I am quite sure that the DC government could have imposed a mandate. I am similarly sure that if the mandate included penalties affecting employment, it would have been challenged in court and would have been essentially worthless. But, not having a copy of the contract on hand, I can't provide you the specific language. This reality has been clear to anyone paying attention to the ongoing discussions. I have no idea how common medical exemptions are and I really don't care. Nor do I care about religious exemptions which I personally find even more absurd. But just about every mandate includes such exemptions so there is no reason for DC to be different. If those claiming exemptions want to get tested weekly for the indefinite future, that's their choice I guess. Personally, I'd do a different cost-benefit analysis. |
You are right, definitely a good first step. It is more work but the more people who are vaccinated, the fewer quarantines and COVID-related outages there will be. I work in a school and the follow-up work from quarantines and infected staff is a lot too. More vaccinations will cut down on that. My understanding is that fully vaccinated staff have to upload their vaccination card and they will get a "time off" award of 8 hours. |
As of today, they are required to either get vaccinated or get tested weekly. Realistically, we can't get better than that. A few posters who apparently have authoritarian tendencies think you can bludgeon people into compliance, but it just doesn't work that way. |
copying this from another thread, because it seems relevant: I work in HR and see the exemption requests from the vaccine mandates. There’s a lot of people with extreme religious beliefs that relate to vaccines generally or this vaccine more specifically because of the testing on the fetal cell line. (I’m always curious if these people also reject medicine tested on those lines.). There seems to be a large overlap with those people believing conspiracy theories about the vaccine because they also often cite inaccurate info about the supposed risks that they got off questionable internet sites. There are also people with medical requests that are fairly vague but similar to the lady above who said autoimmune, heart or clotting issues, etc. I sort of wonder about the doctors signing off on these requests but they are out there. TL;DR: People who still aren't vaccinated are kooks with bizarre theories about vaccines and coronavirus. |
This is just wrong. Vaccines have been freely available for months and yet a huge share of adults still aren't vaccinated (the vaccination rate in Ward 8 is 24 percent, which is lower than it is in Mississippi). It's probably safe to assume that by now that the vast majority of people who still aren't vaccinated have decided that they aren't ever going to get vaccinated. That's why everyone from the White House to the city of New York to the NFL is considering much more drastic measures to get people vaccinated. If we don't crank up the pressure, the mutations of the virus will get ever more dangerous and the pandemic will never end. Wearing a mask and just hoping that it eventually ends is not going to solve anything. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/biden-vaccines-delta/2021/08/05/4359ac76-f567-11eb-a49b-d96f2dac0942_story.html |
It would be nice if DC like NYC added more restrictions on non-vaccinated people - such as can only eat in restaurants if vaccinated. The more inconvenient we make life for these people, the more likely they are to get vaccinated |
I’m a teacher too. And DC gov is not good at follow through. So, yes, exactly right - this is a good first step but I wouldn’t get too excited. And I’m fully vaccinated but if I was an extreme anti vaccer, I would just buy a fake vaccine card off the internet and upload that. Not a chance anyone is looking closely at these things |
It would be helpful if health insurance companies said they won't pay for anything for people who aren't vaccinated. |
You are having trouble distinguishing between fantasy and reality. In your fantasy world, you just have to snap your fingers and everyone complies. In reality, a lot of people don't really care what you do with your fingers. If the Mayor simply told employees that they either had to get vaccinated or be fired, there would be an immediate court challenge. The order would be put on hold while the issue was adjudicated, and we would be no better off than we were yesterday. Your idea that Bowser could use dictatorial powers ignores the realty that Bowser is not a dictator. But, recognizing that any mandate had to include medical or religious exemptions, and by working with the unions, the Mayor achieved the best result that we were ever going to get (at least in a reasonable time frame). Employees can have all the objections to vaccines that they want to. They can believe that vaccines turn them into zombies (apparently one theory going around). But, they then have to be tested weekly. I predict that it won't be too many weeks before that gets old and vaccines don't look so bad. But, regardless, most will get vaccinated and the rest will be tested. All around, not a bad result. |
That’s correct. I’m staff (not a teacher) and I got an extra day off as soon as I uploaded my card. (I mean, I would have done the vaccine regardless given that I have chronic asthma and high blood pressure and didn’t want to have a potentially debilitating or fatal disease that I could easily prevent by having a rather painless vaccine - I had very mild side effects after both shots but honestly way better than the flu shot side effects I’ve experienced in the past.) I have one colleague with a genuine medical exemption, but religious exemptions are a bunch of malarkey. Parents pull those out all the time when they’re told their kids can’t come to school without their vaccines; all of a sudden, their religion forbids immunization against measles. 🙄 New York State did away with those a while ago; wish we’d do the same. |
So all anyone has to do to get a religious exemption is to say my religion opposes vaccination? I’m not sure anything more than that is required |
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Yeah, but the teachers I know who have refused thus far show their cards. It would be a lie that would be hard to follow through on long term. Besides, Delta is likely to make them sick at some point anyway. I find these people to be endlessly selfish and willing to argue their position and utter lack of responsibility to no end. We have yet to hear what the union negotiated to agree to this. |
Everyone I know with autoimmune disorders have been told to get vaccinated because the severe (aka death) risk is higher for people in a flare. I cannot imagine any doctor recommending no vaccine! I really think they have spoken with their doctors. |
They’ve spoken to doctors who don’t take insurance (those that accept insurance require vaccinations) and those doctors are basically getting paid to tell these people what they want to hear. It should be criminal. |