In the fall of 2021, roughly a year after FDA emergency approval of the first COVID vaccines, the federal government issued a vaccine mandate for staff at long-term care facilities.  David had already contracted COVID once since moving to The Meadows; I hoped this mandate would lower the risk of a second infection.  The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services published data showing the vaccination rates in US nursing homes, and I’d been keeping an eye on the rates at The Meadows.  They were pretty dismal, hovering at around 50%.  When the mandate went into effect, I checked the scorecard.  The rate had hardly budged.  There’s a lag between the date of data-gathering and the date of reporting, so I checked back a week later, and a week after that.  Almost no change.  I called my long-term care ombudsman.  She said I should call her if I noticed staff members failing to wear their masks or wash their hands.  They wear their masks, I said, and I’m sure they wash their hands – the problem is that they’re not vaccinated, and there’s a federal mandate.  She said yes, but we can file a report if they don’t comply with infection control measures. 

At a care conference, I pointed out that, according to the CMS spreadsheet, the staff vaccination rate at The Meadows ranked in the bottom 15 of more than 350 nursing homes in MN.  The nurse – or administrator, I’m not sure – said that employees have the right to request religious exemptions.  I said yes, but is it really the case that 40% of the staff are eligible for exemptions?  Are so many more staff members eligible for religious exemptions there than at other facilities that The Meadows ranks in the bottom 15 in the state? 

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I sound so very cranky, don’t I?  Taken one by one, the requests seem reasonable.  The phone system should work.  Healthcare providers should transmit treatment changes to one another directly, not through friends or family members.  Nursing home staff should follow the federal vaccine mandate designed to protect frail, vulnerable long-term care residents from potentially deadly COVID.  But these posts, like my life during those years, amount to a sequence of protest letters and complaint calls.  I prefer to be nice; I prefer, if possible, to be liked.  But I turned into a crank.