And here's my biggest rationale for why nurses need to be better educated (and better paid): We spend more time with the patients than anyone else. Physicians have to have a crap ton of education because they have to diagnose, treat, and prescribe. They have to do that for a huge number of patients, across a wide variety of disease states. Doesn't matter what field you are in, it's an awesome amount of information and no one can know it all, so you have to specialize. It was the same in the law. But nurses are the eyes and ears of physicians. We are constantly assessing our patients. We have to know if what we are seeing is normal or not. We have to know if it deviates from baseline just a little, so we can just monitor it, or if it is serious enough to merit an immediate nursing intervention that we can perform autonomously, or if it's serious enough that it merits a call to the physician for new orders. These are the people spending 12+ hours at the bedside of your patient. People who have to understand patients who are living longer, have a greater number of co-morbidities, are being prescribed a greater number of medications (which can interact with one another, so we need to ensure the docs don't make errors when they Rx, which they do), and are being kept alive with increasingly more complex devices and machines. You really want well-educated people doing all of this. Gone are the days when nurses just took orders. Nurses are licensed professionals, who have a ton of autonomy within their scope of practice. It is not uncommon in smaller, regional and rural hospitals for there to be no physician on a floor. The nurses are literally running everything and we will phone a doc in the middle of the night if we need new orders. In one hospital I worked in *Orange County, California* (hardly a rural area), they had one doc on night shift in the ED and that was it. We called him when we needed him to pronounce a patient with a DNR, but I literally watched this patient die of a STEMI (heart attack) and did all the post-mortem care with no doc around. It's not uncommon. Watch the Covid ICU videos I posted. The docs will be the first to tell you who runs the units. So again, we need nurses with a very high degree of education relevant to their scope of practice, which has become quite complex and requires critical thinking and a thorough understanding of foundational scientific subjects. We don't need to be trained as physicians, but for the love of G-d, people need to know how vaccines work. This is madness. So, yeah, I am not sad to see the vax refusers go.

I don't know what to say, Jean. My 12 year old watched a 40 minute video on viral evolution by one of the nation's preeminent virologists and understood the whole thing. I guess the main driver is that you are motivated to want to understand the information, and so was he. Most people just can't be bothered.

I mean, yes we do cover basic ID as part of peds, if they are a part of the normal childhood vaccination schedule (varicella, measles, DTAP, etc.). But, it's more like, "This is what varicella looks like (symptomology), this is what you should do to prevent it (vaccinate according to the standard schedule), this is the treatment if you do happen to see it (nursing care to memorize),... next ID. Obviously, this varies by program and professor, but at most schools they're not going to explain how epidemiologists track the flu season in the southern hemi, understand statistical data to track how influenza is mutating, which strains are showing the greatest viral fitness and why, are most likely to be the biggest threat in the northern hemi this flu season, are being incorporated into our vaccines, and which vaccine therefore would be the most effective. I am sorry to say, but that is just far beyond the critical thinking skills of your average RN, who lacks the education we have been discussing and has watched some very convincing social media post, by a Russian bot that her chiropractor and a couple of her friends have been sharing, about how the flu shot can make you sick. So, now she has doubt in her mind about the vaccine and her patients are skeptical about getting the flu shot as well because they saw the same social media post too. What is her ability to really address the situation? How have we empowered her to combat this onslaught of misinformation? We are failing patients by not educating our workforce to the full scope of their practice.

Chiropractors are notorious spreaders of anti-science woo. Stats and research design/methods are all BSN courses. A typical RN program covers Nursing Fundamentals, Med Surg I, Med Surg II, Pharmacology, Psych, Peds, OB, Critical Care, maybe Nursing Leadership, and a Final Preceptorship in whatever unit you want to train in when you graduate. Plus, the pre-reqs. Did you watch Trevor Bedford's 40 minute YouTube video, on viral evolution, that was in the Twitter thread? I found it very informative.

