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Indiana Nurses Fired After Refusing Flu Shots On Religious Grounds
Hugh Pickens writes writes "ABC News reports that Indiana University Health Goshen Hospital has fired eight employees after they refused mandatory flu shots, stirring up controversy over which should come first: employee rights or patient safety. The fired nurses include Joyce Gingerich and Sue Schrock who filed appeals on religious grounds. 'I feel like in my personal faith walk, I have felt instructed not to get a flu vaccination, but it's also the whole matter of the right to choose what I put in my body...' adding that she has not had a flu vaccine for 30 years as a result of a choice she made because of her Christian faith. Over the last several years, hospitals have been moving toward mandatory vaccinations because many only have 60 percent vaccination rates says Dr. William Schaffner, chair of preventive medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. Schaffner adds that nurses in particular tend to be the most reluctant to get vaccinated among health care workers, 'There seems to be a persistent myth that you can get flu from a flu vaccine among nurses,' says Schaffner. 'They subject themselves to more influenza by not being immunized, and they certainly do not participate in putting patient safety first.' But Jane M. Orient, M.D., executive director of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, says the scientific case for flu vaccine mandates is very weak and that there is no evidence showing that vaccinated workers are less likely to transmit virus. 'The scientific and religious concerns are in a sense backward,' says Orient. 'Advocates of the mandate are full of evangelical zeal and are quick to portray skeptics as wicked and selfish. It's like a secular religion, based on faith in vaccine efficacy and safety.'"
I'm pretty happy to hear they were fired for such dangerous, asinine, stupidity. One can only hope the hospital won't be sued, and if they are, that the hospital wins decisively and very quickly.
you with new jobs.
I had to pee in a cup to get my first job. I didn't like it but I wanted the job.
quick to portray skeptics as wicked and selfish
You are selfish if you refuse on religious grounds.
the scientific case for flu vaccine mandates is very weak and that there is no evidence showing that vaccinated workers are less likely to transmit virus
You would not be so selfish if you refused on lack of evidence.
Should not have been working in a hospital in the first place, from the looks of it. Superstition over science, what a failure.
Your rights stop where mine begin.You have every right to make religious decisions for yourself, you do not, however to make religious decisions for others or to make religious decisions for yourself that will affect others. They are health care professionals who handle patients, they can make people sick by choosing to honor their religious beliefs and they damn well should have been fired.
If you can't understand the concept of herd immunity you don't need to be working in the medical field. Good riddance to ignorant bible-thumpers.
I mean, this is an important topic and everything, and really gets at the division between religious freedoms and the line on patient safety. But I'm just not seeing the connection to TECHNOLOGY on this story. Slashdot is supposed to be about the latest technology news, news for nerds. Maybe this is just a slow news day, but I'm hoping the editors didn't drop a technology innovation story in favor of an item about flu shots for nurses.
If your beliefs, religion or whatever goes against the rules of work (without even considering that they can cost the lives of people), why did you take the job in the first place?, one's rights end where the other's begin.
I'm for religious freedom but it's a hospital. It's focused on patient care. Your rights as an employee end where it can affect the patient care. Let's pretend it's smoking.
IF a HealthCare worker refuses a standard immunization vaccine, they should find other work.
The AAPS is a fringe group with less than 3000 doctors. It's like the American Osteopathy Association: its members are whack jobs, not real doctors.
Of course there's evidence that vaccination reduces transmission. Did OP even try to research that claim or its source before reprinting it? Did we think the pertussis wave in northern California came from some reason other than that non-vax transmit where vax don't?
So tired of this knee-jerk "well let's give time to the other side" bullcrap. No. Figure out if they're insane first.
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=vaccinated+less+likely+to+transmit
StoneCypher is Full of BS
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flu_vaccine#Benefits_of_vaccination Influenza vaccination has been shown highly effective in health care workers (HCW), with minimal adverse effects. In a study of forty matched nursing homes, staff influenza vaccination rates were 69.9% in the vaccination arm versus 31.8% in the control arm. The vaccinated staff experienced a 42% reduction in sick leave from work (P=.03).[33] A review of eighteen studies likewise found a strong net benefit to health care workers
Of course patient safety should come before religous crap.
I'm very much for equality under the law, and "religious reasons" for refusal amount to no more than someone saying "I don't want to" for unspeficied reasons.
If you refuse to do your job for unspecified reasons (and a nurse leaving themselves prone to serious transmissible infections pretty much counts) then you get fired. If not, then anyone could refuse to do anything they don't like (e.g. hard work). If you allow it for "religious reasons" and not "other reasons" then you are state sponsoring a particular religion over a particular other religion.
After all, serviscope_minorism (in which I believe with utter faith) tells me that that 3p4pm on a wednesday afternoon is the only non holy time I'm allowed to work, and for religious reasons, I need to be allowed to carry a loaded crossbow and running chainsaw as well as wearing a clown outfit.
Religion has nothing to do with it except it gives people "reasons" to make entire series of whacky choices.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
I'm sure we can all agree that the bible definitely doesn't say no to vaccines out-right, since vaccines didn't exist when the bible was written, so this must be an interpretation of a scripture that says something general or vague.
Can anyone give an example of what scripture this might be?
If not, I'm thinking that this "religion" thing is just an excuse that she tells other people, but the real reason is that she just thinks they're bad without any real evidence.
The Association of American Physicians and Surgeons is a well known conservative medical association. Considering they only have about 3,000 members it's kind of silly to even seek their opinion. They certainly have a right to lobby for changes to government health care policy decisions but when they cross the line and contradict verified and tested scientific and medical research they should be ignored. They were one of the groups on the anti-vaccine bandwagon back in 2003.
"We make our world significant by the courage of our questions and by the depth of our answers." Carl Sagan
"But Jane M. Orient, M.D., executive director of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons"
Who cares what a political advocacy group says? They oppose any mandatory vaccination.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_of_American_Physicians_and_Surgeons
Employment is an agreement between two people or legal entities. You do what I say and I'll pay you. If the employees don't want to do what the employer says they need to find another job.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
Thou shalt not get a flu shot? Seriously, I can get behind the notion that, if a person has doubts about the efficacy or effects of getting a flu shot, they should be able to choose whether or not to get one without social or professional ramifications. But what is with all of these objections being written down to religious beliefs? Where in the Bible did Jesus ever say anything about flu shots?
Flu shots only vaccinate you against LAST YEAR's flu. It does nothing for the current strains. I haven't had the actual flu in many years and never get shots.
It is part of my religion! I will sue you for discrimination if you foil my plot.
The justification alone should have her banned from coming near patients ever again. Its like "oh, I have this fantasy that tells me whatever I should do and in order to squash any criticism, I will call it "faith"". How pathetic can you get?
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
I wonder how many of the people applauding the limiting of these women's rights to control their own bodies when it puts another life at risk are pro-choice on the topic abortion?
Support Right To Repair Legislation.
So if the nurse is not okay with the flu shots, she has the choice to go elsewhere for another kind of job.
While when a patient arrives in a hospital, he should not have to choose an establishment which respects the minimal sanitary practices.
Sig (appended to the end of comments you post, 120 chars)
Yeah, that guys evil.
If these people believe in a man in the sky, why the fuck would I want to trust them when I am at my most vulnerable, in a hospital.
Fuck them off, not because they are refusing the injection, just because they are fucking insane and irrational.
It's a generally free country. People can do and say and think what they want, whether it is supported by evidence or not. However, to avoid legal liability in medicine, and other public safety / public service occupations, one must adhere to evidence-based best practices.
You can secretly believe that getting naked, painting yourself with fresh cow's blood while running in circles and barking at the moon will keep you disease-free, that's your right. However, until your study results are repeated and published in a peer-reviewed journal, don't expect the hospital to pay you to do it or advocate it to patients.
As someone who works at an institution with mandatory vaccination policies, I can say that if there was actually a verifiable religious objection (for example such as Jehova's Witnesses) an outside arbiter (usually a Judge or former Judge, someone not affiliated with either the institution or the employee) will more than likely grant a waiver after sitting with the employee in question. The fact that no such waiver was granted leads me to believe that these folks "found God" because they didn't want to get a shot.
At the end of the day, they are health care workers. Their primary responsibility is the health and well being of those in their care. Not availing themselves of a safe, effective, and proven technique to help minimize risk to those patients is irresponsible, selfish, and potentially dangerous not only to patients, but the public at large.
If their faith prevents them from getting something as simple as a flu shot why are they even working in the field of medicine???
About 48,000 people a year die of influenza. She is in the position to be a super carrier, picking it up from a patient and transmitting it on to many other people. It is in appropriate for her to be a nurse if she refuses to prevent the transmission of disease to patients. She should move into an isolated administrative role well away from other people at best. Firing is appropriate.
Cold hard statistics show that a higher vaccination rate amongst primary care personnel, reduce flu infections amongst the patients.
And directly correlates to a lower fatality rate amongst weaker and elderly patients.
These guys are idiots and should be fired.
Of course thay do have a point, being afraid of needles or something. But they also chose a proffession with a responsibility.
People say that you get the "flu" from the flu vaccine because "flu" has become such a generic term for being ill. People say they have the "stomach flu" when they have norovirus or food poisoning of some kind. They say they have a "touch of the flu" when they have a cold. They don't realize that influenza is a specific illness that has a very specific set of symptoms. This is a pet peeve of mine.
That being said, many of the symptoms of the flu or a cold are caused by your immune system's own response to the virus rather than the virus itself. A vaccine causes an immune response too. Some people really do feel slightly unwell after getting a flu vaccine or any other vaccine. This is why they say it gives them the flu: because they don't define the flu properly, and because the vaccine really does make them feel under the weather. If you look at the side effects of the vaccine, they do somewhat resemble the flu (although they're much milder):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flu_vaccine#Side_effects
I don't personally get the flu shot because I don't get the flu that often anyway, and I figure I'll just take my chances. But it's completely reasonable to expect healthcare workers to be vaccinated when they're dealing with some groups of people who are particularly susceptible to the flu.
And what do you think the response to "It is against my personal faith to wash my hands." would be? Moronic.
Did this lady have zero vaccines taken at all? If she has been had zero vaccinations, then she would be justifiably be fired. Did she only refuse the flu vaccine? If she only refused the flu vaccine and took other vaccines, then the religious argument is a cop out.
