Leading Republican says "Trumpers Are Disease Spreading Invaders and Must Be Terminated!

[Phil]

It's time to start firing unvaccinated people: Trump fans are overdue for
a lesson in consequences

The absolute certainty of losing a job is going to motivate a lot more
people than the more abstract risk of dying

By Amanda Marcotte
Published September 27, 2021 1:21PM (EDT)


For those readers who only peruse headlines — which, as anyone who has
access to news website analytics can tell you, is a shockingly huge
percentage of readers — the impending first round of vaccine mandate
deadlines are looking like very scary business indeed. Not for people who
are afraid of needles, mind you, but those who are afraid that mass
resignations and firings — and subsequent staffing shortages of essential
workers — are coming.

"These Health Care Workers Would Rather Get Fired Than Get Vaccinated,"
reads a Monday morning headline at the New York Times.

"New York Hospitals Face Possible Mass Firings as Workers Spurn
Vaccines," reads another from Friday.

"Rural Hospitals Worry They Will Lose Staff Because Of Biden's New Vaccine
Mandate," warns an NPR headline from over the weekend.

"New York May Use The National Guard To Replace Unvaccinated Health Care
Workers," read another.
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The state of New York is the first test case of what actually enforcing a
government-issued vaccine mandate looks like. Monday is the deadline for
health care workers in the state to get the jab or get the pink slip. As
the New York Times reports, "resistance to vaccine mandates has so far
stopped most states from threatening to fire unvaccinated workers." But
New York's newly appointed governor, Democrat Kathy Hochul is calling the
unvaccinateds' bluff. Rather than caving in and letting them keep their
jobs, she is prepared to call the National Guard to fill in the shortages
left by the upcoming firings.

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Despite the media doom and gloom, the truth is Hochul needs to be
commended for her spine. And every other Democrat who wants to see this
pandemic actually come to an end (which should be all of them!) should
follow suit. Staffing shortages are a pain, especially during a pandemic,
no doubt. But staffing shortages are a minor issue compared to the damage
being caused by the unchecked spread of COVID-19, which is increasingly
due to one cause: right-wingers who have made refusal to get vaccinated a
culture war and identity politics issue. Unless such folks start tasting
real consequences for their behavior, the U.S. is going to see another
dark winter, as the virus continues to wreak havoc on our economy and
health care system. Putting up with staffing shortages is a small price to
pay to make sure that Trumpers — a class of people clearly unused to the
idea that actions have consequences — actually start feeling real pressure
to get vaccinated.
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These dread-inducing headlines and anecdotal stories about health care
workers quitting are concealing what is actually the far more important
story: Vaccine mandates work.

A few paragraphs under the scary headline about "mass firings" in the New
York Times comes the actual numbers: "As of Sept. 22, state data shows,
around 84 percent of New York's 450,000 hospital workers and 83 percent of
its 145,400 nursing home employees had been fully vaccinated." That is
almost 10 percentage points over what the same state data set shows as the
overall vaccination rate in the state. There are similar positive results
in New York City, where Mayor Bill de Blasio mandated vaccines for public
school workers, resulting in a 90% vaccination rate among teachers, which
is 9 percentage points over the city average. Hospital systems that
instituted an earlier vaccine mandate have seen even better results. New
York Presbyterian, for example, set the deadline for last Wednesday and
already 99% of the system's 48,000 workers are vaccinated.
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The effectiveness of mandates has been documented outside of New York as
well.

As Dr. Ezekiel J. Emanuel, a former White House health policy adviser who
works for the University of Pennsylvania now, told Fierce Healthcare,
"healthcare systems that have actually mandated this" have " retained over
99% of their workforce." The article goes on to list over a dozen hospital
systems that have implemented mandates. In every case, the fraction of
workers lost was tiny — certainly well worth losing to protect patients
and the larger community from COVID-19.

There's been a similar success at United Airlines, which will start
putting workers on leave this week if they don't get vaccinated. A full
97% of employees have thus beat the deadline.

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Standing Room Only.

The number of unvaccinated health care workers is still alarmingly high in
New York, and fears of staffing shortages are real. But part of the
problem is that the refusal to get vaccinated is being driven by partisan
politics. As the New York Times reported about vaccination rates Monday
morning, "the racial gaps — while still existing — have narrowed," but the
"partisan gap, however, continues to be enormous." The geography of
vaccination rates mirrors the political geography, to the point where
"almost every reliably blue state now has a higher vaccination rate than
almost every reliably red state." The gap also shows up on the county
level, with death rates much higher in Trump-voting counties than in ones
that went for President Joe Biden.
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There's a lot of reasons conservatives cite for this refusal to vaccinate,
though ultimately it all boils down to a desire to "own the liberals." But
a lot of this pettiness is intertwined with a right-wing bravado. To be
blunt, white privilege has long shielded many conservatives from the
concept of facing consequences for their actions. We see this in a lot of
obnoxious right-wing behavior lately, from tantrums over COVID-19
mitigation measures in public places to the attempted insurrection on
January 6. Who can forget how many of the arrested Trump supporters
expressed genuine shock that they might actually face a legal consequence
for participating in a violent effort to overthrow democracy? This lack of
familiarity with consequences is likely why there are so many holdouts,
even in the face of vaccine mandates. Bluntly put, a lot of them probably
don't think that leaders are serious about these threats to fire them, and
won't believe it until it happens. As with the Capitol rioters, there's a
persistent disbelief on the right that they will ever face real
consequences for their bad actions.

This right-wing overconfidence is why sites like HermainCainAward and
SorryAntiVaxxer have such popular followings. Watching people pay with
their lives after displaying such certainty their anti-social behavior
will never result in a consequence may not be the most righteous use of
people's time, but is understandable when the rest of us are suffering
because of Trumpist hubris. The problem with highlighting COVID-19 deaths
to scare the Trumpers straight, however, is that they can always tell
themselves that they're not going to be the ones who die since 98.4% of
people in the U.S. do survive.
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That's precisely why vaccine mandates are so important. The absolute
certainty of losing a job is going to motivate a lot more people than the
more abstract risk of dying of COVID-19.

But for that threat to become real, well, it has to be real. This means
that it's not enough to threaten to fire people who won't get vaccinated.
Employers and governments have to follow through. Hochul is right to do
whatever it takes to make sure that the unvaccinated get their pink slips
this week. If leaders back down in the face of vaccine resistance, the
Trumpers will double down, and continue spreading COVID-19 in a pathetic
effort to "own the liberals." Threats cannot be empty, especially when
facing stubborn people who believe themselves impervious to consequences.
Threats need to be backed up with action. It's time to start firing the
unvaccinated.

[Phil]

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