We covered a section on epidemiology in our community health class, which is a BSN-level class, but epidemiology was not a separate course in my BSN program. Typically, epidemiology is covered more in an MSN or DNP program. All those RNs who are associate-degreed nurses are not required to take community health and have not taken epidemiology, to my knowledge. The highest math class that most RNs have had is college algebra. They have to be able to pass their medical calculations course (basically, the ability to do dimensional analysis is required), but they are not required to take stats. Stats is a pretty typical requirement of BSN programs and is definitely a requirement for MSN programs. So, this is the kind of stuff that is leading to the separation between nurses on this issue. As much as we want to say that all nurses are equal, when you get down to it, you start to see some of the differences in the educational background between LVNs, associate-degree RNs, and BSN-RNs, and how that is playing out in this issue. ETA: I found some info on the % of BSN prepared nurses by state. I think this means % of RNs. I don't think this includes % of BSNs when including RNs + LVNs, so keep that in mind. There were 4,096,607 registered nurses (RNs) and 920,655 licensed practical nurses/licensed vocational nurses (LPN/LVNs) in the United States, as of October 2019 (NCSBN, 2020). So, if you add the additional 920k to the denominator, the % obviously drops. This is important when John Q. Public hears about "nurses" protesting or saying XYZ about vaccines; they make no distinction in their mind between an LVN and a BSN. A nurse is a nurse to most people. https://campaignforaction.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/Education-map-2018.pdf *By way of background, I've also taken two semesters of advanced pathophysiology and one semester of advanced pharmacology -- MSN level courses -- but haven't taken any other upper division science or nursing courses, and still consider my educational background in this area pretty weak. I do a lot of reading on my own to try to make up for my lack of formal education.

There will be tons of lawsuits like these. Anyone can bring a lawsuit -- whether you have a legal basis for your claims is the issue. They didn't. They can appeal. They will likely lose again. You may see a smattering of successful suits in lower courts in those jurisdictions with activist judges who oppose the mandates for political reasons, which is ironic because Fed Soc principles expressly set forth that the role of the courts is to say what the law is and not what they wish it to be (another reason why judges should not hold elected positions). Hopefully, science, prudence, and legal precedent will prevail in the long-run. One would hope, but nothing shocks me anymore in this country. https://fedsoc.org/about-us#FAQ ETA: By way of background, I was co-President of the Fed Soc chapter at my law school, back in the day. Prior to 2016, I was a very active member of the Republican Party. I am no longer a registered Republican in CA.

I posted this two weeks ago on my FB page about the anti-vax nurses at work: "I took a few weeks off from work to get us moved, get the boys settled into the new school year, and to do my interviews. When I went back yesterday, I found out that we had to shut down one of the units at the psych hospital due to the combo of nursing shortages + nurses quitting over the vaccine mandate deadline, and that's in San Diego. We were already running very short staffed, so just a few people leaving was enough to shut down an entire unit. So, our remaining units are now jammed with patients, which has capped us all and made it a more chaotic environment for patients. It's very disappointing that nurses would behave this way. So, I'm thankful they're leaving. They don't belong in patient care if they don't understand science and care so little about the impact their actions have on our extremely vulnerable patients. And they're very aware. They're actually having a goodbye party for them tomorrow." In response to some of the comments: "And because of the shortages, I've had to stay late the last 3 shifts I've worked because I'm always capped and can't get everything done in a 12.5 hour shift. Almost every nurse is leaving late. And too many patients in a locked facility = more codes, more restraints, more seclusion, more IM injections, more intensive paperwork for nurses, and now the patient becomes a 1 to 1, so all my other patients get dumped on another nurse who is already capped and is now over ratio. Think of too many rats in a cage. We need to spread patients out for safety (theirs and ours). It's really shitty what they've done to our patients (and to us). People need to understand that these vax refusers are impacting all aspects of healthcare." And I can tell you that there was no "quiet resolve" with these folks. They went out kicking and screaming, bitching about the "unfairness" of the mandate and spreading all their anti-vax bs about the vaccines around our hospital. It took everything in me to keep my mouth shut. One of them was actually a charge nurse. Umm, yeah.