Vaccinations are not a permanent cure (or prevention rather) for a given disease. Many require regular booster shots, and some are so ineffective (e.g. Hep-B) that the CDC and OSHA have made them optional. This relative lack of effectiveness is often cited by the anti-vaccine folks as evidence that they're not worth getting, although they convenient leave out that most vaccines are otherwise harmless, outbreaks can be contained by short-term and weak vaccines, and some vaccines are amazingly effective, like the rabies vaccine. In fact, the rabies vaccine is amusingly left unmentioned in all of the anti-vaccine literature I've seen, because it stands out as a paragon of long-term and high effectiveness in vaccines.
It's also amazing how polarized people get about this. Either it's the holy grail, and we should take them quickly, no matter what, or they're terrible and should never be taken. People don't seem to talk about picking and choosing based on risk and benefit factors, and none of them talk about spreading them out so as to avoid giving a poor kid the symptoms of too many diseases at once. Vaccines can be hard on the immune system and make kids feel miserable, and it makes me angry that doctors often want to give more than one at a time.
There are no religious grounds here. I am Christian, have read the Bible front to back a couple of times and don't recall any prohibition on flu shots. Basically this person has a personal conviction against flu shots. That is absolutely fine. However, that means the nurses are in violation of company rules which make a lot of sense. It is the hospital's right to fire them.
No controversy here.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
And that doesn't even measure the reduction in harm to patients, but if the nurses are gettingcsick less, they are also protecting patients.
Yes, but that is not what the blurb is stating - they are arguring about patient safty. A Flu vaccine helps you build up an immunity to the virus - in other words, if you are exposed to it, you are less likely to get sick, and if you do, the symptoms are not as bad. Getting a flu vaccine does NOT mean that you will not carry the virus. As such, firing on the grounds that they fired these workers on is not based on science, and as such, there is no grounds for termination. Whether the workers refused the vaccine based on religious grounds or not is moot.
Now, if they said the workers were fired becasue the shots were mandnitory to cut down on worker sick time, that would be different, at which point it becomes a question of if an employer has the right to pass mandates that violates workers religious beliefs. However, as these workers are already in the medical field, it's hard for me to believe that they can seriously claim refusing vacinations based on religious beliefs.
Well, if that's all it is (a benefit to the health workers), then it's still their call whether to get vaccinated or not, even if the statistics show they would be stupid not to. The relevant question is whether it reduces transmission rates between patients, at which point it becomes a patient safety/employment issue. In other words, what matters is if it is something that could be legitimately imposed as a condition of doing the job as a healthcare worker -- kind of like the way that "washing your hands" isn't an optional thing that you can refuse to do on religious grounds either.
Of course this healthcare worker has the right to decide what to put in her body. Always. But her employer should have a right to refuse to employ her further if she doesn't follow demonstrably effective healthcare practices, just like she'd probably be fired eventually for not ever washing her nursing uniform or her body, or constantly showing up at work with contagious diseases and not wearing sterile gloves or masks.
I am required to get vaccinated to travel... it's a requirement of my government and my employer. I go along with it because why not--I trust that what they're injecting me with is a vaccine... I trust that it's been tested... I trust that those tests results are completely revealed and that it is safe.
Today these nurses are being required to get these injections... Many of the initial arguments here are attacking them based on it being a religious decision, and citing statistics that say the vaccine is effective is safe... OK, that's fine... and I agree, it probably is safe and effective.
What happens if tomorrow employers start requiring an injection of an amphetamine-like substance at the start of each shift? It will be chemical altered and the dosages strictly controlled--deemed safe by the medical community and hundreds of thousands of other users. Is it OK for them to require this? You'll be more productive during those hours you're at work, you won't suffer any long term ill effects... so why shouldn't they require this? If you don't like it, you can feel free to find another job (except maybe there aren't any...)
My point being that it can be a slippery slope when we start to allow government and employers to control our bodies under the guise of what is good for us, our jobs, or whatever other reason they want to bring up. ...and the fact that a huge portion of the general population is using a certain substance, or that it's endorsed by the medical community, does not give me a huge amount of faith in it's safety--smoking is a huge example of how that can be wrong.
As far I'm concerned the verdict is still out on cell phones and other microwave-level close range transceivers... I use them constantly, I'm not afraid of them... but I also will not be surprised if during my lifetime strong evidence appears that prolonged and long-term use of these devices correlates to vastly higher instances of cancers.
The first time I heard these stories about some people against vaccines, I got really shocked. Is something only in USA, or is it common in other countries? Just to be fair, I'm brazilian, and here vaccines are faced like a good thing.
Thanks. This study should have been shown to the fired nurses in their exit interview.
IMHO the real question is "do flu shots help prevent the spread of the flu virus they are supposed to protect against". Most people would scream "of course", but if you look into unbiased statistics (of which there are few) I think you would find that they are much less definitive. Even the CDC admits that the seasonal flu vaccine is only 40-60% effective, and I personally wonder what their definition of "effective" is (no symptoms, mild symptoms, etc). Unfortunately most of the information out there is from either the pro-vaccination side (doctors, government, etc) and the anti-vaccination side (religious, crazies, etc). Unbiased studies need to be done before we can say one way or the other, unfortunately I don't see that happening anytime soon.
Give the nurses a break man. It isn't like they are trained medical professionals. ;)
Posted anonymously to protect me from the disproportionate number of nurses in my immediate family. They got needles man!
But just these eight were fired?
Why are just these tiny minority being disciplined? If every other hospital allows free choice, does this one have the authority to without warning start to require it?
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
'nuff said
It's interesting how any time a self-professed Christian does something incredibly stupid, it makes it onto Slashdot. You'd almost think the editors are trolling or something.
For the record, there are many Christian sects, and most of them have nothing against modern medicine. Mine is entirely fine with science in general and indeed my church's primate is opposed to teaching creationism in schools.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
ya know?
"I myself avoid flu shots like the plague" - so what would you do if there was an outbreak of plague and there was a vaccine for it?
I also understand that MRSA (a very serious, and potentially lethal bacteria, if untreated) has been brought on by over sanitization.
AFAICT it's incorrect sanitization. There's some things biologicals can become resistant to and some things they can't...
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I also understand that MRSA (a very serious, and potentially lethal bacteria, if untreated) has been brought on by over sanitization. That's what makes MRSA so serious. It resists almost all antibiotic treatments. Studies have been coming out showing where hospitals that are not as clean have lower rates of MRSA infection.
Let's not mix vaccination with overuse of antibiotics... these are two completely different concepts and mechanisms.
With vaccination you are exposed to weakened, or dead, version of the current virus strain... your body attacks it and produces a level of immunity to it so that when you encounter live, stronger, versions of it in your daily life, your body already has a head start in winning the fight. Vaccination doesn't compromise your bodies ability to fight off infection, nor does it necessarily promote mutation and growth of strong viruses...
With antibiotics you are taking about killing off bacteria ... if you do a half-assed job of it, you end up killing the weaker bacteria leaving the field open for the stronger ones... some of the surviving bacteria may have survived simply because they are immune to whatever agent you used to kill the others--now that bacteria will be reproducing in greater numbers than it would have otherwise done because it has less competition... this especially true inside the body where not completing the full course of antibiotics may leave antibiotic resistant bacteria alive (and reproducing) inside of you...
It would probably surprise a lot of people to learn that given the PR and pervasiveness of the flu vaccine there are no actual double-blind studies proving its effectiveness. Now there are plenty of studies "proving" it is effective. But compared to what? The drug companies don't want you to know that it is within the statical level of noise that you are protected. Without proper double-blind testing you have no idea. You're taking it on the drug company's word. If you've seen that then you haven't seen Bad Pharma (Ben Goldacre)
Pharma companies regularly hide data that is unbecoming. Where are the double blind studies? Without that level of thoroughness, you are asking them to take science on faith.
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
"'Advocates of the mandate are full of evangelical zeal and are quick to portray skeptics as wicked and selfish. It's like a secular religion, based on faith in vaccine efficacy and safety.'"
No, its based on evidence of efficacy and safety.
People say that you get the "flu" from the flu vaccine because "flu" has become such a generic term for being ill. People say they have the "stomach flu" when they have norovirus or food poisoning of some kind. They say they have a "touch of the flu" when they have a cold. They don't realize that influenza is a specific illness that has a very specific set of symptoms. This is a pet peeve of mine.
Actually you cannot get the flu from many of the modern vaccines, because you do not receive the actual dead/weakened viruses at all. Look up e.g. subunit vaccines http://www.niaid.nih.gov/topics/Flu/Research/vaccineResearch/pages/technologies.aspx
What are they exactly? As far as I recall they are never made clear. Anyone that can point to some in depth articles on this, I am curious to know.
and get fired
dont wear the dosimeter in a nuclear facility ... and get fired
dont wear prtective gloves while working on certain tasks ... and get fired
dont wear breathing masks when working with some chemicals ... and get fired
dont go to health tests when working as a cook ... and get fired
What is the death rate directly attributable to Flu shots? Then what's the death rate directly attributable to the Flu for those not vaccinated? If the death rate from the shot is lower, and I'm certain it is, then then how can any one make any kind of logical argument against getting the vaccine? Maybe someone can find the facts on this?
It all starts at 0
A libertarian perspective, which I am here to express, is in support of any employer's Right to terminate employment for whatever reason (barring explicit prior contracts to the contrary). Those nurses also have a Right to seek employment elsewhere, perhaps ending up in an organization that shares their opinion on vaccination (which I personally do not share), or in short-staffed low-paying charities that would be willing to accept all the human resources they can get. Consumers of medical products / services also have a Right to decide between competing providers, and some would take vaccination policies into consideration.
This is a win-win situation, but with all individuals involved having to choose between two competing values: more employment / health care options vs their opinions on vaccines. Over time, the evolutionary forces of the marketplace tend to be very effective in encouraging people to act more rationally, and less and less people would choose in favor of their religious delusions.
One problem with this is government funding - everyone is forced to pay taxes, and you don't have any individual choice if the fruits of your labor end up funding vaccines or religious clinics that reject vaccines, abortions or aggressive foreign wars. If government funds come with regulatory policies attached (ex. all nurses must be vaccinated), then individuals choosing against those policies are unfairly disadvantaged.
