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STICK IT, Damn It!
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2021-09-30 at 7:51 PM UTCYes.
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2021-09-30 at 9:45 PM UTC
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2021-09-30 at 10:04 PM UTCStick It Or Picket (Your Former Employer)
The Hill
Senate defeats GOP amendment to block Biden vaccine mandate
Peter Sullivan
The Senate on Thursday defeated a Republican amendment seeking to block President Biden's vaccine-or-test mandate for businesses with 100 or more workers.
Republicans and Democrats were split down the middle on the vote, 50-50 in the upper chamber, falling short of the 60 votes needed to pass the measure.
Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.) offered the measure, which would block the use of federal funds for vaccine mandates. It came during a series of votes on amendments to a stop-gap government funding measure.
Biden announced earlier this month that his Department of Labor would put forward a regulation requiring that businesses with 100 or more employees mandate employees are vaccinated, or get tested once per week.
Marshall said that while the "vaccine has saved lives," taking it should be a "personal choice."
"Simply put, we must not allow the Administration's unconstitutional vaccine mandate on private companies to go forward," he added.
Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) spoke out against the amendment, pointing to the almost 700,000 Americans who have died of COVID-19, noting the flags marking their deaths.
"Drive down the Mall and look at the flags by the Washington Monument," he said, noting the amendment "weakens one of our strongest tools to get people safely through this crisis."
Republicans have largely denounced Biden's move, saying it was an infringement on their personal freedom.
"Forcing main street to vax or pay a fine will not only crush an economy he's put on life support-it's flat-out un-American," House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy (Calif.) tweeted earlier this month in response to Biden's announcement. "To Joe Biden, force is more important than freedom. Americans won't stand for it."
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has frequently encouraged people to get vaccinated, and has been less outspoken against Biden's mandate than McCarthy, but he also voted for the amendment on Thursday.
The move has been largely praised by health experts, though, as a way to break through to holdouts who still have not gotten vaccinated and have not responded to voluntary measures like incentives. About 23 percent of U.S. adults have not gotten any shots.
Ashish Jha, dean of the Brown University School of Public Health, called Biden's vaccine mandate "essential to creating a safe work environment."
"We're going to protect vaccinated workers from unvaccinated co-workers," Biden said when he made the announcement. "We're going to reduce the spread of COVID-19 by increasing the share of the workforce that is vaccinated in businesses all across America."
Democrats have increasingly embraced vaccine mandates as a popular issue that is key to getting the pandemic under control.
An Axios-Ipsos poll this month found that 60 percent of the public supported the vaccine-or-test mandate for businesses. -
2021-09-30 at 10:05 PM UTC
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2021-09-30 at 10:20 PM UTCIt's allll going to backfire on Biden. The more people injured and dropping dead of the injections, the more people will see they've been duped. Even the ones now taking the so-called vaccines will stop taking them. And all the blame for it will be on Biden.
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2021-09-30 at 10:21 PM UTCThe following users say it would be alright if the author of this post didn't die in a fire!
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2021-09-30 at 10:33 PM UTCABC News
COVID job losses begin: Hundreds fired, suspended for refusing jab
Hundreds of health care workers across the country are being fired or suspended in droves for not complying with COVID-19 vaccine mandates.
President Joe Biden announced earlier this month a vaccine mandate for health care facilities that receive Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement, impacting some 17 million health care workers in the nation.
States including New York, California, Rhode Island and Connecticut also set vaccine mandates for health care workers that take effect this week.
But there are brewing concerns over staff shortages at already-overburdened hospitals still grappling with COVID-19 cases. Some hospital networks said they've ramped up hiring ahead of vaccine deadlines to stabilize their workforces.
ABC News contributor John Brownstein, an epidemiologist and professor at Harvard Medical School, noted that while overall the number of health care workers being terminated or suspended isn't huge, at the same time, "we can't afford to lose anybody at this point."
