OMG Omicron is making employees quit!

 "The greater the difficulty, the more glory in surmounting it.  Skillful captains gain their reputation from storms and tempests." - Epictetus

 

 I like to read the MarketWatch website from time to time.  I read it, as well as a handful of other financial websites, to get a sense of the stock market - which seems to be currently folding like a house of cards.  Like a lot of folks my age, a fair amount of my retirement savings are exposed to the ups, downs, frauds and manipulations of the market.  

Unfortunately, MarketWatch also carries "news" articles that are the essence of propaganda and misdirection.  Recently one of the highlighted stories was this one:

It's about how employers are worried about how the Omicron Covid-19 Variant will affect their quit rate.  Oddly (or not) vaccine mandates were never mentioned in the article.  Women of child-bearing age have been leaving the workforce in droves over these mandates.  They are justifiably fearful that the vax will cause fertility issues, because it affects menstruation.  

All US government health agencies (and their lackeys in the press) speak as one about the fertility fear - the vaccine does not cause any known fertility issues.  Bear in mind that Phase 3 trials are still ongoing, and expected to be complete in February 2023.  Those are the trials that (if the data is not cherry-picked) will tell us if the vaccines cause fertility issues.  This woman here would likely be fired from the FDA today for blocking a major drug.  Anyway, fertility fears might explain part of the female side of your quit rate - not Omicron.

Other employees (male and female) are are quitting too, for a variety of reasons - well-earned distrust of big pharma, well-earned distrust of government, insistence upon on bodily autonomy, backlash against workplace authoritarianism, etc, etc, etc.  That probably explains the rest of your quit rate - not Omicron.  

Nobody is afraid of Omicron who wasn't already afraid of Covid-19.  But I guess at MarketWatch, we have to keep readers believing that the quit rate is about germs.  Not about injection mandates, mediocre pay during a period of roaring inflation, and bad bosses.

Me?  I'm not ready to be a guinea pig for new biotechnology just yet.  We have a process for approving new vaccines, and this process was not followed, so they won't be injecting me.  Hasty decisions made in an emotional state are often poor decisions, and this one is a permanent decision - you can't reverse an injection.  If my employer attempts to threaten my job or otherwise force this issue, I'll do what a lot of other Americans are doing right now - resign and start my own business.

Happily the Supreme Court decided to strike down the OSHA mandate that would force employers of over 100 employees to mandate vaccination or weekly Covid testing.  This is a global airborne viral pandemic, not a workplace hazard that is limited to companies with over 100 employees.  If there has ever been a more idiotic workplace mandate, I've not heard of it.

In any event, such a mandate surely violates the Nuremburg Code (pdf):

The voluntary consent of the human subject is absolutely essential.

This means that the person involved should have legal capacity to give consent; should be so situated as to be able to exercise free power of choice, without the intervention of any element of force, fraud, deceit, duress, overreaching, or other ulterior form of constraint or coercion; and should have sufficient knowledge and comprehension of the elements of the subject matter involved as to enable him to make an understanding and enlightened decision.

This latter element requires that before the acceptance of an affirmative decision by the experimental subject there should be made known to him the nature, duration, and purpose of the experiment; the method and means by which it is to be conducted; all inconveniences and hazards reasonably to be expected; and the effects upon his health or person which may possibly come from his participation in the experiment.

Threatening someone with the loss of their livelihood would seem to be a form of coercion to me, but maybe I misunderstand the meaning of coercion.  If they were really worried about the health of Americans, they would be sending teams into homeless encampments, offering vaccines for everything under the sun, making sure their children were safe, and had food and shelter.  I see through their BS.

The Covid-19 Vaccines have received Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), allowing the normal approval process to be bypassed so that vast profits could be booked over a few quarters because this is an emergency.  However, I would argue that the widespread use and boosting of these vaccines are little better than a hastily implemented and poorly monitored bio-experiment.  

It's not reassuring that the FDA wanted to slowly release the Pfizer clinical studies that justified their Emergency Use Authorization over a period of 75 years!!!  Nothing says transparency like hiding information for 75 years :).  Fortunately on January 7, District Judge in Texas ruled that the FDA must release the information by the end of summer.  

Maybe after people without a financial interest in the success of the vaccine have had a look at the data, we can begin to make an informed decision about these injections.  Until that point in time, the answer for me will not only be no, but f*ck no.  

Too bad we really don't have an effective vaccine for this.  Maybe we should consider focusing more on treating vulnerable people, and those who get really sick with it instead - insured or not.  Or fixate on prevention.  I dunno, I'm just a guy who is watching all this unnecessary flailing around and wondering where the wise people have all gone.