Category Archives: COVID

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The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth is something the credentialed media don’t seem to like

We have already noted that some hospitals have been firing nurses for refusing to take the COVID-19 vaccines, and we had hardly covered them all. The Lexington Herald-Leader reported that some Kentucky hospitals have begun firing staff who refused a COVID vaccine.

    Though the vaccine mandate announcement was made in a unified voice alongside Gov. Andy Beshear, each hospitals’ enforcement of the requirement varies. The Herald-Leader surveyed each hospital, and though it was couched as a requirement, only some have made it a condition of employment.

    The initially agreed-upon deadline for many was September 15, but some have extended it and few have yet to disclose what percentage of their staff fulfilled the requirement, or what will happen to staff who didn’t. Some have confirmed they will offer weekly testing as an alternative, while others are moving more swiftly to write-ups and, in some cases, immediate firings.

    By the end of the day Wednesday, for instance, 23 staff had refused vaccination and were fired at St. Claire Regional Medical Center, one of the hospitals hardest hit by the most recent and severe surge in coronavirus cases. Fifteen personnel were approved for a religious or medical exemption. At the time the mandate was announced in early August, 30% of staff were unvaccinated, CEO and President Donald H. Lloyd said in a statement.

In yet another example of what I have frequently referred to as The Philadelphia Enquirer[1]RedState writer Mike Miller called it the Enquirer, probably by mistake, so I didn’t originate it, but, reminiscent of the National Enquirer as it is, I thought it very apt. shows just how great their journolism[2]The spelling ‘journolist’ or ‘journolism’ comes from JournoList, an email list of 400 influential and politically liberal journalists, the exposure of which called into question their … Continue reading is.

    ‘I see someone quit every day’: Nurses share horror stories from hospital staff shortage, in their own words

    Nurses, already physically and emotionally drained from a year and a half on the front lines of a pandemic, are being asked to care for more patients than is safe for either the patient or the nurse.

    by Maureen May[3]Maureen May, R.N., is a longtime Temple University Hospital nurse and president of the Pennsylvania Association of Staff Nurses and Allied Professionals, which represents 9,500 nurses and health-care … Continue reading | Thursday, September 23, 2021 | 9:00 AM EDT

    Nurses quite literally have their fingers on the pulse of patient care — and we’re sounding the alarm: There are not nearly enough of us at the bedside. What this means in ERs and on hospital floors in our area, throughout the state and even across the nation, is that nurses, already physically and emotionally drained from a year and a half on the front lines of a pandemic, are being asked to care for more patients than is safe for either the patient or the nurse.

Full disclosure: My wife is a registered nurse, working in a hospital.

    When this happens — when nurses are routinely required to care for more patients than is safe — it’s called chronic nurse short-staffing, and care suffers. Nurses suffer, too. These are our stories.

      I see someone quit every day

      by Peg Lawson[4]Peg Lawson, R.N., has worked as an ER nurse at Einstein Hospital for 30 years. She is co-president of Einstein Nurses United.

      We are experiencing a turnover rate now that I’ve never seen in the 30 years I’ve been at Einstein. Every day, someone leaves. Nurses used to be here for three or four years before moving on; now, it’s three or four months. It’s scary on so many levels.

      Nurses who are brand-new, just coming out of school, are being thrust into assignments with high acuity even as they’re forced to handle more patients because the units are short-staffed. Experienced resource nurses are just not available to help, and these new nurses are getting burned out very quickly due to the lack of support and great demand put on their shoulders.

There’s much more at the original. The author collected the stories of five different RNs on the front lines of fighting COVID-19 right now, and I recommend reading it. And while it’s a bit of a stretch to accuse the author of journolism, because she isn’t a professional journalist, the article, which shows the difficulty today’s RNs are having with understaffing, cannot be considered complete without noting that part of the understaffing has been artificially created by vaccine mandates, and the firing of, or quitting by, nurses who decline to be vaccinated. If the Maureen May didn’t include that point, an editor of the Enquirer Inquirer should have.

Media bias does not normally take the form of publishing falsehoods; there are few deliberate lies in the credentialed media. Rather, media bias usually takes the form of lies of omission, of not telling the whole truth in a way that distorts the entire story. We have previously noted that Philadelphia’s Acting Health Commissioner Cheryl Bettigole has a vaccine mandate in place for the city’s health care workers, and said, dismissively, “If you’re more committed to not getting the vaccine than to the safety of your patients, it’s time to do something else. Health care is not for you.”

The editorial position of the Inquirer is to support vaccine mandates. But such mandates have consequences, one being that some people will refuse to be assimilated comply, and choose to either resign or be fired over their refusal. Not reporting that, not reporting that in an already short-staffed state, nurses are leaving or being dismissed for a refusal to take a vaccine which has not been out long enough for us to have complete information about its long term effects.

Though some doctors have pooh-poohed the idea that it’s harmful, researchers have collected over 140,000 reports by adult women who have seen significant changes in their menstrual cycles after getting vaccinated. Could this affect future fertility, or produce children with birth defects? Nobody knows yet; further research is needed.

