Vaccine Mandates Are Working, Most Anti-Vaxxers Don't Actually Want to Lose Their Jobs
- Oct 11, 2021
- 8 min read
Updated: Feb 7, 2023
Everywhere you look on the news, threats of massive societal upheaval is seen if the government or private corporations force the vaccines on their employees. Nurses, hospital staff, doctors, flight crew, all big article headlines full of droves of them threatening to quit if the mandates are put in place. Society itself will collapse because of all those MAGA people ready to stand fast against the big oppressive government. But if you actually look at where mandates have been enacted so far, it’s pretty obvious most of these people are more bark than bite when it comes to losing their career over a vaccine.
“If you look at healthcare systems that have actually mandated this, they’ve retained over 99% of their workforce,” he said in support of the mandates during an August press event. “Their workforce does go along when the employer requires it.”
Follow that link and you’ll see a wealth of different sources of healthcare systems which have implemented vaccine mandates and how many employees they have lost. Some numbers may sound big and scary and can make fun headlines, but if you actually look at the percentages, it shows a very different story:
“Mayor Bill de Blasio's administration said that roughly 5,000 of the city's public hospital healthcare workers had not met the state's Sept. 27 vaccination deadline. Although not allowed to work, city officials are reportedly hoping that those workers—about 10% of the public hospital system's workforce—will choose to be vaccinated and return to their jobs later that week.”
10% may still seem like a decent number, but it’s far less than a majority or even a third, and that is a high percentage of holdouts when compared to many other systems which have implemented the mandates. Even more telling, the last line of the quote appears to be correct, most of the holdouts when actually faced with losing their jobs, caved and got the vaccine.
“As the vaccination mandate went into full effect on Monday, 92 percent of the state’s more than 650,000 hospital and nursing home workers had received at least one vaccine dose, state officials said. That was a significant increase from a week ago, when 82 percent of the state’s nursing home workers and at least 84 percent of hospital workers had received at least one dose.”
This is after headlines of vast droves of people in the NYC medical community threatened to leave over the mandates. To the point that everyone thought the National Guard would have to step in to keep NYC from collapsing. But, none of that happened. Business just carried on as usual as the majority of holdouts lined up for their shots when actually faced with the threat of termination.
“New York state’s mandate for healthcare workers was one of the first and strictest mandates enforced to date — it included no option for unvaccinated workers to opt-out with regular testing. “
“Some had predicted it would cause at least one hospital to pause elective procedures and force state governor Kathy Hochul to consider calling in the National Guard. In the end, 92 percent of both hospital and nursing home staff were vaccinated before the deadline and no major interruptions to patient care were reported, according to the governor’s office.”
The same story played out when the mandate hit NYC schools:
“About 95 percent of all full-time school employees have received at least one dose of a coronavirus vaccine, the mayor said, including 99 percent of principals, 96 percent of teachers and 94 percent of non-education staff.”
“Roughly 43,000 doses total have been administered since the mandate was announced in late August, including more than 18,000 shots that were given to staff members since Sept. 24.”
Sure, some people held out when the mandate went into effect, about 8000 workers, which is not something to shrug off. But, in a system of over 150,000 people, that represents only 5% of staff, a number that seems pretty on par with what we’re seeing in other systems so far that enact mandates. And they all have a few weeks to comply before being fired and barred from working in the school system, or well, any government system that will require vaccine mandates (soon to be all of them). So I can guarantee you that number is going to go down at least a little bit, if it hasn’t already.
“Surveys have shown that as many as half of unvaccinated workers say they will leave their jobs if they're forced to get the COVID-19 shot, but in reality few of them actually quit. That's according to an article in The Conversation, a nonprofit news organization that covers academic research.”
“Researchers looked at companies that have vaccine mandates in place and saw that, so far, only a fraction of workers leave their jobs when it comes down to it.”
"In other words, vaccine mandates are unlikely to result in a wave of resignations — but they are likely to lead to a boost in vaccination rates," they write.”
This is the cold, capitalist reality, folks. People can say whatever they want on facebook about how they’ll stand tall against vaccination mandates, but when it really comes down to it, few are going to risk their whole career over this. Especially the type of people who believe all of the anti-vax talk that circulates social media and Republicans in general, aka the weak minded and spineless.
“Leaving a job can be a really costly, difficult experience,” says Julia Pollak, a labour economist for jobs site ZipRecruiter. “When push comes to shove and people really need to think about whether they are going to act on their social media vow to leave their job if they are forced to get vaccinated. People end up choosing the path of least resistance and just going and getting a shot instead of upending their entire lives.”
Of course, all this isn’t to say that if people WERE leaving in droves and we faced staff shortages at hospitals and medical locations due to vaccine mandates, that wouldn’t prove that vaccine mandates shouldn’t be done. If you’re working in healthcare and you believe you somehow have the right to refuse a necessary vaccine to protect yourself, the patients you interact with on a daily basis, and everyone else in the entire country, then by all means please quit and change careers. The last thing I want if I have to go to a hospital or doctor’s office is to be helped by someone who doesn’t understand the fundamentals of science and medicine and biology. I would love it if all the anti vaxxers were truly strong enough in their convictions to lose their jobs over this (They aren’t). Purge the system of the idiots, I say.
