Delta Air Lines will charge employees on the company health plan $200 a month if they fail to get vaccinated against COVID-19, a policy the airline's top executive says is necessary because the average hospital stay for the virus costs the airline $40,000.
An update on Monday's post, about a Toledo-area brewery that got canceled over a tweet by Senate candidate John Mandel congratulating a sick employee for reporting to work. The restaurant is none too happy with ol' Joshy.
One of its owners made their position on sick employees very clear to Toledo's WTVG:
It is our policy for employees to inform all management before coming to work. As soon as we found out, we sent our employee home.
The correct response. Sick employees don't work, period, especially during a global pandemic of an airborne virus.
Yesterday, the FDA granted full and final approval of the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine.
Calling the agency's approval "a pivotal moment" in the battle against Covid, FDA Acting Commissioner Dr. Janet Woodcock said:
While this and other vaccines have met the FDA's rigorous scientific standards for emergency use authorization, as the first FDA approved Covid-19 vaccine, the public can be confident that this vaccine meets the FDA's gold standard for safety, effectiveness and manufacturing quality that we require for an approved product.
PERRYSBURG, OH — @InsideTheFive is a cool brewery started by two NFL vets. Great food and spirited waitresses!
— Josh Mandel (@JoshMandelOhio) August 20, 2021
Even though Brianne was sick today, she came to work because she knew they were short servers.
These are the type of American workers that make our country strong. pic.twitter.com/o0VFkDkjuo
That is perennial political loser and 2022 Senatorial candidate Josh Mandel tweeting in support of a local restaurant.
Today (and hopefully for every Friday from this point forward), I am delighted to bring this feature back from its pandemic slumber.
Here is the 592nd edition of What I Read This Week.
Meet Peggy Hall. She runs a website called The Healthy American.
What is The Healthy American? For starters, it's a website that NewsGuard ranks 22.5/100 (a failing grade no matter how you slice it), for, among other sins and errors, publishing false and irresponsible misinformation about the Covid vaccine.
Today my kids go back to school. 10th grade for Norah and 7th grade for Donovan. I am so thankful that their school is requiring universal masking regardless of vaccination status. Not all students, however, are so lucky. Only 10 states currently require masks in schools, while eight states outright prohibit schools and school districts from mandating them. That means that 32 states leave this decision up to individuals school districts and parents.
This presents a major problem. Just look at these headlines from schools that are already back in session.
This headline in the Wall Street Journal caught my eye: These People Who Work From Home Have a Secret: They Have Two Jobs.
A small, dedicated group of white-collar workers, in industries from tech to banking to insurance, say they have found a way to double their pay: Work two full-time remote jobs, don’t tell anyone and, for the most part, don’t do too much work, either.
Alone in their home offices, they toggle between two laptops.
With more employers mandating vaccines for their employees, and businesses, cities, and schools doing the same for customers and other non-employee visitors, more people who resist the vaccine are turning to fake vaccine cards to remain employed or otherwise gain access.
As I wrote a few months ago, using a fake vaccine card is a federal crime. 18 U.S.C. sec. 1017 criminalizes the fraudulent or wrongful use of a government seal (in this case, that of the CDC). It is punishable by imprisonment of up to five years.
The illegality, however, hasn't stopped people, and the market is growing.
A few weeks ago I opined that the ADA likely covers Covid long-haul symptoms as protected disabilities that employers must accommodate.
In recently published policy guidance, the Department of Justice agrees.
How are you? Delta is spiking Covid infection rates to their highest levels since last winter. Hospitals are again facing a crisis of space. Breakthrough infections are a grim reality. Masks are again becoming part of our daily lives. How am I? I'm mad.
How mad? Mad enough to voice my resentment to WebMD.
"I am angry, I am resentful, and I think it’s a fair and appropriate response," says Jonathan Hyman, a Berea, OH, attorney who blames the unvaccinated for the backslide in pandemic progress.
Hyman has been following the difficult guidelines health experts have been urging from the beginning. He has been masking up, avoiding large gatherings, postponing travel, and he signed up to receive the vaccine as soon as it was available.
"We have been responsible, I did everything I was supposed to do," says Hyman, 48, who didn't visit his parents for 18 months to keep them safe. "Yet here we are, 16, 17 months later, and it feels like we're in the exact same place we were last summer, and it’s all because some people refuse to do the responsible things they were told to do."
"I need an accommodation for your mandatory vaccination policy. The vaccine is against my religion."
As more employers roll out vaccine mandates, more will be faced with this exact scenario.
Title VII requires an employer to reasonably accommodate an employee's sincerely held religious beliefs, practices, or observances, as long as the accommodation does not impose an undue hardship.
Two, and only two, religions, however, actually support people not getting vaccinated as a tenet of the religion — Christian Scientists and the Dutch Reformed Church. There are an estimated 106,000 Christian Scientists in the United States, and 194,000 members of the Reformed Church. That's a tidy total of 300,000 potential religious objectors based on their religion's actual teachings, period (or only 0.25% of all employees). But that minuscule number does not end the inquiry.
In the past week, we have been made aware of three employees who were coming to the office unvaccinated. All three have been terminated. Let me be clear — we have a zero-tolerance policy on this. You need to be vaccinated to come to the office. And you need to be vaccinated to work in the field, with other employees, regardless of whether you enter an office or not. Period. We expect that in the weeks ahead, showing proof of vaccination may become a formal part of the WarnerMedia Passcard process. Regardless, our expectations remain in place.
According to the lawsuit the State of California is bringing against Activision Blizzard, "During a company event … [key World of Warcarft developer Alex] Afrasiabi would hit on female employees, telling [them] he wanted to marry them, attempting to kiss them, and putting his arms around them. This was in plain view of other male employees, including supervisors, who had to intervene and pull him off female employees. Afrasiabi was so known to engage in harassment of females that his suite was nicknamed the 'Cosby Suite' after alleged rapist Bill Cosby."
You've read my posts from earlier this week, listened to the newly self-appointed quarterback of Team Vaccine Mandate, and decided to require the Covid vaccine for all of your on-site employees. After you announce your mandate, an employee enters your office to present the following ultimatum: "I'll get the vaccine," the employee tells you, "as soon as you sign off on this document."
The employee then hands you the following form, which it found on a website called The Solari Report.
Form for Employees Whose Employers Are Requiring Covid-19 Injection
— The Solari Report (@solari_the) August 2, 2021
This puts employers in a box. This is a form every employee who is faced with this needs to submit to the authorized officer of their company. It is 100% legally accurate, forces them to respond to your questions ttps://t.co/stuFAl0888">pic.twitter.com/stuFAl0888
I'm not proud of this but i just made a scene in public for the first time in my life… I walked into a Starbucks and they asked me to put a mask on! I yelled this is ridiculous, so I turned around and walked out. I know what you're thinking… My first mistake was walking into a Starbucks:)
I came across the post written by the former Hercules actor a couple of nights ago while perusing my LinkedIn feed. Three things came to mind.