    Thalidomide was first marketed in 1957 in West Germany, where it was available over the counter. When first released, thalidomide was promoted for anxiety, trouble sleeping, “tension”, and morning sickness. While it was initially thought to be safe in pregnancy, concerns regarding birth defects arose until in 1961 the medication was removed from the market in Europe. The total number of embryos affected by use during pregnancy is estimated at 10,000, of which about 40% died around the time of birth. Those who survived had limb, eye, urinary tract, and heart problems. Its initial entry into the US market was prevented by Frances Kelsey at the FDA. The birth defects caused by thalidomide led to the development of greater drug regulation and monitoring in many countries.

The COVID-19 vaccines were hurriedly developed and rushed to market due to the tremendous economic and social disruptions caused by federal and state governments’ reaction to, overreaction to, the spread of COVID-19; there are no long-term studies on the vaccines’ effects because it hasn’t even existed for very long. The New York Times reported:[5]Hat tip to William Teach for the story.

    Roughly 221 million doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine have been dispensed thus far in the United States, compared with about 150 million doses of Moderna’s vaccine. In a half-dozen studies published over the past few weeks, Moderna’s vaccine appeared to be more protective than the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine in the months after immunization.

    The latest such study, published on Wednesday in The New England Journal of Medicine, evaluated the real-world effectiveness of the vaccines at preventing symptomatic illness in about 5,000 health care workers in 25 states. The study found that the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine had an effectiveness of 88.8 percent, compared with Moderna’s 96.3 percent.

    Research published on Friday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that the efficacy of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine against hospitalization fell from 91 percent to 77 percent after a four-month period following the second shot. The Moderna vaccine showed no decline over the same period.

The vaccines are at least somewhat effective in preventing contracting the virus in the first place, and in reducing the impact of the disease for those who contract it despite being vaccinated. But it has become clear that the Pfizer vaccine, at least, came with exaggerated promises; in the real world, it does not seem to have matched the hype.

Overall, it appears to be a net good, despite some reports of serious side effects. But it isn’t perfect, and it is reasonable for people to have concerns. Too bad that The Philadelphia Inquirer doesn’t want you to know that.

If you are sworn in for a criminal trial, you will be asked to swear that what you are about to say will be “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.” Journalism, responsible journalism, requires the whole truth, and that’s what the Inquirer doesn’t want you to know.

References

References
↑1 RedState writer Mike Miller called it the Enquirer, probably by mistake, so I didn’t originate it, but, reminiscent of the National Enquirer as it is, I thought it very apt.
↑2 The spelling ‘journolist’ or ‘journolism’ comes from JournoList, an email list of 400 influential and politically liberal journalists, the exposure of which called into question their objectivity. I use the term ‘journolism’ frequently when writing about media bias.
↑3 Maureen May, R.N., is a longtime Temple University Hospital nurse and president of the Pennsylvania Association of Staff Nurses and Allied Professionals, which represents 9,500 nurses and health-care professionals across the commonwealth. She has worked at the bedside for more than 35 years.
↑4 Peg Lawson, R.N., has worked as an ER nurse at Einstein Hospital for 30 years. She is co-president of Einstein Nurses United.
↑5 Hat tip to William Teach for the story.
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This is why we need the First Amendment!

We recently noted the Most Reverend John Stowe, OFM Conv., and his move which banned unvaccinated priests of the Diocese of Lexington from making visits to home or hospital-bound parishioners. The Bishop, has just said that such priests cannot visit the sick and the homebound, which, in effect, denies the sacraments to some ill or elderly parishioners who might want and need them. While, technically, a vaccinated priest from another parish could fill in, the Diocese is very large, and has relatively few priests to cover the area.

But at least Bishop Stowe did not ban actually ban people from receiving the sacraments, even if he did make it more difficult for some ill and elderly parishioners.

    Canadian archbishop: Only fully vaccinated can attend Mass

    By Kevin J. Jones | Denver Newsroom | September 18, 2021 | 10:48 PM MDT

    Anyone age 12 or over attending a gathering at Catholic churches, rectories or community centers under the responsibility of the Archdiocese of Moncton must present proof that they are fully vaccinated, the archdiocese announced Friday.

    The new policy applies to all religious celebrations, Sunday and weekday Masses, baptisms, wedding and funerals, parish and pastoral meetings, catechesis, and social meetings.

    The archdiocese’s announcement comes in the wake of new provincial government rules set to take effect Tuesday requiring proof of vaccination to access certain events, services, and businesses. Fewer than 50 people have died from COVID-19 in the province of New Brunswick since the pandemic began, out of a total population of more than 780,000, according to government statistics. But provincial officials say they are concerned about a recent uptick in cases and hospitalizations.

    The New Brunswick rules apply to those 12 and older seeking to attend “indoor organized gatherings,” including weddings, funerals, conferences, workshops and parties, excepting parties at a private dwelling.