“By and large, vaccine mandates are working. Those in health care are taking these vaccine incredibly seriously to protect themselves and their patients." Brownstein said. "We’re seeing a greater need of health care -- there was a lot of deferred care for elective surgeries and behavioral health -- juxtaposed with existing shortages of health care workers. Any impact is going to create even more pressure on health care systems."
In the South and West
In North Carolina, the Novant Health hospital system, which has over 35,000 employees across 15 hospitals and over 800 clinics, fired around 175 of its workers for failing to get vaccinated, officials told ABC News.
Approximately 375 team members were noncompliant with the vaccine mandate last week and were given a five-day suspension period to get a COVID-19 shot.
Over the course of the week, nearly 200 additional team members became in compliance, Novant Health said Monday. The hospital system now has a vaccine compliance rate of over 99%, officials said.
Employees granted medical or religious exemptions must wear masks and undergo weekly COVID-19 testing.
Novant Health CEO and president Carl Armato said in a statement that the system has been steadily adding to travel staff numbers "to meet the needs of our organization throughout the pandemic.”
“Without a vaccine mandate for team members, we faced the strong possibility of having a third of our staff unable to work due to contracting, or exposure to, COVID-19. This possibility only increases heading into a fall season with the more contagious and deadly delta variant,” he said.
Anti-vaccine protesters hold signs outside of Houston Methodist Hospital in Houston, June 26, 2021.© Mark Felix/AFP via Getty Images, FILE Anti-vaccine protesters hold signs outside of Houston Methodist Hospital in Houston, June 26, 2021.
In Texas, Houston Methodist Hospital, which has some 26,000 employees, saw 153 employees quit or fired over the vaccine requirement after the June 7 deadline to get the shots. Of those, 26 were nurses.
“We staffed up prior to the mandate so that we would be much better prepared when our June 7 deadline arrived, and then we had the fourth surge in Houston starting in July. We continue to hire positions as needed, so we’ve not had any major turnover or staffing concerns,” hospital spokesperson Lisa Merkl told ABC News.
In California, health workers have until Thursday to be fully inoculated.
At Cedars-Sinai, based in Los Angeles with almost 17,000 people in its workforce, about 97% to 98% of staffers are projected to comply by the deadline. About 1% applied for medical or religious exemptions. Those who don’t comply by Friday will be suspended for a week and ultimately fired on Oct. 8 if they refuse the vaccine, The Associated Press reported.
California Hospital Association spokesperson Jan Emerson-Shea told ABC News that the mandate comes at a time "when many hospitals are facing serious staffing shortages."
"It’s hard to predict exactly how the vaccine mandate will play out -- every hospital is implementing its own processes and procedures," Emerson-Shea said. "While some health care workers may qualify for exemptions for either medical or religious reasons, it is possible that some health care workers may choose to leave their employment rather than get vaccinated."
Anti-vaccine protesters hold signs outside of Houston Methodist Hospital in Houston, Texas, on June 26, 2021.© Mark Felix/AFP via Getty Images, FILE Anti-vaccine protesters hold signs outside of Houston Methodist Hospital in Houston, Texas, on June 26, 2021.
On the East Coast
In Delaware, 150 employees left ChristianaCare, a major hospital system in the state, after they failed to meet the Sept. 21 deadline to get vaccinated, the hospital announced in a Monday statement.
Approximately 200 caregivers received religious or medical accommodations and will have to wear masks and be required to undergo regular COVID-19 testing to keep working.
"In late July, we made a commitment to put the safety of our caregivers and our patients first by requiring COVID-19 vaccination for everyone who works at ChristianaCare," CEO Dr. Janice Nevin said in a statement. "As we anticipated, a small number of caregivers chose not to be vaccinated and have left the organization."
The hospital network has also hired more than 200 caregivers over the past month to keep the workforce afloat.
In New York, hundreds of staffers have been suspended this week and risk losing their jobs as the statewide vaccine mandate for health workers reached its first dose deadline Monday.
Northwell, the state’s largest private hospital system with over 76,000 employees, confirmed Thursday that it let go “a few hundred employees” who refused to get vaccinated and now its workforce is “near 100%” vaccinated.
