A group of 38 legislators representing one party in the Minnesota Legislature addressed a letter to the management of the Mayo Clinic questioning the necessity of a COVID vaccination mandate. In response, the Mayo Clinic that has vaccinated 99 percent of employees in all positions noted:-

“Beyond the ability to require vaccination, Mayo Clinic has a moral imperative to do so.  Our staff provide care to transplant patients, cancer patients, immunocompromised patients, and some of the most medically vulnerable people in the world.  These patients deserve the safety of vaccinated staff to care for them during a global pandemic. Mayo Clinic requires vaccination of our staff because it is the right thing to do for our patients and our community.  Our vaccine requirement reflects the best available science.” The response also noted that the Mayo Clinic grants exemptions from the requirements in accordance with law.

The response by the Mayo Clinic to legislators encapsulates justification for requiring, but not mandating vaccination by management of enterprises where large numbers of workers are required to function in close proximity.

It is emphasized that EGG-NEWS is not in favor of mandates.  Those who wish to protect themselves, their families and their communities have in all probability received COVID vaccines.  Of a sample of non-vaccinated respondents to a recent survey, 48 percent indicated that nothing would convince them to be vaccinated. Mandates only make martyrs of the ill- informed and the intransigent. 

Incentives, as offered by many retailers and food producing companies, including Tyson Foods, are more productive.  Some companies have adopted both a carrot and stick requiring non vaccinated employees to be tested at regular intervals at their own expense thereby imposing a financial burden on noncompliance.  Given the emergence of the Omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2, responsible for higher rates of infection, the need to vaccinate as high a proportion of the population as possible is self-evident.  Although breakthrough infections occur following complete vaccination (a course of two priming mRNA vaccines followed by a third booster) clinical effects are mild with a low probability of hospitalization.  Those admitted to hospitals and ICU wards  and fatalities from COVID are overwhelmingly among the non-vaccinated with a ten-fold probability of admission and a seventeen-fold risk of death.

At the end of the day, COVID is a public health situation and is not a political issue.