Hospital exec says employees are walking off the job • Hacker News Board

Re: Hospital exec says employees are walking off the job

#221

Post by nonameiguess » Thu, Aug 05, 2021, 5:30 PM UTC

iamadog55 wrote: post #168

psychometry wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people who fall under "health care workers" don't have a medical degree. Many, including techs and nursing assistants, don't have a bachelor's degree either. So, that population isn't really all that different from the general U.S. population in many ways. Among physicians and medical researchers with PhDs, though, you'll find very little resistance to vaccines.

I'm reluctant to leverage such language, but this is an appeal to authority. And there's tons of historical evidence that authorities failed to produce their predicted end without regard to their field, specialty, education, politics, etc... So to acede to this solely on the basis that the "intelligentsia" has is perhaps just as blind a means as a coinflip. And there is of course a plenitude of arguments about how po…

It's important to recognize the difference between deductive and inductive logic. Much of academia, from lit reviews to citations to the way people are trained and educated, is inherently based upon appeal to authority. Appeal to authority is a logical fallacy only insofar as you're considering purely deductive logic, in the sense that a statement "X believes Y, therefore Y" is not formally valid. That doesn't mean the beliefs of authorities in a field are not valid informally as pieces of evidence.

Whether or not medical consensus has been more predictive than a coin flip historically is an empirical claim. I have no idea if it's true, but that seems doubtful. It's particularly interesting to cite penicillin as an example of medical authorities being wrong. Child mortality has dropped more than a hundredfold in the United States since the invention of penicillin. Not that penicillin is solely responsible for that, but I have to question whether possibly negative developmental effects you are trying to cite here really offsets the negative effects of children having potentially deadly infections. I had a severe case of pneumonia when I was 5 and would have died if not for antibiotics. Death is surely the worst possible negative developmental effect.

Re: Hospital exec says employees are walking off the job

#222

Post by WalterSear » Thu, Aug 05, 2021, 5:32 PM UTC

varelse wrote: post #95

I suspect one could go a long way towards solving this by announcing that unvaccinated covid cases will get zero health insurance coverage. Make exceptions for those that truly cannot be vaccinated but to hell with everyone else. Going further, make society difficult to navigate for people unwilling to be vaccinated or wear masks and our frontline workers will have much better lives. Why are we compromising our quali…

This is about to happen: once the FDA approve the vaccine, it will be legal for health insurance companies to give preferential treatment to the vaccinated and for employers to mandate vaccines.

Re: Hospital exec says employees are walking off the job

#223

Post by scohesc » Thu, Aug 05, 2021, 5:34 PM UTC

psychometry wrote: post #73

_brnu wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's notable that there is substantial resistance to vaccines even among health care workers. https://www.webmd.com/vaccines/covid-19-vaccine/news/2021062...

Most people who fall under "health care workers" don't have a medical degree. Many, including techs and nursing assistants, don't have a bachelor's degree either. So, that population isn't really all that different from the general U.S. population in many ways. Among physicians and medical researchers with PhDs, though, you'll find very little resistance to vaccines.

Strange how the medical system trusts these people enough to parrot the mantra of "this vaccine is safe and effective", let alone actually administer it!

Re: Hospital exec says employees are walking off the job

#224

Post by ectopod » Thu, Aug 05, 2021, 5:34 PM UTC

axaxs wrote: post #167

flerchin wrote: post #69

I don't understand the regional disparities in nurse pay. I know nurses in CA and TX that make close to $200k.

Is there a big one? Or is it that there are what, like 10 types of things called nurse now? I'm asking earnestly, not making an accusation. Ten years ago in a LCOL area, I knew an RN making about that, and they were treated like queens. Was able to work 3 12's, be paid for 40 hrs, and given hotel stay for free, among other things...usually including optional unlimited overtime at double pay. Then I knew some CNAs or…

"Nurse" covers a huge round of competencies in the UK. The standard full-time pay scale goes from £18K to £105K.

https://www.nurses.co.uk/careers-hub/nursing-pay-guide/

Re: Hospital exec says employees are walking off the job

#225

Post by iammisc » Thu, Aug 05, 2021, 5:37 PM UTC

varelse wrote: post #212

iammisc wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a socialized medicine country, I'd understand this argument. However, in a private medical system, there's no reason for this. If an unvaccinated person can pay, they ought to be treated. It's their money.

