Roy Exum
It’s no secret one of the first unwritten rules of running a business is: “Don’t create unnecessary problems for yourself. The real problems will find you without any help, and they should be your focus.” In other words, any company, large or small, that demands its employees to be vaccinated is run by a fool. The view from here is that a vaccine is a personal choice – not a business decision – and unless you’re a “Hey, look how noble I am!” type, it is far better to “let people be people.” Let each march to their own drummer.
The Tennessee city of Germantown drifted over the ‘crazy line’ early in the week when its City Fathers decreed all municipal employees must be vaccinated.
Two days later they waved their badly singed fingers and backed away from such malarkey, largely based on Tennessee Code Annotated 68-5-155 which reads, “a political subdivision of this state shall not promulgate, adopt, or enforce and ordinance or resolution, that requires a person to receive an immunization, vaccination, or injection for the SARS-CoV-2 virus or any variant of the SARS-CoV-2 virus.”
State Rep. Bud Hulsey, R-Kingsport, was one of the sponsors of the house bill, and said at the start the intention of the law was to insure no one would be required to take the vaccine, including government employees. Yet as the Delta variant continues to flex its COVID muscle, there are those who believe they should “save Tennesseans from themselves.”
One businessman believes he “owes it” to his vaccinated employees to provide the best workplace environment when his detractors angrily say he is “punishing his employees” for exercising their basic rights. Stay tuned on this one but the best argument is he never should have invited such a distraction upon himself or his company. It can easily be argued he would have been far better served not to have said a thing.
Believe it or not, the strongest case for the vaccine is from the Delta variant itself; 95 percent of its victims are unvaccinated. Hello? That leaves fewer than five percentof the vaccinated at risk. If that isn’t a straight enough message, there can be a no stronger reason to take “the jab.” This, and health experts are now predicting there are other variants feared to be coming to the United States.
Anthony Fauci, America’s COVID expert, predicted that when the Food and Drug administration formally approves the vaccinate, that is when we will see a rash of bold mandates … and they won’t be from the Biden administration. Speaking to the USA Today editorial board on Friday, he predicts vaccine approval will embolden many groups. “Organizations, enterprises, universities, colleges that have been reluctant to mandate at the local level will feel much more confident," he said.
"They can say, 'If you want to come to this college or this university, you've got to get vaccinated. If you want to work in this plant, you have to get vaccinated. If you want to work in this enterprise, you've got to get vaccinated. If you want to work in this hospital, you've got to get vaccinated.'"
McCallie School, the premier prep school located in Chattanooga, was quick to say in May any student or teacher must be vaccinated by the start of school (Aug. 17) and with the impending approval by the FDA. Fauci believes there will be a rush for mandates. “This is a dystopian world we're living in," he said. The public is awash in lies and misinformation about COVID-19 and the vaccines, "they are being misled." (Definition of dystopia -- an imagined world or society in which people lead wretched, dehumanized, fearful lives.)
FROM USA TODAY: “With COVID-19 cases rising among the unvaccinated as the highly contagious delta variant spreads, Fauci hopes people's "better angels" will prevail over the sea of lies on social media. The delta variant has thrown the danger of COVID-19 to young children into sharp relief. In Tennessee, the Department of Health projects the state's children's hospitals are on pace to be completely full by the end of next week.
“The state's health commissioner, Dr. Lisa Piercey, said the Delta variant is rapidly spreading among children, who are quickly showing symptoms after possible exposure, possibly amounting to a much faster incubation time than previous versions of the virus. Children under 12 are not yet eligible for the vaccine, so the adults around them must be their protection, Fauci said.
“At schools, everyone needs to be vaccinated, he said, teachers, assistants, janitors, "anybody who is anywhere near a child in what should be a protected environment of a school." Because in the current political environment that won't happen, Fauci said masks are the next best thing. Schools are crucial for children's mental health and intellectual, physical, and social development, so it's important they stay open.
"I would rather have a child be a little bit uncomfortable with a mask on and be healthy than a comfortable child without a mask in an ICU," he said. "It just doesn't make any sense to me why you would want to not protect the children."
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SHOULD VACCINATED AMERICANS PANIC?
(From Yahoo.com) Peter Weber, Senior editor, Thursday, August 5, 2021
The COVID-19 pandemic has now officially resulted in 200 million cases and 4.25 million deaths worldwide, and the extremely virulent Delta variant is erasing many of the gains achieved through time and remarkably effective vaccines.
"For public health officials and the Biden administration, the Delta variant is the biggest communication conundrum we've seen in a while," Politico health care editor Joanne Kenen writes in Wednesday's Nightly newsletter. "Don't panic, they tell us in one breath. Well, maybe panic a bit, they tell us in the next, urging us to put our masks back on and think twice about how, when, where, and with whom we gather indoor." This "'panic/don't panic' conundrum," she writes, is exacerbated by the many, many things we still don't know about the Delta strain.
The one clear thing is that "this latest surge, as public health officials remind us, is largely an outbreak among the unvaccinated," Kenen writes. "The best way to protect ourselves and others, to contain the pandemic, is by getting vaccination rates way up." And until enough people are vaccinated, in the U.S. and the world, COVID-19 will be a problem for everyone.
U.C. San Francisco's Dr. Bob Wachter calls this Delta outbreak perhaps "the most confusing time in the pandemic." The "bottom line is that my thinking has changed," he wrote in a Twitter thread Tuesday night. "Six months ago, I felt like I understood all of the key variables when it came to the virus and vaccines," but "now I see that it's best to assume that nearly every parameter is different — usually for the worse" — with the Delta variant.
In lower-vaccination, high caseload states like Florida, Texas, and Missouri, the unvaccinated majority is "no better protected vs. COVID than they were in early 2020," but the virus is now "2.5 times better at its job of infecting people," Wachter writes. "It's obvious what an unvaccinated person should do: get vaccinated ASAP," and "be very afraid" and "super-safe" until two weeks after your second shot.
"What should a vaccinated person do? That's trickier," Watcher concedes. "Everybody's got to choose their own risk tolerance, which'll depend on your psychological state and your risk factors for a bad outcome," plus the prevalence of COVID-19 in your area. "You'll make your own choices, but don't underestimate Delta," he adds. "As the CDC said, it's a new war."