Get a Vaccine or get fired

those articles suffer form a dearth of information.

I'd need to know if getting a flu shot was always a normal and expected procedure to be employed at that company.

or was it made suddenly a requirement now.

also, are you suggesting that the 150 employees who were fired were pregnant?
and, if so...was their decision to not get a flu shot made because of concerns about their potential baby?

or was something else going on..

like I said..dearth
 
my daughter was fired from her job at hays regional medical center for the same reason. it was apparently, company policy.
 
My sister who deals with very sick kids on a daily basis, including the flu, can not be fired for not taking her shots. However, from what I know, she does take her shots and is also a vaccine advocate herself. Right now, more important than the flu shot is the whooping cough vaccine as we have a bit of an epidemic going around here and that bacterial disease can be quite lethal to infants.

Although I don't believe people should be forced to have any vaccine, I can also understand the need to have vaccinated staff working on young children. Infants under 6 months can't be vaccinated for the flu and their best defense is the antibodies in their mother's milk. However, kids sick in a hospital ward may not have access to mothers milk for a variety of reasons. At that point, they depend mostly on herd protection and that means the staff needs to be vaccinated. Of course that's not a guarantee that no flu virus will spread to the already sick kids, but it's huge step up from no vaccinations.

The flip side to this may be; should staff be required to reveal to parents that they are not immunized before treating a child? Would parents be likely to request a vaccinated staff treat their child instead? Should parents have that right? Parents by law are required to use certain safety equipment, such as properly installed car seats, should then parents not demand that those who treat their children do all they can to minimize transmission of a potentially lethal virus?
 
Let's get a bit real here Red. These people are in the Healthcare field. They deal with sick people day in and day out. If they are following the Hippocratic Oath of 'do no harm' to their patients they should be getting vaccinated. Hospitals and Clinics are places ripe with highly infectious people. They never know who they will come in contact with and how they'll spread disease themselves if carriers. I'd assume it's a requirement of their job to provide the healthiest patient care possible. The people who cure shouldn't be infecting others. It happens, of course, but it's best to minimize if not eliminate this whenever possible. Vaccinations are a proven positive healthcare item.

Next you'll tell us the 'my body' rule means people can forgo medical training cuz it changes their brain.
 
@Glaucus
Being vaccinated, even if it worked, would NOT prevent medical staff from being carriers. Of all vaccines, flu shots are the biggest joke. Best case estimates are they're 60%(!) effective. Besides, take these coments from my facebook post as an example.

Person 1 - I guess I would have been fired as well. No one is telling me what to put into my body...no job is worth that much. People are surprised when I tell them my kids have never had the flu shot. But they have also never missed a day of school for being sick.

Person 2 - Had one 12 years ago, gave me the worst Flu I ever had, never did it again.

Person 3 - Same thing happened to XXXXXX. He was so sick for two weeks! He never did it again either :(

Person 1 - Same thing happened to a friend of mine. Too many of those stories for me to get a flu shot. Besides there is no guarantee that the virus strain they choose at the beginning of the season ends up being the one going around.

These are the only responses, no positive replies. None of them are libertarians either;) Of course this isn't scientific, just first hand experiences. There is plenty of research showing having a flu shot is a very, very bad idea.

But throwing that out, lets get back to my first point. Should companies be allowed to dictate what you can or cannot do to your own body? Think about that. Should a company be allowed to make a policy against employees getting pregnant? Would you be OK if a company like Hooters told female employees to either get an abortion or be fired? Pregnant Hooters employees could be seen as bad for business.
 
@faethor
Getting vaccinated against the flu is one of the best ways to contract the flu. Also, pretending it works, it does not stop a person from being a carrier.
 
Getting vaccinated against the flu is one of the best ways to contract the flu.
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As a quick aside, I don't believe that is true, anymore. I think they changed the way the culture is processed several years ago. But the early ones... Yeah, you had a nontrivial chance of getting the flu from the vaccine. And, personally, I don't blame anyone for being still wary of it.

My wife works in healthcare, and she has to be current on all vaccintions, as well as the flu shots. It isn't a problem for us, as she's always embraced going the route of best odds. (Which is getting the shots.) Personally, I don't much like the rule, but I kinda understand it. At least for the Michigan providers, as I understand it, you only need to go through this if you have direct exposure to the patients. If you can do your job without that, you don't need to have any particular vaccinations. The hospital is within its rights to set who can and can't interact directly with the patients.

I faced a similar situation working on a government project. As a civilian, they can't fire me for non-compliance with a rule like this. But they can revoke my security clearance for noncompliance. That will lock me out of the secured area, then they can fire me for an unexcused absence.

I don't much like it. But I'm not sure there's an alternative I like any better.
 
