Letters to the editor: Vaccine requirement

Vaccine requirement

Companies are well within their rights to require employees to get a vaccine for COVID-19, just as they do with other vaccines, require employees to pass drug tests, or perform their jobs in specific ways. It is a foundation of our magnificent free market economy that the government stays out of the workings of businesses as much as possible, and the push by a few very vocal lawmakers to interfere with that freedom violates the principles they claimed to believe in when they ran for office. Individuals are free to make their own health decisions, and that should always be respected, but so should the decisions of private organizations.

Decision making is almost always best when it’s done by those close to the situation. Our hospitals decided it was in the best interest of their staff and the community they serve to implement this requirement, even if that meant losing some employees who exercise their right to leave because of it. We should trust that decision, and encourage our lawmakers to do the same.

James Petzke, Meridian

Public health risk

Just when I think it can’t get any crazier, Lt. Gov. Janice McGeachin and other legislators oppose the imposition of vaccine requirements on the basis that getting a vaccine is a “personal and private” decision. That may be true. However, one’s decision ceases to be “personal and private” when one goes out in public and interacts with others in a way that puts others’ life and health at risk and impinges upon business owners’ ability to keep their livelihoods safe for themselves and their customers. While the decision to be vaccinated or not may be “personal and private” the decision to be a public health risk is not.

Those who choose, for whatever reason, to remain unvaccinated need to accept the consequences of their decision, mask up in public, remain socially distanced or stay home. Those who want to legislate the prevention of health and safety precautions clearly are not concerned with the public. Instead, they are knowingly putting others at risk and doing public harm. This is the ultimate in selfishness and the opposite of what we should be able to expect from those in public service. The hypocrisy is astounding.

Laura Simic, Boise

Vaccine guidelines

Janice McGeachin is a hypocrite. She is supposed to stand for less government interference, yet she wants to tell private hospitals how to run their business and what employment qualification requirements can and cannot be. OMG what is that but government overreach.

My son, a doctor in California, has been dealing with Covid crisis. Here is some info McGeachin obviously does not know. It is from the American Medical Association, the main body giving guidelines to doctors.

“Physicians and other health care workers who decline to be immunized with a safe and effective vaccine, without a compelling medical reason, can pose an unnecessary medical risk to vulnerable patients or colleagues, said AMA Board Member Michael Suk, MD, JD, MPH, MBA. “Physicians must strike an ethical balance between their personal commitments as moral individuals and their obligations as medical professionals.”

“When a highly transmissible disease that poses significant medical risk for vulnerable patients or colleagues, or threatens the availability of the health care workforce, and particularly a disease that has potential to become pandemic, and for which there is an available, safe and effective vaccine, physicians have a responsibility to accept immunization unless there is a recognized medical contraindication.”

Cheryl Lomax, Meridian

Vaccine strategy

I am suggesting an alternate COVID-19 vaccine strategy to target the non-believers and anti-vaxers. Beginning in one month, all people who have not chosen to be vaccinated will have to pay for the vaccine, have to pay for all doctor visits related to the virus and be responsible for all hospital costs related to the virus. Anyone interested in researching the safety record of the vaccine and why it was possible to develop it relatively quickly should read a scientific study rather than the misinformation found in the media and social websites, who thrive on sensational but inaccurate information. As for your freedom to choose to not to be vaccinated, does that supersede the rights of others to not be infected by you? Freedom comes at a cost, and you need to be ready to pay for it.

Lori Poublon Ramirez, Meridian