There’s more at the original, but this shows why our First Amendment is so necessary: in New Brunswick, a province of Canada, freedom of religion is not protected from government interference, and the provincial Minister of Health ordered the Archbishop of Moncton to deny the sacraments to all Canadians in the archdiocese if those Canadians have not been vaccinated. Not only that, the Church has to be the policeman for these orders, and the Archbishop indicated that, after compiling lists of those who provide proof of vaccination, that “list may eventually be requested by the government.”

There’s a lot of internet talk blaming the Archbishop, but we don’t know how hard he fought against this. His letter to parishioners is long, so I’ve copied it as a footnote.[1]Dear Sisters and Brothers in Christ Jesus, The provincial Minister of Health, Ms. Shephard, met with religious leaders in the province following the announcement of new measures regarding the … Continue reading Quite frankly, if this happened in Kentucky, I would not be at all surprised if Governor Andy Beshear (D-KY) “requested” such lists as well. Fascists just love to keep tabs on the people.

In my home state, Governor Beshear ordered all churches closed in March of 2020. It took too long, but at least a federal judge overturned his order, and the Governor did not appeal it. In New Brunswick, the provincial government apparently has the authority to dictate to a Roman Catholic Archbishop how he can conduct his religion, ordering him, and the priests of his archdiocese, not to administer the sacraments to anyone who isn’t vaccinated. That means: no marriages, no Reconciliation, no Eucharist, no Anointing of the Sick, nothing, unless those parishioners have knuckled under and taken the jab.

The left, of course, want to weaken our First Amendment, want to restrict speech because some people’s precious little feelings have gotten hurt. Governor Beshear wasn’t the only Democrat state Governor who tried to restrict religion; restrictions were placed on church services in California and New York, among other places.

Today’s left believe that the state trumps religion, and for them, I’m sure it does, but for normal people, it does not and should not.

These are things we have to fight! Given an inch, the left will take miles and miles and miles.

References

References
↑1 Dear Sisters and Brothers in Christ Jesus,

The provincial Minister of Health, Ms. Shephard, met with religious leaders in the province following the announcement of new measures regarding the pandemic. While explaining new guidelines, she indicated that they had only one goal: to increase the rate of people fully vaccinated in the province (two doses).

Vaccination remains the best way to counter the spread of the Delta virus and protect the population (especially the unvaccinated). The government is looking for a vaccination rate of around 90%. The minister made it clear to us that she does not require masks, sanitizing, or social distancing at our gatherings. These measures remain at the discretion of individuals.

Instead, she wishes to have gatherings of fully vaccinated people to keep people safe and to act as an incentive for the unvaccinated.  That is why going back to past health measures (mask, sanitizing, and social distancing) as a way to include unvaccinated people at our gatherings is not the measure promoted by the government.

Therefore, beginning Wednesday Sep 22nd,  at any gathering inside our churches, rectories or community centres under our supervision, those present must be doubly vaccinated.

  1. By gatherings we mean: religious celebrations (Sunday and weekly masses, prayer meetings, baptisms, weddings and funerals, Confirmation, First Reconciliation, First Communion), parish and pastoral meetings, catechesis meetings, management meetings, conferences, workshops, fraternal and social meetings, bingos, card games, etc.
  2. By those present we mean: priests, lay ministers, members of choirs, volunteers, the faithful and other participants. This also applies to family members or close friends at baptisms, weddings, or funerals. Young people under the age of 12 are naturally exempted by this measure, as they cannot currently be vaccinated.

How can these measures be put in place?

  1. At Masses next week, several volunteers are expected to be at the doors of each church to ask worshippers for full proof of vaccination and collect their names on a list of fully vaccinated people. This list will be used again on subsequent Sundays so our volunteers will avoid asking our parishioners for proof of vaccination each time. The request for proof of vaccination would then be required only for new people. This list may eventually be requested by the government.
  2. Inform the funeral home staff that family members and loved ones who come to church are to be doubly vaccinated. For baptisms and weddings, this task will fall to the parish office staff or to the person meeting the family to prepare for the celebration.  As with other masses and celebrations, it will be necessary to keep a list of participants in funerals, weddings and baptisms after ensuring that they are doubly vaccinated.
  3. For catechesis with children, we follow the rules in force in schools. For the safety of young people, catechists should be fully vaccinated. When parents (or another adult) attend the meetings, they will of course have to be doubly vaccinated. For a celebration in church, you will follow the rule in force now in our churches.
  4. As for parish employees, it is highly desirable that they be fully vaccinated. However, if this is not the case, they will have to wear a mask at all times and undergo a COVID test periodically according to government policy.
  5. We will accept anyone who comes to the parish offices for information or service. If this person is not vaccinated, they may be asked to wear a mask.

Questions:  Can we still accept a person who is not vaccinated or has a single dose inside our facilities for a celebration or a meeting?  Even with a mask and social distancing?
Answer:  The minister said “no” unless she had proof of exemption, which is rare.

We ask you to implement these new measures in each of your Christian communities not only to respect the government’s request but above all to help stop the spread of the virus among our population. We would not want one of our places of worship to be the location of a COVID exposure due to our negligence. The Minister of Health is counting on our cooperation.

