Our Opinion: Berkshire Health Systems, county’s largest employer and region’s most prolific provider, should be able to craft reasonable vaccine mandate policies

While many of COVID’s worst aspects are thankfully in the rearview mirror, we’re still carrying some pandemic-era baggage — including, unfortunately, controversy around vaccines and vaccination policy.

Hundreds of employees and community members say they are against a new addition to the Berkshire Health Systems’ medical mandates for staff: The COVID-19 bivalent booster shot.

Berkshire Health Systems’ recent decision to require all on-site employees to get the new COVID-19 bivalent booster prompted public pushback from some staff. As of Thursday, a petition demanding that BHS cease the booster requirement and “all future COVID vaccine mandates” had attracted more than 800 signatures. It’s worth noting, though, that while many of the signatories are indeed BHS employees, it also apparently includes people who do not work for BHS — as well as some who don’t even live in Berkshire County — simply showing solidarity for the cause.

Based on the comments left by many petitioners, there seems to be a range of hard feelings about the booster requirement. Some simply question the necessity of this booster, while others traffic in more troublesome rhetoric reminiscent of the broader anti-vaccine movement. Whatever the character of the sentiments, though, employers have a right to make rules to protect the safety and effectiveness of their workplace. That goes especially for hospitals or other health care facilities. Further, that does not contradict the principles pronounced by the petitioners and many in the anti-vax movement: that one has a right to remain unvaccinated, that no one should have health care decisions forced on them or the particularly cynical deployment of the abortion rights phrase “my body, my choice.”

This mandate is not in violation of those principles any more than BHS’ previous vaccine requirements for workers — for the flu, mumps, rubella or anything else hospitals have an obvious interest in suppressing. Workplace vaccine mandates do not amount to holding anyone down and forcing them to get vaccinated. No one has an inalienable right to a job regardless of vaccination status at the county’s largest employer, which also happens to be the region’s largest health care provider. For those who have had documentable severe reactions to mRNA COVID vaccines — an extant if seemingly very small slice of folks — the BHS bivalent booster requirement, like all sensible mandates, includes a medical exemption as well as a religious exemption.

To be sure, decisions about booster mandates are among the many things that will require us to think carefully about realistic tradeoffs and risk assessment as we hopefully continue the process of putting COVID behind us. As with other viruses that wreaked havoc in past pandemics but eventually became endemic and less dangerous, vaccination efforts will play a large part but can and should be relaxed with time. It’s a tough conversation but a necessary one. Exactly what vaccination policy shifts to pursue at what time is certainly beyond our expertise, but hospital officials — including those in Berkshire County — should be equipped to make those decisions. And while petitioners might argue that COVID vaccinations and boosters should not be mandated because they aren’t 100 percent effective at preventing transmission, it’s worth noting that no vaccine is 100 percent effective in the final trial of the real world. That reality as it applies to, say, flu vaccines didn’t inspire such ire when they were required, and it shouldn’t for COVID vaccines or boosters, either.

Unfortunately, many aspects of the COVID pandemic, including the vaccines helping us to conquer it, have been pressurized by politics. And as with anything carrying unnecessary sociopolitical topspin, there’s often more heat than light shed on the heart of the issue and its relevant facts. For those who earnestly believe that BHS, along with the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, have it wrong on this bivalent booster, it is their right to avoid it. But it’s also BHS’ right to follow the CDC’s recommendation in crafting a policy meant to protect staff and the community alike at the county’s largest hospital.