Tag Archives: #VaccineMandates

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The Catholic Church and the Right to Privacy

We have twice reported on Monsignor Jeffrey Burrill, who resigned as General Secretary of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, after a conservative Catholic site used cell phone data to show him using Grindr, a homosexual dating app, and frequenting homosexual bars, and noted the New York Times story “Catholic Officials on Edge After Reports of Priests Using Grindr“. Naturally, the Church can’t say that it’s acceptable for priests to be using homosexual pick up apps, but the Church is very concerned about the privacy rights of priests, at least when it comes to their COVID vaccination status.

The Most Reverend John Stowe, Bishop of Lexington

Which brings me to the Most Reverend John Stowe, O.F.M.Conv., the Bishop of Lexington. We have reported, many times, on the Bishop’s policies, with a rather jaundiced eye.

While I have heard no statements from Bishop Stowe concerning Pillar’s exposure of Msgr Burrill’s activities, it would seem that the Bishop is pretty much unconcerned with the privacy of priests in his diocese.

    Bishop Stowe: Catholics deserve to know if their priest is unvaccinated

    Michael J. O’Loughlin | September 16, 2021

    Bishop John Stowe, O.F.M.Conv., last month asked that diocesan employees working at the Catholic Center in the Diocese of Lexington, Ky., vaccinate themselves against Covid-19, extending a mandate that had already been announced for faculty and staff at Catholic schools. The bishop said the diocese let go of “a handful” of employees who refused. When it came to priests in the diocese, the bishop said he turned to “moral persuasion,” urging them to vaccinate themselves as a way to protect parishioners. That seemed to work. About 92 percent of the diocese’s 50 priests have been vaccinated, a rate that puts them as a group well ahead of the 61 percent of adults in Kentucky who are fully vaccinated.

The math is pretty simple: 92% of 50 priests is 46 priests, meaning four diocesan priests are unvaccinated. The Bishop publicly exposed two of them, Father John Moriarty, the Rector of the Cathedral of Christ the King parish, and Father David Wheeler, a parochial vicar at the Cathedral parish, as not having been vaccinated. The Cathedral parish is where the diocesan Bishop has his seat, so His Excellency the Bishop was unable to persuade two other priests that he sees, almost every day, at his resident parish, to get vaccinated.

The other two unvaccinated priests of his diocese have not been named.

I note that the report states that the Bishop “let go”, a euphemism for fired, “a handful” of employees who refused to be vaccinated, meaning that he took “a handful,” whatever that number happens to be, and threw them into poverty. While The Lord hears the cry of the poor, he might not expect one of his Bishops to add to the number of the poor.

    But for the few priests who chose not to be vaccinated, the bishop believes they owe it to their parishioners to be upfront about their status.

    “When I found out that four of them still were not vaccinated, I said they had to disclose that to their people because people were expecting they would be vaccinated,” Bishop Stowe told America. He said he also told the unvaccinated priests that “they couldn’t go into the homes of the sick or the homebound or be in close proximity” to worshippers.

Odd thing, though, that the Bishop would fire let go the “handful” of diocesan employees who declined to be vaccinated, but did not fire let go the four diocesan priests who refused. Could that be because lay employees are far easier to find in this economy, but priests are in short supply? With more parishes, 59, than priests, several priests, including my own parish pastor, who will turn 88 years old in a couple of weeks, have to serve more than one parish.

We have previously noted that Bishop Stowe has been very supportive of homosexual rights and recognition of ‘transgender’ individuals as the sex they claim to be, rather than the sex they are, but I cannot accurately report his position on Pillar’s exposure of the homosexual activity of Msgr Burrill and the privacy rights of Catholic priests when it comes to their vows of celibacy. But we certainly know his views on the privacy rights of both his parish priests and lay employees when it comes to their vaccination status.

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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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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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A bad move by Bishop John Stowe

Frank Reagan (Tom Selleck) visits dying gangster Whitey Brennan (Mark Margolis) in “Dedication.”