If you have any questions, do not hesitate to contact us so that we can help you implement these new measures. I thank you in advance for all the efforts it requires to put in place this new protocol.May the Lord bless us and continue to watch over us.

Mgr Valery Vienneau.
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Laughing out loud * Updated! *

Lexington Herald-Leader “Staff writer Valarie Honeycutt Spears covers K-12 education, social issues and other topics.” Uhhh, maybe she might consider going back to English class?

“(T)hree new bus drivers and one new substitute driver has been hired”? https://www.thepiratescove.us/wp-content/plugins/wp-monalisa/icons/wpml_wacko.gif https://www.thepiratescove.us/wp-content/plugins/wp-monalisa/icons/wpml_yahoo.gif

I have commented on the article, in hopes that Mrs Spears sees it updates it.

    In a Tuesday newsletter, Liggins said that additionally over the next two weeks, the district expects to have four additional drivers ready to start driving.

    “We also have 18 candidates studying for their permits, and 20 people lined up for a class to begin next week,” he said.

If the Fayette County Schools have some luck, it won’t take too much time between candidates getting their permits and being able to take their CDL road test. The question is: how many will stay?

oo0oo

Updated: Friday, September 17, 2021 @ 10:15 AM EDT

I see that Mrs Spears has made the grammatical correction! She also added this:

    In the area of child nutrition, the school district is seeing fewer vacancies each day, “but we are still looking to hire more than 50 additional people,” Liggins said.

    Staff shortages have been so severe in the district’s cafeterias that Central Office staff have been volunteering.

Translation: cafeteria staff do not want to be forced to wear masks, either. Given that those positions are part-time, it isn’t much of a job sacrifice to not take those, and go for the many other open jobs in Lexington.

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Now first responders in Oregon are fighting the #VaccineMandate

We have previously noted how cities are losing school bus drivers and corrections officers and nurses and other health care professionals to mask and vaccine mandates. I tend to concentrate on Kentucky and Pennsylvania, but now it’s time to go to the left coast:

As much as the lovely Amanda Marcotte wants you to believe that vaccine resistance is all done by evil reich wing Trumpelstiltskins, Joe Biden defeated President Trump fairly handily there, 56.45% to 40.37%. The last Republican presidential candidate to carry Oregon was Ronald Reagan in 1984.

    The latest blow came Friday, in Jefferson County court. Dozens of firefighters, Oregon state troopers and the Oregon Fraternal Order of Police filed a lawsuit against the state and Gov. Kate Brown. The suit, first reported by the Oregonian/OregonLive, alleged the governor’s decision to mandate state employees get the COVID vaccine by Oct. 18 or lose their jobs violates the state and federal constitutions.

    The suit came two days after another trooper in Bend was placed on leave.

    “I’ll likely get fired for this video,” Trooper Zachary Kowing said in a clip, posted on Instagram last week.

    In the video, Trooper Kowing sits in uniform, in his patrol car and blasts the governor, her mandate and anyone who gets the vaccine “out of fear.” By Wednesday, Oregon State Police had placed Kowing on paid leave, pending an investigation.

    Portland attorney Dan Thenell is representing Kowing, as well as the plaintiffs in Friday’s lawsuit. He said the cases are separate, but the point is clear.

    “There are many troopers who are not going to get this vaccine and are prepared to lose their job over this,” Thenell said in an interview Friday.

There’s more at the original.

Those are kind of brave words; we don’t really know how many police officers, state troopers and firemen will actually let themselves be fired rather than take the vaccines, but it’s safe to say that the number will be greater than zero. With COVID surging in the Beaver State, and the homicide rate in liberal Portland on its way to a new record, these first responders are needed personnel.

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Two more Philadelphia public schools closed due to #COVID19

We noted, just yesterday, that the Philadelphia School District closed Emlen Elementary School due to positive CIVID-19 tests. Now, two more have been shut down.

    COVID-19 has forced three Philadelphia schools to close

    by Rob Tornoe | Wednesdat, September 15, 2021

    The Federalist: Stanford Faculty Smear Professor Who Accurately Summarized Data On Masks

    Three Philadelphia schools have now been forced to temporarily close due to COVID-19 cases, including one Philadelphia School District building.

    Emlen Elementary in East Mount Airy will be shut for in-person learning until Sept. 24, officials said in a letter to families. The K-5 school enrolls about 300 students, all of whom are too young to be vaccinated.

    “Due to multiple positive cases of COVID-19 in our school, the Philadelphia Department of Public Health (PDPH) has determined that our school building will temporarily close from 9-13-21 to 9-23-21 to help stem the spread of the virus,” principal Tammy Thomas wrote to Emlen families Monday. “Students and staff may not return to our school building during this time.”

    In addition, two charter schools — Lindley Academy Charter School and Pan American Academy Charter School — have also been temporarily closed for 14 days due to COVID-19 cases, a city spokesperson said Wednesday.

    Cheryl Bettigole, MD, from her Twitter biography.

