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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."
Aggressive vaccinations are a good thing. Think we could have practically wiped out polio or smallpox in this country if we just kicked back and waited to see what happened? Of course the flu isn't the same, and I know it's not going anywhere. But if you think for a second that every healthcare worker shouldn't get the flu shot, you don't know a lot about healthcare. This sort of thing isn't to protect the workers, it's to protect the immunocompromised people in the hospital. They need our healthy immune systems to protect them, too.
The summary is a little sensationalistic. It says 2/3 of parents are avoiding 'flu shots, whereas the article quotes 22% as the figure, with the remainder saying they would definitely vaccinate, or that they would try to vaccinate.
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Let's see; people who have a very good chance of coming into direct contact with those infected with H1N1 flu on a daily basis and then subsequently coming into contact with others who may be in high-risk groups for said virus being required to get vaccinated against it? Madness, I say. This is what happens when you let government have control over health care. Socialism. Communists. Sky...falling etc.
Now termination may be a bit harsh, but removal from front-line duties for those who refuse the vaccination seems more than reasonable to me. H1N1 may not be the epic disaster that was predicted, but that doesn't mean we should just ignore it entirely.
Maybe my tin foil hat isn't adjusted right, but of all the vaccines out there, the flu shot (or mist as most people get it these days) is about as safest of them all. Incredibly low side effect rate, very effective, and a guarantee that you're going to get a mild version of the flu before everybody else does. Plus, if you are working in a medical care facility, you won't be an oxygen-burning flu contamination source, making it possible to keep the spread of these viruses down to a minimum.
Yes, the Swine Vaccine in the 70's was very poorly executed and there were many problems. But holy cow folks, it's been over 30 years and medicine has come just a short distance since. For the last 18 years getting a flu shot has been a federally mandated condition of my employment and I don't even work in a health care related field--what the heck is the big deal with getting a flu shot?
Starting next week, all passwords will be entered in morse code.
Maher's a funny guy, and I like a lot of what he stands for. However, his stances on things like medicine and nutrition are total whack-job, and that's putting it kindly. I saw the Maher interview with Frist the other night. All I can say is that if even one person is influenced to NOT take the H1N1 vaccine based on Bill's foolish, uninformed, hippie opinion on the matter, and subsequently that person gets infected and dies, then IMO Bill is culpable. All available data strongly supports the safety and effectiveness of vaccination. Not vaccinating based on superstition is grossly irresponsible.
If you've got a compromised immune system, then working at a hosipital is the last thing that you want to do. Getting fired would probably save your life.
This isn't new; if anything, mandatory vaccination laws have become much more lenient in the United States than they used to be. In the early 20th century, 11 states had fully mandatory vaccination laws, not just "must get vaccinated as a condition of attending public schools" or "must be vaccinated as a condition of working in certain occupations" sorts of things. Rather, it was a requirement for living in the jurisdiction that you must be vaccinated. Massachusetts's mandatory smallpox vaccination law was upheld by the Supreme Court in Jacobson v. Commonwealth of Massachusetts in 1905, which is still the main precedent on the subject.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
If the influenza pandemic will kill off Extreme Programming, now that's something I can get behind.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
"Why is it you can't sue the makers of vaccines, if the vaccine makes you sick?"
In order for vaccination to "work" - from a public health standpoint - a majority of the population needs to be vaccinated. (I think the number's 75%.) If you are giving that many people a shot someone is going to get sick, even if there is nothing "wrong" with the vaccine. Add to that the fact that vaccines are a low margin product - per the supply/demand curve, it needs to be cheap as possible so the most people will get it.
So, you have a product that:
1) will definitely make someone sick and/or kill them
2) You are barely making any money on it
3) there is no "informed consent" defense - most vaccines are mandated.
Why would any company make such a product when they will inevitable get sued for far more than the profit from it? No one would. So the US government, in order to induce the production of vaccines, gave vaccine manufacturers immunity from suit and set up a fund to compensate the people they KNOW will be hurt.
Short answer - you can't sue for injury from a vaccine because, if you could, there would be no vaccines.
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
I only know Maher from youtube clips, he is a smart and funny guy but every now and then he demonstrates he hasn't quite got the hang of the critical thinking thing and comes out with "alternative" health advise that makes me groan. I once heard him repeat the 1990's greenpeace meme that putting clorine in the water to kill bugs was a BadThing(TM), never mind that it is probably the single biggest public health improvement of the 20th century in terms of lives saved.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
On construction sites: hard hat, steel-toed boots, and when appropriate, gloves and safety glasses
At hospitals and other health-care facilities: immunization for the kinds of diseases that are likely to come through the door, especially those with the potential for arrival en masse.
Of course it is within your rights to refuse. But no safety equipment? No, you aren't allowed on-site in the areas where the relevant hazards exist. If that precludes you working, tough.
Seems reasonable to me. It's still a choice, even if it is a harsh one. But anyone who chose to work in health care should have realized years ago what might sometimes be necessary to do the job.
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.
John
That was essentially Maher's ploy.
By interviewing Frist, a former Senator who was the Senate Republican leader during part of his time in office, instead of some other well-known physician, Maher interposed wholly unrelated politics into the discussion about whether or not to get an H1N1 vaccination. The end result is to convince some people who disagree with Frist on other issues to accept what is essentially a "reductio ad Hitlerum" argument: that if Bill Frist believes you should get a flu shot, then clearly, that's reason enough not to.
