For Some Medical Workers, a Flu Shot Or Possible Job Loss

theodp writes "Want to work at Winthrop Hospital? Roll up your sleeve, and we'll talk. TIME reports that every employee at the Long Island hospital — from doctors and nurses who care for patients to the administrative, housekeeping and food-service personnel — must be vaccinated against both seasonal and H1N1 flu or face termination. The mandate comes from the health department of New York, the first state to require all health-care workers to be vaccinated against influenza. Meanwhile, two-thirds of parents say they'll avoid flu shots for their little ones like, well, the flu. So who should you believe — Dr. Bill Frist or 'Dr.' Bill Maher? Before you decide, perhaps a consultation with Dr. Google is in order."

Comments

Re:Captain Obvious

[Trepidity]

If the influenza pandemic will kill off Extreme Programming, now that's something I can get behind.

Re:First Flu?

[plover]

It's not just hospital workers (although that's what TFA is about.) Plenty of people are required to get a flu shot that you wouldn't expect need it.

The one that surprised me are local refinery workers. There is one refinery in our region that produces virtually all of the petroleum based fuel consumed locally. If the flu were to incapacitate 50% of the employees, the refinery would have to shut down. These are trained people needed to produce a critical product, and the refinery wouldn't have the time to train temps to take over for them. Pipelines don't exist to bring in refined products from elsewhere, and the rest of the nation's refining capacity would be strained to meet the demand.

Refinery workers are exposed to a lot of things you probably wouldn't want to be exposed to, but viruses aren't commonly among them. It'd probably be a great place to work if you wanted to avoid contact with other people.

Re:Sounds like a healthy policy

[HiThere]

Actually, there's a bit of confusion. The H1N1 swine flu that they're vaccinating against (as soon as the vaccines are prepared) isn't that much worse than the ordinary seasonal flu. It's the H5N1 that's the reputed killer. And that one isn't spreading widely. (Doesn't seem to be spreading widely?) So this seems to mean that we currently have 3 flu strains in circulation.

The problem is that if someone gets multiple flus at the same time, the genes are likely to do some swapping. This could easily result in a flu that spreads as easily as the seasonal flu and is as deadly as H5N1 (bird flu). So this year it's especially important to keep the level of flu in the population as low as possible.

Well, at least that's how I understand it. If someone connected with the health profession could correct any errors, it would probably be beneficial.