    “In general, most transmission is not happening in school, it’s happening at home,” acting Health Secretary Cheryl Bettigole said Wednesday. She said the best way to keep school buildings open is for parents to get themselves and their eligible children vaccinated, and to not send their kids to school when they’re sick.

    “I think most of us imagined most of the spread happening in school, because all these kids are together,” Bettigole said. “But it’s typically the adults bringing it home, and then spreading it in the house.

Really? And how does Dr Bettigole know this? Or is she just defending a mask mandate, which has been in effect for all Philadelphia public schools, since the first day of school, but for which there is no evidence that it has actually slowed or prevented the spread of the virus?

The fact is simple: despite ‘contact tracing,’ despite all of the wailing of the left that they know the hideously unvaccinated are spreading the virus, no one can say that person A caught the virus specifically from person B.

Of course, the school district knows that even fully vaccinated persons can contract and spread the virus, which is why the Philly schools have mandated weekly testing for vaccinated employees.

That’s the important part here: the public schools in Pennsylvania all have these mask mandates, but, how about that, the virus is still spreading.

Despite vaccinations and despite mask mandates, this school year is looking very much like it will be like the last one.

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Why does Solomon Jones want mostly white prison guards, but not disproportionately black inmates, tested for #COVID19?

I get it: Solomon Jones, a columnist for The Philadelphia Inquirer, really doesn’t like law enforcement, and doesn’t particularly care for white people. Looking at his Inquirer author file, you’ll find columns like this:

So this morning’s column came as no surprise to me:

If Pennsylvania corrections officers don’t want the vaccine, they should look for new jobs

The only people risking the health and safety of union members are the union members themselves.

by Solomon Jones | Wednesday, September 15, 2021 | 9:00 AM EDT

Solomon Jones, from his Twitter biography.

From the outset, COVID-19 exposed America as a society that is more than willing to sacrifice its most vulnerable people. Now, as workers challenge vaccine mandates meant to protect those relegated to the bottom rungs of society, the most vulnerable people will suffer once again.

Last week, the union representing correctional officers in Pennsylvania’s state prisons became one of the latest groups to officially oppose a vaccine or testing mandate. On Friday, they filed a complaint in Commonwealth Court seeking a preliminary injunction to stop an order put in place by Gov. Tom Wolf — a Democrat — requiring prison guards and other state workers to get vaccinated or submit to weekly testing. The guards say they should not have to be tested weekly unless inmates and prison vendors are, too.

Why, I have to ask, was it important for Mr Jones to point out, in the manner he did, for emphasis, that Governor Wolf is a Democrat? He is, but that’s hardly germane to the story. After all, aren’t unions primarily Democratic, politically?

The lawsuit spells it out this way: “The commonwealth’s failure to apply the ‘vaccinate or weekly test’ rule to all individuals in the congregate setting unnecessarily increases the risk to the health and safety” of union members.

Interesting argument, but I’m not buying it. I believe the only people risking the health and safety of union members are the union members themselves.

By refusing vaccination, and then fighting to skip out on COVID-19 testing, these state employees are not only risking their own health. They’re imposing the consequences of their decisions on a vulnerable population. Testing prisoners and vendors doesn’t stop unvaccinated guards from contracting COVID-19. It simply allows those guards to sidestep a vaccination mandate the president of the Pennsylvania State Corrections Officers Association derided as “a slap in the face” while members expressed their strong opposition. More importantly, it allows them to continue to contract and spread COVID-19 among a population of incarcerated people who are unable to leave the facilities, and thus are particularly vulnerable.

Do these three paragraphs even go together? Mr Jones states that the “only people risking the health and safety of union members are the union members themselves,” but then goes on to claim that the union members are concomitantly harming the prisoners.

There are those who believe that as convicted criminals, state inmates deserve any condition, no matter how bad, that comes from their imprisonment. I don’t, especially after watching 26 wrongfully convicted Philadelphians get released since December of 2016. Twenty-four of those innocent people were Black, which makes sense, since 47% of the state’s 37,000 prisoners were Black as of July 30, even though Black people make up about 12% of Pennsylvania’s population.

Nowhere does it seem to occur to Mr Jones that 47% of the incarcerated prisoners have committed somewhere close to 47% of the crimes. He just throws those numbers out there as though readers will see them as obviously unfair. The Philadelphia Tribune, a black community newspaper, reported that about 86% of the city’s 2020 499 homicides were black, while 84% of Philly’s 2,236 non-fatal shootings were black. And, as is always the case, the shooters are around 90% probable to be the same race as their victims.

That means this is not just a major health issue. It is also an issue of racial justice. In a criminal system where Black people are disproportionately imprisoned, and wrongfully convicted far more often than their white counterparts, I’m forced to ask a simple question: How many more wrongfully convicted Black prisoners are sitting inside, waiting to be infected with a virus that could very well give them a death sentence for a crime they didn’t commit?