At the end of episode 15, Dedication, in the first season of Blue Bloods, Police Commissioner Frank Reagan visits Whitey Brennan, an Irish mobster whose son tried to assassinate the Commissioner. The elder Mr Brennan is in a nursing home, essentially waiting for death. Mr Reagan asks Mr Brennan if there’s anything he’d like to confess at the end, at which point the dying mobster laughs at him. The Commissioner then tells him, ‘Not to me,’ then opens the room door to admit a priest, so that Mr Brennan has an opportunity to make his last Confession. That’s a very powerful scene, at least for Catholics, but, with Bishop John Stowe’s new order, oops! so sorry, if you live in one of the widely spaced parishes in eastern Kentucky and your parish priest isn’t vaccinated, he can’t come to you to hear your last Confession.

It isn’t often that the Diocese of Lexington is mentioned by the Catholic News Agency, this being a very Protestant area, but it happened Tuesday morning:

    Unvaccinated clergy in Lexington, Kentucky barred from ministering to the sick and homebound elderly

    By Shannon Mullen, Joe Bukuras | Tuesday, September 14, 2021 |8:10 AM EDT

    The Most Reverend John Stowe, Bishop of Lexington

    Priests of the Diocese of Lexington, Kentucky who have not been vaccinated against COVID-19 may not minister to the sick, elderly, and homebound, Bishop John Stowe has directed.

    The policy was announced during a Saturday vigil Mass Sept. 11 that Bishop Stowe celebrated at the Cathedral of Christ the King in Lexington.

    At the end of the liturgy, Deacon Tim Weinmann read a statement from the cathedral’s rector, Father John Moriarty, that both Fr. Moriarty and Father David Wheeler, the parochial vicar, have not been vaccinated.

    “The bishop has asked that Fr. David and I, Fr. John – I’m speaking for Fr. John – make an announcement that we are not vaccinated, so people can decide if they wanted to attend Mass where they were celebrating,” the deacon read, according to a video of the Mass posted by the Cathedral of Christ the King.

    “And if also the priests – and this has been done throughout the diocese – those priests that are not vaccinated are to follow the COVID protocol in the liturgy, and they are not allowed to visit the sick or elderly that are homebound,” the announcement continued. “Fr. John and Fr. David, again, have not been vaccinated.” Bishop Stowe stood beside Deacon Weinmann while the announcement was read but did not comment afterward.

You can see the announcement at the end of this video of the Mass, beginning at the 1:07:10 mark.

We have previously reported on the Bishop’s mandate that all employees at the Catholic Center must be vaccinated as a condition of employment, which has to mean that any who refuse will be fired. We have previously noted Bishop Stowe’s support for homosexuals, and that the diocese hosts St Paul’s Catholic Church, which is very openly “LGBTQ+” accepting, only a couple of miles from the cathedral parish, Cathedral of Christ the King, where the Bishop resides and has his seat. Bishop Stowe is fully aware of St Paul’s ‘mission.’ One wonders if our Bishop is more concerned with COVID-19 than he is the spiritual health of his parishioners.

Then again, I have often wondered if Bishop Stowe is more of a Democrat than he is a Catholic, the way Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi and so many of our (purportedly) Catholic politicians are. Our Bishop is very much a supporter of liberal, Democratic political policies, and has been far more vocal about such than he has when it comes to abortion. While he noted, in yet another OpEd, that neither major party supports all of Catholic social teaching, he gave very short attention to Joe Biden’s support for abortion, two whole sentences, with neither mentioning that Me Biden also wants to have the taxpayers, which would include Catholics, pay for abortions, he devoted several long paragraphs condemning conservative policies on welfare and illegal immigration. The Bishop called President Trump “so much anti-life,” something that, sadly, our local parish priest reiterated in his homily. As noted above, he supports the diocese’s homosexual activist parish, and he has broken with the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops on the Equality Act. The USCCB opposes the legislation due to the fact that it does not contain sufficient protection for matters of religion and conscience, and might require Catholic diocese and other organizations to hire or retain open homosexuals or transsexuals living in a state of open scandal.

I have heard His Excellency the Bishop at Mass, twice, in our very small parish, and I can tell you that he is an excellent preacher who really tries to connect with his parishioners. If you are capable of being inspired by a priest’s homily, Bishop Stowe will inspire you. I have no reason at all to doubt his faith.

