Why these Oregonians are prepared to lose their jobs by refusing COVID-19 vaccines

They are state soldiers, nurses, medics, school bus drivers, teachers, high school football coaches and yes – according to state records – even employees of the Oregon Health Authority. , the agency responsible for combating the pandemic.

The only thing that all have in common? They oppose vaccination against COVID-19[female[feminine, despite an approaching deadline on Monday demanding that hundreds of thousands of state executive branch employees, healthcare workers and K-12 educators be fully immunized.

These refractories include an unknown but likely small portion of the state’s roughly 800,000 adults who have yet to receive at least one injection.

Announcing her terms in August, Governor Kate Brown reiterated what top public health experts in Oregon and the country have said: Vaccinations are safe and highly effective in preventing hospitalizations and deaths.

“The only way to permanently stop the spread of COVID-19 is through vaccination,” she said.

Some against the vaccine mandate received religious or medical exceptions. But others risk losing their jobs or have already left.

The Oregonian / OregonLive interviewed three of these workers. Here are their stories.

“It looks like communism”

Lyubov Orlov-Ganchenko, a 17-year-old dental hygienist, was “surprised and appalled” when Brown announced the vaccination mandate.

So the Salem resident said she quit her $ 80,000-a-year job, sold her house, and left with her husband, who was also on a job as a cleaner in a medical clinic.

They have spent the last two weeks driving in Florida where they now live in their newly purchased motorhome to save money as they are both unemployed.

She said the thought of the government telling her what to do reminds her of why, at the age of 18, she and her family immigrated to the United States from the former Soviet Union.

“It’s like communism here,” said Orlov-Ganchenko, 48. “Like I had no choice. Everything is pushed on me. It brought PTSD back.

Orlov-Ganchenko said she now plans to work in a different profession – one that probably pays a lot less – because her Oregon hygienist license isn’t good in Florida and she doesn’t want to re-register for classes and take their board exams. again.

The couple chose Florida, she said, because her husband’s cousin lives there. But she also said they were keenly aware of Florida’s less intrusive and more passive approach to the pandemic. Governor Ron DeSantis has very vocally rejected vaccine passports, mask warrants, lockdowns and most recently vaccine warrants announced by President Biden.

“I was like, ‘We are going to go somewhere where we have freedom,'” Orlov-Ganchenko said.

The move meant the departure of their two adult daughters, aged 23 and 24. One lives in Seattle and the other lived with Orlov-Ganchenko, but now couch-surfing, day to day, with relatives and friends, she said.

Orlov-Ganchenko admits she could have stayed in Oregon and tried to keep her job by requesting a waiver of the warrant. But Orlov-Ganchenko said she was unwilling to lie when she said the vaccination is against her religion. And she doubted she was entitled to a medical exemption.

Although the mRNA technology used to develop the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines decades agoOrlov-Ganchenko said she was uncomfortable that it had been just over 18 months since the first dose of COVID-19 vaccine was given to the first beneficiaries of the trial. Public health officials counter that 850 million doses of Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines have been administered in the United States and Europe alone, with very few side effects.

Orlov-Ganchenko also questions the effectiveness of vaccines, noting that they do not prevent everyone from getting infected. In Oregon, between 20% to 27% of recently identified cases were among the vaccinated. But the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention indicates studies showing that fully vaccinated people are eight times less likely to be infected and 25 times less likely to be hospitalized or die from the disease.

Orlov-Ganchenko, who has said he suffers from asthma and an autoimmune disease, wants more time to elapse to prove the safety of vaccines over time. She said she was allergic to 32 things – and had previously developed breathing problems after a flu shot – and didn’t think public health officials were clear on the extent of the side effects and deaths.

“I always tell people that I would rather fall with COVID than the vaccine,” she said. “I realize I could die from COVID, but I would rather things take their natural course. “

“Kick in the face”

The frustration in Jay Hicks’ voice is obvious.