Why, then, does Mr Jones object to the union’s claim that the guards shouldn’t be singled out, but that everybody, the inmates and vendors, should also be tested? It would take only one vendor bringing in supplies or food, making contact with one prisoner, to pass on the virus to the incarcerated population. We already know that vaccination, while it may reduce the probability of contracting the virus, and apparently does lessen the severity of symptoms in infected persons, can still be transmitted from one vaccinated but infected individual to another person, vaccinated or not. The Centers for Disease Control stated, on August 26, 2021:

    Vaccines are playing a crucial role in limiting spread of the virus and minimizing severe disease. Although vaccines are highly effective, they are not perfect, and there will be vaccine breakthrough infections. Millions of Americans are vaccinated, and that number is growing. This means that even though the risk of breakthrough infections is low, there will be thousands of fully vaccinated people who become infected and able to infect others, especially with the surging spread of the Delta variant.

Yet Mr Jones just waves off the union’s concerns, as though they cannot be real.

Everyone who works with a vulnerable population should be vaccinated. From teachers who work with students who are not yet eligible for vaccination, to hospital workers who are exposed to those with compromised immune systems, to prison guards who work with incarcerated people in a closed environment.

If Mr Jones feels that way, why does he not agree that the vendors who serve the prison ought to have to be vaccinated or subjected to frequent testing? Indeed, since we know that the vaccinated can still contract and spread the virus, and if his concern is really the spread of COVID-19, why wouldn’t he support mandatory frequent testing to the vaccinated and unvaccinated alike? With his greatly stated concerns for black prisoners, why isn’t he concerned that the areas with the highest concentration of black residents are also the areas with the lowest vaccination rates?

The prisoners? They can’t be forced, because that would constitute assault. But Mr Jones should want them all vaccinated and frequently tested.

If our prison guards want to work without getting vaccinated, they are well within their rights to do so, but they should be prepared to find employment somewhere else.

The truth is simple: Mr Jones would love to see the number of prison guards cut, and cut dramatically, to force the cutting of the number of prisoners.

Mr Jones sees this whole issue through the lens of ‘racial justice,’ but, in fact, racial justice is a contradiction in terms. Justice, to be justice, must be handled without regard to race, and Mr Jones does not like that concept at all.

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The #VaccineMandate is already causing nurses to quit

We have previously noted that vaccine mandates in the nursing profession would have some rather negative effects in an already short-staffed position.

    Lewis County Health System to “pause” maternity services due to staff unwilling to vaccinate

    By Julie Abbass | September 11, 2021

    LOWVILLE — The maternity department at the Lewis County Health System is the first casualty of staffing challenges made worse by health care workers prioritizing remaining unvaccinated for COVID-19 over their jobs with the hospital.

    Because of a number of vacant positions in the department already, the resignations of six staff members this week combined with the looming possibility that seven other unvaccinated people in maternity may follow suit made it clear to the Health System’s leadership that they needed to hit “pause” on services provided by that department.

    “We are unable to safely staff the service after Sept. 24. The number of resignations received leaves us no choice but to pause delivering babies at Lewis County General Hospital,” Chief Executive Officer Gerald R. Cayer said. “It is my hope that the (state) Department of Health will work with us in pausing the service rather than closing the maternity department.”

    In addition to the maternity ward, there are five other departments whose services may be curtailed in some way if a significant number of staff members decide to leave their employment rather than be vaccinated for COVID-19.

    The “pause” will begin on Sept. 25, two days before the final deadline for healthcare worker vaccination across the state for those who chose to continue their employment.

    Mr. Cayer, who spoke at a news conference on Friday afternoon in the county board room, said 30 people have resigned from their health care roles since the vaccine was mandated on Aug. 23, 20 of whom worked in clinical positions like nurses, therapists and technicians, totalling 70% of the resignations so far.

There’s more at the original, but, further down:

    Regardless of that perspective, however, there are still 165 of the approximately 650 employees who are unvaccinated and have yet to declare their intention to stay or go. About 73% of this group provide clinical services, Mr. Cayer said in a separate interview.

    In the nursing home at the health system, there has only been one resignation so far, but there are 48 people who have not yet taken action.

Doing the math, 165 unvaccinated employees out of 650 is fully a quarter of the staff, 25.38%. If 73% of the unvaccinated employees are clinicians, that’s 120 of them.

The Associated Press version of the story stated:

    Cayer said 30 people have resigned since the vaccine mandate was announced last month, most of whom held clinical positions like nurses, therapists and technicians. Thirty others have gotten at least one dose of the vaccine, he said.

That’s a small sample size, but if thirty have quit and thirty have knuckled under — an expression I believe appropriate, given that they had plenty of time to be vaccinated earlier, and thus the delay in doing so seems indicative of a determined reluctance — that works out to a 50% compliance rate.

Hospitals can try moving staff around, and the article noted that there were some nurses who were currently in administrative positions rather than in direct patient care, but eventually this is going to have a real impact on patient care.

I have said it before: I believe that, potential side effects be damned, it is wiser to choose to take the vaccines than not. But I also believe that the decision to take, or not take, the vaccines, ought to be the free choice of every individual.

More, I have to wonder: among those who did not want to be vaccinated, but felt that they had to knuckle under to keep their jobs, how will their employee morale be after this? Will they do their jobs as well after having been forced to comply as they did previously? Will their loyalty to their employers suffer as a result?