"Regretfully, we have had to exit a few hundred employees, but we are pleased to report that most team members are opting to be vaccinated so as to avoid being terminated," Northwell said in a statement.
In New York City, about 500 nurses for NYC Health + Hospitals are not at work and have been preemptively replaced. Unvaccinated workers have been placed on unpaid leave but can return once they get their shot. A hospital spokesperson told ABC News that today over 92% of the NYC Health + Hospitals' workforce is in compliance with the state vaccine mandate as of Wednesday.
"We anticipated there would be some losses of staff. We knew that no matter what our efforts, some people would not get vaccinated, we planned appropriately," hospital president Dr. Mitch Katz said Tuesday.
Erie County Medical Center Corporation based in Buffalo, New York, said about 276 employees, 7% of the workforce, was on administrative leave for failing to meet the requirement.
That total includes 5% of all ECMC hospital staff and 20% of staff at the Terrace View, a long-term care facility, hospital vice president of communications and external affairs Peter Cutler told ABC News. Those who have not gotten their shots are put on a 30-day period of unpaid leave, but if they get vaccinated they can return.
Similarly, Albany Medical Center suspended 204 employees of its over 11,000-member workforce for one week starting Tuesday for not complying with the vaccine, officials said in a press conference Tuesday.
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said Tuesday that the numbers of state health care workers getting the COVID-19 vaccine are promising with 92% of hospital staff, 92% of nursing home staff and 89% of adult care facility staff inoculated with at least one vaccine dose.
"This new information shows that holding firm on the vaccine mandate for health care workers is simply the right thing to do to protect our vulnerable family members and loved ones from COVID-19," she said.
To grapple with any potential shortages in hospital and health care staff, Hochul signed an executive order Monday night which allows health care workers from other states and countries to practice in New York and waives re-registration fees. -
2021-10-01 at 12:57 AM UTCSt|1 thinks intentional decimation of the health care system, including tens of thousands of nurses and doctors, is a good thing and will actually save lives. That's how stupid, ignorant and brainwashed he really is.
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2021-10-01 at 3:28 AM UTCWe got to destroy society and sacrifice thousands of lives, or else this microscopic germ will win!
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2021-10-01 at 3:29 AM UTC
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2021-10-01 at 3:32 AM UTC
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2021-10-01 at 5:36 AM UTCKMOV St. Louis
Area hospitals begin to take action as vaccine mandate deadlines approach
ST. LOUIS (KMOV.com) -- Several St. Louis area hospitals have reached the COVID-19 vaccine mandate deadline for employees.
COVID-19 vaccine requirement deadline today for some local hospitals
The deadline for both Barnes jedi Hospital and St. Luke's Hospital systems have passed. BJC said majority of employees have complied, but there are currently 45 staff members who are suspended. Those who are suspended will be terminated if they don't comply by October 15th, according to BJC. Every employee at St. Luke's Hospital is currently vaccinated.
News 4 also checked into where other hospital systems stand. Thursday is the deadline for both Mercy Hospital and SSM Health. SSM Health said the vast majority of their nearly 40,000 employees have gotten at least one dose.
As mandates take effect in institutions across the country, an Employee Law Attorney in Indiana is weighing in on if terminated employees could take any legal action.
"It's not an employee's decision just not to get vaccinated and expect not to see adverse consequences. Those folks, absent other extraordinary circumstances, wouldn't have a cause of action," said attorney Stephanie Hahn.
Nationally, this week, United Airlines announced it's terminating employees who are not vaccinated, and New York's deadline for teachers is Friday. Meanwhile, the White House is still a few weeks away from implementing the requirements for large private companies.
Just for comparison, Barnes-J ewish Hospital complex is so large that it has its own postal zip code but only has 45 staff members suspended for not getting the vaccine, according to the article. -
2021-10-01 at 1:08 PM UTCThey're lying through their teeth about how many won't take the shot, trying desperately to minimize the situation they're in.
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2021-10-01 at 2:41 PM UTCSWALLOW IT, damn it!
