Gov. Mills made the right decision to require health care workers to be fully vaccinated by Oct. 1. Her decision garnered support from a broad coalition of health care providers across Maine.

Maine Medical also made the right decision in enforcing that requirement. But some health care workers are fighting that mandate as demonstrated in public protests in Portland, Augusta and Bangor. Republicans in the Maine Legislature also sent letters asking Mills to reconsider and overturn the mandate.

The fourth wave of the coronavirus, delta, now spiking in southern states with low vaccination rates and rising in Maine, is the most dangerous and transmissible variant to date. One affected person can transmit it to four to six others, more than doubling the transmission rate of the previous variant, alpha.

Despite thousands of news articles, social media feeds and cable-TV reports attesting to the efficacy of current vaccines, political interference has served to overturn solid medical evidence into misguided, self-defeating, untruthful and conspiratorial theories.

This virus knows no political affiliation, but this public health crisis now is viewed as a political football.

Were I to learn that LincolnHealth and PBMC (PenBay) did not require hospital workers to be vaccinated, I would immediately cancel two physician consults and a CT scan scheduled for the coming months.

Maine Medical made the right decision and the medical and health care staff of those institutions also will make the right decision by being vaccinated if they are not already.

Knowing that medicine is a science, any protest against these mandates and requirements protests against science. Knowing that health care is caring for health, any protest against proven measures that limit the spread of this virus protests against health.

I ask these protesters: How can they call themselves “health care” workers?

Michael T. Bucci
Damariscotta