COVID-19
Kroger adds monthly surcharge for unvaccinated workers and cuts their COVID-19 sick leave
The country’s largest traditional grocery store chain, with almost 500,000 employees, said vaccinations are a focus for the company
The country’s largest supermarket operator is handing down the ultimate punishments to employees unvaccinated against COVID-19. Beginning next year, Kroger will take away paid leave for unvaccinated employees who get COVID-19 and will require some to pay a monthly health insurance surcharge.
A company spokeswoman said the policies will be implemented in order to encourage staff to make the choice to get the vaccine. Fully vaccinated employees who get breakthrough cases, however, will still be provided paid leave.
Kroger is one of the country’s biggest employers with about 465,000 workers. The announcement was made by the supermarket giant on Tuesday when a companywide memo was sent out. The changes will take effect on January 1st. The company will continue its policy of offering a $100 incentive to all employees who become fully vaccinated.
“As we prepare to navigate the next phase of the pandemic, we are modifying policies to encourage safe behaviors including vaccination,” the spokeswoman said in a statement.
Starting next year, salaried, non-union employees who are unvaccinated and enrolled in the company’s health insurance plan must pay a monthly $50 surcharge, the company spokeswoman said.
The announcement comes as the spread of the omicron variant creates new uncertainty about how businesses should operate and when corporate employees will return to the office. New York and California have reinstated mask mandates, regardless of vaccination status. That’s led to retailers posting entrance signs reminiscent of the earlier months of the pandemic, reminding customers they must put on masks before stepping inside. Some companies, including Google, have pushed back plans to require employees to return to the office in January.
Other companies have also tightened rules around Covid vaccinations or added penalties for employees who do not get them. Starting in November, unvaccinated Delta Air Lines employees must pay a $200 monthly surcharge for health insurance.
Healthcare
Prestigious Science Journals Confirm Censored Views: Masks at Best Don’t Reduce COVID Infection
Just The News reports that a prestigious science journal has confirmed what was highly censored among social media regarding the novel coronavirus pandemic: “the best-case scenario for one of the most common COVID-19 interventions may be that it has no measurable effect on infection.”
A systematic review of studies of mask mandates for children, published Saturday in the British Medical Journal‘s Archives of Disease in Childhood, found “no association” with infection or transmission in 16 of the 22 observational studies and “critical” or “serious” risk of bias in the six countervailing studies. It got the attention of Elon Musk, owner of X, formerly Twitter.
Emails turned over under public records requests show that National Institutes of Health officials were privately questioning the effectiveness of cloth masks and forthcoming vaccines just a month after then-NIH Director Francis Collins appeared to plot with colleagues to organize a “quick and devastating take down” of the anti-lockdown Great Barrington Declaration.
Self-reported SARS-CoV-2 infection was higher the more often people said they wore masks, according to a Norwegian study accepted for publication Nov. 13 in the Cambridge University Press journal Epidemiology and Infection.
An analysis published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on Nov. 20 suggests that “scientific censorship is often driven by scientists” and not just “authoritarian officials with dark motives, such as dogmatism and intolerance,” as popularly believed.
The paper, co-authored by dozens of scholars known for challenging orthodoxies in their fields, cited “self-protection, benevolence toward peer scholars, and prosocial concerns for the well-being of human social groups” as motives for censorious scientists.
Heterodox COVID scholarship may suffer hard-to-prove “camouflaged censorship” by way of “double standards” applied to such research, the paper states.
The findings cast further doubt on the practice of not only public health authorities but scientists themselves in demonizing science-based skepticism of the effectiveness of COVID interventions, particularly in relation to their potential medical, mental and social harms.
That’s now two major reviews in top journals (Cochrane and BMJ) revealing no benefit to public masking. At this point any mask mandate is essentially political, unscientific, and yes–cruel.
Bravo @TracyBethHoeg et al and the work of many others in this space @VPrasadMDMPH… https://t.co/iemhr6sTJj
— Artur Adib (@r2r) December 4, 2023
“Masking recommendations appear to be entirely based on mechanistic and observational data,” they wrote, noting that a much broader systematic review of mask RCTs by the research collaborative Cochrane concluded masks make “little to no difference” against flu or COVID.
(Cochrane unilaterally reinterpreted the study to downplay its findings, over the authors’ objections, after facing media scrutiny.)
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Kevin Johnson
December 16, 2021 at 8:37 am
Kevin Johnson
Mike
December 16, 2021 at 9:53 am
Might be time to boycott Kroger. I’ll take American freedoms over a big time grocery store anytime
KS_Tadpole
December 16, 2021 at 10:17 am
Will they take away vacation pay for infected vaccinated employees?
M. Jones
December 16, 2021 at 10:31 am
Guess I will be limiting my shopping at Kroeger, as to support their hard working employees who continued to work throughout the pandemic. Not fair to penalize employees for not getting a vaccine that hasn’t even been proven effective. And, if they have health issues or have a religious belief that goes against having a vaccine put in their body, that contains fetal matter, from embryo tissue, that’s really wrong. Many jobs out there right now. Hopefully, they’ll all find a better employer.
Blue Ridge Mama
December 16, 2021 at 3:15 pm
Very stupid choice on their part…
Javaman
December 16, 2021 at 3:26 pm
I will never set foot in one of there stores for the rest of my life.
Gloria B SWARD
December 16, 2021 at 5:15 pm
BOYCOTT–It is against the First Amendment Rights. Do they have any young men between 18-25? Will they take responsibility if any one of these young men are adversely affected by heart conditions as a result of the vaccine? They better prepare for lawsuits.
Rhonda
December 16, 2021 at 5:43 pm
With the Covid pandemic our current socialist-headed Democrats have been given a head start on controlling the population thru mandates and scare tactics. I love the way the word “choice” is used.
Brenda Bullard
December 27, 2021 at 1:14 am
those Democrats dropped their slogan, “My Body My Choice” REAL FAST! And in their case it wasn’t even THEIR body! But these people are being forced to take the shot through intimidation and it actually IS their own body!
LesHL
December 16, 2021 at 5:53 pm
Time for these 5000,000 employees to unionize, strike and shut them down. Any of these large corporations that demand, and punish employees needs to be punished themselves! Forcing anyone to put something in their body, they don’t want or believe in through intimidation is disgusting and probably illegal.
Word7
December 16, 2021 at 7:46 pm
Tyrants, I won’t be shopping St Krogers anymore.
Shelly
December 16, 2021 at 8:05 pm
Don’t shop there anyway. That is outrageous!
Cynthia Banks
December 16, 2021 at 10:56 pm
I have shopped at the Smith’s in Mesquite Nevada for the last eleven years. That stops today. How dare you blackmail your employees many who have become very dear to me. Take your company and shove it.