non vaccinated job applicants

[VA Hopeful Dr]

The difference is that driving is not generally a right in America. Driving has been subjected to licensure and all sorts of implied contracts with the government. While you’re not always required to identify yourself to police, you are when you’re driving because that is part of what you have to do to have the privilege of driving. You’re not generally required to submit to a breathalyzer, but you are when you’re driving for the same reasons. Driving has never really been considered a right.

Subject to very few limits, you’re generally allowed to dress however you want in public. Yes there are a indecent exposure laws. I tend to disagree with those laws, but that’s a separate discussion. There are very few restrictions on your personal expression in public, and your expression is generally subject to the strongest first amendment protections if it is a form of political expression.

That is the difference between seatbelt laws and mask mandates.

I didn't say it was identical, I said the rhetoric was similar and it is.

And actually no, public indecency laws are not a separate discussion. It's exactly the same. The government is forcing you to wear something over part of your body in certain settings. Except that masks are preventing something far more serious.

---

Members don't see this ad.

 

[Dr G Oogle]

That is the difference between seatbelt laws and mask mandates.

The difference is that seatbelts protect the wearer and masks protect the people around the wearer. And doing things for others with no personal gain is for some reason very intolerable to a large group Americans and an infringement on personable liberty.

 

[littlefred]

To bring it back to OP's question.

Are we hiring or not hiring the non-vaccinated applicant?

 

[deleted456421]

I'm a little shocked, but then I remember one of the young ladies who graduated in the middle rank of my med school class confide in me she didn't believe in viruses during a break in pathology class. She did graduate and is in practice. Hopefully she changed her mind with education.

I don't think people who have ignorance should be banned from discussion, as long as they are sincere and aren't pushing an agenda. However, Anti-Covid vaccine folks are almost entirely pushing a political agenda in my view in 2021 and trying to pretend to have real scientific concerns.

Totally agreed.

 

[Stagg737]

When cases and hospitalizations are low.

If that's the criteria we might as well say "when COVID is no longer a serious issue" and end the argument there...

Case numbers matter less and less as severe illness becomes less common among the vaccinated. I think we should consider setting up COVID convalescent tents outside of hospitals where the voluntarily unvaccinated can ride out their illness while being tended by voluntarily unvaccinated volunteers (maybe the applicant OP is referencing would like a job there?). Would save hospital resources and perhaps nudge people toward vaccination.

We should also make sure those tents are stocked up with plenty of Ivermectin. Seriously though, I suggested a somewhat similar idea previously and it was not taken well, though this is an interesting thought.

If only we had a large national group, something full of lots of epidemiologists who have spent years studying infectious diseases. Something whose mission involves controlling diseases.

Maybe they could work that out.

Except when you have the head of that group making conflicting statements every other week it gets hard to trust those recommendations or even take them seriously. My wife is about as politically left as you go and has been overwhelmingly "pro-science" with COVID recommendations and she was completely baffled when the current administration and CDC ended the masking mandate last spring. The "experts" keep flipping on whether we should be taking a conservative stance with COVID precautions or loosen restrictions to help with independent liberties. As others previously said, when there aren't consistent guidelines or at the very least consistent arguments as to why guidelines are being implemented, it just creates fertility for seeds of skepticism and mistrust towards those authorities making recommendations and policies.

Actually "team EBM" would have us mask in indoor public places for the rest of time if the goal is to prevent infectious disease spread.

I have never heard any epidemiologist or ID doc make this suggestion. Any sources to this extreme statement?

Also I have noticed some people in this thread framing it as "half the country" being opposed to the vaccine. Currently 82 percent of people 12 and up have had at least one shot, and over 99 percent of people over 65 have had at least one shot according to the NYT. The over 65 are especially vulnerable and have a very good reason to get the shot, much like many of us who work with vulnerable people and thus should have a strong motivation to get the shot. Refusing the vaccine, especially as a healthcare provider, puts you into a pretty small minority.

