Gee & Ursula: Is it time to ‘live with the consequences’ of being unvaccinated?

Hundreds of people rallied outside hospitals in Bellingham and Puyallup on Wednesday, protesting the statewide vaccine mandate for health care workers and state employees.

Protesters gather in Puyallup to speak out against vaccine mandate

“It really isn’t about whether you choose to vaccinate or not,” one person said. “The point is to have a choice. We respect those that want to vaccinate and respect those that don’t for medical reasons, religious reasons, or no reasons at all.”

The rally in Puyallup was organized on a conservative Christian Facebook page. One woman in Puyallup said she believes vaccine mandates are like abortion laws.

“Fact of the matter is if they want me to take the vaccine, they’ll close the border and they’ll abolish abortions. Because abortions kill far more people,” she said. “And if it’s a woman’s right to choose what she can do with her body, then it’s my right to choose what I’m going to do with my body.”

Some nurses say they are willing to quit over this mandate, which applies to most state workers as well as workers in private health care and long-term care. They have until Oct. 18 to get their shots or face termination.

“Even last year we started hearing about those in the health care industry kind of getting fed up and kind of leaving that field, if you will, and then to hear that possibility we’ll even lose more? Look, Ursula, it’s never a good sign when we lose health care professionals,” KIRO Radio’s Gee Scott said.

“Yes, I do believe and I still believe if they’re in the health care industry, you guys are heroes because you do something that I am scared to do and wouldn’t know how to do and wouldn’t want to do,” he added. “But at the same time, I’ve got to say this: I don’t want my loved one to come into a hospital and be cared for by someone that’s unvaccinated.”

He says the same way people can have their opinion about the mandates, he can have his own opinion about the need to get vaccinated.

But, more importantly, Gee asked Ursula what happened to caring about other people?

“We go back in history and we talk about the wars that our country has gone through, and what people did before and how they helped each other,” he said. “What happened to helping out your neighbor, your community? I remember being in military school and … one thing that I learned there is it doesn’t matter how clean my room is, if the cadet next door, if his room’s not clean, nobody’s getting free time. So it actually mattered about what others did around us.”

COVID-19 is something that we are going to have to fight together, Gee said.

“I read this comment this morning that expressed exactly how I feel, let’s say in my darkest hours, when I’m exhausted by saying the same things over and over again,” KIRO Radio’s Ursula Reutin replied.

“Basically this person said that maybe it’s just time to let the chips fall where they may. Maybe it’s time to grit our teeth and bear the brunt of this public health catastrophe. Maybe the only thing that we can do is watch people die and see many lives are destroyed before we all realize that the responsibility for this tragedy lies squarely on our shoulders,” she said. “As you mentioned, we have failed to come together for the common good.”

“There are times I think trying to plead and cajole with people who are either willfully ignorant or defiant in the name of ideological beliefs will not change anything,” she added. “And I want to make very clear, I’m not talking about you if you are medically unable to get a vaccine, and there are truly some people who are medically unable. And for you, we need to do better.”

But to plead with those who remain unvaccinated or to shame people, which Ursula doesn’t think is right, will likely only get them to dig in deeper.

“There are times I say, you know what, all that needs to be said has been said, people still don’t listen. So maybe it’s just that we have to live with the consequences,” she said.

Gee & Ursula: We’re vaccinated and wearing masks indoors

Gee asked her, knowing that her kids are vaccinated, and that she has the ability to work from home, why doesn’t she just give up?

“Because if I give up, it really means that I don’t care about the common good,” Ursula said.

While more than 70% of eligible people in Washington are vaccinated, Ursula shared that there have been now more than half a million cases of COVID-19 statewide, as reported by the Washington State Department of Health. And more than 94% of cases, deaths, and hospitalizations for COVID-19 among those 12 and older were among people who are unvaccinated.

“We have a long way to go,” she said. “If I or if you were to give up now, it’s basically, for me, saying I’m giving up on humanity.”

“We are in a health crisis, a global health crisis. And a year and a half later, more than a year and a half later, we’re going in the wrong direction. So for me to say, you know what, my life is good, why do I care? That’s being selfish. That’s why,” she said.

Listen to the Gee and Ursula Show weekday mornings from 9 a.m. – 12 p.m. on KIRO Radio, 97.3 FM. Subscribe to the podcast here.