“When I disagree with a rational man, I let reality be our final arbiter; if I am right, he will learn; if I am wrong, I will; one of us will win, but both will profit.”
-- Ayn Rand
--libman
Just because AAPS has an important-sounding name does not make it a respected medical organization.
"The Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons: Ideology trumps science-based medicine"
http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/the-journal-of-american-physicians-and-surgeons-ideology-trumps-science-based-medicine/
"The antivaccine lie that just won’t die: The claim that shaken baby syndrome is really due to 'vaccine injury'"
http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/the-antivaccine-lie-that-just-wont-die-shaken-baby-syndrome-is-really-due-to-vaccine-injury/
That second link shows that Dr. Orient is a vaccine-hating crank. Also, an excellent essay on why all healthcare workers must receive the flu vaccine:
http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/protect-yourself/
I do not know of any religion that bans needles.
There's more and more evidence that people who "Have Never Been Sick a Day in Their Lives", are in fact, typhoid Marys. They get colds and the flu just like the rest of us, but their immune systems don't go into overdrive, and they don't have symptoms, but they do spread germs to everyone else. Here's an article w.r.t. SARS http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1201971211000245
All ideas^H^H^H^H^Hprocesses in this post are Patent Pending. (as well as the process of patenting all postings)
The reason health care workers are required to be vaccinated is that someone contracting the flu starts to shed the flu virus for some hours before other symptoms develop. By the time someone begins to feel bad, sneeze, etc. one has already been spreading the illness for hours. (One can see how a virus that behaved in this way would be evolutionarily advantaged over a virus that spread only after the patient first noticed other symptoms.)
Since the spreading mechanism is primarily via the hands touching the nose and mouth, and then touching other surfaces (like doorknobs or keyboards) that are then touched by others, most hospitals with which I am familiar have a different policy: If an employee refuses the flu vaccine, the employee is not terminated, but is required to wear a face mask at all times when at work. This breaks the spreading pathway, albeit less efficiently.
Many hospitals even provide free, voluntary, flu vaccinations to the family members of employees, to reduce the possibility that virus particles shed by, say, a sick child will not be carried by the health care worker into the hospital (for example, in hair or on clothes). This has the added benefit of reducing time away from work to take care of, e.g., a child sick with the flu.
You're being irresponsible too, even though you don't have a job that requires it. Whether you get it often or not, you should be immunized. If you get it, you can pass it on. If you are immunized, your already low chances of getting it become lower. The only valid excuse for not being vaccinated is that you can't be for medical reasons. If you can be vaccinated, it is your social responsibility to contribute to reaching herd immunity so that those who can't be vaccinated can receive the benefits of your immunity.
My religions beliefs say that I should stay at home with my family all day, but my work has told me they will fire me if I don't work.
I sense way to much non nerdy news seeping into what used to be a great site :(
...vaccinate?
In my 37+ years, I've never heard of ANY sane preacher against vaccination, on religious grounds.
This sounds like some nutjob trying to make Christians look bad or just trying to weasel out of getting a flu shot with a nonsense excuse.
"My religion says I am required to speed while drinking!"
Not that my anecdotal evidence matters, but I can attest to getting the flu shot and being sick after.
My mother's a nurse and is, or at least was, a firm believer in the flu shot. She use to make me and my older sister get them every year. She stopped forcing me when I was seven because I was always violently ill afterwards. I hadn't had a flu shot in 20 years and never had more than the occasional head cold. Then last year my wife, who is also a firm believer in the flu shot, was pregnant and asked me to get one for her and the baby's sake. I did and wasn't terribly ill, but for a few days later I was nauseated and sluggish. I got a vaccine this year anyway, but this time I was violently ill. I ended up in the hospital for two days with sever "flu like symptoms" according to the doctor, who wouldn't believe I had gotten my shot. I'm not allergic to eggs so I'm not sure why I would be so sick all of the sudden after 20 years of being pretty healthy.
I definitely believe in the logic of vaccinating as many people as possible and that it's beneficial to everyone, but I also feel the flu shot either doesn't always work as well as some believe, or that it can make some people sick. My wife says it's a one off and I probably already had the flu this year before getting the shot, which is obviously why I got sick. I'll get it again next year and see what happens, but if I'm as sick next year as I was this year, that's the end of it for me.
Also, not to wear out my tinfoil hat, but I'd like to know how much the pharmaceutical industry makes off the flu vaccines and possibly what kind of effect that might have on "research" into it's benefits. I tried to look it up, but only found a few (dubious) sources stating that while they make less off vaccines than other drugs, they still me astronomical amounts. If true, I kind of see that as an incentive for them to lie about the benefits, it's a huge cash cow and you wouldn't want people to all the sudden find out it's a lot of hokey.
I also understand that MRSA (a very serious, and potentially lethal bacteria, if untreated) has been brought on by over sanitization. That's what makes MRSA so serious. It resists almost all antibiotic treatments. Studies have been coming out showing where hospitals that are not as clean have lower rates of MRSA infection.
MRSA is resistant to antibiotics due to the overuse of . . . antibiotics. I think you're conflating MRSA with theories about the polio epidemic.
I am not a crackpot.
Is it worth noting that there are specific medical cases where people are denied access to the flu shot? I showed up to get mine done, and after going through the questionnaire, I was denied on the grounds that my mother had Guillain–Barré syndrome (GBS). I can certainly see how myths persist in the nursing community based on my experience.
I'm not defending the religious grounds argument, clearly, by what I said above, though I doubt 40% of nurses are not taking the shots because of that. It seems much more likely that the rhetoric of "there are no side effects under any circumstances" that is routinely spouted by the medical community fails because they are not properly educating their staff on the whys and why nots. There could be a perfectly valid explanation for why I was denied the flu shot, but certainly the nurses that showed up were not trained and educated on that front. It also stirs up concern when the nurse asks how my mom developed GBS and how she knew she had it, and I had to tell her that it came on suddenly and we had no way of knowing before hand. After all, how would those same nurses know if they were at risk?
Before criticizing a community of (fairly) well trained people, I think it worthwhile to examine the seemingly contradictory and confusing information being spread around.
'I feel like in my personal faith walk, I have felt instructed not to get a flu vaccination, but it's also the whole matter of the right to choose what I put in my body...' adding that she has not had a flu vaccine for 30 years as a result of a choice she made because of her Christian faith
Of course she can choose to be vaccinated or not. That is her legal right. However when vaccination demonstrably reduces risk to fellow patients and co-workers then she is welcome to seek employment elsewhere. Her religion has NOTHING to do with this. If she can make a credible scientific argument that such a vaccination would be useless then fine but I don't give a crap about her particular brand of religious craziness. Hospitals require vaccinations for TB and a variety of other diseases and do so for very good reasons. Influenza is no different. If she really believes what she said in the quote above I don't want her anywhere near patients because she is a danger to them.
Does anyone know what the Flying Spaghetti Monster's take on flu shots is?
Throughout all this discussion no one has talked about what the flu vaccine is. It is not the same as other vaccinations. Influenza strains change from year to year. Each year the drug companies try to predict what existing strains and / or new strains will be dominant several months in the future when "flu season" strikes. They then manufacture many millions of doses before they have any evidence of what the reality of the season will actually be (because the manufacturing process is time consuming and somewhat risky production wise). Some seasons they do better than others, depending on how well they prognosticated that season ahead of time.
Thus the flu vaccine is a bit of a shotgun approach for the masses. I'm sure many of you know of people who had the annual flu vaccination and yet became sick that season and tested positive for influenza (there were reports in the local paper about this already, as the flu season has hit early he). Obviously the effectiveness is quite low, but probably the overall mass advantage does prevent some infections from incurring, again simply due to the massive scale involved. It's is a billion dollar industry which I have some degree of inside information about due to local marketing and distribution of the flu vaccine which involved family members.
Does the overall effectiveness of the annual flu vaccine warrant the tremendous amount of money spent on it? Maybe. I do know that billions of dollars are involved in this industry, and any time that much money is involved there are also significant amounts of money spent protecting the industry and providing justification that it is necessary. So take that with a grain of salt.
Better known as 318230.
And then no one sued the system for allowing "harm" to the patient. Thru study, or were this a case of unequal treatment for profit. And did anyone die from this lack of care, implied murder, how dare you eugenisist. See the name in the article. Nursing home, people who will not understand because f age, How many of the patients got sick because of the "experiment".
Now check the awnser against the factor of proper dressing of the staff, in AV gear, a simple mask and glooves versus, the standard uniform of a nursing home. I have gone into several nursing homes as a rescueman, first responder, and investigator. And seen how different home owners have geared out their staff. That is the difference, not the shot, not the pee cups, but the carring of the operator on the staff and people in their care.
Except that the Flu is transmitted through cough and mucus. If you're not sick from the flu even with it in you you're not transmitting the Flu. Use some critical thinking Gravis777
Do you Gentoo!?
n/t
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Your faith is your private business. If it gets into the way of doing your job, choose a different job.
Should a Muslim cook be allowed to refuse to cook me ham and eggs in a restaurant that offers this meal?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
The real reason to be cautious (read: refuse) routine influenza vaccination is the risk of acquiring Guillain Barre syndrome. This disabling neurological disease has been linked with several batches of flu vaccines, in 1976 and possibly in 2009. In the 2009 analysis, the unadjusted risk ratio was 2.8-fold, but after statistical "adjustment" it fell to a less significant number. The sources for these are, respectively, the US CDC and the British Medical Journal. There is chatter in the lay press about absence of risk, but these sources are as reliable as one can get.
As a health care worker, I can tell you that all of the consent forms I have been offered with the vaccine mention this possibility (sometimes couched in terms that are not meaningful unless you already know), and that none of the hospital executives I have asked have been willing to indemnify the recipient against this risk.
The bottom line question is therefore: if the risk of acquiring this life-changing disease from routine vaccination is in fact not increased, and if mandatory vaccination of health care workers is in the public interest, why would an indemnification fund not be established to care for all vaccinated individuals who acquire Guillain Barre syndrome? Yes, there are spontaneous cases, but at least in the USA the government provides hemodialysis for everyone who acquires kidney failure. Given that precedent, the vaccination issue is easily resolved. Oh, wait, there is a budget deficit....
