(LifeSiteNews) — Facing serious staffing shortages, some of the largest and most prominent hospital systems in the United States, including HCA Healthcare Inc., Tenet Healthcare Corp., AdventHealth, and Cleveland Clinic have been forced to backpedal on their COVID-19 jab mandates in hopes of retaining crucial employees, The Wall Street Journal reported Monday
Townhall reported that University Hospitals in the Cleveland, Ohio area also recently announced the reversal of its jab mandate for hospital workers.
According to The Wall Street Journal, the major hospital systems have been forced to reevaluate their coercive COVID-19 jab policies after needed healthcare industry employees, especially nurses, chose to quit rather than get the experimental injections.
Some big hospital systems have dropped vaccine mandates after a judge blocked a Biden administration requirement for healthcare workers to get shots https://t.co/uKOMcw3P58
— The Wall Street Journal (@WSJ) December 13, 2021
“Vaccine mandates have been a factor constraining the supply of healthcare workers, according to hospital executives, public-health authorities and nursing groups,” the report noted, adding that “thousands of nurses have left the industry or lost their jobs rather than get vaccinated” for COVID-19.
The Journal cited the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in reporting that as of September, unvaccinated employees accounted for a massive 30% of workers employed by over 2,000 U.S. hospitals.
Many people, including healthcare professionals, have been skeptical of the push toward mass immunization. The CDC reports an infection survival rate of greater than 99.95% for those under age 50. Meanwhile, the list of FDA-recognized adverse events has grown from severe anaphylactic reactions to include fatal thrombotic events, the inflammatory heart condition myocarditis, and neurologically disabling disease like Guillain Barré Syndrome, as well as thousands of recorded deaths and permanent disabilities.
The staggering percentage of healthcare workers who have refused to comply with the jab requirements imposed by their hospital systems — many of whom are vitally necessary nursing personnel — could have a crippling effect on America’s hospitals if the establishments move to fire all noncompliant workers.
Recognizing this dilemma, an employee-benefits lawyer has suggested that hospitals that don’t mandate the jabs could see an influx of interested applicants fleeing hospitals with more coercive policies.
“It’s been a mass exodus, and a lot of people in the healthcare industry are willing to go and shop around,” Wade Symons, head of the consulting firm Mercer’s U.S. regulatory practice, told the Journal.
“If you get certain healthcare facilities that don’t require it, those could be a magnet for those people who don’t want the vaccine. They’ll probably have an easier time attracting labor,” Symons said.
News of the major hospital systems dropping their injection mandates comes after a federal judge in Louisiana blocked the Biden administration’s top-down federal COVID-19 jab mandate for healthcare workers that would have impacted at least 10 million Americans.
The judge’s late-November decision was in response to President Joe Biden’s September 9 announcement of a series of vaccine mandates for public and private sectors, including one with no testing option for millions of healthcare workers employed by medical facilities that receive Medicare and Medicaid funding.
FLASHBACK: Biden admin on vaccine mandates
Biden: “I don’t think it should be mandatory”
Psaki: “That’s not the role of the federal government.” pic.twitter.com/xlvA6VONA8
— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) September 9, 2021
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has subsequently announced it will temporarily halt enforcement of its healthcare worker mandate pending appeal of a federal injunction blocking the measure.
“I don’t think the mandates were helpful and I think the court in Louisiana did everyone a service,” Alan Levine, chief executive officer of Ballad Health, told The Journal.
Levine, who told the newspaper his company employs about 14,000 people, of whom roughly 2,000 have opted not to get the shot, said firing “[t]hat many people … would have been devastating to our system.”
Before the Louisiana judge blocked the mandate, at least 22 states had joined a duo of joint lawsuits against the Biden administration over the rule.
States, companies, and private individuals have filed a raft of lawsuits taking issue not only with the mandate for healthcare workers but also the mandate for federal contractors and another for businesses with 100 or more employees.
In early November, a federal court blocked the mandate for large businesses, just two days after it was published. The mandate would have used the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) to impose massive fines on noncompliant companies and individuals for failing to get the experimental shots.
By early December, all three of the Biden administration’s private sector jab mandates were stalled by federal judges.
BREAKING: Federal court blocks the Biden vax mandate for federal contractors. Biden is 0 for 3 on unconstitutional mandates! Freedom is winning! pic.twitter.com/yRZj8g2Wy8
— Christina Pushaw 🐊 (@ChristinaPushaw) December 7, 2021
The latest mandate to be blocked was halted December 7 by a federal judge who sided with South Carolina’s attorney general and Republican governor and stopped the Biden administration’s COVID-19 jab mandate for federal contractors, freezing the requirement nationwide and marking the third federal injection mandate to be blocked across all 50 states.
A shift in public policy toward the reversal of coercive jab mandates comes as many Americans remain concerned that the experimental drugs on the market have not been sufficiently studied for negative effects given their accelerated clinical trials. Many also harbor serious moral reservations about the use of cells from aborted babies in the development of the shots.
Still others simply consider the injections unnecessary given COVID-19’s high survivability among most groups, low risk of asymptomatic spread, and research indicating that post-infection natural immunity is either just as protective against reinfection or provides even greater protection.