But, sadly enough, I do see reason to doubt whether his Catholic faith is stronger than his Democratic allegiance. He basically gave Catholic parishioners a choice of opting out of Mass if either Fr. John Moriarty or Fr. David Wheeler is the celebrant . . . and those are the only two priests other than the Bishop noted in the Cathedral staff directory. I guess that the Bishop will, personally, visit all of the shut-ins in his parish.

Of course, the Cathedral parish is a large one, with three priests, but, the diocese being a very much Protestant one, we have, overall, small parishes covering large geographic areas. My own pastor, who is in his eighties, has to cover two parishes, and it isn’t physically easy on him. I’m certain that he is vaccinated, since he adds, every Sunday, a plea for everyone to get vaccinated. Still, if two priests, in the Cathedral parish, with the Bishop hanging over their heads every day, have chosen not to get vaccinated, the obvious question is: how many other priests, in smaller, rural parishes scattered throughout eastern Kentucky, have also chosen against vaccination? 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.

I understand the Bishop’s concerns about the virus, and, like him, I believe that everybody should get vaccinated, though I oppose vaccine mandates. But the Bishop’s latest actions hurt his parishioners.

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Philadelphia public schools: will this school year be like last school year?

Governor Tom Wolf’s (D-PA) authoritarian dictates during 2020 pushed the Republicans who control the state legislature to set up two constitutional amendments to rein in a tin-pot dictator, something that certainly sounds familiar to Kentuckians! Well, though those constitutional amendments passed, Governor Wolf found a loophole, getting the state’s Secretary of Health to issue a mask mandate for public schools, but now Mr Wolf is angry because some districts are interpreting ‘exemption’ requirements very loosely. We have previously noted that some districts had chosen not to require masks, and some of the Karens were suing the school district, though they didn’t have the courage to identify themselves.

In the City of Brotherly Love, the public schools have a vaccine mandate, sort of:

    20,000 Philly schools employees must get vaccinated by Sept. 30. Here’s what happens if they don’t.

    If they choose to not get vaccinated, district workers will have to be COVID-19 tested twice a week, and they lose access to a bank of 10 “quarantine leave days.”

    by Kristen A. Graham | Monday, September 13, 2021

    The Philadelphia School District’s 20,000 employees must be vaccinated for COVID-19 by Sept. 30, but they won’t lose their jobs if they opt not to get the shot.

    If they choose to not get vaccinated, teachers, administrators, and support staff — as well as contractors — will have to be COVID-19 tested twice a week, and they lose access to a bank of 10 “quarantine leave days” that allow them to be absent from work with pay if they’re sick with the coronavirus or must isolate because of exposure.

    All employees, regardless of vaccination status, are already tested weekly.

    “The testing provider will return to schools for a second time each week to test partially vaccinated or unvaccinated staff,” Larisa Shambaugh, the district’s chief talent officer, said in an email to staff. “If these employees do not test two times a week, they will be subject to discipline.”

We can see what they are doing here.

COVID testing is unpleasant. A nurse sticks a long stick mounted swab up your nose to try to get material from your sinuses. The Centers for Disease Control said, 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.

Since the fully vaccinated can, and do, spread the virus, there’s no logic in letting the fully vaccinated escape testing, if the goal is to prevent the spread of the virus, so the Philadelphia public schools were mandating continued testing of the vaccinated as well as the unvaccinated. But, if the vaccinated are subjected to the same testing regime as the unvaccinated, then there’s no particular incentive to those who are vaccine hesitant to take the jab. Thus, the school system had to make it worse, by mandating testing twice a week rather than once.

Further down in the Inquirer:

    Most district unions have endorsed the mandate, including the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers, which represents 13,000 educators, paraprofessionals, and school nurses. . . . .

    PFT has, in fact, called on the district to require COVID-19 testing for all students. Children are now only tested if they display symptoms during the school day, or if they participate in contact sports or extracurricular activities like band or choir.

If the goal is to prevent the spread of the virus, why not test the students? It’s simple: unless a student’s parents have agreed, in writing, for their child to be tested, something which will be the case for those who sign permission slips for their kids to “participate in contact sports or extracurricular activities like band or choir,” testing students would be considered a physical assault.

