By: Ronda Snyder
On August 12, 2021, Governor Janet Mills announced a Covid vaccine mandate for all healthcare workers. In her announcement, Mills assured us her mandate would “make sure we have the highest quality healthcare in the State of Maine.” Do we really have the highest quality healthcare in Maine as a result of Mills’ mandate and did Mills make an already dire healthcare staffing situation in Maine worse?
At a campaign event, Mills seemingly laughed and made callous comments regarding her actions during the pandemic.
According to reporting by The Maine Wire (Click Here), thousands of healthcare workers were negatively affected by Mills’ mandate. At Maine’s Bicentennial Parade shortly after the mandate was announced, healthcare workers lined the streets of the parade route expressing their displeasure with Mills and her mandate. For her part, Mills blew kisses to the healthcare workers.
As a result of Mill’s mandate which continues today, many healthcare workers report they are still out of work or are working in nearby NH where there is no vaccine mandate. Interestingly, we now know that vaccination doesn’t stop transmission, yet Mills is still blocking Maine residents from working in their chosen healthcare profession if he/she is not vaccinated against Covid. In fact, Anthony Fauci said in an interview with John Dickerson “When you look at the level of virus in the nasopharynx of people who are vaccinated, who get breakthrough infections, it’s really quite high and equivalent to the level of virus in the nasopharynx of unvaccinated people who get infected.”
While the Mills touts her mandate will ensure “highest quality healthcare in the State of Maine,” Maine residents are seeing, just to name a few:
- Extremely long wait times at the Emergency Rooms
- NICU units closing down
- Labor and delivery units closing down
- Extended wait times to see a medical professional
- Good doctors and nurses leaving the state to practice elsewhere
- Hospitals frequently being on diversion for ER cases
To make matters worse, many hospitals, nursing homes and healthcare facilities are employing travel nurses at exorbitant fees while able bodied residents of Maine sit home because of Mills’ mandate that has little to no science backing it given what we know now from the CDC. For example, a nurse sent me a text message this morning from a staffing placement company offering $3,245 for a medical/surgical nurse in Lincoln, Maine. The best part which makes absolutely no sense, the Maine nurse can work here in Maine without being vaccinated as the staffing company confirmed that a religious exemption for this position would be accepted.
Instead, we import travel nurses like Crystal Moyer of Florida. On October 12, 2022, Moyer was involved in an alleged road rage incident in Farmington, Maine. Farmington Police charged Moyer with criminal threatening and reckless driving in connection with the incident. Her arraignment is scheduled for December 6, 2022.
Moyer went on to make a Facebook post after the incident which is concerning given that we were told by Mills that Maine residents would receive “the highest quality healthcare.” Is this the type of person Mills’ mandate caused healthcare facilities to import because of the mandate? The last line is particularly ominous.
In conclusion, Janet Mills’ mandate exacerbated an already dire staffing shortage in Maine and needlessly put Mainers out of work for not getting a vaccine which doesn’t stop transmission. As Anthony Fauci said, the viral loads are the same for vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals. Mills’ mandate caused healthcare facilities to import travel nurses at exorbitant rates thereby raising healthcare costs. Wait times for most medical services have skyrocketed.
Back to my original questions: Do we really have the highest quality healthcare in Maine as a result of Mills’ mandate and did Mills make an already dire healthcare staffing situation in Maine worse?
Janet listened to the recommendations of the CDC. I am elderly and thank her for keeping me safe. Vaccinations are not only about Covid. They ate also about Smallpox, polio, dyptheria and childhood diseases. The first three have been wiped out thanks to vaccinations.
Hospitals have hired traveling nurses long before Covid.
The recent worsening of the nurse staffing crisis is caused by both the influx of patients falling ill with the Delta variant as well as an increase in nurses leaving the profession, fed up with the unending stress, poor pay and terrible staffing ratios that make their jobs unsafe. It is not only from unvaccinated staff as this article implies and ignores the other causes.
And yet, many many of the CDC recommendations have proven to be completely wrong. Covid will never be wiped out by a vaccine as it doesn’t prevent one from catching or transmitting Covid.
No. We have travel nurses working 70 to 80 hours a week. How is that quality care? Would you want them as your nurse or can?
We need LePage. He will get rid of this mandate so we can go back to a better quality of care!!