Okay, so the takes here on this article are 1) Everyone has to get vaxed. Breaking news. The vaccines do prevent ~90% of infections, cases are up over 91/k day average, now having surpassed the initial Spring 2020 crest, the Summer 2000 second wave crest, the Spring 2021 crest, and are now climbing up, or down the walls of the humongous Winter 2020 wave. Overwhelmingly, but not entirely this Delta wave is among the unvaxed. The vaccines also really do take the punch out of the virus if you, the vaccinated, get infected. Hospitalizations are climbing but have not surpassed the Spring and Summer 2020 waves. Deaths are merely creeping up and are still near all-time lows. 2) It is scandalous that nursing home staff are not under vaccine mandates. 3) The data is mounting that vaccines are not working as expected in preventing infection with COVID-Delta, nor hospitalization. The evidence from the graphs is marked: The vaccines, so far, are great at preventing COVID-Delta death. I'll make this 3a. CDC, good God, are you really not sure if vaccinated gay men and vaccinated nursing home residents are "susceptible" to infection and sickness? You need to get out of the Disease Control business, if so.
In late spring, the 142 nursing homes operated by the Good Samaritan Society hit a milestone that was unthinkable just four months earlier: Zero cases of Covid-19 across the whole company, from 900 at the peak of the pandemic.
The relief was short-lived.
The case count has ticked up again: It’s still below 100 among residents and staff, the company said, but includes many breakthrough cases of vaccinated residents testing positive. Then last week, two vaccinated residents died with Covid at the Good Samaritan Society-Deuel County nursing home in Clear Lake, South Dakota.
The company said...[the] breakthroughs had happened...where unvaccinated staff were testing positive, seemingly carrying the virus into the home...
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Late last month, the company became one of the largest long-term care chains in the country to order mandatory vaccines for staff...
Overall, Covid deaths among nursing home residents and staff members accounted for nearly one-third of the nation’s pandemic fatalities... although the death rate has plummeted in recent months with more than 80 percent of residents now vaccinated.
...vaccine mandates among health care workers have gained urgency but also met resistance in the nursing home industry, where some homes say it will cost them staff members...Only about 60 percent of nursing home staff members are vaccinated, and some states report an even lower rate, with less than half inoculated...
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“The bottom line is the vaccine is the No. 1, 2 and 3 thing we have to fight this pandemic, everywhere, but especially in nursing homes,” said Dr. Michael Wasserman, a geriatrician and former president of the California Association of Long Term Care Medicine, who has reluctantly come to believe mandates are necessary.
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“It’s terribly frustrating,” Mark Parkinson, the chief executive of the industry’s main trade group, said of the hesitancy of people...in the nursing home industry [to get vaccinated]. “If everybody would get vaccinated this pandemic would end,” he added.
Well...
But, he said, nursing home providers are wary of mandates, worrying that they could lose workers during “one of the worst labor shortages” in the nation’s recent history.
Okay! But with all those elderly dying because your staff is infecting them you have need for less staff! See, there's always a silver lining.
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Kansas and Louisiana appear to be experiencing outbreaks of breakthrough infections among fully vaccinated residents....
...concerns that elderly residents who are vaccinated may be more susceptible to breakthrough infections...
Concerns? You're not sure but you have concerns? You, Concerned Scientists, are MORONS.
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Nationwide, the total cases among all Americans have increased significantly in the last month, averaging more than 91,000 a day as of Aug. 4, according to the latest data.
...LeadingAge, which represents some 2,000 nonprofit nursing homes, was among the nearly 90 groups that now support mandates for nursing home workers...About two-thirds of... staff are already vaccinated and almost 90 percent of residents...
Mr. Bury [nice name], the chief executive of Good Samaritan, said the Delta variant gave him “tremendous concern,” and said he supported widespread mandates.
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“I would love to mandate the vaccine and I believe it’s the right thing to do,” said Janet Snipes, executive director of Holly Heights, a nursing home in Denver. “But if the nursing home next door does not, I will lose my employees to it.”
But your residents (inmates?) also, Janet, win-win! Tastes great less filling, so to speak.
Recruiting has become even more difficult because of fears of working in a nursing home.
Okay, so you're saying there are many nursing home staff who are vaccine-resistant and in addition there are potential staff who are fearful of getting COVID-19 by taking nursing home jobs. (?)
C.D.C. recently investigated an outbreak at a memory care center in Mesa County, Colo., where 16 vaccinated residents contracted Covid-19 and four died. The agency is expected to publish its findings shortly.
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“I question their reason for being in the business if they don’t get it”--Marita Smith, administrator at Saint Anne Nursing and Rehab Center in Seattle, said of staff.
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At ArchCare, the Catholic group that operates nursing homes and other facilities in New York City, “I think it’s just a matter of time before I have to mandate the vaccine across all the programs,” said Scott LaRue, the chief executive.
Long past time, Scott!