If you’ve ever had a COVID test, you know what I mean: while it does not actually harm the subject, it’s a hugely uncomfortable experience that could be used to question prisoners at Guantanamo. If I had a kid in the public schools, and the school system forcibly tested him, I would soon be several million dollars wealthier.

    But Unite Here Local 634, the union that represents food service workers and some school climate staff, is not pleased by the vaccination mandate, said Nicole Hunt, president.

    “I don’t think it’s appropriate,” Hunt said. “For the School District to mandate the vaccine, people will just leave. This is the most vacancies I’ve ever seen.”

The union noted that there were 195 vacant positions in its unionized jobs, and the Inquirer noted that the school district was already short on crossing guards and school bus drivers, something we have already noted.

The Philadelphia School District stated that there were 202,944 students enrolled in the 2020-2021 academic year; the numbers hadn’t been updated for this fall at the time of this writing, and was, in fact, last updated on February 19, 2021, when the schools were almost all ‘virtual.’

Interestingly, though the 2020 census put the city’s non-Hispanic white population at 34.3%, the school district says that only 14% of the student body population are non-Hispanic white. Non-Hispanic blacks make up 38.3% of the city’s population, but 52% of the student body. The other student body percentages are fairly close to their percentage of the population, which tell us one thing: white Philadelphians don’t trust the city’s public schools and are sending their kids to private or parochial schools. We have already noted that the city zip code areas with the highest black percentage of the population have the lowest vaccination rates, meaning that it is probable that a higher percentage of the student body are unvaccinated than normal. Of course, since none of the vaccines have been approved for use in children under 12, the vaccinated percentage of the student body in kindergarten through the fifth grade must be virtually zero.

But those kids can’t be tested unless their parents approve, and even with approval, who wants to be the nurse forcing a swab up into the sinuses of a struggling second grader?

And now there’s this:

    2 weeks into the school year, COVID-19 has closed the first Philly public school

    Learning will continue during the Emlen Elementary building closure; teachers will be instructing students remotely.

    by Kristen A. Graham | Tuesday, September 14, 2021

    Two weeks into the new term, COVID-19 has temporarily closed the first Philadelphia School District building.

    Emlen Elementary, in East Mount Airy, will be shut for in-person learning until Sept. 24, officials announced in a letter sent 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 in a letter to Emlen families sent Monday. “Students and staff may not return to our school building during this time.”

    Learning will continue during the building closure; teachers will be instructing students remotely, as they did for most students for the entirety of the 2020-21 school year.

    Students who did not share a classroom with an employee or student who tested positive for COVID-19 do not need to quarantine, the letter said.

Now that’s interesting: does this mean that the school district is sharing the identities of those who have tested positive, or simply specifying classrooms?

    Schools officials are following Philadelphia Department of Public Health guidelines to make decisions about when to quarantine students, entire classes, or schools.

    Three or more cases in one classroom requires the class to quarantine; three or more classes across a grade requires a grade to quarantine; six or more cases across grades within a school within 14 days triggers temporary building closure.

    COVID-19 cases among school-aged children are rising sharply.

There’s more at the original, but I can’t be the only person who thinks it probable that we’re going to have another year in public education like the last school year.

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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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Comment rescue from Patterico To me, the far, far greater danger is the mortality rate to our constitutional rights, to our liberty and our privacy.

Factory Working Orphan wrote:

    As (Time123) pointed out, the fact that the postal workers have been exempted from this shows that this isn’t about enforcing a public safety edict to prevent the spread of a highly lethal contagion. It’s about the cabal trying to take advantage of the situation to grab as much power as they can, so that the tool always stays in the toolbox for when they think it’s needed.

There have been several pushes to repeal the Patriot Act, mostly by libertarians like Justin Amash, Thomas Massie, and Rand Paul.

But a “highly lethal contagion”? Being the [insert slang term for the rectum here] that I am, I did something really radical like actually do the math.

The New York Times had a story with the headline and subhead, “One in 5,000: The real chances of a breakthrough infection.” You have to actually read the story to discover that the 0.02% chance of a fully vaccinated person contracting a breakthrough COVID infection was 1 in 5,000 per day, which means 31 in 5,000 per month, or 365 in 5,000 per year.

