Jennifer Bridges knew what was coming when her director at Houston Methodist hospital called her up in June to inquire about her vaccination status.
Bridges, a 39-year-old registered nurse, responded “absolutely not” when asked if she was vaccinated or had made an effort to get vaccinated. She was terminated on the spot.
“We all knew we were getting fired,” Bridges, 39, told CBS News. “We knew unless we took that shot to come back, we were getting fired today. There was no ifs, ands or buts.”
Bridges was one of more than 150 hospital workers fired by Houston Methodist hospital.
“All last year, through the COVID pandemic, we came to work and did our jobs,” said Kara Shepherd, a labor and delivery nurse who joined Bridges and other workers in an unsuccessful lawsuit. “We did what we were asked. This year, we’re basically told we’re disposable.”
‘PLEASE SEND HELP NOW’
Shepherd and her colleagues may be disposable in the eyes of hospital administrators, but they are perhaps not as easily replaced as she or Houston Methodist thought.
Two months after firing unvaccinated hospital staff, Houston Methodist is one of several area hospitals experiencing a severe shortage of medical personnel. Media reports say hospitals have “reached a breaking point” because of a flood of COVID-19 cases.
In an editorial published Tuesday, the Houston Chronicle said the 25-county hospital area that includes Houston had more patients in hospital beds—more than 2,700—than at any point in 2021. News reports make it clear that hospitals are struggling to keep up.
KHOU-11, a local news station, says medical tents have been erected outside of Lyndon B. Johnson Hospital but are vacant because of a shortage of nurses.
“Please send help now,” said Dr. George Williams (depicted in main photo), chief ICU medical officer for LBJ Hospital.
While most media reports focus on LBJ Hospital, reports also make it clear other hospitals, including Houston Methodist, are experiencing similar struggles. The Houston Chronicle says Harris Health System (which includes LBJ) is short some 250 nurses, while the University of Texas Medical Branch has requested an additional 100 nurses to help address staff shortages at four hospitals.
Baylor St. Luke’s Medical Center, a private Houston hospital jointly owned by Baylor College and a local healthcare system, said the hospital “is definitely being impacted” by the nurse shortage.
As for Houston Methodist, the hospital is reportedly struggling as well—although they’ve yet to admit it publicly.
“An internal memo at Houston Methodist Hospital said it ‘is struggling with staffing as the numbers of our COVID-19 patients rise,’” the Chronicle reports.
Public officials are scrambling to address the shortage, which has created a massive patient backlog throughout the Houston area. More than a week ago, Tex Gov. Greg Abbott requested out of state assistance for the statewide crisis, including 2,500 out of state nurses. LBJ Hospital officials said those nurses have not yet arrived.
The metro-wide shortage of nurses reportedly came to light when an ER doctor emailed a state senator about the dire situation in hospitals.
“The combined increase in volume from (COVID and) existing normal volume (and) nursing shortage has made this a terrible disaster at every ER and hospital in the city of Houston,” the physician wrote, according to the Chronicle.
COBRA EFFECTS
It’s unclear to what extent Houston Methodist’s decision to fire 150 unvaccinated medical workers exacerbated the nursing crisis. For perhaps obvious reasons, hospital officials have been mum on the issue.
What we know is that Houston hospitals that did not abruptly fire 150 employees struggled to deal with the COVID spike, and in some cases people died as a result. So it’s safe to presume that Houston Methodist’s decision to fire 150 employees a few weeks before the Delta variant arrived in force didn’t make the situation any better and probably made it much worse.
Some may be tempted to think Houston Methodist was able to quickly replace the workers they lost, but evidence suggests this is unlikely. Apart from the broader shortage, front line nurses “are burned out,” they say.
“We are all tired of this; nurses are tired of this,” Texas Nurses Association CEO Cindy Zolnierek wrote in a recent public letter.
That Houston Methodist hospital didn’t intend to exacerbate its shortage of hospital staff goes without saying, but it’s also an important reminder about what economists call the Cobra Effect.
Every human decision brings about consequences, intended ones and unintended ones. Unintended consequences are so common economists often call them “Cobra Problems,” after an interesting historical event in India that occurred when the British Empire tried to eradicate cobras by putting out a bounty on them. (Can you guess what happened?)
When hospital administrators set their policy—get vaccinated or lose your job—their goal was to increase vaccination rates of hospital staff. The unintended consequence was a shortage of nurses and other hospital workers during a deadly pandemic.
In June, Houston Methodist’s president, Marc Boom, sounded confident that his coercive methods were effective, noting that almost 25,000 of the health system’s 26,000 workers were fully vaccinated.
“The science proves that the vaccines are not only safe but necessary if we are going to turn the corner against COVID-19,” Boom told employees in a statement.
Other Houston hospitals saw things differently. Two months before Houston Methodist fired its workers, Harris Health System officials announced they would not be requiring hospital workers to get vaccinated, noting none of the vaccines were fully approved by the FDA.