Join mine. It requires you to work only on 2 days because 5 days are holy and you have to spend them praising the lord. You're free to praise him in whatever way you choose, too.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
There is good argument for both sides of this.
On one hand, a healthcare worker is around infections all the time, and so is more likely to catch something and pass it on, so there is good reason to require it.
On the other hand, the vacine only applys to the person receiving it, and it's their body. If it can be required for them, then soon it would be used as an excuse to require it for everybody, and that is not okay.
I wonder if these nurses have no vaccines, or if they are just offended by the flu vaccine. For example, I though all nurses have been required to have a Hepatitis vaccine for many years.
My hospital gave us two options: 1, get the shot; 2, wear a mask intended for droplet isolation when in direct patient care. What's funny about the latter option is you only have to wear the mask while say in the patient's room. Droplets swirl, and travel and other nurses breathe it in and exhale it in patient's rooms. It's fucking punishment and I'm surprised it hasn't gotten legal attention any sooner. We ask every patient admitted if they've had their flu shot. If they say no, then we ask if they'd like one. If they refuse it: end of discussion! This could be an elderly patient ready to catch the flu from another inpatient and then take it to the nursing home and hack it up there, however everyone has a right to refuse. Nevertheless, many hospitals are cramming it down health care worker's throats and saying they don't have a right to refuse? Bullshit. I'm glad this is hitting the fan.
Chewbacon
The Bible is like Wikipedia: written by a bunch of people and verifiable by questionable sources.
Fuckin' see ya.
Flu shots are a hoax. I've worked in a hospital where about half of the people chose to have the flu shot. Most of them got sick immediately afterwards and there was no evidence that having taken the shot, would prevent them from getting the flu later that year. People who never took the shot got sick just as much as the people who did.
Changing the terms of employment changes the terms of the contract between employer and employee.
The employee should simply demand higher wages.
I once claimed to be a "Samsonite" christian to give my school grief about its "dress" code.
"I feel like in my personal faith walk, I have felt instructed not to get a flu vaccination, but it's also the whole matter of the right to choose what I put in my body"
I absolutely agree that you have the personal right to refuse a flu vaccine. Please, go along and exercise that right far away from patients who need medical care by professional people... you know... the ones that put their "beliefs" away from science.
Julio Henrique Morimoto juliohm@gmail.com
This has nothing to do with religious rights. This is about these women making asinine choices. If their religion bars them from being nurses, then they shouldn't be nurses. It's really that simple.
Can you imagine a muslim woman being hired to work as a stripper and then suing because she has to take her clothes off? Does anyone think she has a right to work as a fully clothed stripper?
The Amish are doing it right. Rather than force modern society to bend to their outdated religious notions, they remove themselves from modern society. So should those so called nurses.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
I'm fine with firing them over this, as this seems to be a science-based issue where there's good scientific evidence to support the idea that flu vaccination has a meaningful public health benefit. (I'd also support a denial of insurance coverage for people who don't get vaccinated and get whatever illness they could have been vaccinated for).
I'm more intrigued with the low, 60 percent vaccination rate. Why would this be? Are you telling me 40% of these people are anti-vaccine lunatics? Or is there something they know, or think they know, that causes them to avoid this vaccine?
I can see a moral vegetarian refusing a flu shot because she doesn't want shared responsibility for the suffering of chickens bred for their eggs from which the shots were made. Of course, if said vegetarian was a nurse she'd have to additionally consider being responsible for patients getting the flu through her. I am just pointing out that there is an ethical, non-religious, reason for not wanting a shot.
You can't use religion as a means to get your own way. The problem with religion is that if they allow you to use it to get out of a needle or a RFID tag ( old story ) then every single time you don't want to do something they have to accept religion as a way out. They either have to accept it or not and I think it's safer to just deny it.
How many people commented to say: "Good, they do not have a right to a job, they can just go work somewhere else"
Also commented in condemnation of corporations requiring Facebook and other social media passwords.
Also AAPS is not making any spectacular claim. They have stated that their is no empirical evidence based studies to back up any forced vaccine laws. If their is not, it is simply bad science to assume something works and force it on everyone. End of story, I do not care if the AAPS is crazy most of the time; That is how science works, it does not matter who it comes from.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
Religion is a red-herring in this story, if a nurse has the option to refuse a vaccine it should be for any personal reason. The question that I am the most interested in, is if the hospital has a similar policy for their doctors. If the vaccine is so obviously positive, then surely every doctor on staff would also have it. If every doctor has it and agrees that it is good, then I fully support mandatory vaccinations for nurses. I suspect however, that this is not the case, and that the mandate for vaccination is coming from somebody on the business management side of the hospital rather than somebody on the healthcare side of things.
There's a few different things to consider. First of all, some people genetically just don't get the flu. My wife and I have never had the flu that we can remember and we haven't had a cold since we got our allergies under control about seven years ago. It makes me wonder how many of the reported colds and flus are simply people suffering from allergies.
If you do a Google search, the CDC is saying that the current flu shot is only 60% effective and previous flu vaccinations have been at 40% or less. (There's been a couple of studies in the past that indicated flu shots were no more effective than a placebo.) If you figure that some percentage is simply immune from the flu, that makes the flu shot even less effective.
You can read more about the flu vaccine's effectiveness in a New York Times article here: http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/11/05/reassessing-flu-shots-as-the-season-draws-near/
I would probably get my plague vaccine, and then continue avoiding my flu shots.
This isn't a matter of work discrimination against religion... it's religion discriminating against the job.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
The other method to reduce transmission is prevent caregivers from working in the hospital if they show signs of being sick with any significantly harmful highly contagious disease. If they get sick way too often with such diseases then they should be fired as being not fit for the job - because the very same practices (washing hands regularly, etc) that reduce the odds of you spreading disease from patient to patient, also reduce the odds of you contracting such diseases. If they are not part of your lifestyle and habit, perhaps you should not be working in the hospital as a caregiver.
In fact if everyone was forced to quarantine themselves till they are fully recovered at the first sign of sickness then most contagious diseases will have to evolve to not be so obvious. This would result in more diseases becoming less acutely harmful.
Yes a disease might still be contagious before you start getting a fever, coughing/sneezing/puking/shitting a lot, but that unpleasant stuff happens because the viruses that caused those happen to spread better. So if we started strictly quarantining ourselves immediately on any signs of such stuff then these diseases would have to evolve to not do such stuff - because diseases that do such stuff would not spread so well.
But I think this is never going to happen unless some really nasty disease starts spreading and we don't have decent countermeasure (or don't have one that scales well enough). Everyone (bosses, employees, teachers, students, parents etc) seems fine with people going to work/school because they're not sick enough... "Don't be a baby" etc. As long as that continues, most people will have a high chance of getting that unpleasantly sick.
I've read through some of the comments with interest. The general consensus seems to be that the employer can demand whatever the employer wants. That probably reflects the US centric nature of the commentators.
However, I have problems with enforced medical intervention. It's been done before, serilization of the mentally ill, forced abortion (china one woman one child policy).
I also have problems with withholding medical intervention - we've recently had a case in the UK courts where a mother didn't want her child treated for a brain tumour. The courts eventually ruled that the operation could go ahead.
I would strongly oppose any measure that required doctors to be involved with euthanasia but at the same time I'm critical of the current rules that require people to refuse food and starve themselves to death because nobody is allowed to help them to die.
I don't know the ins and outs of this particular issue. In the UK we do have the concept of a notifiable disease and, should you contract one, you can have your freedoms limited up to an including being forced to stay in an isolation ward. But I've never heard any suggestion that flu vaccines should be made compulsory for anybody.
Personally, I think something like this should be legal issue and not an employment issue. If employers think this is an important intervention then they should lobby their legislators to make it compulsory and then people can have a chance to vote on it. My inclination should anything like this be proposed in the UK is that I would be opposed on moral and ethical grounds regardless of the efficacy of the intervention. I'd be willing to be swayed by a convincing argument though (but because employers should be allowed to enforce it isn't a convincing argument to me)
Tim.
God said, "div D = rho, div B = 0, curl E = -@B/@t, curl H = J + @D/@t," and there was light.
'There seems to be a persistent myth that you can get flu from a flu vaccine among nurses,' says Schaffner.
Tell this jackass that I sit and watch a half a dozen coworkers come down with this bug about once a year. . . . right after they get the vaccination. Oh, yea, I know, it's just coincidence.
The American *Osteopathic* Association has over 40K doctors, is fairly mainstream, and has a greater focus on underserved care and charity work than the AMA. Yes, some DOs are more accepting of alternative medicine than other physicians, but they are a minority even within the DO profession.
My wife is a D.O. who uses science-based Western medicine to treat her patients. She is 100% in favor of vaccinations and other sensible preventive medicine. She will also refer them to non-traditional stuff if they're seeking that (e.g. acupuncture, herbal remedies). And that makes her more "out there" than most DOs. Let's not perpetuate the stereotype that DOs are some kind of weirdos - at least in the U.S. they're trained, licensed physicians just like MDs.
The difference between a DO and an MD (at least in the U.S.) is like the difference between an NP and a PA - they can do the same things, but just have a slightly different philosophy and are coming to their training from a slightly different angle.
If the reasoning for her getting the flu shot is that she will present less risk to her patients then why not have her wear a full body condom? The argument of "protect the patients" is eerily reminiscent of "protect the children". I'm sure the substances in flu vaccinations are just as harmless as so many other substances deemed "safe" for use such as DDT, etc.. It's not like big corporations have influence in government decisions, heavens no!
I think others have questioned everything else you've said, so I question your understanding of Herd Immunity. Herd immunity is the observation that if more than a certain percentage of a population is immune to a disease, it is unlikely to spread quickly enough among the susceptible population to sustain an outbreak. In effect, the herd insulates the at-risk individuals from the illness. If less than the required percentage is immune, then this insulating effect is insufficient to prevent outbreaks and contagion among the remaining population.
For example: an immunization rate of roughly 85% protects against outbreaks of Diphtheria. Roughly 80% immunization is required to protect against mumps. Roughly 93% is required to protect against Pertussis. (This higher threshold indicates why Pertussis outbreaks are more common than some diseases for which vaccines are commonly available.)