Anyway, all of this hard data may be encouraging to most corporations and local governments who want to implement vaccine mandates, but are scared of all the threats of massive staffing shortages. But, the anti vax (Republicans) have another card up their sleeve: Make shit up.
Just this past weekend we saw massive issues with flight cancellations, primarily affecting SouthWest Airlines.
“The world's largest low-cost carrier canceled three of every 10 departures it had scheduled on Sunday and the disruption continued into Monday, a federal holiday, with 337 flights — or about one in 10 — canceled so far, according to the aviation tracking website FlightAware.”
Southwest was quick to blame the massive flight cancellations on Air Traffic control and weather issues in Florida, and the FAA was quick to point out they had no ATC cancellations since Friday and that “airlines are experiencing delays because of aircraft and crews being out of place.”
“"Flight delays and cancellations occurred for a few hours Friday afternoon due to widespread severe weather, military training and limited staffing in one area of the Jacksonville Air Route Traffic Control Center," the FAA said.”
Other airlines were affected, but not nearly as much as Southwest. Southwest has a very heavy presence in Florida, so it makes sense that a delay could affect their flights much more than other airlines. With how razor thin and complicated air travel is, it isn’t impossible to see how one delay of a large portion of an airlines flights can cause a massive cascade of delays, especially when you have to use said flights to get pilots and staff where they need to be for other flights. This shitshow of a weekend is just highlighting how on the edge Southwest has been stretching their logistics, to the point that a single unforeseen delay in a high traffic area results in a wave of cancelled flights across the weekend. This is the result of COVID decimating the airlines last year, and they’ve been scrambling to keep staff and planes flying ever since.
But of course, this explanation isn’t good enough for the Republican crowds. They have been promising massive upheavals of people quitting and striking over these vaccine mandates, so by god they’re going to make it happen, even if they have to make it up. Already, you can’t go through anywhere on social media without the vast majority of comments proclaiming their support of SouthWest employees making a stand. And we have Congressmen like the great Ted Cruz tweeting this:
"Joe Biden’s illegal vaccine mandate at work!" Cruz tweeted. "Suddenly, we’re short on pilots & air traffic controllers."
It doesn’t matter that both the FAA and the Southwest Pilots union have stated in no uncertain terms, they faced no staff shortages over this weekend and that the delays where due to weather in Florida and Southwest fucking up badly:
"We can say with confidence that our pilots are not participating in any official or unofficial job actions," it said in a press release. "Our pilots will continue to overcome SWA management’s poor planning, as well as any external operational challenges."
https://www.axios.com/local/dallas/2021/10/11/southwest-airlines-delays-pilots-covid-vaccine-mandate
I mean we have absolutely no pilot or SouthWest staff, or ATC staff, or FAA staff on record saying anything about a strike or mass “sick day” for that weekend, on any news source. And no, a post on facebook from someone claiming they’re a pilots’ daughter or something doesn’t count as on record.
It doesn’t matter that even though the vast majority of the airlines all enacted vaccine mandates, somehow SouthWest was the only one faced with secret massive strikes that no one internally will admit to or anyone has any evidence to prove.. None of it matters. Republicans and anti-vax can lie and just make it all up now, because we see that when vaccine mandates are actually enacted, nothing falls apart. People buck and cry foul, but they get in line and get their shots when faced with losing their jobs. That doesn’t fit their agenda, so they need to resort to just fabricating news to fit their world view, with absolutely no evidence to support it. All text book conspiracy theory tactics.
What’s concerning to me is most of the rest of the country is just so tired of fact checking everything, they’re all just shrugging and accepting it as fact. They see a facebook post about someone bitching over all the Southwest flight cancellations, then see a comment about how all the pilots are striking over vaccine mandates, shrug and accept that as truth. It puts a niggling bit of doubt and worry over all these mandates, and it gives the holdouts the bargaining power to continue to threaten to quit over the mandates. They won’t if their jobs are actually on the line, but the threat is all they need if there’s enough bullshit behind it.
The mandates are working. Most places in the country, even where vaccine compliance is high, are only at close to 70%. Children can’t get the vaccine because of course, it’s still being thoroughly tested for safety and efficacy in them, which takes time. So if we want a chance of having COVID out of our lives, having to not worry about masks or hear about the next scary variant coming, or having the economy stalled, we need to have almost every eligible person in this country vaccinated. That’s the only way we achieve herd immunity.
Covid is the very reason that the airlines took a huge hit last year in their ability to staff and cover costs of flights and probably ultimately why a small delay of flights in Florida lead to massive flight cancellations from Southwest. Yet, the Republicans somehow use that to blame it all on the one thing that will get us out of this mess and our economy back on track. To convince those last 20% of holdouts of people wracked by misinformation and conspiracies, apparently the only way we have left is to threaten them where it matters: Their wallets. Don’t believe the propaganda. The vast majority have caved where the mandates are put in place and they will continue to cave nationwide. And those that don’t get the vaccine can and should be replaced.
It has been phenomenal in the private industry how quickly employers are embracing vaccine mandates. It works! And if we keep this rolling, we may get our lives back! We have to remain vigilant and check resources and not be tempted to automatically believe salacious news. All of us can fall prey to false stories and conspiracy stories. I just dont' know how to make so many people differentiate between real journalism and biased reporting, when they don't trust anything. You cannot argue with people who refuse to accept truth. It is frustrating and dangerous.