He believes COVID-19 vaccine development has been rushed and he opposes Brown’s mandate that he be fully vaccinated as a correctional officer at Snake River Correctional Institution in eastern BC. Oregon. All states 4,500 prison staff fall under the requirement.

Hicks, a 23-year-old employee, is scheduled to work Tuesday, the first day the tenure goes into effect, but is still awaiting a response from the Oregon Department of Corrections on whether to report for work.

“I’m giving 23 years of my life and now it’s ‘Goodbye?’ And now I am nothing? said Hicks, 54. “It hurts.”

He now hopes that a religious exception that has just been filed will be approved. He declined to share details of his religious objection with The Oregonian / OregonLive.

COVID-19[female[femininehit the prisons across the country particularly hard. In Oregon, 44 inmates and three employees have died, according to a online dashboard. More than one in four inmates and staff are known to have been infected, more than triple the rate among Oregonians in general. Hicks is one of them, but his request for a medical exemption was denied.

“I had COVID because of my job,” Hicks said. “And now I have antibodies and I’m the best for my job and I’m being punished?” “

The reality of whether natural immunity to infection gives a person adequate protection against re-infection is still much debated in the scientific world. Hicks is one of six plaintiffs in a federal lawsuit filed last month by workers in Oregon who have all been previously infected with COVID-19 and are arguing they should not be submitted the governor’s vaccination mandate.

a Israeli study conducted when the delta variant was dominant last summer seemed to show that natural immunity may offer better protection than full vaccination with Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines. But public health officials point out some research which shows that immunity to natural infection can vary widely from person to person, and decreases dramatically from six months to one year after infection.

If Hicks gets fired he said he’s not sure what he’ll do with a living. He lives in Vale, a town of about 2,000 people near Ontario, with few prospects for employment. Hicks said he might try to get hired by the Malheur County Sheriff’s Office, which falls outside the state’s vaccination mandate.

But opposing that demand, he said, is about his freedom to make personal medical decisions.

“It’s just a kick in the face,” Hicks said. “But hey, I’m tough. … It’s much more important than my job.

Vaccines look like “hocus pocus”

Kathleen Sanders, a pharmacist over 25, has two obstacles in front of her.

She doesn’t want the vaccine for herself. And she will not administer vaccines to others.

Both mean that she is effectively unemployed.

Hood River Walmart put her on unpaid leave in April, she said, when she did not want to vaccinate customers. She believes the vaccines were developed too quickly and the government is not communicating the true number of side effects.

“For me, just believe that ‘hocus pocus’ wave the magic wand and it works… that’s a huge red flag as a professional,” said Sanders, 50.

Sanders said she had natural immunity to a previous infection. But she said she also opposes it because the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines were tested on a fetal cell line and the Johnson & Johnson vaccine was produced using adenovirus grown using cells dating back to a fetus. None of the vaccines contain fetal cells.

Sanders is Catholic, and even though the Vatican said it was “Morally acceptable” to be vaccinated, personally, she does not agree.

Six months into her unpaid leave, Sanders, a fifth generation Hood River resident, is actively seeking work as a pharmacist online. She would much rather work face to face with patients and supervise the staff of six pharmacy workers she used to do, she said.

She is also discussing with her financial advisor the possibility of tapping into retirement savings to make ends meet.

“I went to school for a long time,” said Sanders, part of another lawsuit challenging Oregon’s immunization requirements. “I love my patients. I love my staff.

Living in a county where 76% of adults are fully vaccinated, the second highest rate in the state, Sanders said he heard from friends or acquaintances who disagreed with his decision not to get it done. vaccinate.

“I’m on the verge of being bullied,” she said.

People agree with her and other healthcare workers who have worked on the front lines of the pandemic but will not get vaccinated, she asked that they not be so judgmental.

“I was a 2020 hero because I showed up for work every day,” Sanders said. “And what, now it’s 2021 and I’m laid off?” This is honestly how I feel.

– Aimée Verte; [email protected]; @o_aimee