Business Insider
A COVID-19 pill could soon fill a gap in our pandemic response that vaccines can’t overcome
adunn@insider.com (Andrew Dunn)
Companies are racing to develop a pill that can treat COVID-19.
Drugmakers like Pfizer and Merck expect results on their oral-antiviral programs before year-end.
An effective, easy-to-take treatment could play a big role alongside vaccines.
Another COVID-19 breakthrough could be just weeks away, but this time with pills instead of shots.
Three of the largest drugmakers - Merck, Pfizer, and Roche - are anticipating late-stage-trial results before the end of the year for experimental antiviral drugs. If successful, these treatments could fill a gap not covered by vaccines: helping already infected people recover faster. They might even be able to stop people from getting sick in the first place.
These oral drugs could change how doctors treat mild and moderate COVID-19 cases and "lower people's risk perception of the pandemic," Matthew Harrison, a Morgan Stanley biotech analyst, wrote in a September 27 research note.
While excitement is building as the pharmaceutical giants launch more studies, don't expect a miracle cure. If these antivirals do work and are safe - which remains to be seen - they're likely to help only in certain circumstances. Scientists working on these drugs say they likely will work best as an early treatment, meaning they won't be of much use to people who are seriously ill.
A simpler, cheaper treatment
COVID-19 pills are an enticing prospect. They're simpler to mass-produce and administer, compared with antibody drugs OK'd to treat COVID-19. The antibody therapies are typically given as an hourlong IV infusion, followed by another hour of monitoring for side effects. The three leading antiviral programs are being tested as 10-pill regimens: two capsules every 12 hours over five days.
The pills are also likely to be cheaper than the antibody infusions, which are free for patients but cost the US government more than $1,000 per dose.
These new drugs could complement vaccines. While the vaccines are highly protective, they also have their limitations. A fraction of people simply refuse to be immunized. Some who get the shot, like those with serious immune-system weaknesses, fail to mount an immune response from the vaccine. And uncertainty lingers for everyone over how well the vaccines stop transmission, as well as how long protection lasts, particularly as the virus keeps mutating.
"We still don't understand how the continued viral evolution is going to impact vaccine efficacy broadly," said Daria Hazuda, the vice president of infectious-disease discovery at Merck who is leading research on a COVID-19 pill. "There's still an important role for antivirals."
Antivirals would be "one more piece of the larger puzzle of solving the COVID problem," said Bernadette Boden-Albala, the director of the public-health program University of California, Irvine, who is not involved with the research.
But Boden-Albala said she was worried the public-health system wouldn't be equipped with widely available rapid testing and an easy way to quickly write and dispense prescriptions for the millions of patients in the US with the virus. The Biden administration isn't working fast enough to build that system now to take full advantage of these drugs if they do work, she said.
"We just have to get the process right - that's been our problem," Boden-Albala said. "We have significant process problems, and the public-health infrastructure is so fragile and needs to be rebuilt."
Merck Molnupiravir is an experimental oral antiviral developed by Merck and Ridgeback Biotherapeutics that could treat COVID-19.
In the sprint to results, industry analysts expect Merck to be first. The company's leaders said in July they could have late-stage results in October. More recently, a company spokesperson told Insider the official timeline for results was before the end of 2021.
The New Jersey pharma is developing an antiviral called molnupiravir, which was originally developed as a treatment for the flu. The company licensed the drug in July 2020 from Ridgeback Biotherapeutics, a small Miami biotech. The federal government is betting big on molnupiravir, agreeing in June to buy enough pills to treat 1.7 million people. That $1.2 billion deal is contingent on the Food and Drug Administration authorizing the treatment.
Merck is finishing a study with 1,850 volunteers with mild or moderate COVID-19 who randomly receive molnupiravir or placebo pills. The main goal is to see if fewer patients on molnupiravir are hospitalized or die after 29 days compared with those getting the placebo.
