‘Don’t You Work With Old People?’: Many Elder-Care Workers Still Refuse COVID Vaccine | Talking Points Memo

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This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://talkingpointsmemo.com/?p=1382147
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I AM an old person.

I’m vaccinated and wear a mask because I don’t trust some people to do the right thing.

Certainly those who “care” for the elderly should be required to be vaccinated otherwise they can flip burgers at Mickey D’s or work for a lawn care company.

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Typhoid Mary’s all of them.

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I have one reply to relatives who will not vaccinate when discussing the need to do so.

“I will pray you do not get sick. If you do, I will pray you recover. If you don’t then I will only say nice things at your funeral. After that all bets are off.”

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They are akin to drunk drivers imo.

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Substantial pluralities of the people we euphemistically call “health care workers” are uneducated twits who would otherwise be working some other worker drone job.

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Instead, she said her decision was carefully considered. It never made sense to her, she said, that the virus seemed to strike randomly, with some residents getting sick while others did not. She said she is not convinced the vaccine would change the odds.

This woman is a complete fucking idiot.

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My father is in a memory care facility. He got it last year. Of the other six people on his floor of about 20-24 residents who got Covid, four died. Covid entered the facility last year because some POS lied on their Covid questionnaire. I have absolutely no basic compassion for someone who works with the elderly and refuses to get vaccinated. None. Get vaccinated or find a different line of work. Those should be their choices. Thankfully, Pops’ facility fired all the anti-vaxxers. They fucked around and found out.

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Nursing home workers certainly have the right to make decisions about their own health and welfare

Vaccinating against a virus causing a pandemic is not a decision about one’s own health and welfare because you can spread the virus to other people.

It’s like saying that someone should be allowed to keep a nuclear bomb in their apartment because they have a right to make decisions about their own welfare. Ummm no, because when that nuclear bomb goes off it’s taking down everyone else in that building and many people around as well.

Similarly, unless you are not going within 20 feet of another human being, not being vaccinated is not a choice about your own personal health and welfare. Being a walking pandemic spreader is not a choice about your own welfare.

Next thing these people will be telling us that surgeons can choose to wash their hands, sterilize their equipment, or wear masks while operating on patients because it’s a choice for their own personal health and welfare.

The discourse around the vaccine is frankly insane. There should be only 3 options.
Get vaccinated and live a reasonably normal life till everyone is fully vaccinated.
Be medically incapable of being vaccinated and live a reasonably normal life with basic mask wearing and social distancing till nearly everyone is fully vaccinated.
Don’t get vaccinated and don’t be allowed in the presence of other people.

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I wonder if this woman drives a car. Does it make sense to her that she is being propelled by hundreds of actual explosions every minute?

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My mother’s caregiver got vaxed as soon as she was able to - relatively early because of her profession. I didn’t realize at the time how lucky my mother and I were—ARE—to not have to deal with a healthcare worker who refuses to get vaccinated. Now I do see how fortunate we are.

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I’m a bit shorter in that I will pray that they don’t get others sick.

Don’t give two shits what happens to them.

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or if she believes in the friction that allows her to stay on the road.

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Not being vaccinated at a nursing home is reckless endangerment.

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Right? Baffling! Like how some get worse colds, flus, and some never seem to at all. Some survive cancer, some don’t.

Must be some sort of……conspiracy!

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Our family has an annual reunion in early November. It was cancelled last year but is taking place once more this November.

The organizer is our senior cousin. He recently sent out an updated schedule and list of events to the more than one hundred fifteen family members and in closing he asked that anyone who was not vaccinated contact him, that he would hold their names in confidence but that should even one person who is not c=vaccinated attend that he and many others would be cancelling our reservations.

Pure and simple. We love our extended family members but not enough to put ourselves at risk.

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Another argument for another day, but low wages are part of this dynamic.

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Fair for some people. I genuinely care for my relatives. It’s just that some of them left the Northeast for the South and over time lost much of their common sensibility to the hillbilly counterculture.

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Idiots
The Vaccines are genuinely now the “Gold Standard” … in general terms there are no prominent credible practicing medical authorities who would advise against getting vaccinated - unless you had some pre-existing compromising condition.

These idiots have lost all objectivity and have descended into “personal opinion” lunacy … this is not something to argue about in a bar - like “Designated Hitter …good or bad?” or “what tastes better Coke or Pepsi?”

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Yes, of course! Most “health care worker” jobs are really just grunt work.

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