I don't know. In Judaism, we have the concept of Tikkun Olam -- our obligation to repair the world and make it a better place. So, I cannot speak for anyone else's worldview, but for me, it starts with each of us doing our part. I knew that I was healthy enough to work again, so despite my disability, I went back to school to try to do my part. If there are things that you know that you can do to help -- volunteer at a hospital, give blood, get vaccinated, vote for legislators that support mental health parity (healthcare workers are going to need it!), student loan repayment, and programs that work to close health disparities -- just do what you feel is right for you. But no, I don't think we are doomed. We just need to look honestly at our situation and take stock of where we are as a society, You cannot treat a sick patient without first doing an accurate assessment. The United States has a lot of very preventable issues, but we all know that getting any patient to change his/her lifestyle is hard.

I posted this back in August: "I tell this to everyone I know: It was more difficult for me to get into nursing school than it was for me to get into Stanford Law School (if you go based on # of applicants vs # accepted, it is worse than any medical school in the nation). I was rejected by Western Governors twice before I was admitted and my TEAS score was well over the 99% -- I scored 94.6 https://www.ppcc.edu/application/files/4215/6678/1303/ATI_ADN_Scores_as_of_late_Jan_2019.pdf. I was basically told by the San Diego State admissions rep not to even bother applying because I didn't have a 4.0 in my science pre-reqs. He said that the average admitted student had a 4.0 in science and a 3.92 overall. I graduated magna cum laude/Phi Beta Kappa from a top 10 liberal arts college, am a SLS grad, had a three page resume of international experience at top law, consulting, and finance firms, volunteer healthcare experience in the ED and ICU of a magnet hospital and women's/community health experience at Planned Parenthood, and other volunteer/pro bono legal work for a disability rights organization representing the homeless and setting up domestic violence/crisis houses for women in Moscow, several competitive scholarships (e.g., the Rotary, which sent me to Moscow State University to study constitutional legal development after the fall of the Soviet Union), military service, plus stellar letters of recommendation, including one from a nurse practitioner I took three masters level nursing courses prior to even going to nursing school (I took advanced pathophysiology and advanced pharmacology -- NP level courses before I went to nursing school), None of that was enough to get me into nursing school right away at WGU or SDSU. I was admitted to one local community college, but couldn't make the schedule work with homeschooling. Two other local community colleges went by a "points" system and I wouldn't have scored enough points to have been competitive there. For two other community colleges near me, it would have been about 50-50 if I would have been competitive with their points system, so I didn't bother applying. Now that I have my BSN, in my area, I am competing with close to 1000 applicants for every position because there are so few new grad residencies available to train new nurses at our hospitals." Let me update: Since August, I have been working per diem at the job that I had while I was in nursing school, working for an agency that staffs our county psych hospital, a 100+ bed locked facility that serves a mostly homeless/indigent very acute population of psych patients. During nursing school, I was a mental health associate (aka a tech) at the facility, but once I was licensed, they changed my status with the agency to an RN and I have been working full time+ at the hospital because they are severely understaffed and rely on the agency to staff about half of their positions. I had all of *10 days orientation* (most new grad residencies provide 3-6 months of preceptorships) before I was on my own, *floating* between our emergency psych unit (where I triage often acutely psychotic patients, usually brought in by the cops, and whose Covid status is unknown) and our inpatient psych units, which have completely different charting systems and workflows, taking up to 6 patients at a time. I handle the aforementioned ED triages, discharges, transfers, all medication administrations (including intra-muscular administration of meds when patients are too psychotic to take meds orally, which they often fight), seclusion and restraints, frequent assessment of both psychiatric status, but also any medical issues that may arise (which are frequent and quite heartbreaking among the homeless and mentally ill/drug-addicted), collaborating with our interdisciplinary team of physicians, social workers, dieticians, recreational therapists, etc., and all the charting of all of that. Plus, trying to find any time to actually help my patients with therapeutic communication skills, so that I can impart a tiny bit of compassion and some lived experience of coping with bipolar (which I have to keep on the downlow because of the mental