I compared that with the published statistics in Fayette County, Kentucky, and found that the breakthrough rate in Fayette County was a bit higher, 0.0290% per day, but not significantly out of line. Then I used the same set of numbers for the unvaccinated or partially vaccinated population, and found an infection rate, in the same community, of 0.0905% per day, 3.121 times that for the fully vaccinated, but still not even a thousand to one chance that an unvaccinated person will contract the virus on any given day.

Yes, it makes sense to get the vaccine, because it cuts the chances that if you do contract the virus, you’ll actually get sick. But that raises an obvious question: if the vaccine helps keep those who contract the virus from getting sick, or as sick, as those who have not been vaccinated, are the asymptomatic but vaccinated population being tested at significantly lower rates?

Highly lethal? With 40,870,000 total cases in the US, and 659,231 COVID deaths, that works out to a mortality rate, under American medical care, of 1.61%. Worldwide, 219,000,000 cases and 4,550,000 deaths, the mortality rate works out to 2.08%. This ain’t the bubonic plague (mortality rate 30 to 60%) or smallpox (30% mortality rate).

To me, the far, far greater danger is the mortality rate to our constitutional rights, to our liberty and our privacy. Though I suspect that nk was kidding — at least to some extent — when he said that he “would hope that the government would have a database (that he) could easily access,” I’m fairly certain that there are a lot of souls on the left who really would want just that. We already know that far, far, far too many people have accepted “Wir müssen Ihre Dokumente sehen!” as perfectly reasonable and normal.

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Scratch a liberal, find a fascist

It seems that President Biden believes he has the authority to order people to get the COVID-19 vaccines:

    Biden expresses frustration over the unvaccinated, says ‘a distinct minority’ is keeping the U.S. from overcoming the coronavirus

    By Annie Linskey, Yasmeen Abutaleb, Seung Min Kim and Lisa Rein | Thursday, September 9, 2021 | 5:52 PM EDT

    President Biden announced sweeping new vaccine mandates Thursday that will affect tens of millions of Americans, ordering all businesses with more than 100 employees to require their workers to be inoculated or face weekly testing.

    Biden also said he was requiring all health facilities that accept Medicare or Medicaid funding to vaccinate their workforces, which the White House believes will impact 50,000 locations.

    And the president announced he would sign an executive order that would require all federal employees to get vaccinated against the coronavirus — without an option for those who prefer to be regularly tested instead — in an effort to create a model he hopes state governments and private companies will adopt.

    The cluster of new policies comes as the country grapples with the highly contagious delta variant, which has sent cases surging to more than 150,000 a day and is causing more than 1,500 daily deaths. The White House has struggled to convince hesitant Americans to get vaccinated and has been increasingly shifting toward requirements.

    In remarks from the White House, Biden took a more antagonistic tone toward the unvaccinated than he has in the past, as he turned from cajoling toward compulsion and blamed those who refuse to get shots for hurting those around them.

Yeah, that’s going to persuade people who haven’t wanted to get vaccinated to do so!

There’s more at the original, but the Washington Post article never stated under what legal authority the President claims he can order private businesses to do this. The New York Times said that:

    The requirements will be imposed by the Department of Labor and its Occupational Safety and Health Administration, which is drafting an emergency temporary standard to carry out the mandate, according to the White House.

An obvious question: if getting vaccinated is so important, why did Mr Biden only order it for companies with 100 or more employees?

There’s at least one more day of the special session of the Kentucky General Assembly; I would suspect that the legislators would quickly put together a bill banning all state employees from in any way assisting OSHA in enforcing this order of the President’s/

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Lies, damned lies, and statistics Shading the truth does not help your case

The Centers for Disease Control reported, as of August 22, 2021, that of the eligible population in Fayette County, Kentucky, 80.6% had received at least one dose of one of the COVID-19 vaccines, with 68.3% being fully vaccinated. The chart on the right is from Lexington-Fayette Urban County Government, downloaded September 3, 2021. You can click on it to enlarge the image.

So, with such a significant part of the population in the Bluegrass State’s second largest city, wouldn’t you expect COVID-19 cases to be lower than prior to the availability of the vaccines?