Unless that one shot was J&J, then getting "one shot" wouldn't be considered vaccinated by many professionals, especially after the first couple of months with waning immunity coming out as almost certainly being a factor for all forms of the vaccine. Also, how are we defining "opposed to the vaccine"? People refusing to get an injection? People just not getting fully vaccinated? In practice, is there really any difference between someone against the vaccine and someone who is not vaccinated because of apathy/complacency? I understand your point, but there are a lot of gray areas in this argument that have sort gotten glossed over in this argument of Pro or Anti-vaccine.

I don't "like" taking my cholesterol medication but that doesn't factor into the risk/benefit equation. I don't "like" using hand sanitizer 60+ times per day either but my dislike doesn't factor into it.

Are you saying that patient preference and what they "like" doesn't factor into compliance?

To bring it back to OP's question.

Are we hiring or not hiring the non-vaccinated applicant?

I'd still like to know why it's any of our business unless we're on the hiring/credentialing committee...

 

[Mad Jack]

Are any of you facing a job applicant who will not get a COVID vaccine? Our hospital did not issue it's own vaccine mandate, but now has the CMS mandate, but the rumors are the religious exemptions will be fairly liberal. I anticipate this woman would be granted a religious exemption, but I'm now having many doctors on the inpatient team say they would not want to work with someone who is not vaccinated for COVID. As the lead doctor, I'm facing the reality of being chronically short staffed, and I think it's likely coloring my opinion that we really need everyone we can get who is clinically competent, and not getting a vaccine is not a deal breaker for me. What do you all think? Ultimately we can't hire someone nobody wants to work with.

Dealbreaker for me. Why would I want to share coverage with someone who demonstrates poor decision-making on the level of this applicant?

 

[Mad Jack]

I recently got privileges and a 1099 position at a psychiatric facility... they only asked me about flu and covid vaccines (and there has always been the option to wear a mask instead of getting the flu vaccine). No one has asked me about hep b vaccine recently.
I do always get my flu shot

I was required to have hep B, MMR, flu, and COVID on hire at my last two gigs

 

[birchswing]

Regarding the earlier conversation in the thread about the validity of the CDC, I think people on both sides of this issue are now rightfully distrustful of them (and honestly as a liberal I've never been anything but skeptical of NIAID's Fauci who seems like a moth to the flame when it comes to TV cameras), especially in light of today's CDC Arbeit Macht Frei policy, and if I were in a hiring position I'd take an unvaccinated person over Dr. Rochelle Walensky who thinks people with Covid should be going into the workplace after 5 days with 0 Covid testing to prove they are negative first. To me that is scandalous and what I would call (in a nonprofessional capacity) sociopathic to allow to happen. To make a dumb decision (not getting vaccinated) at a personal level is one thing. To allow millions of contagious people back into workplaces for corporate greed is disgusting. The people in Silicon Valley are never going back to work in person, and the retail workers who are sick are being told to get over Covid faster so they can go back to work and be huffed and puffed on all over again—and of course as I mentioned previously, the CDC won't even set sane masking guidelines to protect them. This pandemic has laid bare what many people have known for a long time about "public" health organizations—they're not public. There are special interests, both with at the national and international (WHO) level that fund them. Blame the doctors who won't get vaccinated and don't hire them, but give no quarter to these rarefied experts who are playing games with people's lives. Walensky should be out, and I'd be more upset at any hospital that hired her than a random person who decided not to get vaccinated. She knows what she's doing and why she she's doing it.

Edit: And I'll say one more point I have not heard, if this were happening under Trump, we would be hearing a lot more about it and it would be called out as the scandal it is. I grew up in Sweden. I'm about as far left as you can get in the US, but I think Biden has been doing a terrible job. The only thing that has worked well in this pandemic are the vaccines, and how much credit Trump gets for that I don't know, but we certainly had better availability before Europe. Everything else under both administrations has been kind of a mess with messaging, contact tracing, testing, etc.