health stigma that I live with -- yes, even among other psych nurses). Suffice to say, it's not the safest situation, especially for a new grad, and has been incredibly stressful. Every shift, I have at least one patient who can be a "hot spot" (aka is frequently being violent with staff or other patients), so I have to do all of this while somehow managing not to pass out from low blood sugar (I am supposed to eat small, frequent meals with my gastric bypass, which does NOT happen), get a UTI from not peeing (if you don't drink water, you don't pee!), and not making any mistakes, which new grads are prone to do (because nurses DO eat their young -- ask me how I know!) Meanwhile, I have been interviewing for new grad residencies in the ICU at the major hospital systems in SD because I was advised that, even though I think that I may want to be a psych NP down the road, I also love the ICU (so am torn on which direction I want to go long-term), and getting my start in intensive care would be a better place for me to begin my career. To that end, I have had serious help from several attending physicians, lobbying/making calls to hiring managers on my behalf, and thus far, I have managed to land a grand total of 3 interviews -- 2 ICU spots and 1 in the ED -- none of which have resulted in offers because the positions all went to the techs that already worked in their units. So really, although 1000 people applied and a handful of us were chosen for interviews, the jobs were really already someone else's to begin with. So, really a complete waste of time. Now that I understand how this system works, I had a nurse friend hook me up with the nurse manager in another ICU. I was able to get my resume in front of this ICU manager and talk with her on the phone for 15 minutes. It went well. The nurse manager already went to the ICU that didn't hire me and talked with them about me. Since I was one of their top candidates, she told them, "Well, if you're not going to hire her, I will." That seemed positive. So, she plans to open up a new grad position in the near future in her unit. 1000 more people will apply. Hopefully, I will get an interview and hopefully she will choose me, but this is the system that currently exists for hiring here. It is all about seniority and who you know. The gatekeepers are what are stopping us from helping with the shortage. They exist at every level -- from getting into nursing school, to finding clinical placements, to securing a job afterwards. I know that it's not like this everywhere, but I can only share with you what I know. Nurses in So Cal and SF are literally flying to NV, AZ, and TX to work their 3 x 12s back to back and then flying home. They get their one year of experience and then they are set here. Why don't they just move to those states, you might ask? Because being a nurse outside of CA is really pretty sh*tty, in a lot of places. I saw the difference when I worked in east Texas. The pay can be low, they can be treated like crap, they don't have mandatory meal and rest breaks, they don't have our ratios, and they don't have our strong nursing unions. They literally had ICU nurses taking out the trash at the hospital in Texas. So, there are tons of people who want to work in California especially, coastal California. A six-figure job, working 3 days per week is not a bad gig. Why would I move to Florida and make $30 per hour doing the same thing, while taking 8 patients. Eesh. No thanks. So, yeah. It's a big ole charlie foxtrot, as we used to say in the Army. Throw in a pandemic, travel nursing pay that is 4x what you can make as a staff nurse, and the burnout and emotional distress that so many nurses are feeling after 20 months of this, and you get this: Trigger warning: language (please click through and read the comments from other nurses as well -- people really need to understand how these HCWs are doing mentally and why)

I don't see it as any different than our annual flu shots. We get boosted every year for flu as part of our job. I also have to get an annual interferon quant test to prove that I don't have TB. It's just part of the job. This shouldn't be shocking for a healthcare worker. My stance is the same for things like school entry. Kids have booster requirements for some vaccines in order to attend school. And, *as long as we are in our current state, with Covid running rampant throughout the world*, I don't have a problem with our mandates in other contexts extending to boosters. However, I have no reason to believe that the pandemic will continue in its present state if our global vaccination campaign (mandates inclusive) is successful. Covid will die down, and booster mandates will likely become unnecessary, save for certain professions where mandating annual vaccination as a condition of employment is the standard (like mine). So, no. I don't think people are going to have show their Covid vaccine passport, with annual boosters, to go to a restaurant ad infinitum. I think that is typical anti-vax hyperbole, without any basis in the science of vaccines or the history of pandemics. ETA: I listen to the folks that study viral evolution. One example:

There is a push for all nurses to have their BSN, but the additional courses (from RN to BSN) are not science-focused, so I don't think that really addresses the science deficit. Our science-focused pre-reqs in CA are one semester each of Intro to Bio, Intro to Gen, Organic, and Biochem, Anatomy, Physiology, Developmental Psych, and Sociology. Then you have your actual nursing school didactics and clinicals, which are focused primarily on assessment, pathophysiology, and pharmacology. But, there is no question that there could be more extensive science pre-reqs. Physicians take gen bio, gen chem, o chem, a year of physics, often genetics and bio chem, and math at least through calculus before they enter medical school. And that's really a very bare bones list of pre-reqs. Most medical students today will apply with a much more rigorous course load, as well as scientific research, etc. I am not saying that nurses need to be educated like physicians, but from the data that I have seen, education level (vs party affiliation, gender, race, etc.) seems to be the primary driver re vaccine hesitancy. So, I agree with you that something needs to change fundamentally re nursing education.

Just think about the R0 for varicella and the effectiveness of vaccines for it. https://www.cdc.gov/chickenpox/vaccine-infographic.html https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/65/wr/mm6534a4.htm

Same.

I apologize as well. I was likely thinking of another poster in the thread who made those statements.

Chris, I didn't make that claim. I don't think that you should stop living your life. I have a disability as well, although it is not one that is apparent from looking at me and likely not one that would make me more susceptible to Covid (though, we don't really know that for sure yet, I suppose). My point in saying that is just for you to know that I understand what it is like to live with a chronic disability, and despite the claims made against me in this thread, I know that my lived experience with disability has made me a more empathic and compassionate caregiver to my patients. I am incredibly grateful for the vaccines precisely because they have made it easier for my family and I to go back to living our lives. My kids go their charter school in-person classes again, my kids went to summer camp again, my son started taking his glider training classes again, we have traveled to my parents in Seattle again, my husband's family in Quebec can finally cross the border and come to see their grandkids again this year (after two years!), we can hopefully celebrate my son's bar mitzvah in Israel next year, I was able to finish my nursing school clinicals and graduate, etc. All of that happened thanks to these vaccines. And all of that has happened while all of us have stayed Covid-free (knock wood). We all wear masks when we are indoors, but outdoors, we went horse back riding for my son's birthday and had pool parties and went to pumpkin patches and spent time on our boat -- I am pretty lenient about outdoor stuff. I just haven't seen the data to convince me that outdoor spread is a serious concern unless you are really up close to each other. So, please please please. I don't know the extent of your disability, but to the extent that you are able and have support from friends and loved ones, please enjoy your life. Staying isolated is not good for anyone's mental health. Sending you so much love!