On our volunteer fire department. Particularly the EMS people. We see a lot of people with chronic respiratory diseases, COPD, and the elderly and people with weakened immune systems. The flu could kill them. Since they spend most of their time shut in, first responders are a possible vector.
So, yeah, we're getting flu shots and so are the ambulance and hospital people. If you're in the military, they vaccinate you against shit I've never even heard of.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
next thing you know, they'll be forcing construction workers to wear hard hat and astronauts to wear space suits. It's a slippery slope people!
--
Stay tuned for some shock and awe coming right up after this messages!
I got all those side effects just from reading your idiotic post!
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.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Nice try, but squalene and other adjuvants are forbidden in U.S. vaccines by the FDA. With regards to the mercury, if it's that big of a concern to you, I hope you are on a tuna-free diet because there is more mercury in a tuna sandwich than in the thiomersal of any vaccine available in the U.S..
As for your scary-sounding list, yes, it's a list of possible adverse effects that a person may experience - but it is not an indication of likelihood. No medication is without risk, but in general, people take the medication because the benefits outweigh the risks by a significant margin.
To put it in a grossly exaggerated, probably flawed slashdot-style analogy, the documented possible side effects of flying in a plane are motion sickness, legionnaire's disease, food poisoning, lice infestation, mental anguish, deep vein thrombosis, alcohol abuse, insomnia, halitosis, delayed departure, poverty, or becoming part of a suicide mission that turns your plane into a bomb. But more likely than any of those you'll get to your destination with very little lasting impact on your personal health or safety - as long as you remember that stupid 4-1-1 rule.
"151 dead from Swine Flu in Mexico", on recounting, turned out to be 6.
I don't know where your non-cited figure of "6" deaths from the original swine flu outbreak in Mexico came from, but maybe it was from a misinterpretation of a report detailing the deaths of 7 patients at a single tertiary care hospital in Mexico city during a single month. The New England Journal of Medicine article that detailed the fate of the 98 patients acutely ill with the swine flu in that hospital at that time also references that 85 people in Mexico were known to have died as of May out of 4910 confirmed cases, a fatality rate of 1.7%.
Fortunately only Mexico during the initial outbreak reported such a high fatality rate. This is very fortunate as almost no young person in the world had any kind of immunity to this strain. In all likelihood when you come down with it you will be 'lucky' enough to only have to suffer a few days of bed-bound misery.
I'm a healthy skeptic.
Skepticism is good, but you've jumped way beyond that into conspiracy theories and paranoia.
I'll stick with preventative measures, as opposed to a shot that may or may not be effective this season
Doing nothing does not count as a preventative measure. It is true that usually with the seasonal flu vaccine scientists must guess months beforehand what strains to put in the vaccine and since they don't always guess right the vaccine is usually only about 70% effective, but as for pandemic H1N1 the vaccine is an excellent match and it should give almost everyone who gets it protection.
The vaccine if they really worked it wouldnt matter how many people got the vaccine. The people who got the vaccine would be protected, and the people who didnt would only be harming themselves.
That would be true if "really worked" was a binary, 100% or 0% status. This is not the case.
Vaccines do not protect everyone they are given to (the vaccine merely trains immune systems, after all, which differ from person to person). Even if they were foolproof, vaccines cannot be administered to everyone - even if the risk of complications is far less than the risk of the disease in most people, there may be individuals (e.g. very young infants for the flu vaccine) for whom that is not the case. These still-vulnerable individuals benefit instead from "herd immunity":
One way to make yourself safe from a disease is to make yourself immune, so you can't get the disease. If that is impossible, another way to make yourself safe is to live in a population who have mostly made themselves immune, so you have no contact with anyone who can give you the disease.
Unfortunately, herd immunity also allows people to "defect" from their vaccinations; that's the entire reason why people would even consider skipping a vaccination in the first place! Why expose yourself to the nocebo effect, when you can simply free-ride off the immunity of others? They say that confusing correlation and causation leads to autism, you know!
http://www.cdc.gov/H1N1flu/vaccination/pregnant_qa.htm
"Does the 2009 H1N1 flu shot have an adjuvant or squalene in it?"
"Adjuvants are agents that are sometimes added to a vaccine to make it more effective. There are no adjuvants (such as squalene) in either the 2009 H1N1 or seasonal flu shot used in the United States."
And you've apparently not been educated in immunology, or contagion. If a disease is moderately virulent (like the common cold, or the flue), but the vaccine is prevalent (such as 90% or better of school children, who are incredibly susceptible), outbreaks are very small and likely not to spread. If the vaccine is rare, the disease can still spread as a serious contagion: a plague, if the disease is dangerous enough.
AIDS is a fascinating example. It takes serious work to get AIDS: blood-to-blood transfer is unusual. But the idiots who first got it spread it _virulently_ through the susceptible group, so broadly that it's entered the general population in places like South Africa. And a hospital is a festering ground for infection: the sick people go there, otherwise healthy people get the disease and spread it to other patients unless their clean procedures are ver, very good, and the same staff person may see many other patients or clean many other rooms or handle many other cafeteria trays and spread the disease wildly among otherwise weakened people. They _should_ be vaccinated, for the safety of the patients.