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Mandatory H1N1 Vaccine For NY Health Workers Suspended
lunatick writes "The controversial mandatory swine flu vaccine for health care workers in NY has been suspended. While the reason for the suspension was stated as a shortage of the vaccine, a connection was found showing state Health Commissioner Richard F. Daines, M.D. and/or his wife may directly profit from the sale of the vaccine. Within hours of that connection being questioned on a radio show and the podcast being distributed, the announcement was made suspending the order. The health care community of NYS is petitioning the State Attorney general to investigate the connection."
H1N1 may indeed be pandemic in NYS, but it's still not as prevalent as corruption.
Just as an FYI, you have a typo in the title. "Manditory" should be "Mandatory"
I've read suggestions to make people (kids in particular) get vaccinations before but frankly I have never been comfortable with the concept. When you start telling people that they must put something foreign into their bodies at what point exactly does it stop?
Plus what happens if this vaccine turns out to have nasty side effects? Is the state who mandated it responsible or will they just wash their hands and say - "You had a choice!" That's what they tried to do after all the medication they made soliders take in the first gulf war turned out to have serious long term side effects.
Going into crazy paranoia zone here now, but how long until RFID chips (which have already been linked to cancer) will be mandatory for government employees for "security reasons?"
Isn't that sort of a defining aspect of a union?
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
So, the "scandal" here is that his wife works for Golman Sachs and that pharma stocks are overpriced? Somehow mandating that healthcare workers get vaccinated against a new flu is somehow a huge conspiracy to profit for them how? I recognize that the tin-foil-hat brigade has kicked onto high alert over H1N1 vaccination, but this is stupid. This is front page material how?
The NY State Unions are Outraged that their employer wants to keep its workforce healthy
I am usually as anti-union as they come but this is case where I see them actually doing some good. We don't generally have the abusive employer-employee relationships we had in the past, but your employer insisting you inject something into your body certainly counts!
Its one of the most perverse violations of rights in recent times! We are supposed to be secure in the right of our person.
Now that this has been declared a federal emergency by the big O, I fully expect other groups of people to be "required" to be vaccinated. Well I say they can vaccinate my dead body because that's the only way I let them do it! You can be darn sure I will try and take as many of whatever agents attempt to force such on me down with me too. Anyone who tries to forcefully inject a bunch of heavy metal Mg in you deserves to be injected with some Pb at high velocity in my book!
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
We've been seeing tons and tons of articles like this recently on slashdot. There's a consistent anti-vaccine slant on all of them. I'm guessing that there's some small group of antivaccine crazies who are active on the firehose, and they consistently vote up each other's stories.
Find free books.
What Unions did 100 years ago or even 25 years is not what they are doing now.
They had their time and and place, and the 21st century is not one of them. As an ex-union (Teamsters) employee, I will never support them again
Gone!
If you have direct patient contact, you should be doing all you can to keep your patients from getting more sick. That means getting your vaccines and getting tests for certain diseases. Or do you think TB testing shouldn't be mandatory for front-line hospital workers as they are now?
In all the media hype there is not one word mentioned of the Pharmaceutical companies involved. Why? Could they be holding out for a better price? That's just good business isn't it? Has America traded its children's future for the promise from a Grinning Show Off with an out stretched hand? There to many dead to ignore these kinds of questions.
Either H1N1 is so serious that we do need a vaccine. Or it's ok to delay vaccinations while we get the finances sorted out. Something smells. And speaking as someone who has had it... all I can say is that it really doesn't seem much worse than regular flu. My only conclusion is that there's a bunch of people making a whole load of money off our fears. Global financial meltdown, H1N1... what's next? We need to give up another few trillion to save ourselves from a plague of locusts? Oh... too late for that one...
And if yes, then there is clear favouritism in giving limited supplies of a vaccine (currently enough to vaccinate around 10% of the population) to politicians first.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
You send thugs with baseball bats to break up union meetings?
Damn...
President Obama was injected in a public display, but how can you be sure it was the same vaccine they are giving to everyone else.
The military are all required to get the flu injection, and this year the H1N1. Congress is optional, don't know if many did.
He got a flu shot along with his family but it wasn't for H1/N1.
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
Alternatively, they are outraged that the State can force someone to accept an elective medical treatment that may violate their religious convictions or may simply be a case where they are not convinced of it's safety or that it's benefits outweigh the risks. It hardly matters who agrees or disagrees with their assessment, it's THEIR body, not the state's.
There are a lot of people who consider their own body the last refuge of personal freedom and have deep philosophical objections to it's violation by the state.
Notably a number of people who have already been voluntarily vaccinated have joind in objecting to it being mandatory. It's also worth considering that according to articles on the subject, health care workers are "notoriously non-compliant" with flu vaccination. That is, the people best equipped to understand the benefits and risks tend to opt against being vaccinated.
It's understandable considering that while the various other vaccines have years of safety record and a one time risk in trade for for decades of worthwhile protection, the flu shot is essentially new every year and not much good after that year.
It's interesting how with all of the pressure to get vaccinated we don't even hear a peep about mandatory sick leave, a measure that certainly has proven benefits and carries no medical risks AND is effective against any communicable disease (yes, many are communicable before symptoms are manifest, but most have some overlap between communicability and symptoms).
I don't really see why you're conflating this with abortion, and then heaping the blame on liberals. It strikes me as very disingenuous to even compare the two things. You were vaccinated as an infant against diseases, do you also consider that to be a violation of your privacy rights? To me it doesn't seem like a bad idea to have health care workers, in a heavily populated city like New York, to be vaccinated against something they'll likely be exposed to.
To me this looks more like 'six degrees of separation' being made by a local right-wing radio station.
Question for you. Do you believe that the regular flu shout should be mandatory for "front-line hospital workers"?
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
Not to mention that some people are allergic to the flu shot. As it is made using eggs, anyone allergic to eggs can get a severe allergic reaction to the flu shot, including death. Some how I doubt all hospital workers are not allergic to eggs.
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
It's a right-wing radio station.