Because I never made "a statement about how every person who is walking and breathing being portrayed as a loaded gun ready to go in and intentionally shoot up a place." Those are your words, not mine. You have repeatedly tried to reframe this issue as some sort of "scary" and "frightening" statement about my feeling towards patients, lecturing me about my "unconscious bias" and how I should stick to making a crap ton of money as lawyer. And people have called you out on your shenanigans. I've never said anything of the sort and I am not going to be baited into it because I don't believe it. This conversation has always been about my feelings re the mandates related to nurses and whether they should lose their jobs over them. Let's review what I said: "I hope every nurse that refuses to be vaccinated and boosted regularly (unless he or she has a legit medical exemption) gets kicked to the curb because those nurses clearly don't understand science and have no business being representatives of a profession that is grounded in evidence-based practice. Good riddance." "People do stupid stuff all of the time. I do stupid stuff all of the time. I don't intentionally do stupid stuff that puts other people in harm's way at my job. And if I did, I would expect to be fired. Why is this even controversial? We are not talking about people pigging out on too much pizza or drinking too much in their free time. We are talking about someone going into a hospital with a loaded weapon and intentionally shooting up the place. I don't care if you worked honorably for 20 years before that; you don't get to intentionally cause damage to people. When you know better, you do better. There was no vaccine at the beginning of the pandemic. Vaccines came out under emergency authorization. Some of us lined up to get them. Others hesitated. The vaccines were studied. Billions of doses were administered globally. They were deemed to be both safe and effective by physicians and scientists the world over. Now, those healthcare workers who hesitated are being told that the time for equivocation is over. It is time to be vaccinated to protect public health DURING A PANDEMIC. We are asked to be vaccinated for a myriad of other diseases and we do it. That's part of our job. You go into this profession knowing that that's part of our job. You don't get to opt out of vaccines and go to clinicals. It's part of the deal and everyone knows it. But, suddenly now, in the midst of a 100-year pandemic, after these vaccines have been vetted the world over, we have to put up with these refuseniks compromising patient care? GTFO here with that nonsense." And let me be clear again, since you seem to have difficulty understanding this: I stand by my belief that a nurse who is working in direct patient care is indeed walking around with a loaded weapon, that could go off at any moment, if he or she is not taking appropriate precautions (masking + vaccinating), which IMO is a breach of a nurse's ethical duties and grounds for termination. None of which has anything to do with patients or anyone else, so stop extrapolating and making baseless claims.

What part of this was avoiding the claim: "So, yes, if you have no way to know whether you are infectious or not, because you can be asymptomatic, and rapid home tests are still not readily available in this country, then when you are a nurse, you have a duty to your patients, who are relying on you for their safety, to err on the side of caution and assume that you are walking around with a loaded weapon. Therefore, IMO you *must* take the necessary precautions (masking + vaccinating) because, to do otherwise, and err on the side of assuming that you are healthy until proven otherwise, is to put your patients at risk because we know how Covid spreads silently and asymptomatically. And this choice, as I have said repeatedly, is a breach of your ethical duties as a nurse and grounds for termination by your employer." I answered your question directly and I stated the evidentiary basis for my claim. That you fail to grasp that is not my issue. And, I didn't ask you to assume that every person that you "come in contact with is a loaded gun," did I? You are making huge assumptions from very my specific claims, which is why I continue to point out your false equivalences. I said, "..."when you are a nurse, you have a duty to your patients, who are relying on you for their safety, to err on the side of caution..." Are you a nurse? If you aren't then I am not speaking to you because I have already stated numerous times that no duty = no breach. I speak to vaccine hesitant patients all of the time. My role is to educate people about the benefits and risks of vaccines. That's it. I do not guilt people. I do not pressure patients. I believe in informed consent and bodily autonomy. I also believe in personal responsibility for one's choices, and that if you choose to live in a collective society (versus self-sufficiently), we have certain duties and responsibilities, depending on the roles that we choose to take on in that society. For example, I chose to serve in our all-volunteer force as a member of the military. Therefore, I lost the right to be a conscientious objector. If I didn't like the prospect of potentially killing people, I didn't have to volunteer to serve in the Army. Likewise, if you choose to become a nurse, then you know going in that you lose the right to opt out of vaccinating against deadly diseases because we know from nursing school that vaccination supports public health. This isn't some surprising concept that is being sprung on people out of nowhere. Like I said, it's literally nursing school 101. So please cut it with the false equivalences. You're not fooling anyone here with these games.

