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Comment by ipaddr | Hacker News Reader

These fired nurses have fallen quickly from heros to villians. What a terrible outcome for many who risked their lives and who helped so many survive. Feels like we are turning on them, blaming them for continued covid for not getting vaccined.

The current stats don't lineup with the theory that covid is being spread through unvaccined healthcare workers who should be fully masked and protected anyways. But the vaccine debate has turned political and the people who were the loudest praising nurses are the first to throw them to the wolves.

Nurses (employed still or fired) today feel forgotten. Celebrating them this year feels like a painful reminder of lockdowns.

It seems like society has turned cold hearted. Perhaps the endless social causes brought up as an identity page has caused people to truly not care.

How can you fire the very people who risked it all and saved you last year?

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> How can you fire the very people who risked it all and saved you last year?

Risked it all, except getting a covid vaccine to help reduce their patients exposure to covid

They risked it all for you and your family and all you did was get a vaccine and you think you are morally right to support their firing because them getting a covid vaccine would help reduce exposure to covid? They wear protect masks better than the ones you can buy. You realize your risk is higher in person work, socializing and having kids in school. I hope you have taken steps to stop those activities before you toss the first stone.

> You realize your risk is higher in person work, socializing and having kids in school

Than working in the covid ward at the hospital?

I doubt it

A 1/3 of covid cases are in the age group 6-12. You are unlikely to pick up covid in a hospital from a first responder because they are protected wearing the best gear available.

Here's what the actual data says:

"...relative to non-essential workers, medical support staff had the highest risk of severe COVID-19 (RR 8.70, 95% CI 4.87 to 15.55), followed by health associate professionals (RR 7.53, 95% CI 5.44 to 10.43) and healthcare professionals (RR 6.19, 95% CI 3.68 to 10.43)." https://oem.bmj.com/content/78/5/307#T3

"Frontline HCWs had a significantly increased risk of COVID-19 infection, highest among HCWs who reused PPE or had inadequate access to PPE. However, adequate supplies of PPE did not completely mitigate high-risk exposures." https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7273299/

"Prior to the availability of the COVID-19 vaccine, reports found HCWs accounted for 3.8 to 19 percent of COVID-19 cases." https://www.uptodate.com/contents/covid-19-occupational-heal...!

"Healthcare workers are currently at a much higher risk of being infected by COVID-19...frontline healthcare workers are facing up a nearly 12 times greater risk of a positive COVID-19 test, and those with inadequate access to PPE are at an additional 23% higher risk. Furthermore, we found that if they were directly caring for COVID-19 positive patients, healthcare workers were experiencing a 5 times greater risk of developing the disease, 6 times if they did not have access to proper PPE." https://covid.joinzoe.com/us-post/covid-risk-healthcare-work...

Since you seem to be concerned about nurses in particular, you should know that the majority of nurses are vaccinated and support vaccine mandates [1]. Also note that this article does not specify whether any nurses were fired.

[1] https://covidvaccinefacts4nurses.org/covid-19-survey

Just because a majority has support doesn't mean we start removing minority rights in 2021.

I agree! And indeed no rights have been lost!

The right to keep your job has. Which means your right to choose has been compromised.

If we're going to invent new human rights, what about an employer's right to hire and fire individuals based off their suitability for a job? And if you don't think employers have that right, then do I not have the right to be a nurse as well, regardless of my qualifications?

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