My understanding is that there is a chance of getting the flu if your vaccine has live virus in it. And I believe those vaccines still exist, but not sure if they exist in the US or even in Canada (I believe Russia still uses those). However, you're much more likely to get a vaccine with deactivated virus, which can't give you the flu but can give you flu like symptoms. So yes, you can get a flu vaccine and get a fever and in fact that's somewhat common. That's also the reason why some people take a Tylenol before they take the shot, to reduce the fever. However, that's counter productive as when your body goes into fever it's also kicking the immune system into high gear and the Tylenol actually suppresses that. And you want your immune system to take it up a notch so that it can react to the (dead) virus and thus build up a healthy response so that when the real thing comes along it can attack it instantly. That's how the vaccine works, which also means, you're not likely to be a carrier of the flu virus you were vaccinated against. This is similar to someone who wasn't vaccinated and got the virus and recovered. They are now immune to that virus and are not likely to transmit it to to others once their body has wiped it out because their body has the required antibodies - just like a vaccinated person.

And yes, you can get the flu vaccine without any side effects, and still get the flu a month later. That's nothing to do with the effectiveness of the vaccine itself but with the fact that the flu virus mutates so damned quickly that you can't possibly immunize against all strains. It's also possible that the vaccine just didn't take, possibly because the patient took an immune suppressing drug like Tylenol or perhaps their body needed a stronger vaccine.
 
redrumloa said:
@faethor
Getting vaccinated against the flu is one of the best ways to contract the flu.
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It'd be pretty amazing if it could the flu virus in the injection is dead. There has been no demonstrated flu caused by the flu vaccine injections. There are stories as you included. Which as you say isn't scientific. They are often an invalid event and symptom association. It's similar to the effect that happens when one buys a new car. All of a sudden they see all sorts of the same model driving around. It's an observational error.

Also, pretending it works, it does not stop a person from being a carrier.
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There's no pretending it works. You posted the 60% effective number yourself. 60>0 the last time I attended school. And yes if you don't have the flu in your body then one type of carrier has been prevented. Now yes it could be on one's clothes and body. I expect Healthcare workers are following sanitary practices such as clothes washing and frequent hand washing. If not they need to be retrained if not fired.

Hospitals are full of infections from, surprise, infected people. The equipment and workers should be doing their utmost to improve the odds of patients to come away healed not more sick than when they entered.

Going back to the 60% effective number. Part of the reason is we don't know which virusii will be most prevalent. It is somewhat guess work. But as always science is improving it's knowledge and ability. Lifelong flu protection is something to watch.
 
faethor said:
There's no pretending it works. You posted the 60% effective number yourself. 60>0 the last time I attended school.
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Last time I checked, the balance of 60% would be 40%. 40% of people get get the vaccine get the flu. I guarantee far, far less than 40% of the population who were NOT vaccinated got the flu. Those are terrible odds! Get a shot and have a 40% chance of getting the flu. I'll pass.
 
redrumloa said:
Last time I checked, the balance of 60% would be 40%. 40% of people get get the vaccine get the flu.
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Well, your maths isn't quite right there, but it's true that the flu vaccine is a farce and a cash cow. It doesn't work for the old and the very young (two main risk groups for which it is recommended) and doesn't work very well in the healthy group that it tends not to be recommended for. Most people in a normal flu season will not get the flu. Vaccinating everyone just exposes everyone to possible dangers from manufacturing defects and adjuvant sensitivity (including increased allergies and autoimmune problems) while failing to prevent the majority of flues it is supposed to prevent.

About 5% of people would get a given flu. If everyone got vaccinated 3% would still get the flu and 2 out of every hundred people (those who would otherwise have got the flu) will be prevented. However, even if people were only getting salt water injections there would be a low chance but unavoidable chance of complication. The more doses of flu vaccine you try to produce the slacker the controls tend to get (with companies cutting corners, perhaps failing to kill the virus, or extending cultures with more adjuvants, trying to circumvent logistical problems with more preservatives etc).

On the other hand - if your job requires you working with people who are likely to have the flu then it may make sense to use the vaccine. If you work with frail people who would be particularly badly effected by the flu it also makes sense. For most healthy people it doesn't. The last time governments went crazy on stocking vaccine (swine flu) it was later found that quality control had been quite bad - fortunately not many people went to get the shots.

Hand washing and not rubbing your eyes are low tech and effective methods for most people.
 
Hand washing and not rubbing your eyes are low tech and effective methods for most people.
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that's probably one of the reasons I can go years without even getting a cold
 
@Red
As shown by McDeath it's not 40% of people getting the shot get sick. It's 40% of otherwise would be sick still get sick. Now certain classes in our society are more likely to be exposed than others. Nurses clearly have a higher probability of seeing an infectious person. And if they are infected they are likely to see a person that has a compromised immune system. Because they spend their day deaingl with sick people. I wouldn't say everyone should get a shot, but Nurses are one of the best groups to ensure they are fully immunized against diseases.
 
faethor said:
I wouldn't say everyone should get a shot, but Nurses are one of the best groups to ensure they are fully immunized against diseases.
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And if they had a good strong union they would also be a great group to monitor the quality of the vaccines and effectiveness as they would have a professional interest and the money and manpower to act against manufacturers if the vaccines were improperly produced or not as safe or effective as advertized. As it is at the moment the manufacturers say how safe and effective they are and the journals they own publish articles that agree with them. We have very few independent studies on flu vaccine effectiveness and those that have been done seem to show that flu vaccines are either not very effective or are actually counter productive and increase your likelihood of developing flu (but we don't know why).
 
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