On the Deaths of Two Unvaccinated Florida IT Workers

I sometimes talk about "the family of geeks" — how our shared experiences can bring us together. But if that's true, there's been a death in the family.... Manatee County Administrator Scott Hopes, who is also an epidemiologist, said six unvaccinated employees, including five in the IT department, tested positive for the virus within a two-week period. The two IT employees who died last week were identified in local media and obituaries as Mary Knight, 58, and Alphonso Cox, 53. Hopes said that the one IT employee, 23, exposed to the virus who was vaccinated did not get infected. "This particular outbreak demonstrates the effectiveness, I believe, with the vaccine," he said to reporters Monday. "All of the cases were non-vaccinated. They were unvaccinated." He added in a news release, "Individual employees in the IT Department who were known to be fully vaccinated and who were in close proximity of those who were infected did not contract COVID-19." But even with the outbreak, masks will remain optional for staffers returning this week, with unvaccinated workers being "encouraged but not required, to follow covid-19 prevention measures...." Manatee County, located in southwest Florida, has fully vaccinated 43 percent of its eligible population. The Manatee Board of County Commissioners repealed coronavirus safety requirements last month and strongly recommended that people visiting the County Administration Building "use their best judgment" to protect themselves from a potential spread of the virus... When the second employee died Thursday, the decision was made to shut down the building the next day so it could be disinfected. "When you have that many cases, and you have a 40 percent fatality rate, you have to worry," Hopes said to Florida Politics. "I would prefer not to have any more employee funerals." Yet the county announced over the weekend that "face masks will be optional for the public and employees inside the facility...." Funerals and celebration-of-life events for Knight and Cox are scheduled to take place later this week. Thanks to Slashdot reader luis_a_espinal (a Florida-based software engineer) for sharing the story. Country administrator Hopes is concerned, reports the Sarasota Herald-Tribune, because "Of the first five cases, all were sick enough to be hospitalized or died. That's not the normal COVID variant that we saw last year." And yet... As officials work to control the outbreak, questions have been raised about how far the county can go to keep employees safe — including whether it can inquire about employees' vaccination status, since the recent victims so far have not been fully vaccinated... "We are allowed to ask," Hopes said. "But they don't have to tell us, and whatever their response is, we are not to ask any further." Manatee County School District General Counsel Mitch Teitelbaum said the school district had the same understanding of privacy laws... [The county-owned seaport] Port Manatee had reported three new cases of COVID-19 on Monday, spurring fears that the virus was continuing to spread among the county's workforce. On Tuesday, port spokeswoman Virginia Zimmerman said the three cases had been an "aberration" and that there are not any additional cases to report. Zimmerman said the port does not inquire about employees' vaccination status, and that the port "encourages, but does not require, staff to be vaccinated." While the county scrambles to mitigate the spread of the virus, Hopes said many county employees are grieving the loss of their coworkers. "These weren't just colleagues," Hopes said. "These people have basically lived at work together for 20 years, and this happened quickly."

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