Reading the site that is linked, they don't even have any tangible evidence that there is something going on. A lot of guilt by association innuendo, six degrees of separation connections, and 'what if' type questions.
The CDC says it's because of the shortage of the vaccine. I'll trust them, for the time being, over a biased right-wing radio station.
Because getting an abortion doesn't endanger anyone else.
The reason vaccinations are mandated is because each person serves as a potential vessel to spread the disease to many other people. Your choice of whether or not to take it is something that affects us all.
I agree we should have a choice about what goes into our bodies, but this is the reasoning, and its not without merit.
If you believe that we should uphold the right of someone to control their own body then it is difficult to defend these rights for abortion but not the right to take or refuse vaccinations.
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
The same people who say that women must have free access to abortion, because they have the right to say what they do with their bodies, are now saying that NYS health care workers don't have the right to say what they do with their bodies with regards to a vaccine?
Well yes, but it's different - the workers aren't all women. Seriously that would be the first argument if they were - sexual discrimination.
Why is it that liberals say that a woman has the right to decide whether or not she gets an abortion because it's her body, but say that health care workers don't have the right to decide whether or not they get vaccines, even though it's their body?????
Because the lives of women are deemed to be more important than the lives of men? Again, seriously. Just look at the media (and mortality/injury statistics) and see what lives are given the most value and what lives are seen as more disposable. I've been waiting for feminists to start protesting the unequal treatment for a while now. I expect that will happen any day now.
The tyrant will always find a pretext for his tyranny - Aesop
It's not difficult at all. A woman receiving an abortion isn't working at a hospital where her abortion can spread to people with weakened immune systems.
Vaccinating people who are working at hospitals, who can spread a virus to everyone they come in contact with as part of their job, isn't in the same league with abortion at all.
You're acting like these are forced vaccinations to the population, and they're not. It seems to me that this is a very common sense thing to do, to keep a virus from being spread in a hospital...
Why is it that liberals say that a woman has the right to decide whether or not she gets an abortion because it's her body, but say that health care workers don't have the right to decide whether or not they get vaccines, even though it's their body?????
I don't think the comparison holds quite so simply. Abortion isn't a viral disease, the flu bug is something a health care worker can spread by getting infected before they're aware that they are infected. In that case, it's not just the health care worker's body, it's everyone they come in contact with, and a lot of those they come in contact with may have compromised immune systems. I don't think it's just a matter of washing, if you do get infected, your body becomes a walking factory for the virus.
They chose to work in a hospital. Hospitals need to prevent the spread of disease to their already ill patients. This is common sense. Every health care contract should have an immunization clause, and if they don't, it needs to be put in. If you don't want the shot, you are free to quit.
How is that like abortion?
I don't have to get a shot, because I don't work in a hospital. But I also have asthma, and I'm not a moron. So I'm getting the shot.
You opt-in to working in a hospital where, unless you are a moron, you realize regulations like this can be made.
There are multitudes of ways to protect a patient from exposure, from face masks to reverse isolation air exchange rooms to simply staying home while ill.
To demand vaccination out all the different means to reduce infection is an arbitrary line in the sand, most spoken by those who neither give patient care nor will bear any cost should any problems arise.
TB testing is different with respect to the laws associated with it (you can be quarantined in most states for refusing INH treatment) and is advocated as a means of tracing exposure and workman's comp. claims.
To put things in perspective, the Hepatitis B vaccine is not mandatory, even though at one time Hep. B represented one of the highest occupational risks of those who performed direct patient care.
In short, know what the fuck you are talking about instead of parroting useless asides of what someone else told you to think.
Do alot of health care workers in NYC hospitals have unprotected sex with their patients? Slippery Slope arguments are bullshit, and this is a fine example of why.
The population isn't being forced in to taking the virus. This is only in regards to people working at hospitals, where they are exposed to the virus, and working around patients with weak immune systems.
When have unions ever worked against the interests of their members?
I didn't say much, so there is lots of room to argue about what exactly I must have meant, but I'm pretty sure that working for the benefit of the members is a core goal of every union that has ever existed.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
And I'd give anything for one right now. My current employer has dropped promised raises, dropped promised bonuses, and is currently telling us we can't use our grandfathered vacation (despite that being illegal in WA state- its pay or let us take it here). The reasons for needing them aren't as desperate as they were in the days of child labor and 16 hour workdays, but they aren't gone. Until greed is wiped out of humanity (in other words, never) management with power will always seek to abuse those who have less power, and will always need to be opposed in the only way workers can- by banding together.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
Great point there. Also look at the source of this "article". A local right-wing radio station, with nothing in their article except innuendo, six-degrees-of-separation finger pointing, with no real evidence of any wrongdoing at all. I think their main problem with the commissioner is that he was appointed by a Democrat.
Yes, because these people chose to be health workers; there is no way to become on without making a deliberate decision to do so. If you don't like mandatory vaccination, then don't be a health worker.
Though I don't really understand the point. If a health worker wants to expose himself without vaccination, let him. With or without vaccination, a sick health care worker should not be working; having him at work while sick because "hey, I'm vaccinated" would be idiotic.
The same people who say that women must have free access to abortion, because they have the right to say what they do with their bodies, are now saying that NYS health care workers don't have the right to say what they do with their bodies with regards to a vaccine?
When a woman gets an abortion, only she and the fetus are affected.
When a health worker, WHO WORKES A JOB WHERE THEY WILL COME IN CONTACT WITH INFECTED PEOPLE, refuses to get a shot to prevent the spread of an infection...that affects their own health and potentially tens of thousands of people. That worker needs to be able to come into contact with patients, help them, and not get sick themselves, and not pass the illness onto others.
Furthermore, health workers are already required to get many vaccines. They knew that going into the job; when I worked at a hospital, we had to hand over medical records proving we'd been vaccinated (even though I didn't work with patients, if there is a public health emergency, they pull employees from other areas as needed. Even if it only to help push stretchers and take out the trash.) If you want the right to refuse a vaccine, DON'T WORK IN HEATHCARE.
