New York hospital to 'pause' delivering babies after staffers quit rather than get vaccine

[Jilly_in_VA]

An upstate New York hospital system said it will be forced to “pause” maternity services later this month after employees refusing to vaccinate against the coronavirus have caused staffing shortages.

Lewis County Health System is experiencing mass resignations as a result of its Covid-19 vaccine mandate, putting some services at risk, Lewis County Health System CEO Gerald R. Cayer said Friday. The maternity unit is already seeing staff shortages, with at least six resignations so far and seven others who have expressed an unwillingness to be vaccinated.

“We are unable to safely staff the service after Sept. 24,” Cayer said. “The number of resignations received leaves us no choice but to pause delivering babies at Lewis County General Hospital.”

Hospital administrators are working on "contingency plans" in the case more mass resignations put other essential services at risk.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/new-york-hospital-pause-delivering-babies-after-staffers-quit-rather-n1279001
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Personally, if I were a low risk mom, I would be looking for a midwife willing to do a home birth (in these times, I think I'd want a home birth anyway!)

[choie]

1. Why the hell do heath care workers

refuse to get vaccinated??

[RKP5637]

5. To me, they don't belong in health care at all. I just don't get it. Are they that brainwashed. n/t

[FarPoint]

7. You are absolutely correct...

They do not rise to the professional level is providing a Standard of Care...they are the ones we need to week out of the medical field.

[Mr.Bill]

11. Misinformation and ignorance.

Same as the rest of them.

[RKP5637]

2. I hope they don't take them back after they have resigned. n/t

[Horse with no Name]

3. This is why I love Biden's directive

That any facility that accepts Medicare/Medicaid will require all staff to be vaccinated. There are still places these unvaccinated nurses can go. Once that takes effect, they will have to leave nursing or get vaccinated.

[Dream Girl]

14. I don't understand what you're saying. They will still have places to go, but will have to leave

Nursing hen this takes effect. Not sure I’m tracking, but interested in what you’re saying.

[Horse with no Name]

17. 99% of facilities take Medicare and/or Medicaid

Currently, not all facilities require vaccination and the nurses are leaving the facilities that do and going to the facilities that don’t require it.
Once this takes effect, there is nowhere for them to go. They will either have to vaccinate or find another career.

[rickyhall]

4. The most amazing thing is medical anti-vaxxers.

It's like mechanics who refuse to replace the oil in their cars or butchers who refuse to throw our rotten meat. It boggles the mind.

[lindysalsagal]

6. They work so hard to keep others alive, but not themselves.

This is religion.

[aeromanKC]

8. The selfish MAGAt's should be fired.

[Liberal In Texas]

9. Good. Who would want to have close contact with a healthcare worker who wasn't vacciniated?

I for one assumed all the medical staff I've been around were vaccinated. Probably wrongly. I have asked a few and gotten positive responses but trying to remember to ask everyone in the office is harder.

[Scrivener7]

10. This is a stunt. There are not a lot of jobs to be had in Lewis County. It has a tiny population.

Those nurses would likely have to move in order to get a new job. And how easy would it be for a non-vaxxed nurse to get a new job? It's one thing for them to not be fired, but who will hire them?

[Silent3]

12. Is there something about maternity ward work that attracts more anti-vax types?

A lot of the anti-vax propadanda comes from the "mommy blogger" contingent, where there's an unfortunate intersection of nurturing with all things "natural", where a preference for that which is deemed natural turns into a lot of woo, pseudoscience and anti-science.

Maybe a lot of that crosses over into people who focus on delivering babies as well?

[carpetbagger]

18. Which has always confounded me.

Two choices...
1) present your body with one of the parts of the virus so it learns how to defend itself from the whole virus
2) get a workng copy of all 30 proteins and a fully replicating virus, your body will deal with it in the same way, but in the meantime to give it time you'll try dewormer from Merck, then end up in the hospital, get steroids, piped in oxygen, another drug devloped by the drug company whose board was chaired by Donald Rumsfeld until he got tapped by Bush, and possibly get a plastic tube shoved down your throat along with the drugs that killed Michael Jackson and Prince to keep you from pulling it out in your delirium.

"natural"

[Silent3]

19. None of them think...

…(I suppose I could just end the post with that subject line) the part where they need anything else beyond denial is going to happen to them.

[Klaralven]

13. There has been substantial propaganda on social media that vaccines cause infertility among women

“It’s a cynical question, but what gets us to losing the higher amount of staff?” says Alan Levine, chief executive officer of Ballad Health, which has 21 hospitals and other centers serving patients in Kentucky, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia. He decided not to require vaccinations for his health-care workers after modeling suggested he could see 15% of nurses, or as many as 900, leave if he did. That’s more than he anticipates losing to Covid-19 quarantines and illness, even with the most recent surge filling up the network’s ICUs and 130 staffers quarantining on a single mid-August day. At Ballad, 97% of doctors are vaccinated. Among front-line nurses, he estimates vaccination rates hover around 50%.

...


“The overwhelming number of our nurses are female and young and in childbearing years,” Levine says. Rumors on social media caused some young women to fear that the mRNA vaccines such as those made by Pfizer Inc. and Moderna Inc. could affect their fertility. That’s not true. But it’s a worry that’s taken firm hold in some circles, even after the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists said publicly that there is no evidence the vaccine harms fertility.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-08-26/covid-vaccine-mandates-drive-some-nurses-to-leave-america-s-hospitals

I haven't found data on percent vaccinated by age and sex. In general, there are more women vaccinated than men. However, that is probably because in the over 65 age group, which is vaccinated at high rates, there are lots more men than women.

I'd bet that in the 18 to 45 year old age group, a higher percentage of women than men are unvaccinated.

[Jilly_in_VA]

16. I hadn't heard that

although I know there's been hesitancy among a lot of pregnant women about getting vaccinated. One thing that is true is that unvaccinated pregnant women who get Covid are much more likely to die. Someone needs to broadcast that.

Another thing that seems to hold water is that ivermectin can cause infertility in men. Whether that's temporary or permanent I don't know. Maybe it should be fed to men in certain parts of Texass. /s

Also, Ballad Health is the OTHER corporation responsible for ruining community hospitals in Tennessee (and Virginia). Tennova being the first and the one I hold the most venom towards because it killed not one but two hospitals I used to work for...two large urban hospitals, one of which was a Top 100 Heart Hospital. Ballad is a comparative newbie to the process.

[fescuerescue]

15. I hope they make sure that word gets out to the babies.