    300 new cases, 5 new deaths. Lexington’s COVID-19 numbers continue to spike

    By Jeremy Chisenhall | Updated: September 2, 2021 | 4:27 PM EDT

    Lexington reported five new COVID-19 deaths Thursday, making August the deadliest month for coronavirus since April.

    The five deaths all occurred in August but were newly confirmed as being caused by COVID-19. The Lexington-Fayette County Health Department has confirmed a total of 10 coronavirus deaths from August. There were only three deaths in July, four in June and six in May, according to health department data.

    The local health department has asked residents to wear a mask in crowded public areas, avoid close contact with people who are sick, cover coughs and sneezes and wash their hands often. The health department advises everyone should follow those guidelines, whether they’re fully vaccinated or not.

    Lexington also reported 301 new COVID-19 cases Thursday morning. The city’s rolling average of new cases has jumped up to 232, the highest it’s been since early January.

The chart at the left is from the article, which has free access; it’s not behind the Lexington Herald-Leader’s paywall. You can click on the chart to enlarge it, but this is a screen capture; the one at the original is interactive.

The seven-day rolling average of new cases, on September 1, 2021, was 232, the highest it has been since January, and only four previous weeks, December 6, 2020 (253), November 22, 2020 (244.3), December 13, 2020 (237.6) and January 10, 2021 (242.4), have seen a higher rolling seven day average . . . and all of those weeks were before COVID-19 vaccines were generally available. (A few health care workers began receiving vaccinations in December.)

The death rate from COVID-19 has declined significantly since the vaccines were available, with 14 recorded in August, compared to 12 in each March and April of this year, just as the vaccines started to become available, but 29 in February and the county record of 61 in January. Mr Chisenhall’s story had a graph indicating just 10 COVID-related deaths, but the chart at the right is from the Health Department. I note that, with 14 COVID-related deaths in August of 2021, in which we had no mask mandates, other than in schools, which had just opened at the end of the month, no businesses closed, and no real restrictions on activities, it was one more death than in August of 2020, with similar weather, masks required everywhere, some businesses closed and other of Governor Andy Beshear’s restrictions in place.

There were more than 300 new COVID-19 hospitalizations reported in August, with only two previous months having exceeded 300.

Mr Chisenhall’s report did not tell us what percentage of the new cases, hospitalizations and deaths were among partially or fully vaccinated people, but digging through the Health Department’s charts, the information begins to come together. The hospitalizations chart shows — though, admittedly, not quite ac clearly as it might — that hospitalizations among the non-vaccinated clearly exceed those among vaccinated patients. But that is skewed by the fact that other charts indicate that the number of cases has greatly increased among 5 to 17 year old and 0 to 4 year old patients. Since none of the 0 to 4 year old, and only half of the 5 to 17 year old, groups are even eligible to be vaccinated, those cases will very much skew the breakthrough cases percentages.

The Health Department tell us that, in one of the few charts accompanying the graphs, that in August there were a total of 5337 cases, 3775 of which were among the non-vaccinated and 1562 are ‘breakthrough’ cases among the vaccinated, 29.27%.

But when you eliminate the roughly 220[1]Even enlarged, the charts are difficult to read; I have done my best in looking at the charts to get the right number, but could be off by a few. cases among the 0 to 4 year old group, none of whom are vaccinated, and half of the cases of the 5 to 17 year old group, to get the 5 to 11 year old group, none of which are eligible to be vaccinated, from total cases, we’re down to 4680 total cases among the vaccine eligible. All of a sudden 1562 ‘breakthrough’ cases among a total of 4680 eligible to have been vaccinated, we see a ‘breakthrough’ case rate of 33.37%.

In other words, one out of three is the actual breakthrough rate in Fayette County.

Vaccination clearly helps, but not at nearly the rate that the advocates claim that it does. Actual numbers published by the Health Department, rather than hard-to-read graphics would help nail the breakthrough percentage down more directly. But, if the full truth were told, there would be plenty of evidence that people should get vaccinated, but that a vaccine mandate should not be imposed.

References

References
↑1 Even enlarged, the charts are difficult to read; I have done my best in looking at the charts to get the right number, but could be off by a few.