Health care is experiencing an unprecedented staffing crisis as resources are stretched over capacity.

Global news recently informs us that "Like other hospitals across Canada, LHSC has been contending with staffing shortages as medical professionals retire or quit the profession following two-plus years of the COVID-19 pandemic" 

Last month, LHSC reported it had roughly 540 vacant nursing positions it needed to fill, including 442 for registered nurses and roughly 100 for registered practical nurses. The hospital employs nearly 15,000 people.":  https://globalnews.ca/news/9184183/lhsc-significant-emergency-department-wait-times/ 

Meanwhile, thousands of Ontario health care workers, terminated from their jobs for making an informed personal decision about their health, are still not allowed to go back to work.  Many people refused the covid vaccines because of personal medical reasons unknown to the public.

 Now that the CDC's official guidelines have changed to “vaccines will help you avoid hospitalization and death.   The facts need to be updated: 

1. with the emergence of the omicron variant which has caused wide spread immunity, there is no longer a community benefit to the covid19 vaccines. Now that it is acknowledged to provide a personal benefit only, it should be a personal choice.

2. Dr. John Ioannidis of Stanford university has used all currently available data to determine that the true infection fatality rate (IFR) of covid-19 is now accepted to be 0.035%, or about the same as the flu. Dr. Ioannidis concludes, “The current analysis suggests a much lower pre-vaccination IFR in non-elderly populations than previously suggested.” https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.10.11.22280963v1

3. The CDC now recognizes natural immunity.

   Greta Massetti, who wrote the most recently updated CDC guidelines https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/71/wr/mm7133e1.htm?s_cid=mm7133e1_w has stated that 95% of the population has some level of immunity so why are hospitals still forcing vaccines for staff when new guidelines "represent an increasing focus on individuals making their own decisions about their level of risk and how they want to mitigate that risk?”

4. At the recent European Parliament Special Committee investigating the Covid-19 pandemic response, Pfizer representative, Janine Small, stated that the covid vaccines were never tested to stop transmission. https://apnews.com/article/fact-check-pfizer-transmission-european-parliament-950413863226

5. According to a recent CBC article, Ontario nursing and physician colleges would rather hire internationally trained health care workers than hire back our highly experienced hospital staff https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/college-temporarily-register-international-nurses-1.6555165

6. Many of our UHCWO members are vaccinated nurses who are still employed. They have confided to us that the international nurses are not familiar with our protocols and add to the burden, requiring extra help while they learn on the job. They have expressed to UHCWO a need to get their unvaccinated colleagues back to work.

7. UHCWO continues to accept new health care staff that are still being terminated for refusing the covid-19 vaccines, even as hospitals admit they have dire shortages.

 All of our health care workers bravely went to work in the spring of 2020 in the face of a new unknown danger and risk, while everyone did their part by staying home.  It's time to truly thank them by respecting their personal right to informed consent and let them return to the careers they have worked so hard to achieve.  The collective loss of years of experience is incalculable.  They are ready to put their extensive experience to work, serving their community fearlessly to help mitigate the disastrous unsafe shortages we are now seeing.

 It's time to bring back our terminated health care heroes!