Vaccine mandate deadline creates perfect storm for deadly nationwide nurse shortage
Unanticipated consequences?
President Joe Biden's newly announced vaccine mandate might backfire on him -- big time.
In August, then-New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced that all health care workers in the state would be required to have at least the first dose of the COVID-19 vaccination by Sept. 27 or be fired.
The consequences of this statewide mandate are already being felt at Lewis County General Hospital in Lowville, New York. The hospital just announced "a pause" in delivering babies after staff members in the maternity unit handed in their resignations over the controversial mandate, according to WWNY-TV.
On Friday, Lewis County Health System Chief Executive Officer Gerald Cayer told reporters that 73 percent of the hospital's 629 employees have been vaccinated and that the mandate had prompted 30 more to get the shot. However, it also led 30 employees to resign.
If the mandate is causing problems in a highly vaccinated state, how much worse will the situation be in states such as Alabama, Wyoming, Idaho and West Virginia that have vaccination rates of 40 percent or less?
In May, the University of St. Augustine published the results of a study of the nationwide shortage of nurses. The report said nursing shortages have occurred "periodically since the early 1900s. Multiple factors led to each shortage, from world wars to economic recessions."
The current shortage began in 2012, according to the study, long before we'd ever heard about the coronavirus. It projected that "1.2 million new registered nurses will be needed by 2030 to address the current shortage."
"In a state that already had one of the nation’s lowest ratios of nurses to population, job postings for nurses jumped by double-digit percentages in each of its regions in 2020, then jumped again," the report said. "As of this week [Aug. 20], 11,000 nursing positions across the state sit vacant, according to the nursing job service Vivian. More than 1,700 of those are in intensive care units."
With about 42 percent of Georgia's population fully vaccinated, according to Becker's, the Biden mandate could be devastating there.
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