We have previously noted, many times, that people all over the country are resisting vaccine and mask mandates, and that these have, and will continue to have, the effect of creating a serious shortage of citical workers. From Newsweek:

1 in 8 Nurses Say They Haven’t Been Vaccinated and Don’t Plan to

By Katherine Fung | August 31, 2021 | 5:06 PM EDT

As the nation continues its efforts to ramp up vaccination rates, figures seem to lag not only among the public but also in hospitals, where one in eight nurses say they have not been vaccinated and aren’t planning on doing so.

A survey conducted between July 8 and 29 by the American Nurses Association (ANA) and American Nurses Foundation (ANF) found that among nearly 5,000 nurses, a quarter said they didn’t trust the vaccines or were unsure about the safety and effectiveness of the shots.

Of those who don’t intend on getting vaccinated, the main concerns included lack of information about long-term effects and vaccine safety, as well as mistrust in the information surrounding the vaccines’ development and approval.

Although the majority of nurses, 88 percent, are vaccinated, the proportion of vaccine-hesitant staff could present a problem for hospitals if vaccine mandates are issued for all healthcare workers.

Hospitals across the country are facing severe nursing shortages—an issue that existed before the pandemic but has been exacerbated by many leaving the field over the last 16 months due to burnout from caring for COVID patients.

The Biden administration has already required that nursing home staff be vaccinated in order for long-term care facilities to receive federal Medicare and Medicaid funding—a mandate that some in the industry have warned will pose “disastrous workforce challenges.”

There’s more at the original, but the article concludes with an absolutely laughable idea. It states that hospitals mandating vaccination could solve staffing shortages by raising pay, but with the already existing shortage of nurses, luring RNs from one hospital to another with higher pay just makes other hospitals raise their pay, and it still leaves shortages of nurses, though it might redistribute the shortages. If there aren’t enough nurses period, that’s just rearranging the deck chairs.

Then we have this, from NPR:

Chicago School Bus Drivers Have Quit In Droves Over COVID Vaccine Mandate

August 31, 2021 | 4:39 PM EDT

Chicago Public Schools says 10% of their school bus drivers quit on Friday as they’re unwilling to get mandated vaccines. The district is now offering cash to parents who drive their kids to school. . . . .

Chicago public school officials apologized for the cancellation (of bus routes), but say they were forced to do it for 2,100 students. That’s because in just one day, 70 bus drivers quit. The reason – according to district officials, these drivers didn’t want to get vaccinated, and the district was mandating it. Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot backs the school district’s decision.

Much of the credentialed media reports have avoided noting why there are shortages of bus drivers, because the media know that publishing that undermines the arguments for the mandates, but there have been a few that told the truth. Note that the sources above are from Newsweek and National Public Radio, not exactly known as evil reich wing sources.

Finally, there’s this:

Mu COVID Variant, Which Scientists Fear is Resistant to Vaccines, Detected in 39 Countries

by Samantha Lock | September 1, 2021

A new coronavirus strain has been declared a variant of interest by the World Health Organization (WHO) with mutations that may be resistant to vaccines.

Mu, or B.1.621, was first identified in Colombia and cases have since been recorded in 38 other countries, predominantly in South America and Europe.

“Since its first identification in Colombia in January 2021, there have been a few sporadic reports of cases of the Mu variant, and some larger outbreaks have been reported from other countries in South America and in Europe,” a weekly epidemiological update released by WHO on August 31 read.

Over 4,500 sequences (3794 sequences of B.1.621 and 856 sequences of B.1.621.1) have been recorded in 39 countries as of August 29, the report said, citing information uploaded to the GISAID Initiative, a global science initiative that provides open-access to genomic data of influenza viruses.

Although the global prevalence of the Mu variant has declined and is “currently below 0.1 percent” the prevalence in Colombia (39 percent) and Ecuador (13 percent) has “consistently increased,” the report reads. . . . .

The variant is listed as one of five “of interest” by the WHO, including Eta, Iota, Kappa and Lambda.

Four other variants “of concern” and considered as having potential to make the pandemic worse are listed as the Alpha variant (first recorded in England and seen in 193 countries), the Beta variant (now seen in 141 countries), Gamma in 91 and Delta in 170 countries.

I wonder when they are going to run out of Greek letters for new variants. But as stories crop up about the Lambda and Mu variants being resistant to the vaccines, the arguments for a vaccine mandates fail as well.

It seems pretty obvious: we are going to have some forms of COVID with us for years and years, and destroying our freedom and our society to fight it is the worst thing we can do.