Americans will of course disagree about which CEO’s approach was the correct one. The pandemic, after all, has been bitterly divisive because we’re deeply divided over this very question: should coercive means be employed to achieve certain desired healthcare outcomes, and if so, to what extent?
In 2020, political leaders around the world said yes to this question, and the results were disastrous. A year later, private companies are playing a different version of the same game: take the vaccine, or get fired.
Like the lockdown champions of 2020, corporate leaders no doubt believe their action is moral, proper, and will achieve their desired result. But as the Cobra Effect reminds us, focusing strictly on desired outcomes and ignoring potential unintended outcomes is a good way to get bit.
This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.
Welp, stupid is as stupid does. When will hospital boards learn to hire medically trained personnel to run their lofty administrations? (Rhetorical question, we know they won’t.) What makes a non-medically trained administrator think they know more about medicine than the ‘boots on the ground’ nurses? ====> Propaganda, mainstream variety.
The stupidity and irony of brainwashed idiots no longer amazes me or even surprises me. Hospitals and clinics are run by nurses. They (most of them) knew better about how to treat SARS viruses. Lack of situational awareness will continue until the toxic mRNA brew kills off the woke idiots.
Find Richard Citizen Journalist on Telegram. He has been taking videos of parking lots at major hospitals, including Houston Methodist. Yanno, those 4-5-6 level stacked arrangements. Except for a handful to a dozen of staff vehicles they have been EMPTY. Crickets at Emergency unit doors.
Imagine that. The stupidity should be painful.
Medical facilities have a duty to provide a safe environment for their patients (and staff). Hand washing patrols routinely circulate through most hospitals in order to document the facilities efforts in mitigating nosocomial infections. Any business or institution has the privilege of having requirements to maintain continued employment. Most employees are “At Will”, and are therefore subject to the rules of the employer- but are free to seek employment elsewhere. As seen in the Methodist Hospital case, defiance ends in termination. The healthcare workers who refuse to get vaccinated are going to have a hard time finding employment as more institutions require vaccination. Their “victory” will be Pyrrhic. Hospitals will adjust. Nursing students will graduate and fill the empty slots. Life will go on.
In light of the Biden Administration encouraging employers to mandate vaccines in order to retain employment while ironically not requiring vaccination mandates for their own staff, Gab has created a No Vax Mandate Job Board group.
You can view and join the group here.
This job board is for sharing job openings that do not require employees to inject themselves with an experimental substance or violate their bodily autonomy and religious beliefs in order to retain employment. This is also a board for job seekers to share their resume, skills, and story.
Related resource: DOWNLOAD COVID VACCINE RELIGIOUS EXEMPTION DOCUMENTS HERE
At Gab we do not require our employees to be vaccinated. In fact we don’t pry into any of the personal health choices of our team because frankly it’s none of our business. We know there are many businesses who share these values with us and many people looking to work for those businesses.
This job board aligns with Gab’s vision of building infrastructure for a parallel economy and we hope to expand further on this job board initiative in the coming months.
As Facebook and other Big Tech giants work to silence and “fact check” any and all vaccine dissent Gab remains committed to mission of being the home of free speech, individual sovereignty, and the free flow of information online.
Andrew Torba
CEO, Gab.com
Jesus is King
Click here to view this email as a blog post and please share it.
I don’t agree. Not this time. People have had enough and are pushing back. So your recommendation is to get the jab and keep your job (and your mouth shut?)
In light of the Biden Administration encouraging employers to mandate vaccines in order to retain employment while ironically not requiring vaccination mandates for their own staff, Gab has created a No Vax Mandate Job Board group.
You can view and join the group here.
This job board is for sharing job openings that do not require employees to inject themselves with an experimental substance or violate their bodily autonomy and religious beliefs in order to retain employment. This is also a board for job seekers to share their resume, skills, and story.
Related resource: DOWNLOAD COVID VACCINE RELIGIOUS EXEMPTION DOCUMENTS HERE
At Gab we do not require our employees to be vaccinated. In fact we don’t pry into any of the personal health choices of our team because frankly it’s none of our business. We know there are many businesses who share these values with us and many people looking to work for those businesses.
This job board aligns with Gab’s vision of building infrastructure for a parallel economy and we hope to expand further on this job board initiative in the coming months.
As Facebook and other Big Tech giants work to silence and “fact check” any and all vaccine dissent Gab remains committed to mission of being the home of free speech, individual sovereignty, and the free flow of information online.
Andrew Torba
CEO, Gab.com
Jesus is King
Click here to view this email as a blog post and please share it.
If your virtue signaling is meant for Andreas’ blog readers I think you’re definitely in the wrong place.
You’re either extremely naive and lazy, believing everything stated by the mainstream media like a good sheep or you know full well what is happening to our nation and are enabling their agenda.
Your copy/pasta reflects extreme laziness – what’s your point?. Are you attempting to imply you are Andrew Torba? If you’re trying to pass on a religious ‘exemption’, epic fail. Even if you’re a Christian Scientist it won’t work. You obviously have no idea the entity you’re dealing with, do you?