This is, just as the top poster says, anti-vaccine hysteria from people who think their gut beats experts, research, fact. We're the only developed country that has this problem...the rest of the world, hell, even the Catholic church has accepted Evolution, yet nutjobs came out of the woodwork and demanded it's false and constantly challenge its teaching. Then we had the anti-global-warming nutjobs. Now it's anti-vaccine nutjobs.
What's next? Square Earth? We're the pivoting point of the universe? Why is it that it feels like only America has all the idiots who deny the obvious, proven, fact?
Please help metamoderate.
Isn't that sort of a defining aspect of a union?
No. You are obviously ignorant if this is your belief.
The owners look out for the company and the unions look out for the workers. As long as there is balance in the force then everyone is treated fairly as both sides make reasonable compromises.
When there are no unions, as in the industrial revolution, the owners were raping the workers. Now the unions have too much control and refuse to vote down wages and benefits during a recession...
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2009/10/five-major-pension-problems-one-simple.html
Really? Getting an abortion doesn't endanger anyone else? You can't imagine anyone else who might be harmed by an abortion?
Think carefully now.
Actually, the Declaration of Independence states: "... certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." Unalienable rights means that they cannot be given up, by a contract of indentured servitude for example, either for yourself, and certainly not for your descendants. So there are certain contracts that are "not allowed, for principled reasons", because people are not free to give up certain of their rights.
Other sorts of contracts that are not allowed, for good reasons, are selling your house to somebody under the condition that they promise never to sell it to anyone "not of the white race" or jewish, and that they must apply this condition upon anyone that they sell it to. This is sort of like a racist, viral, GPL, and it was common in the U.S. in the first half of the 20th century.
Share. Until it becomes uncomfortable. Or at least a little.
I'm in an age group with one of the lower incidence rates, but the highest death rate amongst those that do get it. It's weird.
No one is suggesting that health-care workers be sent to jail for refusing shots. I'm sure they have to put up with blood and urine tests as a condition of employment too. I'll bring up your abortion analogy the next time I assert my right to morphine mind-modification, though.
What if you know yourself to already be allergic to things? The probability of complication depends on how much you know about your situation, so applying general probabilities to yourself is silly.
Note how my comments have been viewed as arguing against vaccines. All I'm doing is discussing aspects of them. How can one even make a decision without being able to discuss individual aspects?
The corruption angle here might be a good reason to investigate the interest-conflicted doctor, and perhaps take back their ill-gotten gain if that's what's happening. But there's no basis to freak out about mandatory vaccination of health workers.
Waiters and other employees in restaurants are required to wash their hands, because their job puts them at higher risk of both getting and passing on disease to customers and fellow workers. The same risk management is necessary for health workers, who are much more at risk. The people screaming about the mandatory vaccinations of health workers aren't just crazy, they're interfering with protecting the public health.
--
make install -not war
Rice University has a vaccine production researcher that suggests last year's "wrong strain" vaccine increased one's chances of getting H1N1 this year because the "antigenetic distance" yields wrongly targeted (dud) antibodies.
Respected researchers' report from Canada say the odds for getting H1N1 this year were doubled for recipients of last year's flu shot.
But how do I know for sure that you aren't a robot sent from the future to discourage future survivors from getting the vaccine before it mutates into a superbug, facilitating the robot takeover?
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
It's a mandatory vaccination; there's nothing voluntary about it. Yes it's a very good idea to have everyone in this line of work vaccinated but let's call it what it is.
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
However unlike the late 1800s and the early to mid 1900s we have a choice for different jobs. If you are unhappy with your work environment look for new work. Even in this economy you can probably find a job that you will be happier in then it would take the Union to "negotiate" for you. Now for this case chances are your company is not doing to well. So your dropped promised raises and bonuses probably saved your job. Now during Union talks what do you think will happen... Sure they may have fought tooth and nail however the company will probably. Outsource its work to an other non-union area. Go Bankrupt as they couldn't keep operations running, or probably laided off the high paying jobs and hired a bunch of lower paid jobs. As the union will be happy as it has more union members and the company can layoff most of its expenses. Guess what Tech People are in that higher paid bracket.
If you want the best for yourself especially now with modern communication and transportation. Find a new job and then quit your current one. You will have a better job, the company that you quit will have to suffer from higher attrition. (and if they get too many people doing this then they will realize that they are doing something wrong because they cant keep good employees) Going with a Union you will be a pawn for 2 groups that really don't care about you.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
I'll tell you I work in the healthcare industry and I'm usually pretty libertarian in my view point but the insurance industry and the malpractice industry is sucking up 70-80% of the healthcare dollar today. Even I am starting to think that even the government could fuck it up any worse.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
When there are no unions, as in the industrial revolution, the owners were raping the workers. Now the unions have too much control and refuse to vote down wages and benefits during a recession..
Yea the idea that Unions are no longer relevant you bring up a 100 year old example. That is all I really hear about pro union Hundred year examples. Come on lets face it you got brained washed by the schools with Unioned teachers. They never cover the negatives of unions, they just make anyone who opposes them seem like an evil money grubber.
The owners look out for the company and the unions look out for the workers. As long as there is balance in the force then everyone is treated fairly as both sides make reasonable compromises.
Except for modern studies that show that Happy Employees are Productive employees. I have done work in a lot of places some Unionized and some not. HR departments in Non-Unioned shops try to keep the employees relatively happy, so they don't quit especially if they are good employee. In Union Shops the HR department works their employees like dirt because they just need to follow the letter of the Union Contract and the poor slobs you thought getting a union is better stick it out and think they are getting a good deal. Granted Union Employees get paid more but at the cost of their work environment. I would much rather get paid a little less and be way much happier for about 1/2 of my awaken day.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Labor unions are about the only thing keeping the middle class alive (albeit on life support) here in the US Unfortunately the problem is the middle class has changed. 50 years ago Middle class was an uneducated workforce who is willing to work hard for a living. Modern Society no longer needs these people as much. We need educated people willing to work hard. So what happened to the middle class was they slipped down to lower class because they are not needed anymore. The people they need now are educated motivated people. These people don't do well with unions because they want to show off their own merits.