No one I have seen has been asking that question, and employee morale can be a very difficult thing to measure, but one thing seems certain: these mandates will not improve morale in the slightest.

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When The Philadelphia Inquirer censors the news

We have previously noted information which can be found, if you look, but which the credentialed media journolists[1]The spelling ‘journolist’ comes from JournoList, an email list of 400 influential and politically liberal journalists, the exposure of which called into question their objectivity. I use the term … Continue reading mostly choose not to report, that COVID-19 restrictions and mask mandates are contributing to a shortage of school bus drivers.

And this morning we hear from a newspaper I frequently call The Philadelphia Enquirer:[2]RedState writer Mike Miller called it the Enquirer, probably by mistake, so I didn’t originate it, but, reminiscent of the National Enquirer as it is, I thought it very apt.

    Philly’s bus driver shortage is a ‘crisis,’ leaving kids missing school or stranded

    After a year-plus of pandemic-disrupted learning, persistent bus woes have kept some students out of school completely and left parents and school staff scrambling yet again.

    By Kristen A Graham | Saturday, September 11, 2021

    Most days, the yellow bus that’s supposed to take Denise Madre’s kids from their Germantown home to school in Roxborough doesn’t show up at all. A bus did come on one of the seven days school has been open so far — nearly four hours late.

    That happened after Madre, who doesn’t drive, paid for an Uber to get Jonan and Braylee to Shawmont Elementary, and also after the time the children — both of whom have autism — were left waiting at school for hours because no bus ever came to take them home.

    Philadelphia School District officials warned the community about worsening school bus driver shortages this summer, and shifted start times over community and school objections to streamline operations. The district is even offering families $1,500 annually to drive their children to school instead of putting them on a yellow bus.

    But the transportation reality has been much worse than anyone had braced for, affecting schools across the city, leaving some students stranded and others on buses for hours or dropped off in the wrong neighborhoods. After a year-plus of pandemic-disrupted learning, persistent bus woes have kept some students out of school completely and left parents and school staff scrambling yet again.

It’s a fairly long story, primarily filled with the horror stories of children not picked up, or dropped off at the wrong location, including one girl who is legally blind. But, far down, is this paragraph:

    (Danielle) Floyd, the transportation general manager, said the district is working on offering bonuses and paying for trainers for its own drivers, which represent about 20% of its driver workforce; vendors are also generally offering perks and upping salaries. But in this employee market, it’s been especially difficult to find workers who can get their CDL licenses, pass physicals and drug tests, and make it through safety training.

Having been in the ready-mixed concrete industry for thirty years, yeah, I can testify as to the difficulty of finding drivers who can pass the drug test. But Kristen Graham, the article author, never mentioned the elephant in the room, that some potential drivers simply won’t take the jobs because they don’t want to wear face masks.

It’s not as though she doesn’t know that, because the Enquirer Inquirer has reported on that in the past, in an article linked with the story above:

    In Pennsylvania, some drivers aren’t coming back to work because they don’t want to mask and others are concerned about the health ramifications of being around large numbers of people, said Ryan Dellinger, executive director of the Pennsylvania School Bus Association.

How, I have to ask, did the article author miss that part? Or, more probably, why did she choose not to include it?

The answer is simple: the Inquirer’s editorial position is that masking is a universal good, and noting that the mask mandate has the ‘unintended consequence’ of keeping those people who refuse to wear the infernal things away from such jobs undercuts the newspaper’s editorial position.

We noted an article by uber-feminist Jill Filipovic McCormick, The Importance of Being Honest: Sometimes we have to sacrifice for public health. But don’t deny the sacrifice itself:

    The impulse to downplay inconvenient outcomes of one’s own position has been in full force throughout Covid, and with the school reopening + Delta, it’s gotten even more extreme. I keep hearing, for example, that wearing a mask is no big deal and anyone who complains about masking is probably a Covid denialist reactionary. This is pretty weird, because it seems to me to be obviously, demonstrably true that wearing a mask is an inconvenience and a personal and cultural sacrifice — it means you can’t fully read other peoples’ facial expressions, it impedes basic human interactions, it makes you break out, it irritates your face, it fogs up your glasses,[3]In the only place I will wear a mask, at Mass, because our Bishop has mandated it, I have to pull it down to read, because it fogs up my reading glasses in seconds. Being partially deaf, I read the … Continue reading and I find that when I wear one I start to feel a little disoriented after a while, especially inside under bright lights. Wearing a mask sucks! But it sucks far less than giving someone else Covid, or getting Covid yourself. And so of course, in scenarios where people are not all fully vaccinated and infection rates are high, we should continue wear masks inside. I wear masks inside and I think indoor mask-wearing for essential activities should be mandatory (I also think vaccines should be mandatory for inessential activities, like dining out).

