COVID vaccine mandates waning in Madison workplaces … – The Capital Times

Wisconsin legislators are considering significant limits on an employers ability to require workers to be vaccinated, even as some companies and local governmental agencies in Dane County have dropped COVID-19 shot mandates for employees.

The legislation, heard in a state Assembly Committee on Thursday, is the latest in a line of efforts to weaken vaccine mandates in Wisconsin after a spike in anti-vaccine fervor during the COVID-19 pandemic.

That pushback followed efforts from companies, government agencies and other employers to require the COVID-19 vaccine as a condition of employment. The approved COVID-19 vaccines havebeen deemed safe and effective and millions of Americans have received the shots, with adverse side effects considered rare.

The latest bill would require employers to offer an exemption process for workers who because of religious, medical or philosophical reasons do not wish to get a vaccine.

A business could not require documentation from an employee to back up the exemption request, creating what critics fear is a major loophole.

It doesnt make any sense to me, Rep. Christine Sinicki, D-Milwaukee, said.

While the bill was inspired by the COVID-19 pandemic, its authors say, the language would apply to any vaccine requirements.

Wisconsinites in every facet of life have a right to decide what to put into their bodies, Rep. Shae Sortwell, R-Two Rivers, the bills co-author, told the Assembly Committee on Labor and Integrated Employment. We saw these freedoms of Wisconsin workers compromised during the COVID-19 pandemic. We want to ensure that this does not happen again.

Vaccine requirements begin to fade

While many prominent employers in Dane County announced plans in 2021 and 2022 to require COVID-19 vaccines, some have since dropped the policies.

UW Health "strongly encourages" but no longer requires the COVID-19 vaccine for employees, spokesperson Sara Benzel said in an email. Staff members are required to be vaccinated against influenza, but religious and philosophical exemptions are an option.

Molly Groose high-fives her daughter Clara Groose, 7, after Clara received the COVID-19 vaccine in November 2021. The public health department recommends that people get their vaccine shots and, if eligible, a booster, especially as people gather for the holidays.

In June, the Madison School Board rescinded the district's staff COVID-19 vaccine mandate 21 months after it was first put in place. The Madison Metropolitan School District's medical experts said the wording of the original mandate left it out of date given boosters, and employees had expressed concerns about the cost and staff time to enforce the mandate given the end of the national emergency declaration.

Dane County also dropped a COVID-19 vaccination requirement for its workers, Greg Brockmeyer, director of the countys Department of Administration, said in an email.

Epic, American Family Insurance and Exact Sciences are among the prominent Madison-area businesses who previously said they would require a COVID-19 vaccine. Spokespeople for those businesses did not immediately respond to questions about their current policies.

Rep. Francesca Hong, D-Madison, who is also a Madison restaurateur, said her business asks employees to be vaccinated but does not require it as a condition of employment. But she said she believed the government should not infringe on the rights of private businesses who wish to make immunizations mandatory.

I don't believe the state should be removing anything that undermines public health, she told the Cap Times.

Meningitis, chickenpox shots also targeted

The Legislature has increasingly voted to do away with vaccine requirements for both the COVID-19 shots and other immunizations.

In June, the Legislature blockeda requirement that seventh graders be vaccinated against meningitis, as well as opposing an effort to make it harder to seek out a waiver for the chickenpox vaccine requirement for younger students.

And in 2021, legislators considered a measure that would have prevented private employers from requiring the COVID-19 vaccine at all. While it passed the state Assembly, it was ultimately not considered in the state Senate.

The latest effort involving employer policies is an attempt to mirror the exemption process for K-12 students. Currently, students can get an exemption due to a medical condition or because of their religious or personal beliefs. They could still be excluded from school in the event of an outbreak.

Minnesota and Wisconsin are among 20 states that allow parents to opt out of vaccinating their children. Health Officials say a 95 percent immunization rate is required to prevent outbreaks of diseases like measles.

Sen. Steve Nass, R-Whitewater, one of the bills authors, told the Assembly committee that requiring vaccines can breed mistrust of both the employer and the shots.

He also repeated a common anti-COVID-19-vaccine claim that the shots were potentially dangerous, as they had not been fully approved by the Food and Drug Administration when they began being administered in the United States. Because of this, Nass said people could sue employers who made them get the vaccine.

Both Pfizer and Moderna shots have since received full FDA approval, though more recent variations of the vaccine are under emergency use. But data was still required to demonstrate the vaccines safety in tens of thousands of participants before an emergency use authorization could be issued.

Still, Nass said it was improper for employers to pry into the private lives of workers.

Employer vaccine mandates I believe violate personal privacy, he said. Employees are sensitive to their personal information in the most significant parts of their life. They would prefer not to divulge their medical information to their employers.

Rep. Karen Hurd, R-Fall Creek, criticized the efficacy of vaccines more broadly, saying the eradication of measles was due to people achieving natural immunity by acquiring the disease, not from mass vaccination campaigns.

Both the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Pan American Health Organization consider the development of a vaccine against measles, mumps and rubellato becrucialto their 2000 elimination in the United States, as well as essential to continuing to suppress the disease.

Measles cases have again become a problemboth in the U.S. and globally, with the CDCattributing the increaseto 61 million doses of the MMR vaccine being delayed or missed during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Hong, the Madison lawmaker and small business owner, said it was disheartening that people are still airing misinformation about vaccine effectiveness.

It's absolutely absurd that after a vaccine that saved hundreds of millions of lives, after over a million people died from COVID-19, that we are still having conversations of recognizing that it is not just about our personal health, that public health means caring for your neighbor, she said.

Cap Times reporter Scott Girard contributed to this report.

Go here to read the rest:

COVID vaccine mandates waning in Madison workplaces ... - The Capital Times