Your second paragraph makes no sense. So what. Being pro Union doesn't mean you are a Democrat (no matter what they want you think) and Being Anti-Union doesn't make a republican. The Democrats just give Unions lip service to get their support that is about it. The Unions decided not to go to the republican party so no money for the republicans so they can be more critical against them.
And your rest of your post is even more off topic more then it was already.
If you think the Democrats are that much better... Why do you think Oboma put stimulus money for Dr. to get EMR systems? This was already a recession proof growing industry? I bet if you do some hunting around you will see some major EMR software providers being buddy with our president. Or Unions lining the democrats to keep their failing model alive. Unions need major reform. They don't want it so they pay the party that is big on Reform (the democrats) to not push them to do it.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
I fail to see how government control will stop Malpractice suits. As for Insurance for my point of view is that they need to follow better standards. Their ANSI files for sending claims (Which is a different standard then the terminal emulation) are slightly different for every insurance company. Then methods for sending them electronically ranges from old DialUp BBS's sending the claims via X-Modem to sending it via Https. Or you got other stupid solutions such as using a modem to dial into a VPN tunnel then https that data to the site. Then they have different fee schedules causing Dr. to manipulate their records so they can get paid for service. Eg. A doctor wants to order a Cholesterol test so he put down the person is feeling tired just so insurance will cover it.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
I work at a company which deals with live infectious diseases every day. In order to even enter certain buildings on campus, you have to have the appropriate immunizations for the diseases being researched in that building. Our badges have colored stripes on the back indicating what vaccinations you've received (the vaccine name is also written inside the colored stripe, for colorblind individuals).
If you're tech support or facilities, you basically need every common vaccination that's out there because you may be called to enter any building on campus. If you're a researcher, you definitely need the vaccinations for the buildings you work in, but most are asked to get the full gamut.
If you're in a situation where you're exposed to infectious disease as part of your job, I see no problem with requiring you to be protected from that disease. Standard workplace safety has people using safety equipment every day; this is not different except that failure to comply can unknowingly cause an epidemic and kill tens, hundreds, maybe thousands of people.
Slay a dragon... over lunch!
You overrate the ability to choose a different job. I can (and am searching, I found a few but they require me to carry a pager, something I refuse to do) but I have 100K in the bank and no family. Now take a realistic view- most people can't afford to instantly drop their job. Nor can they decide to pick up and move- they have other obligations, financial situations like real estate they can't sell, family who can't move with them, etc. Saying just "find another job" is simplistic to the extreme.
As for what would happen in union talks- the company would cave utterly. Outsource? Laughable if you've ever actually seen the results of outsourced work, it's never above abysmal. And they'd miss deadlines that would cost them millions, most likely losing both of their main contracts due to it. Go bankrupt? This company is making money and the stock is at the point it was precrash. They aren't doing this because they're in dire straits (in which case it might be understandable), they're doing it because they're assholes and they can.
As for unions who don't care about you- a union doesn't mean joining the teamsters or the AFL. It means a group of workers who band together. You're right that those giant unions are frequently not a good idea, but a union formed of the workers at a company work wonders.
I find the arguments of the anti-union people laughable. Unions are ultimately just about using market power on both sides rather than one. If a few dozen people were to join together and form a company selling their own labor, you'd have no problem with it. Well thats all a union is. But by grouping together you have greater leverage than any single person can. So you have no problem with outsourcing or business in general but you have problems with people joining together to form a labor corporation? Its laughable really- unions are a logical and necessary growth of capitalism.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
Maybe it is more important to ask everyone to get their Vitamin D levels checked?
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/newsletter/vitamin-d-and-h1n1-swine-flu.shtml
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/treatment.shtml
Why is it OK to force people to get vaccinations (which are not 100% effective, and which can have side effects) but asking medical staff to get enough sleep, eat right, avoid bad stress, exercise, and either get sunlight or take vitamin D3 supplements seems like it can't be enforced? Why is it OK and moral to insist on vaccinations for medical staff but not diet and lifestyle issues? Forcing medical interns to work overtime so they lose sleep is obviously putting everyone at risk, too, if the interns' immune systems are weaker from lack of sleep or sunlight. Why don't hospitals change their policies more on that?
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
I'm against labor unions and the US CoC. I'm for public health. I want the protections union employees enjoy extended to all workers.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Question for you. Do you believe that the regular flu shout should be mandatory for "front-line hospital workers"?
Question for you. Do you believe there is no effective difference between the usual seasonal flu strain and the H1N1 strain?
For taking an inane pseudostory as proof of something.
It's a bit difficult to see how anybody could make a profit off mandatory vaccination of health workers. There's an extreme shortage of N1H1 vaccine, so any that actually gets made is going to be sold and used. This is just lame conspiracy mongering, the kind that mentally challenged right-wing pundits come up with on a daily basis.
I think it's interesting to note that once this claim is made, no matter what this doc does he'll still look bad.
His decision was to cut the program immediately. This implies either the claims are true and he wants to bury the whole thing before it erupts, or he just wants to save face. But the same conclusions would be drawn even if he hadn't cut it straight off, and no matter whether he was guilty or innocent.
Which is not to say I'm scolding the reporters for covering it, it's just something to think about.
If you aren't angry, you aren't paying attention.
Somehow I doubt they didn't think of this. Somehow I doubt there were no exceptions.
Anyone who tries to forcefully inject a bunch of heavy metal Mg
I take it you don't eat green vegetables, then. (Also, magnesium isn't a heavy metal.)
Damn right. People should have the right to bargain independently, free of government regulation, for the best pay and benefits they can receive for their job. And they should be able to make contracts, free of government regulation, provided all parties to the contract agree. Unless this contract is to form a labor group capable of collectively bargaining for the best pay and benefits they can receive for their job. Then it's socialism.
I think any healthcare worker who exposes patients to influenza because they refused the vaccine should be jailed. Nutjob sneezes near a immune compromised individual and it's over, nutjob doesn't even know, they just know that palin would make a great president.