Not that what I have to say, or anyone else – especially the propaganda echo-chambers of ABC, CBS, NBC, MSDNC, and CNN – should be taken as ‘gospel’ or ‘the real truth’ I strongly recommend doing something you obviously have not done – research outside the realms of the main stream and do some deep research. Try utilizing being open to information that doesn’t fit the mainstream narrative, using critical thinking when doing so. One hint: you won’t find anything ‘non-mainstream narrative’ using Goog.
Because you began pointing out “washing hands and keeping efforts in mitigating nosocomial infections”, I’m guessing it’s the former and you’ve been well brainwashed. Your canned reply is actually comical and completely avoids the whole point, which is blatantly obvious you have no idea what is being done at this point in my nation. You have no clue how a corona virus is transmitted. You have no awareness of the fact that, according to the CDC website, what is called the ‘common cold’ AND the ‘flu’ are in the SAME SARS family of corona viruses as what is being called ‘COVID-19’, Wuhan flu and China virus. BTW, that annual ‘flu’ deaths were mysteriously replaced by what was called ‘COVID-19’ deaths. If that makes sense to you quit reading. Full stop. There is no hope.
Nope. It was NOT because everyone was wearing masks. Again, refer to the CDC website (who, for some reason, has a habit of changing their ‘advice’ according to the current narrative.) which goes (or did) into why N-95 mask pores are too large to prevent the transmission of corona viruses. That’s not taking into consideration that millions of people wore cute cloth masks that their wife/mother/grandmother/friend with an etsy store gave/sold them. Cute, but no cigar. Seriously, that’s stupid. Multiple masks don’t make the N-95 mask pores smaller or negate any risks. If you don’t get that, try imagining putting up a chain-link fence to stop mosquitoes. Asinine.
Now to the meat. Use duckduckgo to look up Dr. Robert Malone who is the inventor of the mRNA technology behind the COVID-19 vaccines. Other than being told the truth by one of the researchers at the Wuhan Inst. of Virology you can’t get a better opinion about the nest of poisonous, toxic formulas that are being pushed (forced) on the world community. NOT Joyless Reid or Fredo Cuomo.
The big question is why is it being forced? How long has the ‘common cold’ and flu been around? They transmit the same way ‘COVID-19’ does. The annual death count has followed the increasing curve with population. In the US the influenza death count was around 400,000 in 2019 (that’s the last time I checked the CDC site), was affected by the same comorbidities as what has been with the so-called ‘COVID-19’ – obese, elderly, cancers, diabetes, smokers, certain heart and lung diseases. Yet we *still* expect the cold and flu every.single.year. No totalitarian push for vaxxes every year for those, huh? Why? Seriously – WHY? And why for a SARS virus that has a survival rate of 99.985%?
We went from the first lie of “give it two weeks to flatten the curve” to people being thrown in jail for not wearing a face diaper or trying to keep their businesses open to survive? That has NEVER been done for the annual influenza virus which has historically had the same % of deaths that ‘COVID-19′ had. Why?
I got the impression you call yourself a Christian, using Andrew Torbas’ copy/paste ‘Jesus is King’. If you are you clearly need to spend more time *studying* the Bible. Start with Revelations.
If you’re curious and inclined to get deep in the rabbit hole use duckduckgo to look up ‘Orsini’ (the gray pope), who controlls the Rothschld family and the Rockefeller family. Then look up ‘The Rockefeller Foundation Report 2010 – Lockstep’. If you can’t connect the dots to what is transpiring now there’s no hope for you.
I’m a United States Marine. I served six years for my country, took an oath to protect and defend my country against all enemies, foreign and domestic. My oath never expires. I served honorably and attained the rank of E-5 Sergeant. At this time my nation is being attacked. We are in an ongoing war with foreign AND domestic terrorists. Anyone who enables or conspires with the enemy is my enemy. Today 12 Marines and a Navy Corpsman were killed by a foreign terrorist when they were doing their jobs. The person responsible for their deaths is the incompetent, incapable, delusional puppet who maquerades as president of the United States; a 49-year politician who has a track record of failing at everything and never accomplishing anything for any citizen of this nation except for himself and his son.
I have no nerves nor patience left. Make the decision to be a patriot or the enemy, you’re either one or the other, there is no in between. At this point it doesn’t matter to me, it’s on you and you are the one who will pay the price, either here on earth or when your day of judgement comes.
Make your choice wisely.
This is the most recent relevant article about the intentional FDA lie /deception about a ‘vaxx’ being ‘approved’. Steve Bannon interviews Dr. Robert Malone.
https://www.wnd.com/2021/08/stunner-expert-says-fda-approved-pfizer-shot-not-people-getting/?utm_source=Email&utm_medium=wnd-breaking&utm_campaign=breaking&utm_content=breaking&ats_es=93700919cd18b5d460e3ef67ae2d076d
Bravo! Well said. Glad you are among my readers! Thank you.