Can nothing really change their minds?
We are told by those health care workers who feel they should be able to reject being vaccinated for COVID and yet still work in the health care industry that there is nothing anyone can say that will convince them to accept being vaccinated.
So the fact that, worldwide, in excess of 100,000 people have participated in clinical trials for the various vaccines doesn’t matter? That’s a phenomenal number for a phenomenal scientific effort.
It doesn’t matter that no mandate for vaccination would’ve been needed if previously there had been full compliance? The high levels of infection would have dropped significantly in West Virginia and the U.S. by now, and young children would not be exposed and infected in ever larger numbers.
It’s not important that we could protect the young from transmission by being vaccinated ourselves?
Do you let your patients, who are generally sick people, know that you are unvaccinated so that they can decide against receiving your care?
Should we ask every health care worker we encounter whether they have been vaccinated, just like asking them to wash their hands before touching us if they don’t do that?
We all have to wear masks while in a medical facility if we want to receive care, so having everyone vaccinated seems to be a consistent health-related measure.
If the protesters develop COVID themselves, will they expect other health professionals to risk their lives and emotional well-being once again to treat them? Even though each patient could likely have prevented that in the first place.
I was truly grateful to be able to get the vaccinations in February and March and for all of the preceding work that made it possible and safe.
I say thank you to all of the infectious disease researchers and vaccine developers who knew they were traveling in unknown territory but had to keep pushing forward because time was truly of the essence. They have served the greater good, and I applaud them.
Deb Miller
Reedsville
Vaccine mandate must exclude pregnant women
Based in part on the FDA’s approval of the Pfizer COVID-19 (Comirnaty) vaccine, the West Virginia University Health System announced all employees must take a COVID vaccine or be fired.
This mandate, announced by CEO Albert Wright, does not allow pregnant women to be exempt, even though no medical study has been performed on the health of babies born to vaccinated women. The only studies completed and in support of the Comirnaty vaccine, as per the FDA and CDC, were on lab rats.
The CDC is working hard to obtain and analyze data on the health of infants born to vaccinated women. They will do a good job, but today, there simply hasn’t been enough time. Pregnant women were excluded from phase 1 of the clinical trials used to support the FDA decision, and the emergency Pfizer vaccine became available to the public less than nine months ago.
There is plenty of evidence that pregnant women tolerate the Comirnaty vaccine well, but none on their unborn children. If it is a woman’s right to decide to terminate a pregnancy, isn’t it also her right to decide how to protect that pregnancy?
And yet, WVU Medicine has forbidden a pregnancy exemption from the mandated vaccine. Women in his staff are being forced to choose between their career or their unborn child. To a mother, a lack of proof that a thing will harm her child is not good enough. There must be proof of safety. There is none.
Forcing this vaccine on pregnant women is arrogant and cruel. A decent person would allow pregnant women to decline the vaccine until their child is born. Time to make a change. Bend just a little.
Jenny Tennant
Maidsville
Conquering coronavirus takes cooperation
Last Sunday’s Dominion Post front-page picture of some health care workers protesting vaccination mandates demonstrated that there are those who do important work but personally resist a mandate supporting the protection of the common good. The personal freedom to participate or not to participate in vaccinations is apparently more important to them than cooperation to control the pandemic.
As noted social analyst, and author of “Bowling Alone,” Robert Putnam writes in his recent book, “The Upswing,” the dangers of over-emphasis in private freedom are limited awareness of the needs of others and insufficient balance of attention to community and equality. An imbalance toward private freedom is what he believes we still face as a culture today.
What a difference from the shared public spirit of communities supporting World War II. There have also been times when mandates have been deemed necessary to control smallpox and polio. In those instances, we initiated different mandates and still benefit collectively from those actions today.
As far as coping with threats to our future, which include pandemics and environmental imbalances, Theodore Roosevelt said, “The fundamental rule of our (collective) life — the rule which underlies all others — is that, on the whole, and in the long run, we shall go up or down together.”
We will not address this pandemic successfully unless we protect each other. In today’s world, the vaccines provide essential means for doing so. This is why mandates are necessary.
Don Spencer
Morgantown
Running low on sympathy for the unvaccinated
I’ve always considered myself to be a fairly sympathetic person, but lately I seem to be running low on that commodity. COVID-19 cases are spiking (again) in almost every state — and almost all of these new cases are from the unvaccinated segment of the population.
There is a part of me that says I should be sympathetic to their plight. I should feel sorry for all the pain and suffering they and their families are going through. Long, painful stays in the hospital, hooked up to a ventilator, maybe totally unaware of where they are or what is going on around them.
They would do anything to avoid being vaccinated because it is their right to not be vaccinated and hell with any responsibility to anybody else.
Some anti-vax people have gone so far as to spend hundreds of dollars for animal medications and for what? The vaccine is free. It’s just too bad for the rest of us — who want to do the right thing — if the hospitals run out beds with the unvaccinated, and there is no room for the rest of us — because it was their right and their choice.
Then there is the part of me that says choices have consequences, and this is what they chose. Not to get vaccinated may mean they contract COVID-19 or become a spreader. Becoming a spreader puts everybody at risk, including those vaccinated, those with medical conditions that don’t permit vaccination and those too young for it.
With all the science lined up against them and their responsibility to the country to get vaccinated for the “common good,” how did they come up with the decision not to get vaccinated?
You may now understand the quandary that many people are now going through about whether we should have sympathy for the unvaccinated. Should I be sympathetic for people getting COVID-19, with all the pain and suffering, or should I be downright mad they shirked their responsibility as a citizen of this country and made a “stupid” decision?
Tom Talerico
Morgantown