Are we really arguing about this while over 700,000 people have died in this country? Perhaps, you are from another country that hasn't been ravaged as severely by this virus. Perhaps, you haven't seen the virus up close for the past 20 months, and the devastation that it has wrought to so many friends, colleagues, and patients in your life. If that is the case, consider yourself very very fortunate indeed. I actually count myself among the incredibly lucky because everyone in my immediate family has remained healthy to date, as have all of my parents and stepparents (who are Republicans and, to be honest, really could have gone down the rabbit hole). My marriage has also survived the pandemic (not so among many of my friends), as has our small business throughout the lockdown/difficult business climate in CA (enough said there). I also managed to graduate on time from nursing school, even though my clinicals in CA were shut down, and my cohort had to fly to another state to finish our program. So while none of this has been easy, I still consider myself very fortunate and am incredibly grateful for the privilege of access to these life-saving vaccines. So, yes, if you have no way to know whether you are infectious or not, because you can be asymptomatic, and rapid home tests are still not readily available in this country, then when you are a nurse, you have a duty to your patients, who are relying on you for their safety, to err on the side of caution and assume that you are walking around with a loaded weapon. Therefore, IMO you *must* take the necessary precautions (masking + vaccinating) because, to do otherwise, and err on the side of assuming that you are healthy until proven otherwise, is to put your patients at risk because we know how Covid spreads silently and asymptomatically. And this choice, as I have said repeatedly, is a breach of your ethical duties as a nurse and grounds for termination by your employer.

Why? The whole issue with Covid is that you have no way to know when you're infectious. If it was as simple as taking a temperature scan, we wouldn't be in this predicament. Only about 20% of patients that are infectious even run a fever. That's why all of the places that still maintain this type of security or hygiene theatre are ludicrous. Covid is airborne. And as long as you and I are walking around and breathing in close proximity to others, we are literally walking around with a loaded weapon that could potentially go off. Anyone who denies that is denying what we have learned about this virus in the last 20 months, which is fine for John Q Public. Disappointing, and a sad state of affairs re American society, but whatever. But, for nurses working with patients? Just...no. And, our best way at present to control the weapon is to put a trigger lock on it via masking and vaccinating, and hoping that the gun still doesn't go off. Yes, natural immunity from infection is a trigger lock as well, but again, it doesn't last forever either.

She is trying to draw a false equivalence between these anti-vax nurses, who go into a profession knowing that vaccines are part of the profession, and people who eat too much or drink too much in their free time. And now, you're making a false equivalence between your coworker, some rando student, and these anti-vax nurses. Again, these nurses have an *ethical duty* to provide safe patient care, to preserve the safety, integrity, and competence of the profession, and to improve their health care environments, consistent with the values of the profession. None of which are they doing at present. One of the first things you learn in law school is the concept that there can be no breach of contract where there is no duty. Your coworker and the random student don't owe anyone a duty -- maybe a moral one, you could argue, but certainly no ethical duty that is part of their profession. However, attorneys, physicians, *and nurses* have certain ethical duties that are literally part of their ethical codes of conduct. You breach those duties and you can lose your license. Like, it is literally nursing school 101. This is why this is not even a close call for hospital attorneys. If you have unvaxed nurses on staff, when there is an FDA approved vaccine available, the hospital is going to be liable if they don't require their staff to be vaccinated against a potentially deadly disease. This is an ethical and legal duty, and there is plenty of legal precedent for it. And as much as these anti-vaxxers want to protest the situation, they are going to lose. And, you can make whatever ad hominem attacks you want about me on this board, but I'm not crying about that loss. It's better for patients and it's better for the profession that these folks are culled. That has nothing to do with patients. Patients don't owe me a duty. Patients do stupid things all the time. I didn't go into healthcare expecting patients to make good choices. I went into healthcare to help people. Covid hasn't changed that. I try to educate people about the vaccines, but if they don't want them, I don't pressure them. I respect their right to informed consent and I hope that nothing bad happens to them or their family. That's it. But, am I upset at other nurses, who should know better, for putting extra stress on their colleagues and patients? Sure. I will own that. It's a stressful time right now, and I am human.