And private insurance has a long history of denying claims. How is this any different? https://www.cms.gov/CCIIO/Resources/Forms-Reports-and-Other-...

Because the denied claims are the responsibility of the individual, not the government.

Re: Hospital exec says employees are walking off the job

#226

Post by mullen » Thu, Aug 05, 2021, 5:43 PM UTC

motohagiography wrote: post #201

varelse wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because this is an out group constantly endangering the well-being of others? It really is one. Or if it isn't, then what exactly is it? Your body, your choices, your consequences, but not mine or anyone else's. Why is the right to dodge vaccination and masks so important, so absolutely vital, so incredibly on target that we risk the destruction of the Republic itself if we mandate them? Do you also support my right…

I sincerely believe this hesitancy issue is designed to identify people as offside and as a wedge issue or scissor statement, and not as discourse to derive facts about the topic. Blaming the hesitant and making histrionic claims is like trying to convince me of some eugenic racist theory, where it's just a fast filter that repels everyone intelligent enough to disagree with you and leaves you with a remainder of eas…

This isn't a Political debate, this is Public Health. The data is super clear, the only way out of this Public Health disaster is vaccines. The faster that everyone gets their vaccine shots, the faster ALL OF US can get out of this pandemic that is negatively impacting all of our lives. The current vaccines can do that with next to zero impact on a person's health.

Individuals not getting vaccine shots are not endangering just their lives, they are endangering the Public Health. They are putting unnecessary stress on the Health Care system and allowing themselves to be the incubator of the next varent that prolongs this Pandemic.

We're not Scapegoating anyone for this Pandemic because the people who choose not to get vaccinated are driving and causing this Pandemic. They really are to blame for the Pandemic in its current form.

BTW: Public Health > Individual Freedom

Re: Hospital exec says employees are walking off the job

#227

Post by bzbarsky » Thu, Aug 05, 2021, 5:44 PM UTC

papito wrote: post #106

muaytimbo wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assume we're talking about Bezos here, Amazon pays above the prevailing wage in most markets and if workers don't feel they are being treated fairly they have the choice to work elsewhere. Bezos is flying to space not "just because", he's flying to space in order to build another company we all might benefit from, like AWS or Prime. He's flying to space because he's earned it, by improving a lot of developers and c…

This fetishizing of the rich is exactly the problem. How dare these socialists take this wealth and give it to the unthankful moochers! No one is talking about "punishing" the ultra-rich, but I would like to see them pay around my percentage tax rate, which is 28% - that's just Federal. I challenge you to find a wealthy person paying anywhere near that. The top tax rate in the US, decades ago, was 90%. It effectively…

> The top tax rate in the US, decades ago, was 90%.

Which pretty much no one paid because there were so many exceptions to it. Starting with the fact that the top long-term capital gains tax rate was 25%, not 90%.

A lot of those exceptions got eliminated as part of the process of reducing the top marginal rate to the levels we observe now. The current "top" Federal rate is 39.35% on earned income, 40.8% on interest, non-qualified dividends, and short-term capital gains, and 23.8% on qualified dividends and long-term capital gains. That assumes a large enough income that we're not worrying about Social Security in any way, or phaseouts of various sorts or whatnot, but _are_ hitting the extra medicare tax and net investment tax provisions of the ACA. It also assumes that the employer side of the 1.45% Medicare tax is not incident on the employee, which of course it is, but we're comparing "headline" rates.

So specifically for Jeff Bezos, most of whose "income" is presumably long-term capital gains due to AMZN price appreciation, the difference between the "decades ago" utopia you describe and now is the difference between a 25% and 23.8% marginal rate on that long-term capital gain income.

