnished.

“Getting back to normal”relied on people not purposefully avoiding the vaccine and becoming bioreactors for additional variants.

That’s just covid - what about all the other diseases like polio, tb, pertussis, chicken pox…

Would you expect healthcare workers to be vaccinated against those ? Or should they wait to get the natural antibodies?

Polio: no, across the world there are less than 100 cases a year. TB: we require teachers to take a TB test, why not health care? Pertussis: yes, that’s part of the TdAP vaccine and I was required to get that as an employee of a health system. Chicken pox: usually most people have antibodies for this either from vaccination or illness.

In these cases though, they have not.

It would be a better argument to say that they've tested positive for covid-19 antibodies - but that's not what's going on here.

They're just anti-vax.

So it’s mandatory abortions then? Must be in response to Texas.

Rural hospital full of clearly unqualified medical staff. Who cares? I would not want my wife giving birth there covid or not.

> Who cares?

Sometimes people do not have a choice and people are very limited in ways they can convince a baby to come out later rather than sooner.

Would you rather she give birth on her own?

Bringing a third trimester pregnancy to a location without adequite medical facilities is the first mistake.

What makes them unqualified?

The refusal of basic germ theory and medical science?

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