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Should Disney Require Its Employees To Be Vaccinated?
HughPickens.com writes According to Joanna Rothkopf Disneyland is already a huge petri dish of disease with tired children wiping their snot faces on Goofy and then riding log flumes through mechanized rivers filled with the backwash of thousands of other sweaty, unwashed, weeping toddlers. Now John Tozzi reports at Businessweek that five workers at Disneyland have been diagnosed with measles in an outbreak that California officials trace to visitors at the theme park in mid-December. The measles outbreak is a publicity nightmare for Disney and the company is urging its 27,000 workers at the park to verify that they're inoculated against the virus, and the company is offering tests and shots on site for workers who are unvaccinated. One thing Disney won't do, however, is require workers to get routine vaccinations as a condition of employment. Almost no companies outside the health-care industry do. "To make things mandatory just raises a lot of legal concerns and legal issues," says Rob Niccolini. Disney has been working with public health officials, and they've already put some employees on paid leave until medically cleared. "They recognized that they were just a meeting place for measles," says Gilberto Chávez. "And they are quite concerned about doing what they can to help control the outbreak."
Employers should not be put in a position where they are giving medical advice or direction. If there is a reason that large, public centered facilities or parks should have required vaccinations, then that needs to be public policy, not corporate policy.
Hospitals require testing and proof of vaccination as a condition of employment. I've worked in one in the past and they wanted proof of certain vaccinations, a TB test, and provided any needed vaccinations free of charge. (I got a booster for MMR and tetanus) I think if a place like a hospital it would be insane not to require the employees to be reasonably secure against likely communicable diseases. At a place like Disney where they have to deal with the general public I wouldn't have a problem with public health policy mandating vaccination as a condition of employment. I don't think people should be forced to accept a vaccine if they are adults and really don't want to (and of course if they cannot due to allergies etc) but I have no problem with certain jobs being closed to them if they are not vaccinated. I think all children should be vaccinated or have proof that they cannot safely be vaccinated before attending any public school.
*sigh* Every vaccination debate we get this ignorant argument. Vaccinations, like everything in life, aren't 100% guaranteed. They're very effective, but they don't *always* work. Also ,there are people who can't have a vaccine for legitimate reasons (often a compromised immune system). The people for whom the vaccine doesn't take, and the people who legitimately can't get vaccinated are protected if enough people *are* effectively vaccinated because there aren't enough viable carriers. This is called "herd immunity." That is why everyone who can be vaccinated needs to be vaccinated--not just for their own protection but the protection of others.
Of course, if the CIA hadn't used a vaccination program as a front for an intelligence gathering operation in the region, maybe this violence against and mistrust of vaccination teams would be much lower.
When someone says, "Any fool can see