There is NOTHING about herd immunity which increases the likelihood that HELPS spread pathogens.
So in this case instead of religion vs science we have religion vs placebo?
I'm sorry, but fuck your personal religious beliefs.
You are a health care worker. Your job is help people stay healthy. If you willfully chose to be a Typhoid Mary, then you are doing the exact opposite of what you had agreed to do and have no business being in health care.
PERIOD.
The flu vaccine is FAR from proven to be effective.
http://chemistry.about.com/cs/howthingswork/a/aa011604a.htm
And on top of all of THAT, there's still the issue that fairly regularly, the vaccines given are found to be defective in one way or another, and people receiving the shots are asked to come back in for a second attempt with the revised vaccine.
1- They are working at a job and being paid to do so. When youre being paid by someone then you are expected to follow certain guidelines that employer sets in place. This is a hospital where outside illness can cause problems for already weakened, already sick, the old in years, and immune deficient. If the hospital demands you have a flu shot to help protect patients then its no different than the fact hospital require staff to wash their hands before entering and after exiting a patients room. If they dont want a shot they shouldnt be in the medical field, or they should find a job someplace where it isnt mandatory. When you are paid to do a job you are expected to make certain concessions for that job.
2- This is a prime example of extreme stupidity. They refuse a flu shot for religious reasons?! &$&^ and &$& 4&&&$$. That is why religion is such a terrible thing because it shows how incredibly stupid we are. Its like look how many great things we can do with stem cells right now. But for stem cells first 20 years of exsistence we couldnt do anything because christians cock blocked the research, think of what we could be doing with it right now if christians didnt exsist. Or look at the whole twin tower fiasco, they would still be standing and all of those people would be alive if it werent for religion. Religion causes more ignorance, more judgemental mentalities, more pain, more suffering, more lack of evolution and more death than anything else in the entire history of mankind.
3- If their faith is so absolute and so very strict even on the most insignificant thing possible why are they even nurses at all? If their faith has a rule against flu vaccines then how can they possibly be nurses? Does that mean they wont give a flu shot because it makes them a hypocrite? What about medical procedures or other medicines?
Personally this sounds like they are making a mountain out of a molehile in hopes of getting some attention, or perhaps a lawsuit for some easy cash. I worked as a PCA and a HUC at a hospital for 6 years, my mother is a ER nurse and TCU for over 20 years, I went through nursing school and Ive been a nurse on a SNF for the past 9 years. Not once have I ever, I mean ever heard of someone refusing any type of vaccine due to religion. The only time I ever heard of anything even remotely close to refusing something because of religion is I had a lady who refused a blood transfusion because of her religious beliefs and the end result of her refusing it was her own death but hey we cant all have the intelligence greater than a hummingbird I guess.
But I am so so glad the hospital stood up to those nurses and fired. Such incredibly narrow minded, closed minded, religious nutwing mentalities need to go. They have no place in modern society and if I was a patient I wouldnt want someone like that taking care of me. Id want someone intelligent, open minded and willing to learn taking care of me. In other words, Id want someone smart and savvy taking care of me and not some nutball with a 1200ad mentality.
There are a few problems as I see it...
1. Flu Vaccine's effectiveness is questionable. Irony, almost everyone I know who gets the flu vaccine, still gets the flu. And they always seem to be told "Oh the problem was this year, the vaccine didn't match up well to the active strains". But I hear this EVERY year.
2. Flu Vaccine can still cause a few days worth of flu like symptoms.
3. How often are people actually catching the flu? particularly a strain of illness they would not get if they had the vaccine.
4. Where does it stop and at what risk? We have employers mandating vaccines. Which do pose risks, albeit usually very slim. But do we support the removal of personal liberty to choose what to do with one's own body? Really? Are we sure? Is pro-choice philosophy bunk...why is it I we hear we should have the right to choose for our bodies...but then are often told we don't have that right. Sure, one might say, well you have a choice. You can choose to get the vaccine per your employer's requirement or loose your job. What if an employer said "Children reduce productivity of my workers. If any woman gets pregnant and chooses to keep the child. She will be fired." Is that likewise fair? It's really not that different in scope of "right to your own body".
Four days ago, I had a flu shot; I've since enjoyed the full suite of aches, coughing, headache, fever, you name it. Yesterday I had labs done to determine if this is the flu, and they came back negative. The fact that there are not actually viruses reproducing inside my body doesn't help alleviate the symptoms.
And since I'm not "technically" sick, I may be asked to work. I may not be spreading flu when I cough, but anything else I'm carrying, sure.
The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, "I'm from the government and I'm here to help." - Ronald Reagan
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If you think you have the right to choose what goes in your body (which you should!) then the hospital has the right to choose who they employ.
FFS part of any healtcare workers job description should be to prevent the sped of disease. If you can't do your job you shouldn't have that job.
I wonder if these people realize that attributing your personal opinion to God is blasphemy. The train of though is "my opinion is right", "God is always right", "therefor this is God's opinion". Of course everyone has opinions and everyone believes their opinions are correct.
If you are a nurse / doctor / employee who feels it is your right to have such a sensitive job and your beliefs regardless of religious basis define for you no vaccine, you are well within your rights; but you will be subject to a harsher scrutiny.
1. you are personally libel for your patients health, not the medical facility
2. you will wear a face mask from the moment you walk into the facility to the moment you leave, and the medical facility is not required to provide you the daily supply.
3. you will sterilize your hands each and every time you take off your latex gloves and then instantly put them on again and will wear them the entire time you're at the facility, and as stated before, the medical facility is not required to provide you with this supply
4. if you do not like these safety guidelines imposed, feel free to seek employment in a medical facility that does not impose such restrictions.
5. if you are sick, you will not return to work for 5 days after you are healthy again at your own expense.
6. if you contract a virus at work that you refused vaccination for you will be immediately dismissed from your job with no further compensation, either submit to return to work based on health or termination, which ever the medical facilities guidelines are.
If you are a patient who cannot be moved from the facility due to several factors (distance, specialty care, public etc...)
1. you have the right of refusal for allowing a non-vaccinated employee from tending to you
2. should you waive those rights, you release the non-vaccinated medical professional free of liability for contraction of the sickness the vaccines were for
Life takes interesting turns, but the most interest is when you're off the beaten path.
Likewise if your religion is against hand washing, nursing might not be the field for you. I would say it is that simple.
In addition, I'm going to go out on a limb and say BS to the whole "my religion" is against that crap. Show me someplace in the bible that makes mention of flu shots. Also if they want to take some general principle further and say that they don't feel right about interfereing with Gods plan or something stupid like that, why they heck are they working in Medicine? Please get these nuts out of health care as quickly as possible.
...and yor, it was said on high, with some clearity, and rightly so, God did say, Thou shalt not, takest yon Flu Shot and it was so. So we all pray, Amen.
The data on the flu vaccine is not missing, it is manifold. What we know is that it doesn't have the level of effectiveness that other vaccines have at scale because of the rate of change and variability of the viruses at issue, both temporally (change) and geographically (variability).
But what we also know is that it is more effective than nothing.
Which makes this a morality/ethics argument, not a scientific argument. The position that we don't have enough data to know whether it "works" or that it only "works" if no vaccinated individual becomes sick or transmits the virus is a semantic trick. It implicitly reframes efficacy as being:
- 100% effectiveness
- In one single dimension of possible efficacy / one single metric of measurement of efficacy
The benefits of the vaccine are well know, as are the seasonal variations in its effectiveness and the difficulties in getting it right.
The discussion is whether, given the particular level of efficacy and variability at issue, forcing the administration of the vaccine in some cases is justified. But it's not really a scientific question, or even if we say that we don't have the same data on the particular case of a particular role-player in society and their effect on a particular demographic in a particular year and with a particular vaccine or administration technique, the more general data that we do have makes the scientific uncertainties involved much smaller quantities than the moral/ethical ones that people are actually concerned about.
It's a common tactic in moral/ethical debate to try to recast these kinds of value issues (my individual cost-benefit analysis vs. my effect on others by adopting it vs. the balancing of my rights vs. theirs) as somehow "scientific."
Science can tell us how things work (or don't). It can't tell us what's "worth doing."
But Indiana is a "right-to-work" state. How could this possibly be? Dont shoot down collective bargaining and then complain that you dont have collective bargaining power.
"Don't take a flu shot."
Christian grounds my ass.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Some people were able to express their religious beliefs. That there were consequences comes with the territory. Now they are martyrs for their faith.
The hospital continues to provide care for its patients.
Win/Win all around.
"I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert
I don't think they should be fired for refusing to be vaccinated. Those who choose not to get the vaccine should have to wear full body bio hazard suits at all times in the hospital as a safety device, much like a butcher wears cut resistant gloves. I wonder if they will choose the suit, vaccine or just quit?
In Africa, inoculation was so common that American slaves inoculated themselves and got no smallpox,
while smallpox decimated their masters' families. Inoculation eventually became vaccination and one gets an inkling [understatement] that vaccination succeeded on a worldwide scale since the once rampant smallpox was eradicated from the world by 1977.
Regarding herd immunity; Herd immunity works great if the entire population has a perfect immunity. the more varied (trending downward) the immunity levels of the populous, the greater likelihood you have actually helped spread the virus.
I like your argument for the sake of the general population. Americans overuse antibiotics and generally ignore the beneficial impacts of occasionally getting sick and exposed to a wide variety of viruses, illnesses, etc.
However, that doesn't hold true for healthcare workers. Some hospitals that might not be as clean have less MRSA, but it doesn't mean they have less bacteria. People might still get infections in those hospitals, it's just easier to treat.
The flu, on the other hand, is okay for some, bad for others, and terminal for some. Nurses might interact with elderly cancer patients, immuno-compromised children, and very sick, homeless, drug-addicts - all in the same day. Every effort should be made to keep what is afflicting patient A from affecting patient B. Hand-sanitizers are by every door in a hospital not so the patients can sanitize their hands but so their handlers can.
They regularly put themselves in high-risk situations and should make every effort to minimize risk. If they aren't alright with that, they should find a different place to work. Not every nurse has to get a flu shot at all establishments, but it is becoming more popular - just as hand-sanitizing and gloves have in the past couple decades.
Heresy! Blasphemy! No job for you.
