Rhode Island Defends Crazy Covid Policy
In the wake of staff shortages following the state's decision to fire all health care workers who refuse to get vaccinated, the Rhode Island Department of Health has opted to allow vaccinated covid-positive individuals to take their place. Department spokesman Joseph Wendelken explained that “the unvaccinated pose a greater overall risk because these social misfits reject the government's authority to decide what each person must do to benefit public health. In the long run allowing these individuals to flout the government's directives poisons social cohesion.”
“While being treated by a vaccinated person who is covid-positive does present some immediate risk to patients, this risk is narrowly confined to those who come into direct contact with the infected staff members,” Wendelken argued. “Statistics show that the individual's risk of being seriously harmed by contact with a vaccinated covid carrier is very low. For people under the age of 70 there is a less than 1% chance of dying even if they become infected. Realistically, covid is not something we should worry about.”
Whether Wendelken's reasoning regarding the comparative risks of employing vaccine dissenters vs. vaccine compliant covid-positives is being tested by a covid outbreak at Eleanor Slater Hospital, a state-run facility where 28 patients were newly infected as of Thursday, January 6th. Wendelkin rejected the possibility that covid-positive staff could be the source of the new infections “because they all wore masks.”