I appreciate the work you do but you're no where near qualified to give a definitive answer on the topic you're writing about.
In order to try to get you to refuse vaccination, the anti-vaccination propagandists will often try to convince you that vaccines are unsafe. They will tell you that vaccines cause debilitating disease and sickness. However, such claims ignore the medical literature, which says something quite different. Before I tell you how we know that vaccines are safe, let me spend a moment discussing what "safe" means in terms of medical science.
Would you consider taking a bath to be safe? Did you know that roughly 350 people die every year because of taking baths? If so many people die every year taking baths, why do we continue this "dangerous" practice? We continue it because it is significantly more dangerous to not take baths than to take baths. If you decide to stop taking baths due to the alarming statistic quoted above, you are opening yourself up to all kinds of diseases. Thus, even though it is possible for you to die taking a bath, the benefits of taking that bath far outweigh the risks. As a result, we continue to take baths, despite the fact that some people die from it every year.
That’s exactly the kind of reasoning used to determine what is medically safe. Virtually every medicine and activity comes with risks. Even vitamins can cause liver damage, bleeding problems, heart injury, and bone problems, especially when taken in high doses. Thus, no matter what you do, you take risks. The question when evaluating any medical procedure is simply this: Do you risk more by refusing the medical procedure than by accepting the procedure? In the case of vaccinations, the medical research is quite clear. You are significantly more at risk if you refuse the standard vaccinations than if you get them.
How can I state this so definitively? All you have to do is look at the data that has been collected on this point, and it is quite clear. First, we know that over the past several years, the vaccination rate has increased in the United States. During this same time period, children in the United States have become significantly more healthy.
Note from the graph on the left that as the vaccination rate went up, the general health of children also increased. Note even further that when the vaccination rate declined slightly from 1998- 2000, the general health of children declined slightly as well. Now look at the graph on the right. As the vaccination rate increased, the infant mortality rate, child mortality rate, and preadolescent mortality rate decreased. Note further that the most significant reductions in mortality rates occurred when the vaccination rate was increasing the fastest, and that as the vaccination rate dropped from 1998-2000, the decline in mortality rates leveled off substantially.
Now do these graphs prove that vaccines are safe? Of course not. There are many factors that contribute to health and mortality, and there is no way from this study to conclude whether the increase in vaccination rates actually caused the increase in children’s health and the decrease in mortality rates. However, this graph presents a huge problem to anyone who wants to claim that vaccines are dangerous. If vaccines are so dangerous, why are children becoming healthier while the vaccination rate is increasing?
Of course, the only way to make a strong scientific conclusion when it comes to medicine is to do controlled studies. Many such studies have been done, and the conclusions are that vaccinated children are healthier than non-vaccinated children. For example, one study looked at 496 vaccinated and unvaccinated children, comparing the health of the vaccinated children to that of the unvaccinated children. It found that children who received immunizations against diphtheria, pertussis, tetanus, Hib, and polio within the first 3 months of life had fewer infections than those who did not. Surprisingly enough, even the rates of infections unrelated to the v
You don't have the least idea what you're talking about either. So don't you be telling people to 'know what the fuck [they] are talking about'
This flu, like many diseases, is transmissible several days before symptoms. Staying home doesn't work - you only stay home when you feel sick, which is 2-3 days too late.
Face masks are far from perfect. I've been fit-tested for respirators, and they're good but not perfect. Plus coughing tends to blow the mask away from the face, don't you think?
Hep B is a danger to the health care worker. Not getting flu vaccinated makes the health care worker a risk for everyone in the hospital, particularly the sick.
I have developed a truly marvelous proof of this comment, which this signature is too narrow to contain.
That their employer wants to keep them healthy isn't the problem. The problem is that they don't have a clue how to do so, and many of the current sources of advice don't really have a clue either.
-- The Grand Teddy Bear has Spoken: "Windows 8 Source Code Available NOW! more disgusting than your pr..."
You send thugs with baseball bats to break up union meetings?
Damn...
Wait is sending thugs with baseball bats an anti-union or pro-union act?
The Gospel according to lolcat
When have unions ever worked against the interests of their members?
When there is money involved for union leaders.
The Gospel according to lolcat
I mean don't get me wrong, companies make a profit on them, but it is a minor part of their total profits. Vaccines aren't all that pricey over all, and they are a one time thing. They don't make money like the prescription treatments do. We also aren't talking about a lot of people here. How many health workers does New York have? 10,000 maybe? Let's be real generous and say 100,000, which we all know is way over. Ok well that is 0.03% of the US population. A population, which I might add, is clamoring for the vaccine because there isn't enough right now.
Your REALLY think that a tiny percentage of something the company doesn't make much money on is enough to change their stock price? Sorry, I'm not buying the bullshit. Remember that flu vaccines normally cost in the realm of $25 to the end user. That includes the fee that the clinic administering it wishes to charge. The actual cost per dose to the clinic is more in the $10-20 range. That goes to the pharma company. However, they have costs in terms of producing that. Even if they were very low they are still lock to clear $5-10 profit per dose.
So you assume high profit on the doses and assume a very high number of workers and you still arrive at like $1,000,000 extra profit. Oh wow. Such an amazing amount... Except companies like GSK make a $25,000,000,000 profit. This kind of thing wouldn't even be a blip.
Labor unions are about the only thing keeping the middle class alive (albeit on life support) here in the US.
Which is why union membership has plunged and continues to fall? The only real area where unions are growing are public sector jobs. In the private sector employees either vote against them or unionized businesses can't compete (General Motors, Crystler, & Ford). It also cannot do squat for the skilled jobs. Unions had a purpose at one time, but our laws have largely been structured during an early 20th century era of company towns and we haven't really seen any effort made in modernizing unions since the Taft-Harley Act was passed when congress overrode Truman's veto. A national right to work law and a law declaring unions to be for-profit enterprises (which would pay the corporate income tax) that are essentially employee owned businesses designed to negotiate work contracts rather than some government sheltered entity would seriously help competativeness.
