Had Your Flu Shots Yet?

[rob]

 

Yep....just like you are about Obama.

 

Meh. I'm actually not that in love with the guy, but whatev

 

 

You vote for him....you love him.

 

 

Do you love gasoline and petroleum products, kevbone? I mean, you probably use them everyday. Or what about plastics? You're voting for this stuff with your dollars.

 

Life is full of hard choices, isn't it?

[kevbone]

Do you love gasoline and petroleum products, kevbone? I mean, you probably use them everyday. Or what about plastics? You're voting for this stuff with your dollars.

 

Life is full of hard choices, isn't it?

 

That analogy is quite the stretch.....

[JayB]

"Cancer nurse Joyce Gingerich is among the skeptics and says her decision to avoid the shot is mostly "a personal thing." She's among seven employees at IU Health Goshen Hospital in northern Indiana who were recently fired for refusing flu shots. Gingerich said she gets other vaccinations but thinks it should be a choice. She opposes "the injustice of being forced to put something in my body."

http://www.14news.com/story/20572905/nurses-fired-for-refusing-flu-shot

 

Medical ethicist Art Caplan says health care workers' ethical obligation to protect patients trumps their individual rights.

 

"If you don't want to do it, you shouldn't work in that environment," said Caplan, medical ethics chief at New York University's Langone Medical Center. "Patients should demand that their health care provider gets flu shots - and they should ask them."

 

Very glad to see this. If you work in a medical setting you are free to refuse any and all vaccinations, and your employer is free to fire you.

 

Hopefully more firings will follow.

[jon]

Very glad to see this. If you work in a medical setting you are free to refuse any and all vaccinations, and your employer is free to fire you.

 

Hopefully more firings will follow.

 

Are you for real, JayB? A health care worker who has received a flu shot will not protect a patient if the worker got sick any way. The only protection is a clear policy that prohibits sick workers from working. So what if you have to pay them another day of PTO, at least they aren't infecting their coworkers. How many times have you had a coworker infect half your office? At my old work you were put on short-term disability if you were on sick related PTO for more then three days, with benefits based on tenure. When your business model revolves around seeing sick patients all day you have to build in the fact that your own workers are going to get sick as well.

 

I find it interesting how virulent this years strain is, and I can't help but thinking that the virus, just like HIV, is creating escape mutations that circumvent the immunity created by the vaccine. In the case of HIV, the virus will constantly mutate to evade the immune responsive even if it poses a short-term decrease in fitness, but when given the opportunity will mutate back into it's prior form when protection to that particular epitope is lost.

[tvashtarkatena]

Nobody gets more joy from seeing another lose their job than a Righty Tightie Tool.

 

 

 

 

Edited January 14, 2013 by tvashtarkatena

[rob]

Hopefully more firings will follow.

 

yeah, hopefully, right? LOL!!!

[kevbone]

Very glad to see this. If you work in a medical setting you are free to refuse any and all vaccinations, and your employer is free to fire you.

 

Hopefully more firings will follow.

 

You and Hitler should get together and go bowling. That is crazy talk.

[rob]

 

You and Hitler should get together and go bowling. That is crazy talk.

 

Hitler was actually a champion bowler

 

[kevbone]

 

You and Hitler should get together and go bowling. That is crazy talk.

 

Hitler was actually a champion bowler

 

 

He was also a champion asshole. See any correlation?

[rob]

[tvashtarkatena]

Every once in a great while someone here opens up a little window into their soul.

 

[JosephH]

See any correlation?

Yes, about as much correlation as between antibiotic over-use and flu vaccinations.

[KaskadskyjKozak]

do it

[JosephH]

Very glad to see this. If you work in a medical setting you are free to refuse any and all vaccinations, and your employer is free to fire you.

The only best protection is a clear policy that prohibits sick workers from working.

I would actually agree with both of these statements.

[rob]

You know what would be neat? A dengue fever vaccine!!

[glassgowkiss]

Joseph, you can't vaccinate your way out of this. If overprescription of antibiotics in the 70's and 80's, this brings the "don't fuck with nature" to a whole different level.

Again, the ignorance is palpable in the attempt to tie the two issues.

You keep just saying about ignorance on my part, yet somehow this is where your argument ends. I asked you directly- what are the health risks for a healthy adult associated with contracting flu, and what are the chances of developing long term complications from this illness by a healthy adult? Please be specific.

My point is that we do not know long term effects on things like mutations of these strands. The same way as antibiotics helped to create necrotizing cellulitis, necrotizing faciatis and a whole slew of other fun infections. Are the antibiotics bad? I am not saying that. What is bad was overprescription for mostly viral infections.

And for the ending argument- ignorance is having 70% of adults overweight or obese and not doing anything about it. It's not a flu that kills millions a year, it's a cardiovascular disease that kills millions a year. Somehow it's OK, let's panic about the flu.

[tvashtarkatena]

Obesity can't extinguish the species, although it might slow down procreation a bit, unless we suddenly develop a taste for pie-wagons en masse.

 

A pandemic could.

 

Personally, my response to the whole thing is to stockpile weapons.

 

 

 

 

[tvashtarkatena]

I'm responsible, though, so no need to worry.

 

 

[JayB]

Very glad to see this. If you work in a medical setting you are free to refuse any and all vaccinations, and your employer is free to fire you.

 

Hopefully more firings will follow.

 

Are you for real, JayB? A health care worker who has received a flu shot will not protect a patient if the worker got sick any way. The only protection is a clear policy that prohibits sick workers from working. So what if you have to pay them another day of PTO, at least they aren't infecting their coworkers. How many times have you had a coworker infect half your office? At my old work you were put on short-term disability if you were on sick related PTO for more then three days, with benefits based on tenure. When your business model revolves around seeing sick patients all day you have to build in the fact that your own workers are going to get sick as well.