Yes, we do. It's clear that you don't find people to be scary who are intentionally willing to jeopardize their patients' safety by refusing to follow the established standard of care, which is to vaccinate. But, when I say "good riddance" that they are now being asked (20 months into the pandemic) to find some a new line of work, where they can be free to exercise their autonomous, personal choices re vaccination, this is somehow a frightening prospect. I am giving them exactly what they asked for: informed consent, bodily autonomy, and personal responsibility and accountability for their choices. Nurses are one of the top most trusted professions in the United States. To preserve that trust, we need people who can carry out the ethical duties of a nurse. Among those duties are safe patient care, owing the same duties to self as to others, preserving the safety, integrity, and competence of the profession, and improving health care environments that are consistent with the values of the profession. This is stuff that is straight of the American Nurses Assn Code of Ethics. If you cannot uphold these principles, and I think you'd be hard-pressed to argue how going against the standard of safe patient care and arguing against the overwhelming science in favor of vaccination is doing so, then I don't think it is a controversial statement to say that these people should be fired. And I do find it interesting, however, that you're certain that all of these unvaccinated nurses are only working in their units healthy, as if Covid actually worked that way. Like the unvaccinated ICU nurses that I worked with, who had Covid twice, I am sure that they didn't spread it to any of our already uber vulnerable patients in the ICU, right? And no one in my family has had Covid this entire time, despite my numerous work exposures, But, I am somehow the scary one in this scenario. Yes, we differ quite a bit in our values, to be sure.

But, we are the unhinged ones.

People do stupid stuff all of the time. I do stupid stuff all of the time. I don't intentionally do stupid stuff that puts other people in harm's way at my job. And if I did, I would expect to be fired. Why is this even controversial? We are not talking about people pigging out on too much pizza or drinking too much in their free time. We are talking about someone going into a hospital with a loaded weapon and intentionally shooting up the place. I don't care if you worked honorably for 20 years before that; you don't get to intentionally cause damage to people. When you know better, you do better. There was no vaccine at the beginning of the pandemic. Vaccines came out under emergency authorization. Some of us lined up to get them. Others hesitated. The vaccines were studied. Billions of doses were administered globally. They were deemed to be both safe and effective by physicians and scientists the world over. Now, those healthcare workers who hesitated are being told that the time for equivocation is over. It is time to be vaccinated to protect public health DURING A PANDEMIC. We are asked to be vaccinated for a myriad of other diseases and we do it. That's part of our job. You go into this profession knowing that that's part of our job. You don't get to opt out of vaccines and go to clinicals. It's part of the deal and everyone knows it. But, suddenly now, in the midst of a 100-year pandemic, after these vaccines have been vetted the world over, we have to put up with these refuseniks compromising patient care? GTFO here with that nonsense. My humanity is well intact. I changed my entire profession because I wanted to help my fellow humans -- whether they are mentally ill or proned and sedated. I could have gone back to making a crap ton of money as an attorney, but here I am, at almost 47 years old and a new grad nurse, suited up and ready to join the fight in the ICU. So, don't lecture me about my humanity or my compassion for my fellow humans from your keyboard.

THANK YOU! Why do people continue to think that they are immune to Covid forever? How many times do I have to repeat the story of the ICU nurses that I worked with in Texas that had Covid more than once because they believed the same bogus information and refused vaccination on that basis? I hope every nurse that refuses to be vaccinated and boosted regularly (unless he or she has a legit medical exemption) gets kicked to the curb because those nurses clearly don't understand science and have no business being representatives of a profession that is grounded in evidence-based practice. Good riddance.

I try to show people videos of what it's like inside of a Covid ICU as much as possible because, you are right, the public really needs to see more of it. Much much more. Working in the ICU during this pandemic has put the fear of G-d in me re Covid (and I haven't been working in a "Covid ICU"). IMO, it is criminal what is happening to our healthcare system because of the anti-vaxxers in our country. I cannot adequately express my anger. Those of you who don't understand the reason for these mandates really need to hear the words of the people being affected. This is how your family gets to say goodbye to you. You get to die of suffocation with an ICU nurse and a respiratory therapist by your side. Enjoy your "freedom": And let's not forget that it's not just mortality that matters. Covid causes tremendous disability: This was at the beginning of the pandemic. You can watch how these travel nurses were affected: https://www.wsj.com/video/series/in-depth-features/covid-chasers-the-nurses-fighting-coronavirus-from-hot-spot-to-hot-spot/E05FF3C1-0873-4AF9-ADA1-9F1CECE24065