As for your poll, I can find plenty that say the exact opposite of what you claim on healthcare. It is just a matter of where you look and the way the poll is worded. The GOP has long trailed the Democrats in total registered voters, but has normally also exceeded the Democratic Party in per capita turnout. This makes perfect sense since people tend to get more conservative as they age thus the young tend to be Democrats and the old tend to be Republicans and for all the fuss about the coveted "youth vote" it should be noted the youth don't generally vote while seniors turn out in droves. This also doesn't mean that once today's seniors die the Republican Party will die. Today's young liberal activist will eventually grow up, get jobs, start families, and start voting Republican. Politics ebbs and flows. Keep in mind, the Democrats may have won stronger majorities in both houses and the presidency in 2008, but 4 years earlier in 2004 the GOP was in a similar (albeit not quit as dramatic) position. The GOP will come back at some point, then the Dems will come back, and so on and so forth. If socialized medicine is implemented now, it can be repealed later, or neutered through reform, and then brought back, and then killed again. Somehow I suspect "GOP is dying" is similar to "BSD is Dying" in that there is far more rhetoric than reality.
More important than any of this is for all the talking points you put forward about this vast right-wing conspiracy of big evil companies, none of it matters. Your welcome to keep demonizing Republicans. Go on, keep whimpering, but the fact is, not a single Republican vote is needed in either house to pass this bill. The Dems have a very strong majority in the House and a 3/5 majority in the Senate. They don't need bi-partisanship, and they know it. Their only problem now is that what the party leadership wants is so extreme they have to get a few members of their own party to support it. Both parties know this and this is why there have been no compromises or efforts at bi-partisanship. Both parties also know there is a time limit, as the GOP almost certainly will gain seats in 2010 (since most of what remains are "safe seats" and not really competitive and Obama will never likely see the majorities he has now again even if he is re-elected in 2012). Barring another 1994, the GOP will likely not gain a majority in either house, but will likely have enough to at least force a compromise in the Senate or introduce moderate amendments in either house. But go ahead, keep kicking that dead horse.
The Gospel according to lolcat
The owners look out for the company and the unions look out for the workers.
Deep down, Union bosses are looking out for themselves, and since they are unlikely to be removed. Voting in union elections is effective, but much less so than customers voting with their feet (which the owner worries about). An incumbent union boss needs to do something wrong for the union to vote him out, a business owner must go further than not being wrong, they much be the most competitive option all of the time or they will be outdone by competition. Voting in union elections work, but it is much slower and incremental compared to a market that changes daily.
The Gospel according to lolcat
...and if he haven't, you will critize for NOT taking the vaccine as "regular" people are mandated.
Instead look at your critizing impulses, which are not constructive at all..
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
What? Using your ability to remember past government and corporate behavior trends to then extrapolate the emerging patterns we are most likely to expect? Now cut that out! What are you? --Some kind of thinker? Some kind of observant realist? Are you theorizing about the shape that known corruption will take? Are you some kind of conspiracy theorist? For goodness sake man! Hasn't the term "Conspiracy Theory" been more than sufficiently coded with shame at this point? Only the most stalwart individual is able to withstand its use without flinching like a Pavlovian mongrel. And you're in a damned kennel, so get off your high horse and stop acting like a human being!
This is Slashdot!
--We here are dedicated to the fantasy of projecting a Star Trek reality upon the world regardless what actually happens to exist on the landscape. In the view of the wishful geek, science is NEVER used for nefarious purposes, and everybody, if they could only dispense with religion and magical thinking, would want human-kind to excel and walk on the moon.
Science is GOOD. It is NEVER used to extend the agendas of greedy psychopathic power-mongers. Heavens no! The hundreds of instances of dangerous and deliberate disregard through greed and corruption led by the very agencies and corporate bodies charged with our well-being MUST BE IGNORED! --If we do not ignore those acts, then the warm and fuzzy Star Trek dream might fade away and our delicate nerd sensibilities might be exposed to uncertainty and anxiety! NO NO NO!!! Only Happy Thoughts! The only complaining you are allowed to do is within the narrow parameters of correcting errant math and pop-culture references, laughing at religion and the technically ignorant. --Oh, and being angry with Microsoft, Sony, SCO, Diebold, every botnet blackhat in Russia, the cellphone and cable companies and whoever else happens to be on the radar in any given month. . , besides that, Science is NEVER used for ill purposes. Corruption doesn't exist, and thus by extension, conspiracies to trick people for power and profit don't exist either. Got it? We are cognitively dissonant around here, okay, and we LIKE it that way!
In short, you MUST NOT question the base assumptions upon which the world is built. Nerds can't handle that. We are a weak-willed, fragile lot as it is. We had to put up with so much fear and degradation during school that the fragile structure of our Star Trek dreaming is all we have left to tie our sense of safety and self-worth to. If you start to pull that down. . , why we might have to grow up and start building something real, and that's just too scary. Have a heart!
Sigh. Ironically, Darwin will have the last word. People tend to get annihilated rather quickly when they pick the wrong side in the battle between reality and wishful thinking.
Look folks, there's nothing wrong with vaccination as a concept; it's great. But a needle administered by a psychopathic corporate/government agency is not the same as a vaccination created by a sensible person with no driving agenda.
For goodness sake. I still remember when we were all going to die from West Nile disease if we allowed the plant-based, non-toxic and highly effective alternative forms of mosquito repellents onto the market. Deet is made by who again?
Hook, line and sin
Paragraph 1. I am too lazy to make any concessions for myself. You refuse to carry a pager however a union concession would be every getting a pager. I Never said drop your job and get a new one I said get a new job and drop your old one. There is a big difference. That fact that you have poor job searching skills and cannot find a place that doesn't require a pager means you are not looking very hard. Or the conditions of your work environment arn't that bad. I would just say you are Lazy.
Paragraph 2. Are you sure the company would cave in? If so for how long. Outsourcing does work. I was a consultant for 7 years. Unions hated me because I perfumed better then their employees. I was a threat because I showed what an outsourced person can do that a Union Employee couldn't. Outsourcing usually fails do to poor management in part of the parent company. Giving them too much leeway and not keeping them focused on what the company needs to be accomplished.
