Mayo Clinic fires 700 unvaccinated employees | Hacker News Reader

Mayo Clinic fires 700 unvaccinated employees

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21 pointsnixass13 comments

I've been to Mayo Clinic, and it was wonderful, especially compared to the regular health care system.

They have a reputation to maintain, and whether there is a hard scientific basis for this or not, I can see it being in their best interest to be able to state to their customers (ie, very sick people) that "all Mayo Clinic employees have been fully vaccinated".

People go to Mayo when they are very sick. It's not like the general population going to the grocery store. When you have a concentration of sick people in poor health, it makes complete sense to me to reduce their risk as much as possible, and vaccinated employees is part of that IMO.

I don't know if they have a policy of patients requiring vaccination, but if they did, I think it would be a good thing for the same reason: you have two huge buildings (in the Rochester, MN location) that are full of sick, weakened, vulnerable people who need specialized help. The last thing they want or need is to be exposed to Covid while seeking treatment.

If someone doesn't have Covid, they can't spread Covid. If they have Covid, then they should stay home until no longer infectious. Rapid antigen tests work well for this.

Secondly, if someone already had Covid, they have prior immunity. Thirdly, vaccination doesn't prevent catching or spreading Covid. This has been made clear with Omicron data.

Their policy is not rational nor science based. It smacks of being punitive more than anything.

Do we have data regarding reduced transmission of Omicron based on vaccination status? I ask because (given how dominant that strain is now) that could be the only rational justification for this requirement on the basis of "protecting others." I mean this in good faith. If there is data, please point me to it .

Reduced hospitalization and disease severity is enough of a justification, and that it does.

Then you’re making the argument that the hospital is forcing this because they’re worried about their own employees being hospitalized. Even at a 10% hospitalization rate (much too high), that’s 70 people. Who won’t all get sick at the same time, and likely won’t all be hospitalized in the Mayo Clinic.

The only way to justify this is reduced transmission, enough so that it outweighs the harm to patients done by firing staff in the current supply-constrained healthcare economy.

They are getting sick all at the same time, and the total number of the population getting infected is saturating wards.

No, the only way to justify it is that even with a largely mild disease, the total number of hospitalized patients is saturating the health care system. Which it is, therefore it is justified.

Not sure if the numbers bear this out, but presumably reducing employee sick leave would be a rational argument on the hospital part?

Reducing employee hospitalization by firing them doesn't strike me as particularly sensible...

No. Apparently we have data for increased transmission of omicron by the vaccinated. [0]

It may be due many number of things, but it is clearly not safer to work with vaccinated coworkers if that study is correct. -- [0]: https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/52810/is-the-ef...

Hospitals do this with the flu vaccine as well, every year they require employees to get vaccinated, the employees don't, so they have to fire them because the regulatory penalties aren't worth it, even at the cost of the the brightest researcher or doctor. They usually hire them back after they get vaccinated.

Source: my So worked in a hospital which did this and was there to see 177 people get laid off for missing their shots

what happens if the federal mandates get ruled illegal by the supreme court? do people fired via state or corporate mandate have any recourse?

If it's at-will employment the no.

There are anti discrimination laws, not sure they apply, but they fired a large swath of people based on a medical status. A law suit can always be started

This is not actually new. Hospitals have required employees to be vaccinated for the flu and other viruses for sometime. It is not new or a policy change for Covid.

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