Another far-left liberal and strident feminist, Amanda Marcotte, complained about having to wear a mask:

    I really wanted to get back to my spin class. And for a couple of months, I did just that. Exercising at home for the past year was fine, but nothing beats a 45-minute spin class for leaving one red-faced and sopping wet with sweat. But it’s that “sopping wet” part that became a problem this week when the gym sent out a memo bringing back their indoor mask mandate. This isn’t a 5-minute jaunt in a grocery store with a mask. Exercising with a sweat-soaked mask is like being waterboarded. So I canceled my class and sent a polite but angry note to my gym.

If these leftists can combitch about wearing masks, why would it be a surprise to anyone that some people would choose not to accept what Mrs McCormick called “an inconvenience and a personal and cultural sacrifice,” and opt not to take a job that required wearing one? If you have a Class B CDL, what you need to drive a school bus, you could also drive a dump truck or a concrete mixer or a box truck, and not have to wear one of the infernal things. The left simply don’t understand, or don’t want to understand, that some people take their personal decisions based on things that the left think unimportant.

The credentialed media don’t outright lie as much as they simply don’t report information that would hurt their editorial slant.

References

References
↑1 The spelling ‘journolist’ comes from JournoList, an email list of 400 influential and politically liberal journalists, the exposure of which called into question their objectivity. I use the term ‘journolism’ frequently when writing about media bias.
↑2 RedState writer Mike Miller called it the Enquirer, probably by mistake, so I didn’t originate it, but, reminiscent of the National Enquirer as it is, I thought it very apt.
↑3 In the only place I will wear a mask, at Mass, because our Bishop has mandated it, I have to pull it down to read, because it fogs up my reading glasses in seconds. Being partially deaf, I read the readings from the missal before Mass, to help me understand what the lector is going to read, and to get a heads up on the responsorial psalm, because I don’t always hear it well enough to catch the individual words.
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Andy Beshear is displeased that the state legislature refused to do his bidding, but it’s his own fault

Governor Andy Beshear (D-KY)

As I said, Governor Andy Beshear (D-KY) regrets having called the General Assembly into special session, but he has no one to blame but himself. On July 10, 2020, the Lexington Herald-Leader reported that Mr Beshear stated he wouldn’t involve the legislature because he believed that they wouldn’t do his bidding.

    Beshear was asked at Friday’s news conference on COVID-19 why he has not included the legislature in coming up with his orders. He said many state lawmakers refuse to wear masks and noted that 26 legislators in Mississippi have tested positive for the virus.

The Governor refused to call a special session of the legislature during 2020. Republican candidates for the legislature ran against the Governor and his edicts, and the voters rewarded them with 14 additional seats in the state House of Representatives, and two in the state Senate.

Then, as promised, the huge Republican majorities enacted several new laws, over the Governor’s vetoes, restricting his ’emergency’ authority under KRS 39A. So, what did Mr Beshear do then? He went to Democrat sycophant Franklin Circuit Judge Phillip Shepherd, and got the Judge to enjoin enforcement of House Bill 1, Senate Bill 1, Senate Bill 2, and House Joint Resolution 77.

Can anyone be surprised that the General Assembly is not well disposed to the Governor, and not exactly inclined to do his bidding?

    Beshear rebukes Kentucky legislature for preventing him from issuing a mask mandate

    By Jack Brammer | Updated: September 10, 2021 | 3:23 PM EDT

    A frustrated Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear chided the Republican-led state legislature Friday for getting rid of the state’s mask mandate for public schools and banning any type of statewide mask mandate.

    The legislature’s decision on the mask issues was “wrong” and puts him in a position of trying to fight the alarming spread of the coronavirus pandemic “with one hand tied behind my back,” said the Democratic governor.

    If he had the authority, Beshear said, he would immediately implement a masking mandate for indoor settings and hopes more businesses would impose mask mandates. He also said he encourages school districts to “do the right thing” and require universal masking in schools. Local school officials will have the option of what to do about students wearing masks.

Well, that’s just it: Kentuckians voted for Republicans in last November’s elections because they were fed up with the Governor’s executive orders, and the mask mandate was probably the one which rankled them the most. When Mr Beshear said that if he had the authority he would immediately implement as mask mandate, he was stating the very reason that Republicans enjoy a 75-25 majority in the state House and a 30-8 majority in the state Senate.

    The governor used football analogies to describe the situation, saying for 18 months he has been able “to quarterback Kentucky through this pandemic. I have made the tough calls, sometimes the unpopular calls and I have taken the hits that go along with them.”

Well, that’s just it: a quarterback is only 1/11 of the offense, and without the other ten men on the field, even Tom Brady couldn’t do anything. Governor Beshear thought he could play the game by himself, and leave the other ten players on the sidelines.

Heck, not even on the sidelines, but locked outside of the locker room.

Would the General Assembly have been more willing to play ball with the Governor, if he hadn’t insulted them at every turn, if he hadn’t tried to keep them off the field? Well, who can say, given that he didn’t try it? But instead of trying to put together five offensive linemen, three receivers and two running backs, the Governor created four angry defensive linemen, three mean linebackers, and four fast and hungry defensive backs. So, he got chased back into his own end zone, and sacked for a safety.