Paragraph 3. That is if the union is also for the employees interests and the companies. AKA a good Human Resource department.
Paragraph 4. I have seen real world examples of unions screwing over people. Far more then public companies. your 100 year old idealism doesn't hold true anymore. You are conseeding by saying only a small union but small unions don't work as they dont have teeth. Large ones do but they are very corrupt.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
So far it looks like a slightly higher mortality rate and a different mortality distribution. Statistically significantly different, but from a practical stand point, only the distribution is different. Not that mortality and distribution are consistent year to year with the seasonal flu anyway. My question for the OP was because he seemed to be saying all vaccines should be required of hospital workers, regardless of alternatives.
This whole H1N1 strain has groups trying to require them getting the H1N1 vaccine when the regular vaccine has never been required before. I do not see a practical difference between the two, only a statistical difference.
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
(Source -- definitely worth reading)
Vaccines save lives. Anti-vaxxers use lies and bullying to kill people and promote their pseudoscientific nonsense. It's a shame they won this battle, and people will die as a result. If there's one area of science and technology that needs an army of Slashdotters defending it today, it's vaccines and science-based medicine in general. Fight back.
Why is it okay to force anyone to be injected with experimental treatments for any illness? That's precisely what flu vaccines are. They may help against a particular strain of flu and they may have side-effects.
Experimental. In the world I live in, until there's a earth-shattering apocalyptic event going on, forcing doctors to take anything should be off the table.
"Oh no... he found the
Has President Obama and other high-level politicians, powerful elites, etc, along with their families, taken the H1N1 vaccine?
If no, there's the answer right there regarding its safety.
Because they're definitely the people with the highest risk of infection.
Interesting but first that figure of mine was for both Third-party payors (health insurance) and Malpractice, in your link while unclear seemed to only include the clinician's malpractice insurance's claim payments. In reality the Clinician generally has his/her own malpractice policy, the first level corporation often has it's own malpractice policy and some time the second level corporation has it's own Malpractice policy and the second level corporation frequently provides coverage for selected staff members.
1. The Clinician is typically an employee of the first level corp which must do it's own taxes, fed state and local income taxes so it need a CPA and usually a Lawyer on retainer. This is to provide liability insulation to the Clinician's personal assets from Malpractice charges, but the costs aren't included in your reference.
2. The first level corporation is usually contracted by the second level corporation which typically owns the physical assets, the AR and it also must do it's own taxes and probably it's own malpractice policy. Most of the staff members are employees of the second level corp which of course means taxes CPAs and lawyers.
3. Don't omit the Malpractice provider has multiple levels of management lot of clerical staff and Lawyers and accountants sucking out money.
4. On the patient side you have a Lawyer working on contingency for a third of the settlement plus expenses; those expense include the lawyers billable hours at $300-450 per hour, expert witnesses at $300-450 per hour which amount to half, so the patient gets about 20% but that 20% isn't 20% but an annuity that pays the 20% over twenty years so the annuity company gets a healthy cut of the malpractice dollar too.
The above is why I called Malpractice an industry, hell it can cost a $1,000 dollars in wages just to find the patient records in bulk storage if a former patient hints at a malpractice case only to discover we didn't even do that procedure 5 years ago.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
Baseball bats? Amateur!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homestead_Strike
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
Paragraph 2. Outsourcing does work. I was a consultant for 7 years. Unions hated me because I perfumed better then their employees.
Sure, some people overdo it with the perfume and cologne, but that doesn't seem like a reason for hire/fire in and of itself. :P
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. I'm absolutely certain that the geeks or slashdot would be very interested to learn of your John Grisham-esque tale of corruption, intrigue, and political scandal... if there were proof.
If you have proof that H1N1 was bio-engineered, show us. If you have proof that this was done by politicians or vaccine companies, show us that too.
If anything, a more logical explanation is that H1N1 came up naturally and now all the players in power are positioning themselves to personally benefit. You're giving our political/business leaders too much credit to suggest that such a scam would occur to them and that they could successfully pull it off. These people are opportunists, not evil geniuses.
But for the sake of the argument, let's say you're right. They made this happen, and now H1N1 is out there and the conspirators the only ones with the vaccine and stand to greatly profit... What can we do about it now? Not taking the vaccine out of spite seems like a rather stupid thing to do.
-Grym
You don't make any sense here. Why would a union concession be to make everyone carry a pager? There's no reason for my current job to require it. And having done it in the past, I don't want to do it again. I'd rather take an extra couple of weeks to find a job without it. As for not looking that hard- just started recently, I held out for a retention bonus that was due Oct 1, I had previously decided it was worth staying in this hellhole for a few more months for a 22K bonus they couldn't back out on (I had signed paperwork on this one). Now I have it, so its done with.
Yes I am sure. No it doesn't work. Oh there's a few skilled outsourced engineers out there, but they're few and far between. I have never seen an outsourcing project that didn't end up costing the company far more than it would have paid to do it in house. Hell, we're trying it now- we're only outsourcing the simplest jobs and its still coming back with us having to redo 50-70% of it.
A good human resource department? No such thing. Especially when it comes to looking out for employees interests. A human resource department is hired to look out for the employers interests. If you expect them to look out for yours even for an instant you're setting yourself up to get screwed.
I haven't ever seen a union fuck over someone, although I do assume that it happens. I see companies do it constantly. As for my 100 year old idealism- wait til you see a world without unions. How many of the gains that they fought and died for do you think we'd keep without them to keep companies honest? The 8 hour workday? That's already going by the wayside. Child labor? Hell they still do that, they just do it outside of US borders. Companies will exploit you in every way possible. In the most mobile of jobs you may be ok thanks to the ability to switch, but for the vast majority of workers the only thing that can protect them is unionization or the threat of it.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
That quote is not germane to the H1N1 discussion.