The same faith that says women have no right to choose to not be a birthing chamber, you sickening hipocrite?
Once you get through all the pro and anti vaccine nonsense there are several points that make forcing health care workers to get it a bad idea.
1) The seasonal influenza vaccine is only marginally good at preventing influenza
http://summaries.cochrane.org/CD001269/vaccines-to-prevent-influenza-in-healthy-adults
2) They don't help in a health care facility setting at reducing patient mortality
http://summaries.cochrane.org/CD005187/influenza-vaccination-for-healthcare-workers-who-work-with-the-elderly
So why not look at something that does actually work? Give free vitamin D3 tests to all health care workers so they can optimize their vitamin D3 levels. That would go a long way to keeping the health care workers influenza free.
Except, during cold and flu season, most people do have a cough or sneeze anyways, due to allergies or colds or whatnot. So just because you are not sneezing or coughing as a result of the flu because you built up the immunity, most people are still coughing and sneezing, and can be carrying and hence, spreading the virus.
The flu vacine is to help keep you from getting sick, not from passing it on to others. You are still a carrier, and a transmitter.
Hi, I'm your nurse. I don't believe in science. I believe in magical thinking. I may very well be contagious as a result of my religious beliefs, but don't worry, if you get sick I'll pray for you.
Careful with that thin edge, Eugene; that same phrase can be easily applied to justify the creeping police state lead by the TSA and endless war against stateless groups by the DOD and friends.
No it isn't. Bad studies and a bunch of all cause mortality studies that fail to account for the healthy user effect are the only ones supporting it.
- Dr Lisa Jackson's out of season influenza vaccine research
http://ije.oxfordjournals.org/content/35/2/337.short
- Cochrane Review - Vaccines for preventing influenza in healthy adults
http://summaries.cochrane.org/CD001269/vaccines-to-prevent-influenza-in-healthy-adults-
So rather than being science based belief in the seasonal influenza is just that. A belief. Nothing more. It doesn't work anywhere near what is advertised.
Suppose there's a new vaccin that, if taken by nurses, has been proven to completely rule out any chance of them infecting patients. But, as a side effect, it causes X% of the vaccinated to die instantly. Or, on average, those vaccinated live Y days shorter. How large may X or Y be for you to still be a proponent of obligatory vaccination? (And what if X and Y are unknown?)
What if we not only requite nurses to vaccinate, but also policemen, firemen and teachers? What the hell, why not forcibly vaccinate everyone? That would help stop a flu epidemic.
And while we're at it, why not have everyone implant an RFID and put a halt to terrorism!
it's possible the OP is experiencing a correct immune reaction, including emission of cytokines, but without an actual widespread infection of replicating influenza. Could "feel sick" but not be actually infected.
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Yes indeed, everyone should have a right to their own body and what goes into it provided it does not gravely endanger anyone else. Fortunately for them, not getting a flu shot is not so dangerous so these nurses should not be forced to do it. One thing people should *not* have a right to is a job where you refuse to follow the rules of said job. It shouldn't matter that it is for religious reasons. I could believe in my own crazy version of Christianity that says it's a sin to wash my hands. I should be free to do that. I sure as shit shouldn't be allowed to work in a hospital or even a restaurant.
1. You should be free to put whatever you want into your body (provided it doesn't harm others)
2. You should be free to practice whatever religion you want (provided it doesn't harm others)
3. You should be entitled to a job even if you can't or won't do it to the employer's satisfaction because of religious beliefs.
People frequently confuse these statements. They say and think they want 1 and 2 (which are very reasonable), but what they actually want is 3 (which is completely retarded).
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From the Wikipedia link in the article summary:
"The Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS) is a politically conservative non-profit association founded in 1943 to "fight socialized medicine and to fight the government takeover of medicine." Many of the political and scientific viewpoints advocated by AAPS are considered extreme or dubious by other medical groups.[1] Notable members include Ron Paul and John Cooksey; the executive director is Jane Orient, a member of the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine.
"The organization opposes mandatory vaccination,[11] universal health care[12] and government intervention in healthcare.[10][13] The AAPS has characterized the effects of the Social Security Act of 1965, which established Medicare and Medicaid, as "evil" and "immoral",[14] and encouraged member physicians to boycott Medicare and Medicaid."
I'm not sure that they bring an unbiased perspective to the issue.
God is imaginary
Sure you may be right, but you're still less contagious for a shorter time, the virus might not even gain a foothold at all. In this sense carry/transmission window is very much smaller. So if you also follow hygiene guidelines about shielding sneezing and washing hands then risk of transfer to vulnerable patients are dramatically reduced and there's no doubt lives are saved.
and they were smart not to. Recently the AMA ruled that Thimerosol is safe in vaccines. How many docs sold their soul for that one?
On the one hand, flu shots are so inherently stupid, it boggles the mind that a *hospital* of all employers would make them mandatory. They really ought to know better. Flu shots do, to a first approximation, absolutely nothing -- they certainly have not been shown to be effective enough to warrant any kind of mandatory policy.
On the other hand, I am rather intimately familiar with the Christian faith, and it provides absolutely no valid religious grounds for refusing vaccination. Some of the cults[1] (e.g., J.W.) refuse transfusions and/or vaccinations, but I'm not aware of any legitimately Christian denomination that teaches against them, and the Bible certainly does not.
On the gripping hand, I'm not sure this case is really about flu shots at all.
---
Footnotes:
[1] - I am using the word "cult" here in the theological sense -- a group that claims to be rooted in Christianity but denies core tenets of the faith (usually, the diety of Christ).
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
When they went into the profession, they knew that there were innoculations, etc. You know, medicine. In the medical profession.
So if they didn't want to deal with that, WHY THE FUCK TAKE THE JOB????
It's like becoming a stripper then complaining because your religion thinks that nudity is a sin, therefore you shouldn't be taking any clothes off...
but for some reason, only religion seems to get a pass on bad beliefs.
The following and its links are a good overview of what you need to know about the AAPS and its journal. It is from 2008, but not much has changed.
http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/the-journal-of-american-physicians-and-surgeons-ideology-trumps-science-based-medicine/
Posted as a coward in part for reasons stated in the article.
I challenge you to post proof of efficacy. 1. A single institution that scientifically correlated its mandatory vaccination policy to improved outcomes, decreased incidence of flu. 2. A single study showing large scale immunizations of populations against influenza an effective method of decreasing incidence of flu. -
In case anyone wants to know, it's the 13th Commandment that covers this: "Thou shalt not be vaccinated against influenza". Unfortunately the tablet containing Commandments 11-15 was lost after Moses dropped it after coming down off the mountain after his long conversation with a burning bush.
Thankfully there was a young entrepreneur present named Steven, son of Jobs, who was able to copy down all the information from the broken tablet onto something he called an iScroll, and then proceeded to convince people that in order to stay in God's good graces they needed to have a copy for themselves, which he of course would provide for a substantial fee. And lo, the masses came and paid, and paid, and paid, making Steven quite a wealthy man. Unfortunately it, and he, were short lived. Soon after Moses filed a complaint with the burning bush's patent and copyright office God smote Steven, son of Jobs, and damned him to Hell, where he somehow manages to convince Satan to let him out every few hundred years just for shits and giggles.
And that's why religious people shouldn't get flu vaccines. Understand now?
Yes, but that is not what the blurb is stating - they are arguring about patient safty. A Flu vaccine helps you build up an immunity to the virus - in other words, if you are exposed to it, you are less likely to get sick, and if you do, the symptoms are not as bad. Getting a flu vaccine does NOT mean that you will not carry the virus. As such, firing on the grounds that they fired these workers on is not based on science, and as such, there is no grounds for termination. Whether the workers refused the vaccine based on religious grounds or not is moot.
I don't have anything peer reviewed to reference, but this is one of those situations where I feel the "common sense" argument is rather powerful. If you are effectively vaccinated it is less likely that the virus can take hold in your system. This means that if you come in contact with it you can still spread it by then contacting other things, at least until you clean up, but your body will not be producing virus cells on its own.
Effective vaccination reduces the number of sources of the disease in the environment, so logically unless the environment was beyond saturation with sources this will reduce the chance of it spreading.
Less people sick with contagious diseases = less disease spread, all else being equal. Is that really a hard or controversial concept?
I used to get high on life, but I developed a tolerance. Now I need something stronger.
I'm not allergic to eggs so I'm not sure why I would be so sick all of the sudden after 20 years of being pretty healthy.
That is not the only question they ask prior to getting the flu shot. They also ask "Have you had an adverse reaction to the flu shot in the past?" From your description, I'd say you should definitely answer "yes" to that question.
I'd suspect you have an overreacting immune system. If you get swine flue you may well be DOA. Given the severity of what you're describing, your doctor will want to know since this may well complicate things if you ever end up in a hospital at any point in the future.
Should have anything what so ever to do with my health.
Then I will have your back against cup pissing mandatory anything even background and credit can all go away.
But then you and I both know you cant.
Why are people who do not believe in modern medicine allowed to work in hospitals?
The entire reason for hospitals is to care for patients. Patients come first. No exceptions.
To all those who find fault with the hospital for mandating flu shots, ask yourself if their personal relationship with their god instructed them not to where any mask over their face, would it be reasonable to fire a member of a surgical team?
What if their faith instructed them not to wash their hands?
Obviously if they caught the plague, they'd catch a vaccine too, since they weren't really avoiding the plague if they ended up getting it.
If there were a religious objection to flu vaccination, which is not plausible, then it's a religious objection to taking the job, just as Buddhists can't be slave traders.
Immunize.org: "Protection from influenza vaccine is thought to persist for a year because of waning antibody and because of changes in the circulating influenza virus from year to year." Thought to? WTF does that mean?
Why become a nurse in the first place?
Anyhow, best to step aside and let nature trim the breeding pool. Morons.
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If I got a job as a porn star and then refused to sleep with the other stars because it was against my religion, I would expect to be fired from that too.
If your religion prevents you from doing what the job requires, you should get a different job.
...But we know that harmful effects of mercury on the body are cumulative and are not entirely limited to children.
Timerosal is, indeed, mercury-based.
Mercury is toxic.
Therefore Timerosal is toxic.
Sounds like logic, right?
Table salt is chlorine-based.
