Follow the science. Fire the incompetent nurses.

Protests at Sanford:  illiterate and maskless

Employees at Sanford Health, my provider, are staging protests over the requirement that they must be vaccinated.  I have appointments this month for regularly scheduled wellness checkups.  If Sanford has people on staff who think that a vaccination requirement is bullying and a violation of their freedom, they cast serious doubt on their medical competence to treat anybody for anything.  They have demonstrated that they are unqualified to practice medicine.

The protest organizer in Sioux Falls said, “I stand here to support our staff in there that are dealing with being bullied. Sanford is setting a precedent to not allow people to have the right to their own bodies, if this goes through what’s next?”

Ironically, this protest was taking place at the same time that
major healthcare organizations, Sanford and Avera, were holding press conferences on the surge of coronavirus cases in South Dakota and what measures could be taken to stop the pandemic.   The protest signs suggest that getting vaccinated is a matter of fear and that the Center for Disease Control and Department of Justice (I don't know when the DOJ entered the healthcare field) are making laws.  The agencies in question by protesters are carrying out their Constitutional duties: " in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty."  In some ways, the protest demonstration benefits the rest of us because it identifies which of these maskless idiots it is best to stay away from.

As for competence in medicine, the field has recognized for some time that medical "students learn from the beginning that their responsibilities include care of communities not just individual patients, that achieving better health depends on much more than a well educated physician, and that prevention is just as important and often more effective than sophisticated treatment."

Sanford has given its employees until Nov. 1 to show their proof of vaccination.  I was fully vaccinated in February, but when I keep my appointments later this month, I would like to be assured that the people attending to my health are competent enough to apply the principles of community medicine to their practice of it.

[Just as I was getting ready to hit the publish button for this, I was notified that my seven-year-old grandson, who wasn't feeling well this morning, was tested at school for Covid-19 and the test was positive.  Thank you protesters for this blessing of liberty.]