COVID vaccine mandates are coming to bear, and the results so far are about what's been expected:

Novant Health has fired about 175 employees for failing to comply with the company's COVID-19 vaccine mandate.

The North Carolina-based company, which runs 15 hospitals, announced last week that it had suspended 375 workers who had not received the vaccine. By last Friday, 200 of those workers had gotten their first dose, according to Novant spokeswoman Megan Rivers.

While Novant confirmed that the remaining employees who declined to get the vaccine had been terminated, the company would not say exactly how many that was. The company, which employs about 29,000, said it had a 99% compliance rate with its vaccine mandate.

It is perhaps unsurprising that most people obeyed the mandate and received the vaccine. What will be more interesting to observe is how many of them will obey additional mandates for, say, booster shots, which some officials are indicating may become a permanent fixture of the U.S. medical repertoire.

When long-term effects of the vaccine—if there are any—become known, that could further complicate the picture. The point being that a "99% compliance rate" means relatively little as far as the future of COVID vaccines and mandates are concerned. That number could easily shift depending on a variety of arguably probable factors.

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