Chlorine is toxic.
Therefore table salt is toxic.
Oops. That doesn't work... How about this instead:
Table salt is sodium-based.
Sodium burns on contact with water.
Therefore table salt burns on contact with water.
Hmmm... That doesn't work either.
Perhaps there's a flaw with the idea that 'something-based' is automatically going to behave the same way as 'something'.
There is, no evidence that Thimerosal, in the low doses involved with administering vaccines has any health risks beyond local skin irritation at the injection site.
They started researching new alternatives when the anti-vax 'scare' started. Unfortunately, the famous 'study' which purported to actually *show* measurable health effects caused by vaccines turned out to be a fabrication, with patients who were carefully selected to already match the desired outcomes, and where the patients *didn't* correlate, data was invented whole cloth in order to *make* them correlate.
Even ignoring that, and working under the overabundance of caution typical of modern medical science, that last sentence of yours that I quoted simply shows that even *without any evidence of risk*, medical scientists are reluctant to assume that there can be no such risk, and recommend against including the compound in vaccines recommended for children specifically *because* most vaccines are administered to patients as children, so removing the *potentially* dangerous compound from that majority of vaccines greatly reduces any associated long-term, cumulative risks.\
Thimerosal is "safe", as in 'after-quite-a-lot-of-study-there-is-no-known-danger-from-it's-use', not as in 'there's-absolutely-no-potential-harm-that-can-come-from-it-ever-we've-proven-it-and-no-amount-of-scientific-research-will-ever-show-anything-different'.
Of course, *nothing* fits the latter category, but that doesn't seem to stop people (like yourself) from selectively bringing it up in an attempt to argue that something is 'unsafe'.
All this is nonsense, period. Jobs have requirements. Sometimes those requirements are a button-up shirt, sometimes those requirements are to work on Sunday, sometimes those requirements are to serve people ham, sometimes those requirements are to sell contraceptives, sometimes those requirements are to get flu shots.
If people have religious objections to doing those things, they need to find another employer. (Of course, job duties should be clearly explained in advance so that people can actually decide whether or not to take the job.)
Now, yes, it's illegal for employers to discriminate on the basis of religion, so if, for example, a gas station decided, to keep from having to employ Jews and Muslims, that all workers must eat a piece of ham upon arrival at work (For an absurd example), yeah, okay, that's a lawsuit, because there is no logical reason to have workers do that except to exclude certain religions.
But things that are perfectly reasonable job duties? No. Workers don't get to claim some sort of religious exception.
And please note that I say this as someone who is _incredibly_ pro-worker and in favor of all sorts of corporate restriction...in fact, that is precisely _why_ I say that: Because 90% of the time these 'kowtowing to worker religions' end up being that some workers and their employers share a religion, so the workers get away with whatever they want, and meanwhile other minority-religion workers keep silent out of fear of losing their job. (How many workplaces follow Kosher rules, for example? How many banks have some way to keep Muslim employees from having to charge people interest?)
The idea that 'religion' lets people opt out of their job is an _incredibly_ bad policy to start that is used almost solely for _majority_ religions to argue even more special privileges, and a really bad idea for the country at large to get in its head that is how things are supposed to work.
Although it is a less stupid idea that _corporations_ somehow have freedom of religion, and thus don't have to follow any laws that 'they' don't believe in, another idiotic idea that has shown up recently. (Hint: Corporations do not have beliefs.) This is yet another incredibly stupid and destructive idea. If you do not wish to follow some part of corporate law because that part is against your religion, btzzzzz, you don't get to form a corporation and get the special privileges we've given corporations under the law _because_ they follow corporate law...thank you for playing.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
Glad they were fired. Here's a thought - don't work in the healthcare industry around SICK PEOPLE if you don't want to do what is necessary to help keep those SICK PEOPLE from getting sicker. I have a friend w/a child who has leukemia. The last thing she wants is for you to bring your illness to her child (that has NO IMMUNE SYSTEM) & possibly kill her. I just can't believe they are so idiotic to think that their needs s/come over the patient. Then get out of healthcare. You s/not be a nurse. I w/be pissed if I was in the hospital sick & you gave me the flu & made me worse because you didn't care enough to get a vaccine. Religion - BS. God didn't tell you not to get a flu shot idiot.
Oh and they can give "false positives" (not really false) if you eat too many poppy seeds from normal rather than opium poppies.
Off-topic, I know, but that isn't quite right, the reason for the potential false positives is that the seeds do indeed come from genuine opium poppies, there is no such thing as edible seed from "normal" poppies. Poppy seeds found in food products all derive from Papaver Somniferum AKA the opium poppy, and yes it has been proven that eating as little as a single poppyseed bagel can result in a positive test. The seeds contain very small amounts of opium, not enough to produce pharmacological effects, which is why you can eat them, but modern urinalysis is sensitive enough to pick up even trace amounts. Bottom line is you should never eat anything containing poppy seeds in the week before a piss test.
Given that hospitals do not have an infinite pool of on-demand skilled replacement labor for patient care positions, "reduces lost work time from staff contracting the flu" has a fairly direct impact on patient care.
And it really doesn't matter that hygiene measures, considered in isolation, have similar effectiveness to vaccination because hygiene measures and vaccination aren't mutually exclusive options (in fact, I think you'll find that hospitals tend to mandate proper hygiene measures for patient care workers in addition to mandating flu vaccinations for those workers.)
Hospitals tend to do that, too, though enforcement is probably somewhat spotty, because its hardly as if every hospital employee can be given an exam at the start of every shift. That is no more a mutually exclusive option with flu vaccinations than proper hygiene procedures are.
Actually, they do care very much about that; one of the major reasons for mandatory flu vaccination of health care workers is to reduce the risk that those health care workers are unable to work effectively in the event of a major flu outbreak. (The big push began during the 2009 swine flu pandemic, and this was the main motivating factor.)
I refuse to pay taxes it's against my religious beliefs. Incidentally, I still expect to enjoy all the benefits you taxpayers fund.
Ps... Thx suckers
I'm an IT manager at a hospital. Every year I get harassed to have my employees take the shot sign a refusal form. I don't remember enrolling at the shot police academy.
which is why I don't get flu shots. Oh, and that I rarely, and I mean rarely get the flu.
Be seeing you...
When the health care system manages to wash its own hands, and learns that you mustn't re-use syringes, they will have gained sufficient credibility in dispensing advice concerning elective medications.
"Now, if they said the workers were fired becasue the shots were mandnitory to cut down on worker sick time, that would be different, at which point it becomes a question of if an employer has the right to pass mandates that violates workers religious beliefs."
No, It becomes does the employer have the right to dictate what goes into employees bodies? They're nurses, not lab rats, nor whores, nor slaves. That's regardless of whether its "for the job" or not.
You'd better be going to work with gloves and a face mask on all the time, otherwise you're being irresponsible. It's your social responsibility to not pass on whatever blight you've picked up during whatever depraved acts you were so inclined to commit.
News to me. I'm married to a nurse. Three of my friends are married to nurses. Through my wife's work, there's contact with all sorts of nurses. The topic of vaccination comes up very often. I've never met a single nurse who claims that vaccinations of any sort transmit the disease.
What it _does_, though, is cause many individuals to develop the symptoms of the flu. I cannot state whether this is due to an immune system response or due to an impressive placebo effect, but I have seen the results. Fever above 99 degrees, sweating, chills, and pasty white skin. During this time, the nurses have two options: They can choose to work while suffering from these symptoms, during which time they are more likely to make mistakes that could be dangerous to patients. Or they can choose not to work. The latter option, of course, is not covered by the employer. Certainly, it can come out of your PTO, but basically, it's a big "screw you" to anyone who has this reaction to the flu shot.
Even better, as has been pointed out, the flu shot is a giant gamble anyway, and there's always a few nurses in the hospital who get the flu, despite the vaccine. If you're one of the people who suffers from the symptoms, you can't afford to take time off, you don't want to put your patients at risk, and all of these things look even less attractive to you because you took enough microbiology, immunology, and physiology classes to understand that the flu vaccine is nowhere near as effective as, say, the polio vaccine, wouldn't you think twice about getting stuck with this one?
To bad.
“Up to 90% of the total decline in the death rate of children between 1860-1965 because of whooping cough, scarlet fever, diphtheria, and measles occurred before the introduction of immunisations and antibiotics.”Dr. Archie Kalokerinos, M.D. PhD
“In 1954 the Americans pushed forward a polio campaign. What happened within the first year was that to their horror they found that particularily one type of the polio vaccine was causing polio. Because the vaccine is not a killed virus, your giving polio in a partly killed form. They got rid of that particular type of the vaccine. Then they realized that all the forms of the polio vaccine caused polio. So what they did is redefine it. They only called it polio if you still had paralysis after 60 days. Now in most cases polio paralysis resolves after a few days. So that's how the statistics of polio went down. By changing the definitions.” Dr. David Ritchie
“Polio has not been eradicated by vaccination, it is lurking behind a redefinition and new diagnostic names like viral or aseptic meningitis...According to one of the 1997 issues of the MMWR there are some 30,000 to 50,000 cases of viral meningitis in the United States alone. That's where all those 30,000 - 50,000 cases of polio disappeared after the introduction of mass vaccination” Dr. Vera Schiebner
Don't they say "My vaccination only works if you get yours too."?
Oh thank goodness, I thought I was the only one! I had the flu vaccine three times in the mid-1990s and each time I got violently ill with flu-like symptoms. I decided to not get the shot after the third time. Once was coincidence, twice was suspicious, but three times seemed to be enough evidence for me. I didn't get the flu most years that I didn't get the shot, and when I did get it the symptoms were less than my reaction to the shot. And no, I'm not allergic to eggs.
I finally decided to try the shot again last year, and had no negative reaction. Same thing this year. Perhaps I grew out of it, perhaps the ingredients changed enough to remove whatever was making me ill, perhaps my immune system just stopped overreacting. Whatever the reason, I seem to be ok with the flu shot now.
Many scientific papers have concluded that vitamin D is efficient for reducing the risk of getting flu. But I bet that a non patentable natural compound is of little financial interest compared to Flu vaccine.
It kind of bothers me that questioning the profit motive of a corporation is considered worthy of tinfoil hat status. Sure its totally unsupported when you first ask, but isn't any valid inquiry along a new line of thought?
