Despite the second wave
Over half of New York City firefighters said they will not get vaccinated for COVID-19 despite the second wave of cases in the city.
So they’ll spread it. They’re essential workers, obviously, so if they don’t get vaccinated they’ll spread it like crazy.
The results of the survey came nearly two weeks after the New York City Fire Department (FDNY) announced it won’t make the vaccine mandatory for its members, even as the city sees a surge of COVID-19 cases.
Yeeeeah that’s no good.
“It may become necessary to require that certain individuals or communities be vaccinated, such as health care workers and students, to protect the public’s health,” Mary Beth Morrissey, the chair of the New York State Bar Association’s COVID-19 task force, said in a statement on November 7.
Bad times ahead.
Our school has had an extremely high number of positive tests, and yet they are still planning to continue with business as usual in the spring semester. They insist there is no school spread, even though there have been clusters of cases in people who work closely together. We have had a lot of students struggling because of it, and yet they think the faculty can continue to work on campus, take off their masks in their offices (cubicles, in large open rooms, with half walls between them, which the administration insists is adequate to prevent transmission; some of the faculty don’t even have that).
What is wrong with people?
I plan to get the vaccine, and I think these firefighters should, but do they actually have that much day to day contact with the public?
I think so, yes. They respond to a lot of different kinds of emergencies, not just fires.
On the plus side, these refusals will help the rest of us get the vaccine sooner.
(Yes, I realize that the vaccine priority schedule is designed to optimize the use of the vaccines, so having lower-priority people get it sooner in place of high-priority refusers is suboptimal. I’m just saying that we’re not likely to have a glut of vaccine doses any time soon.)
It speaks to the culture of public employees. At least those with hig-machismo quotients. I expect we’ll find similar infiltration by anti-vaxx, flat earth, Christian nationalist etc. etc. in the police forces.
Do we know whether vaccination will prevent transmission to others in addition to shielding the recipient?
Good question.
Maybe? Since it’s being talked about as meaning that a slow return to normal life will be possible? I’m guessing the authorities wouldn’t be saying that if it didn’t also prevent transmission…but it’s just a guess.
Vaccination can prevent transmission. It provides immunity. If you are immune to a disease (eg. chicken pox), you may get infected, but your immune system will recognize it and deal with it. The disease organism won’t get a chance to replicate, and you won’t be shedding the organism, and then won’t be passing it on to others.
Thank you Karen.
@Skeletor:
The most pressing issue is surely that all the firefighters will be down with COVID, not necessarily that they’re spreading it to the public. They’ll spread it to each other and there’ll be nobody left to put out the fires.
Speaking as an ex-employee of a fire brigade here in the UK, firefighters do tend to mingle a lot with the public and other emergency services workers, at least in non-COVID times. It’s an inevitable part of the job, even before considering things like fire safety inspections. I guess a lot of their activities have been scaled back, but I imagine they’ll be in the thick of people quite a lot of the time, even so.