The U.S. has ordered around 251 million doses. North of the border, Canada is buying 50 million doses and expects to pay around $400 million dollars before the cost of administering. Assuming $8 per dose, that's 2.4 billion dollars spent from the North American public purse on a manufactured bit of fear-mongering. That's quite the tidy sale. --And the rest of the world is vaccinating against this 'swine flu' as well. Make no mistake; this is a cash-cow bonanza for a small number of companies.
That article you linked to is pure, high-charge emotionalism; as bad as anything you'd see on Fox News. By the time you get to the parts which contain actual data, the reader, (in this case you), are so worked up that you cannot reason your way out of a paper bag.
That's hardly a win for science. --Though it is certainly common enough among people who supposedly promote science.
While I am not a lover of network news in any form, this item is perhaps worth noting. . .
H1N1 Cases Exaggerated? - CBS
In any case, I really don't think it's that people have a problem with vaccines per se, it's that they don't trust the companies making and delivering them. And given the long and much-spotted track record of both the government and the pharmaceutical industry, this is a very reasonable position to take.
It sounds to me as though you're confusing the dream of a perfect world in which medical technologies are used appropriately and responsibly with the real world, which is filled with out-of-control capitalism and reckless disregard for human health and welfare. Geeks seem to have a lot of trouble differentiating between the two, I find.
-FL
In my experience, the people most lax in the use of seatbelts are professional drivers. It could be written down as overconfidence in their own skill, except that they are equally lax when it's someone else - even someone they know has just gotten his driver's license - is driving. That's because they drive a lot everyday, and the more you do something, the less you think of risks while doing so.
Similarly, the health professionals not getting flu shots can be due to careful consideration of risks, or it can be because of a feeling of invulnerability gained from years of being near ill people without dying.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
In the case of health professionals, they may be right to suspect a heightened immunity. Their immune systems are constantly challenged.
That study's results haven't been replicated yet and it was pre-publication when it was reported on. It's the scientific equivalent of a rumor.
æeee!
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. I'm absolutely certain that the geeks or slashdot would be very interested to learn of your John Grisham-esque tale of corruption, intrigue, and political scandal... if there were proof.
Sorry dude, if you sit on your arse and wait around for proof to come to you, especially if you're waiting for the television to provide it, then you'll live and die in controlled ignorance.
All the information you need is out there. It's not hidden. What you are asking is for others to dig it up and present it on a silver platter in tasteful sound-bites for your ease of consumption, as though you were the prince of the world and that I or anybody else gives a hoot whether or not you live or die. Now, while I don't wish you any undue misery, it's a free choice universe and today I'm choosing not to plunder my extensive notes and previous research into this subject and then to spend an hour or more writing an essay just so you can turn your nose up at it and dicker around and play silly games. Yesterday I might have had the patience, but today, I'm feeling grumpy, and so you get this response instead:
You've been trained from birth to expect that you deserve information. The whole 'Jury Box' syndrome as hammered into us all ad nauseam through court room drama television and film teaches us that the public must sit on their hands and judge reality based only on what two sides of a fabricated argument present before us. We're by no means encouraged to leave the box, (or the easy chair) and go look for ourselves. Screw that. And frankly, screw you. Go answer your own questions. If you want to know what others have worked out through the application of hard work, you might want to learn how to ask properly.
Now hurry up and get your shot while supplies last.
-FL
So it's not the health care commissioner, it's his wife. And it's not that she has investments in the company that makes vaccine, but that she has a job with an investment bank that has investments in just about everything, so there must be some pharmaceuticals in there somewhere, right? So maybe requiring health care workers to get vaccinated will increase their sales (which seems unlikely, considering that vaccine manufacturers are not close to meeting the demand, but hey, maybe, right?) which will increase her employer's profits by some tiny fraction, and maybe this will help her by, I don't know, increasing her annual bonus by some tiny fraction. So clearly this is why New York is favoring requiring vaccination for health care workers.
Of course, if you play this kind of idiotic seven-degrees-of-separation game, you can make almost anybody sound like they have a conflict of interest. But then, the kind of people who are afraid of vaccines believe things that are even crazier...
This is a reasonable point, but I don't think it is terribly revisionist to claim that I meant "when have unions worked against the interests of their members and for the interests of the general public?".
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
It has nothing to do with socialism. The Teamsters were greedy liars and cheats. They wanted nothing more than power and money for the higher-ups in the organization and didn't give a rats ass about the members.
Gone!
I probably did not mean to respond to you. :-P Like any organization, there are plenty of unions with corrupt leadership that don't function as they are intended, and there's no problem with that complaint -- it's just not the usual complaint.
Donald H. Rumsfeld Named Chairman of Gilead Sciences
http://www.gilead.com/pr_933190157
Gilead and Roche End Tamiflu® Dispute; Expanded Collaboration Includes Gilead Role in Oversight of Manufacturing and Commercialization
http://www.gilead.com/pr_783456
Then google for at least 2 of these 4: Rumsfeld Tamiflu Gilead Roche.
How can this guy be always on the "winning" side when America suffers?
That study's results haven't been replicated yet and it was pre-publication when it was reported on. It's the scientific equivalent of a rumor.
And? All of these studies are. They're not experiments. They are junk science.
The chief evidence of this is how quickly people dismiss the ones they don't agree with, as you did your post above. You're pointing out how the community will influence, belittle, and otherwise modify that study until it no longer matters.
In contrast, how many people refute the speed of gravity? And if they did, how long would it take to sort it out? Would the community get to chime in and 'correct' the errors in the test?
there are critics of the teaching of evolution worldwide
So where are YOUR facts? Because as far as I know, the anti-evolution "movement" exists almost exclusively in the US. Everywhere else, evolution is held as proven, established fact. For fuck's sake, even the Catholic church supports it. We are viewed as a bunch of backwater, ignorant, stupid hicks.
Please help metamoderate.
It's a bit difficult to see how anybody could make a profit off mandatory vaccination of health workers. There's an extreme shortage of N1H1 vaccine, so any that actually gets made is going to be sold and used
You know, if I could pass along the "insightful" points from my post to yours, I would. I'm not sure why I didn't see this myself.