In general, antivirals launch a war against the virus inside our cells. Viruses hijack our cells and convert them into copying machines. Antivirals try to block that replication process. Drugs like molnupiravir, called nucleosides, intentionally insert errors into the copying process, obstructing the virus' quest to replicate.
That process also means antivirals typically are most potent when given earlier on, when replication is limited. In April, Merck stopped researching its drug in hospitalized COVID-19 patients, saying interim data suggested it didn't help those patients.
The Swiss drugmaking giant Roche is also developing a nucleoside called AT-527 with a small Boston biotech called Atea Pharmaceuticals. This drug was being researched as a hepatitis C antiviral before the pandemic broke out. Preliminary results announced in June from a smaller clinical study showed potential for the drug, but upcoming data will be more definitive. Roche expects results before year-end from a study testing AT-527 against a placebo in 1,386 people with mild or moderate COVID-19.
Roche Pharmaceuticals CEO Bill Anderson thinks oral antivirals are the most promising treatments in the industry's pipeline, he said at a September 7 press briefing. Roche's anti-inflammatory drug Actemra, which is authorized in the US to treat hospitalized COVID-19 patients, helps only when patients face severe illness and are struggling to breathe, Anderson said.
"You really want to be able to treat people before they get so sick," he said.
Finally, there's Pfizer's antiviral program, which acts slightly differently by blocking a protease enzyme that plays a key role in the virus' copying process. Pfizer is testing this antiviral in combination with a low dose of ritonavir, another antiviral that slows the breakdown of Pfizer's drug so it lasts longer in the body.
In July, Pfizer started a 3,000-volunteer study of nonhospitalized COVID-19 patients, hoping to reduce the hospitalization and death rates compared with a placebo group. Pfizer wants to have results before the end of the year for that study, which could support a filing for emergency authorization if successful, a company spokesperson told Insider.
Pills to prevent sickness
Other drug developers are betting there will be room for improvement beyond this first wave of oral antivirals. Those companies include Enanta Pharmaceuticals, a small Massachusetts biotech looking to start initial human testing early next year for its own coronavirus pill.
"Just because you have something moving forward that you're going to have data by the end of the year, it doesn't mean it's going to be good data," Enanta CEO Jay Luly told Insider.
There are also clinical trials looking at giving the antivirals even earlier - before people are sick.
Merck and Pfizer are already recruiting volunteers for prophylaxis trials, which are designed to see if their pills will prevent infection and symptomatic disease in the first place. Both studies are recruiting people who live with someone who has symptomatic COVID-19. Roche also plans to start a similar prevention study before year-end.
"We know antivirals, even in these acute respiratory infections, work really well as prophylaxis," Merck's Hazuda said.
HIV-treatment research is the most compelling example of this, Hazuda said; pre-exposure prophylaxis treatment for HIV is up to 99% effective at preventing infection after exposure to the virus. That same concept has held true for flu and respiratory syncytial virus treatments, she added.
Hazuda also said she saw a role for Merck's antiviral beyond COVID-19 in tackling future pandemic threats. Molnupiravir, Hazuda said, has shown activity against a variety of viruses in lab studies, including Ebola. While it has a long way to go from being an effective treatment, it could help prepare against future pathogens, she said.
"We're very excited that it could be something we have readily on hand that could play an important role in future zoonotic transmissions of other coronaviruses, as well as future outbreaks of new strains of influenza virus," she said. -
2021-10-01 at 4:13 PM UTCThe following users say it would be alright if the author of this post didn't die in a fire!
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2021-10-01 at 4:17 PM UTC
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2021-10-01 at 4:18 PM UTCThe difference between big pharmas patented new blends and *ugh* horse paste *shudder* is the price.
If it isn't so expensive to go through that you go bankrupt, then illness isn't going to benefit you.
Fucking Trumpsters not wanting to suffer. -
2021-10-01 at 4:19 PM UTCThe following users say it would be alright if the author of this post didn't die in a fire!
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2021-10-01 at 4:20 PM UTCTiny dick.
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2021-10-01 at 4:21 PM UTCThe following users say it would be alright if the author of this post didn't die in a fire!
