"Don't You Work With Old People?": Many Elder-Care Workers Still Refuse to Get COVID-19 Vaccine

[Nevilledog]

Link to tweet

Tweet text:
Caroline Orr Bueno, Ph.D
@RVAwonk
More than 40% of the nation’s nursing home & long-term health care workers still aren’t vaccinated.

The situation in these places is worse than you can possibly imagine, but no one — and I mean no one — who could do anything about it actually will.

“Don’t You Work With Old People?”: Many Elder-Care Workers Still Refuse to Get COVID-19 Vaccine
Amid a “pandemic of the unvaccinated,” more than 40% of the nation’s nursing home and long-term health care workers have yet to receive vaccinations.
propublica.org
2:36 PM · Jul 23, 2021

https://www.propublica.org/article/dont-you-work-with-old-people-many-elder-care-workers-still-refuse-to-get-covid-19-vaccine

*snip*

Nursing homes faced a shocking mortality rate during the pandemic. In the U.S., COVID-19 killed more than 133,000 residents and nearly 2,000 staff members between May 31, 2020 and this July 4, according to Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services reports. The true toll is thought to be even higher as data gathering lagged in the early months of the crisis, health experts say.

Working in a nursing home became one of the “most dangerous jobs” in America in 2020, according to an analysis of work-related deaths by Scientific American.

Yet seven months after the first vaccines became available to medical professionals, only 59% of staff at the nation’s nursing homes and other long-term care facilities are fully or partially vaccinated — with eight states reporting an average rate of less than half, according to CMS data updated last week.

Twenty-three individual facilities had vaccination rates of under 1%, the data showed.

*snip*

[pandr32]

1. This makes my blood boil

[RainCaster]

2. Why are they still employed?

That should be mandatory, IMO.

[liberal_mama]

3. Probably because there are labor shortages in the industry

My sister-in-law works for a large group of nursing homes and she says they can't find people to work. Of course, she's a Trumper and blames it on Biden giving everyone free money. But the true problem is that it's really a bad job for not so great pay.

[RainCaster]

4. My daughter works for a hospital

She's a Hillary & Joe voter, but she is frustrated that after 3 years of college she still can't make enough money to live on her own. We are frustrated too, because we are subsidizing a rediculously expensive catholic hospital, and we are not only not catholic, but we don't get a tax deduction for this.