 

I find it interesting how virulent this years strain is, and I can't help but thinking that the virus, just like HIV, is creating escape mutations that circumvent the immunity created by the vaccine. In the case of HIV, the virus will constantly mutate to evade the immune responsive even if it poses a short-term decrease in fitness, but when given the opportunity will mutate back into it's prior form when protection to that particular epitope is lost.

 

If there was a connection between immune escape and virulence wouldn't we have seen incrementally more virulent strains year after year? I'm not up to date on the influenza literature but I'd be surprised to see this idea represented there.

 

Firing for refusing vaccinations - I think it's a great idea, long overdue, and I'd like to see it universally enforced immediately.

 

Surgeons can still transmit infections despite having taken every precaution to prevent doing so. E.g. they've done all that they can to protect the health of the patient that they're working on.

 

It's possible that one of their patients could still develop a post-op infection, but if they've taken all of the reasonable and customary measures to prevent it, that's something quite different than someone with no scientific or medical justification deciding that they aren't going to, say, wash their hands for whatever reason that they can conjure up.

 

Anyone with direct patient contact has the same obligation with respect to vaccines. They're a standard precaution, and anyone who refuses them is willfully and negligently putting patients at risk. That's unacceptable.

 

[JayB]

Joseph, you can't vaccinate your way out of this. If overprescription of antibiotics in the 70's and 80's, this brings the "don't fuck with nature" to a whole different level.

Again, the ignorance is palpable in the attempt to tie the two issues.

You keep just saying about ignorance on my part, yet somehow this is where your argument ends. I asked you directly- what are the health risks for a healthy adult associated with contracting flu, and what are the chances of developing long term complications from this illness by a healthy adult? Please be specific.

My point is that we do not know long term effects on things like mutations of these strands. The same way as antibiotics helped to create necrotizing cellulitis, necrotizing faciatis and a whole slew of other fun infections. Are the antibiotics bad? I am not saying that. What is bad was overprescription for mostly viral infections.

And for the ending argument- ignorance is having 70% of adults overweight or obese and not doing anything about it. It's not a flu that kills millions a year, it's a cardiovascular disease that kills millions a year. Somehow it's OK, let's panic about the flu.

 

 

What are the health risks to the gravely-ill, the elderly, the very-young, and the immunocompromised who get exposed to the virus from healthy adults?

 

 

[ivan]

seems not unreasonable that an employer could demand that an employee providing a public service be vaccinated - them army boys don't get a lot of choices, for example. flu vaccines are obviously not panaceas, but if you're working in an intensive care unit, it sure makes sense to stack the deck as much in your favor as possible.

 

requiring all citizens to be vaccinated is certainly more orwellian, but that's not the subject here. if there is a critical mass of doctors who think vaccines are bunk, there ought to be a hospital of their's somewhere i imagine where you can work at, if you have the same mentality.

[jon]

JayB, the flu shot does not prevent the physician from becoming infected with the flu, same as a flu shot does not protect a patient if the doctor is sick with the flu. The only thing that will protect patients from flu exposure is a clear, proactive, compassionate policy where health care workers that are infected with the flu are prohibited from working and are encouraged not to risk working. The reality is health care employers are more concerned with their employees being on sick leave.

[ivan]

my virology credentials are in arrears...but i thought many viruses can be communicated even before the infected begins showing clear signs like fevers, congestion, etc.?

[ivan]

also, pretty hard to be sure when you wake up in the morning for work if that shitty feeling is a cold, a poor night's sleep, a bit too much wine w/ dinner, etc. even if you take out the economic disincentive for an employee to skip work (and employer incentive not to create a system where folks can easily play hooky), you still have an imperfect mechanism for keeping sick workers home

[JayB]

JayB, the flu shot does not prevent the physician from becoming infected with the flu, same as a flu shot does not protect a patient if the doctor is sick with the flu. The only thing that will protect patients from flu exposure is a clear, proactive, compassionate policy where health care workers that are infected with the flu are prohibited from working and are encouraged not to risk working. The reality is health care employers are more concerned with their employees being on sick leave.

 

 

I'm perfectly aware of that fact that the current set of flu vaccines don't provide perfect protection - but they do significantly decrease the probability of infection and subsequent transmission to patients.

 

Health care workers reporting to work when sick is definitely a problem, but you can transmit the infection before symptoms develop and be infected and contagious but asymptomatic, so clearly just having people stay home when they know that they are sick with the flu won't work, even if you assume that people actually have perfect knowledge that they are sick and what they're sick with - which is far from the case.

 

"Most healthy adults may be able to infect others beginning 1 day before symptoms develop and up to 5 to 7 days after becoming sick. Children may pass the virus for longer than 7 days. Symptoms start 1 to 4 days after the virus enters the body. That means that you may be able to pass on the flu to someone else before you know you are sick, as well as while you are sick. Some persons can be infected with the flu virus but have no symptoms. During this time, those persons may still spread the virus to others."

http://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/disease/spread.htm

 

More of the same here:

http://www.medscape.org/viewarticle/567336

 

Refusing to be vaccinated and thereby minimizing your chances of transmitting a potentially lethal infection to gravely ill patients isn't any more medically, scientifically, or ethically defensible than refusing to scrub in and stay sterile before performing surgery - or any other imperfect but reasonable and prudent precaution to protect patients you are charged with caring for.

 

Like I said, everyone be free to refuse vaccinations and any institution in the business of caring for sick patients should be able to fire you for doing so.