All that said, are you paying a 28% _marginal_ rate, or a 28% _effective_ rate? And are you specifically talking about "wealthy" people or "high-income" people? I ask because last I checked the top 1% of incomes paid something on the order of 25% _average_ Federal tax rate for the last several years (i.e. after the tax cuts a few years ago), and the top 0.1% of incomes paid closer to 27-28%. That's just counting income and payroll taxes, not the incidence of corporate income taxes or whatnot. And again, just Federal; state taxes are a separate story.

Re: Hospital exec says employees are walking off the job

#228

Post by varelse » Thu, Aug 05, 2021, 5:44 PM UTC

iammisc wrote: post #220

varelse wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The IFR seems to be about 1% now that we a have a lot of data, and a bit higher in the US. But that could change or are you asserting it won't? And are you completely unconcerned about new variants? We'll have to disagree on that. The Delta variant has saturated ICUs again, no problemo I gather? And you're misrepresenting the paper. It doesn't claim 35% fatality, it cites the 35% fatality of MERS, a distantly related…

> But that could change or are you asserting it won't How can you interpret what I wrote to say that a new virus or variant certainly won't cause a higher fatality rate? Anything can happen at any time. For all we know, a new virus could become prevalent. Typically though, we base public policy based on things that have already happened and the likelihood of future things. There is little reason to believe COVID will…

So you assert viruses cannot evolve to be deadlier but at the same time insist they always evolve to become less deadly.

But the only evolutionary imperative is more virus particles. If becoming less deadly is the best path, the virus becomes less deadly. But if increased fatality comes along with making more virus particles, it will get deadlier. But don't take it from me:

"But there’s no obvious evolutionary advantage for SARS-CoV-2 to reduce its virulence, because it pays little price for occasionally killing people: It spreads readily from infected people who are not yet feeling sick, and even from those who may never show symptoms of illness." - https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/how-viruses-ev...

>COVID does not seem to be bouncing between animal hosts

Um.... No...

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/article/wild-us-d...

Re: Hospital exec says employees are walking off the job

#229

Post by MarkLowenstein » Thu, Aug 05, 2021, 5:47 PM UTC

joshgrib wrote: post #206

MarkLowenstein wrote: post #195

Did they walk off the job in December and January, when they had higher than the current numbers of infection for 2 months straight? CNN is highlighting this non-unique situation to dump on a hated "red" state. Will they be there in a week, when "blue" Oregon, Washington, and Hawaii all have bigger numbers than they've ever seen? Those states all social-distanced themselves into ripe fruit, ready for picking by the m…

Does social distancing somehow increase the risk of getting the Delta? I did some searching and couldn't find anything to back that up, if a certain state was better at social distancing the first time it seems like they probably would be for the next one too

I meant to point out that if a region has kept COVID conflagrations from happening, via social distancing efforts, they will have accumulated less natural immunity, thus they are riper for conflagrations in the future. The way I predict "who's next" in the U.S. is to look at which states are at the bottom in terms of infections per capita. Those are the ripest. The technique has worked very well for me thus far.

Re: Hospital exec says employees are walking off the job

#230

Post by FireBeyond » Thu, Aug 05, 2021, 5:49 PM UTC

bigmattystyles wrote: post #79

pavel_lishin wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're underplaying non-financial incentives. I would rather have a job that pays $X but offers flexible work hours and vacation time that allows me to be a better parent, than a job that pays $1.5X but won't let me take a day or afternoon off to (e.g.) take my kid to the doctor, etc. Granted, that probably applies more to WFH desk jobs than front-line nurses.

An RN I know in New Orleans makes a paltry $28 / hour. Insidiously, they gave her 10k upfront for a 3 year contract. If she leaves, she has to give it back. She put it straight to her student loans so now she’s stuck there. I agree with op, we say we love our front line workers, but that’s just talk. I’m not sure but there’s not much of a union for them down there.

Yeah, here in the PNW, I could point her to two companies that will give her work at her choice of hospitals for $65/hr, with "as much work as she wants".

Don't start me on EMTs working 24 or 48 hour shifts for $11/hr.