That's an interesting study, but I wish it were a double blind study over multiple years and influenza strains. Too many potential confounding variables for me to make too much of a judgement, particularly on the sick leave.
Millions long for immortality who do not know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon. -- Susan Ertz
From the same source:
An analysis of data and patient population health in New Mexico's 75 long-term care facilities nursing homes found that as vaccination rates of health care personnel with direct patient contact rose from 51 to 75 percent, the chances of a flu outbreak among patients in that facility went down by 87 percent. The New Mexico study showed that vaccinating health care personnel provided more protection to residents than vaccinating the residents themselves.[35]
All so called Flu Vaccines contain Squaline...check it out and decide if you want to poison your system for the rest of your lives...better to load up on fresh garlic and keep warm with fresh air = max 5 days to full recovery...Tamiflu is manufactured by the govt slimball Donald Rumsfeld...yes that one who ordered the military stand down on the False Flag 911 scam...Who do you trust?? a 3 thousand year old natural health remedy or a toxic brew with terrible illnesses?? NEVER trust the Flu scam scare tactics...its ALL money...RESEARCH and learn...
This is not a story about whether the flu shot works, so stop debating it, its about medical practitioners refusing to get flu shots on religious grounds.
First, these people should NOT have been in a medial profession if they were so religiously convicted to not allow getting medial services received themselves. Either they are being a religious hypocrite, or a medical hypocrite.
Second, I don't care what YOUR beliefs are about the flu shot, if you are in the medial field then the medical field WIDELY believes that the flu shot minimizes the risk of transferring flu to patients. Your sole goal as a medial practitioner is to NOT harm your patients.
At what point does religious beliefs cause harm to your patients, that is why they were fired. You can be damn sure that if some patient got sick and dies, and it was found one of these nurses was sick when treating the patient, the hospital would be sued for millions. A hospital is a private institution which can freely decide to hire and fire based solely on protecting their bottom line. Medical costs are already excessively high, a hospital being sued frequently because all their religious nurses are sick would certainly pass on the costs to their patients.
There are no human rights issues here, only irresponsible people entering a medical profession but refusing to do what is necessary to protect their patients. As a human I have a right to be protected from the ignorance of religious zealots.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
Our band the Refusers has a song on this flu shot debate with that very title. The Refusers are currently ranked # 8 out of 1900 indie rock bands in Seattle on Reverbnation. Listen to Do You Want a Flu Shot for free at the link below to get a musical perspective on the flu shot. Rock this shot! http://www.reverbnation.com/therefusers/song/15464450-do-you-want-a-flu-shot?utm_campaign=opengraph&utm_content=song&utm_medium=link&utm_source=facebook
In 2 years they put the wrong virus in the vaccine so NOBODY was vaccinated for the virus in circulation. There was no increase in deaths due to the flu. In another year they had manufacturing problems which prevented the vaccine from being shipped before the season was almost over. Again no increase in deaths.
The all cause mortality studies that are used as evidence fall flat when you follow the same groups outside the flu season. In the flu season there is a 5% difference in death rates between vaccinated and unvaccinated in favor of vaccinated. When you follow the same group outside the flu season there is a 4% difference in death rates favoring the vaccinated. Even with the large sample sizes the 1% difference is statistical noise.
- Dr Lisa Jackson's out of season influenza vaccine research
http://ije.oxfordjournals.org/content/35/2/337.short
Then you have the reviews of doctors and researchers at the Cochrane Collaboration. They are not anti-vax and have a high opinion of most vaccines but a very low opinion of the seasonal influenza vaccine. In real world terms for every 100 people vaccinated you will get one less case of flu.
http://summaries.cochrane.org/CD001269/vaccines-to-prevent-influenza-in-healthy-adults-
They also looked into this very issue of vaccinating health care workers and found "We conclude that there is no evidence that only vaccinating healthcare workers prevents laboratory-proven influenza, pneumonia, and death from pneumonia in elderly residents in long-term care facilities.".
http://summaries.cochrane.org/CD005187/influenza-vaccination-for-healthcare-workers-who-work-with-the-elderly
So instead of forcing vaccines with limited effectiveness why not do something that does work like optimize vitamin D3 levels in the patients and HCW, make sure all HCW wash their hands between each patient, wear masks, use swabs to detect which patients have influenza and isolate them.
The pro-vax side in this debate are the ones with the belief issues because they don't want to face the evidence that the seasonal flu vaccine just doesn't work as advertised.
In Minnesota, a teenage girl who had been vaccinated a few months ago, just died from influenza this past weekend. So the vaccine is not certain protection, and there is a slight chance that it will result in illness. Additionally, it is highly likely that most nursing home residents have been vaccinated, yet almost all of them are now reporting Type A flu outbreaks.
So it is not "dangerous, asinine, stupidity" for nurses to refuse vaccination. It is a rational choice based on current information. The vaccines aren't working.
I wish these Anglo Males would stop trying to tell women what to do with their bodies.
http://drsircus.com/world-news/over-forty-children-paralyzed-by-vaccines-in-one-village
Just sayin'.
'They subject themselves to more influenza by not being immunized"
Completely erroneous. They are exposed exactly the same number of times as someone who is immunized. Immunization does not change the quantity of exposure, it changes the response to the exposure. That change in response can reduce the number of times they expose others, however.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitamin_D_and_influenza
http://blog.vitamindcouncil.org/2011/12/07/the-difference-between-a-prophet-and-a-madman/
Adequate iodine may help prevent infections, too:
http://www.jmbblog.com/2009/11/iodine-the-forgotten-weapon-against-influenza-viruses/
So may eating a lot more vegetables:
http://www.diseaseproof.com/archives/cold-flu-flu-and-nutrition-dr-fuhrman-responds-to-comments.html
Any chance you made ofther changes in your diet and/or lifestyle about the same time?
If about fifty percent of medical staff avoid flu shots, what does that mean?
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3365133&cid=42539793
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
I am a practicing nurse, at a hospital who mandates the "flu shot or mask" rule. The immunization is always provided for free to ALL hospital personnel, not just those providing patient care and it's surprising to me how many caregivers are opting to wear the mask! The CDC recommends it, it's DOES have proven efficacy AND it protects not only yourself, but your family and the patients. I say fire them all if they refuse to get the shot...hospitals shouldn't be employing stupid people anyway!
No. It takes about two weeks after vaccination for antibodies to develop in the body and provide protection against influenza virus infection. In the meantime, you are still at risk for getting the flu. Chances are you were already colonized with something else and it was coincidental.....
The problem is that "just in case" is not a reasonable argument for taking about people's right to be left alone by an oppressive government.
I take it you missed the part about this being an employer policy, not a law enforced on the public at large.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
BTW, the hospital where I stay now (as a patient) does not require immunization of their staff.
You have the absolute right to refuse to be cared for by someone not immunized -- they're potentially a threat to you, personally.
This isn't academic to me: a friend is currently undergoing chemotherapy, and is severely immunocompromised in the meantime (not to mention bald as an egg, nauseated to the extent that she needs IVs to prevent dehydration, etc.) I could theoretically visit her, but given that flu is communicable before it's symptomatic I won't take the chance even though I've been vaccinated. The hospital she's in has an absolute "vaccinated or don't work here" rule, like the one in question; otherwise she'd be at a different hospital.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
Forget religious exemption, how about basic human rights. Many of us live by other truths and knowledge. We don't believe in the crude, dangerous and laden with side effects model of allopathic drugs and vaccinations. It's a giant money making industry more concerned with maximizing profits than it is with making people healthy.
The antibiotics industry and it's rampant, indiscriminate use for example is responsive for the super bugs. They would not listen and now we have a disaster on our hands.
We have other simple, cheap, effective answers like colloidal silver, ozone treatments, natural healthy raw food diets of fruits and vegetables and all have been ridiculed and attacked, and even prosecuted by the same destructive drug cartels.
When powerful corporations are in bed with government to force people to do things for their own greed, it's fascism! Wake up before it's too late.
The ONLY acceptable exemption in a patient care environment should be some documented allergy to the vaccine.
PERIOD.
If you have religious issues with it, change your profession to some pastoral position in your particular faith.
The mercury in thimerosal is not non-reactive, you blithering ignorant idiot. Stop it with the sodium chloride bullshit. Start here. "Thiomersal [alternate spelling] is very toxic by inhalation, ingestion, and in contact with skin (EC hazard symbol T+), with a danger of cumulative effects ... Cases have been reported of severe poisoning by accidental exposure or attempted suicide, with some fatalities ... Animal experiments suggest that thiomersal rapidly dissociates to release ethylmercury after injection; that the disposition patterns of mercury are similar to those after exposure to equivalent doses of ethylmercury chloride; and that the central nervous system and the kidneys are targets, with lack of motor coordination being a common sign."
Check out the MSDS here or here. "Highly Toxic (USA) Very Toxic (EU) ... Very toxic by inhalation, in contact with skin and if swallowed. Danger of cumulative effects ... Calif. Prop. 65 reproductive hazard. Target organ(s): Nerves. Kidneys."
Had you asserted that the exposure to an undoubted toxin via vaccination is so low as to make the risk slight, I would have treated your anonymous cowardly post as rational. As you didn't do that, but instead brought up completely erroneous parallels, and you are not seriously considering pros and cons, you make a pretty good punching bag.
My original post, moderated to virtual invisibility by idiots, still stands:
"stirring up controversy over which should come first: employee rights or patient safety." I can't believe that this is even an issue. These nurses are in the medical profession and their job is nurture and protect the health of those in need of care. Their right to be obstinate cannot, or should not, take precedence over the safety of patients. Hospitals are already breeding grounds for MRSA bacteria. I don't think that we need coughing, wheezing, snotty-nosed employees spreading viruses willy-nilly.
Here is an article about negative side effects of swine flu vaccine,,,,http://health.yahoo.net/news/s/nm/insight-evidence-grows-for-narcolepsy-link-to-gsk-swine-flu-shot
Basically if you are a healthy human being, eatting healthy organic food, exercising...etc...you shouldn't need unnecessary vaccines...the flu vaccine is one of them...I think MRSA should be more of a concern to the hospitals than a nurse taking or not taking the flu vaccine.