I also work in a hospital.
And I get vaccinated.
BUT maybe all of you should realize that as a health care worker if I miss more then 6 days a year due to sick leave I can be fired!!!
So many, many of my friends/coworkers come to work sick. And have gotten there patients sick.
Because they are afraid of losing there jobs. In some parts of the country there is a health care worker shortage but not where I live. People cant loose there jobs.
How about some outrage over this.
It seems like the bolded bit is the best reason of all to require them to be vaccinated.
I have known a few people to have this flu, guess what, none of them died. I have three kids and no one is there schools have died. Yes I know that people do, but like Firedancer, I will take my chances, I very rarely get sick and I am not a germaphobe, which is probably why I don't get sick. I actually come into contact with germs sometimes. Shocking isn't it.
The problem is, these healthcare workers are not just taking chances with their own health. They are taking them with the very lives of their patients.
The seasonal flu isn't a problem this year, the vaccine is unnecessary. ...
Tell that to the 36,000 people who die each year from the seasonal flu.
... If a medical professional is sick they stay out of work so that they don't compromise their patients.
Ummm, just above, two medical professionals stated that they don't have the freedom to take off simply because they are sick. Therefore, medical professionals ARE compromising the health of their patients.
The whole premise of the mandatory vaccine is and absurd, feel good measure. Until they stop visitors from entering a hospital to visit "immunocompromised grandma" and the whole host of other non employees from entering the patient care area the vaccination of a chosen few is a moot point.
I think that you are wrong. Here's why:
Lets say that you come into contact with five medical professionals while in the hospital and you receive five visitors. If no one is vaccinated and the flu is especially bad, your odds of being exposed by these people might be as high as ten out of ten, right? Now, imagine that you are in a hospital that required all of it's staff to be vaccinated. Now, your odds of being exposed by these people are reduced to five in ten. Given that many (most?) sick people will not visit someone in the hospital, your true odds would be much less.
Amazingly, even with the low hospital vaccination rates, patients aren't catching the flu and dying due to their nurse not having had a flu shot.
Objection. Assumes facts not in evidence. Also, it is directly refuted by an earlier poster (see above).
And this is where I disagree. To tell a citizen that they have to put a foreign body - ANY foreign body - into their own body in order to earn a living or attend a public gathering (such as school), I believe that's going too far.
No one is forbidding these people from earning a living. They are welcome to go work somewhere else.
Once employers have the precident set that they can tell people what to do or how to behave when they're off the clock, more demands will come.
Ummm, you realize that employers have always been able to dictate many after hours activities (or the lack thereof), right?
I'm glad I'll be dead by the time America finally reaches the point where "Land of the free and the home of the brave" bears no resemblence to its citizens. Right now it seems that much of the populace is hell-bent on giving up their freedoms (or giving up other people's freedoms which will eventually lead to everyone's freedoms) because they're afraid of something.
I asked you earlier in teh thread to eplain which freedoms are being given up in this scenario and you didn't respond. Please share which specific freedoms you feel are being violated by this employer.
... If on the other hand they are not vaccinated I feel no moral obligation to take preventative measures against myself that they are not willing to take against themselves.
What if they are allergic to eggs and therefore cannot take the vaccine? As a medical professional, would you not be duty bound to avoid placing them in harm. Would the hippocratic oath not require you to do so? What is wrong with a hospital requiring it's staff to live up to the oath that they swore to?
. I know the CO of my old unit was very pro vaccine and made it difficult to refuse vaccines. He would make you come in and show scripture or other religious texts that say not to do them.
