Health-care professionals and other people who work in a health care setting seem to be on the front line when it comes to implementation of the H1N1 compulsory vaccination agenda in America. And they’re understandably no more thrilled to be forced to take untested vaccines than anyone else would be.
Poster from health professional vaccine resisters, NY city, 2009
And of course, doctors and nurses are in a better position than most to be aware of the non-beneficial “side-effects” of vaccines in general. In past years, about 60% of doctors chose NOT to take the regular seasonal flu vaccine.
Of course, from the point of view of those who want to impose the vaccine on the populace for whatever that reason might be — profit or genocide — it certainly undermine the credibility of their message to the public if it becomes known that a large percentage of doctors and nurses wouldn’t choose to take the vaccine themselves. And that’s probably the reason more and more hospitals are trying to make it mandatory.
Of course, as citizens concerned about the effects of vaccines in general, and concerned further about the infringement of personal rights and freedoms involved in the unprecedented step — in the civilized west at least — of using police-state power to enforce compulsory vaccination of entire populations, we’d best support our health professionals in their efforts to nip this idea in the bud.
Compulsory vaccination is a bad idea whose time, we hope, will never come. Here are some news reports about how the effort to get health professionals to “toe the line” on taking the H1N1 vaccine is going. This story is from Alex Jones’ infowars.com:
“Albany nurses and other health professionals are planning to stage a rally next week to protest a state regulation that mandates they will lose their jobs if they refuse to take the swine flu shot, as fears grow about the vaccine’s dangerous ingredients and government plans to forcibly inoculate whole populations with the H1N1 jab.
Earlier today we reported on the case of “Clare,” a daycare worker in Albany who, despite having minimal contact with hospital staff who work in a separate building, an exemption allowed in the official decree, was ordered to take the seasonal flu shot on the spot or be fired. She was also advised that the same procedure would be in place for the swine flu shot, as is outlined in the New York State Department of Health’s emergency regulation issued in August.
Now nurses across the state are standing up against government intimidation to take the shot, pointing out that the vaccine has not been properly tested and contains mercury, squalene and other dangerous additives.
The New York State Nurses Association is supporting a demonstration on behalf of nurses set to take place next week, reports Newsday.
“This vaccine has not been clinically tested to the same degree as the regular flu vaccine,” said Tara Accavallo, a registered nurse in Stony Brook’s neonatal intensive care unit, the division that has produced a number of protesters. “If something happens to me, if I get seriously injured from this vaccine, who’s going to help me?”
Accavallo says she is willing to lose her job if need be, which is exactly what will happen to thousands of other health professionals on November 30 if the government refuses to back down.
Rob Kozik, another registered nurse in Stony Brook’s neonatal intensive care unit, said he has no problems with a seasonal vaccine but he has deep concerns about being immunized against H1N1. “I usually get vaccinated against the flu, but they are mandating an untested and unproven vaccine,” Kozik told Newsday
“The H1N1 vaccine already has a poor track record,” he added. “Back in 1976 there was vaccine [to protect against swine flu] that caused death and Guillain-Barre syndrome,” said Kozik, referring to a nerve-damaging disorder that some people linked to the vaccine. He said he also worries about the vaccine additive thimerosal, which is used as a preservative in some doses of the vaccine.
According to Dr. Steven Walerstein, medical director of Nassau University Medical Center where H1N1 vaccinations have already started, 25 workers at the institution refused to take the shot and were later “referred to human resources and counseling.”
If polls are proven accurate, at least a third of nurses and health workers in the U.S. and the UK will refuse to take the shot, with another third still undecided.
The fact that health professionals, and even employees loosely affiliated with hospitals, are being intimidated into taking the shot, proves President Obama’s claim that the vaccine will be voluntary to be deceptive and misleading. At the very least people’s livelihoods are on the line if they refuse to be injected and elsewhere, in countries such as Ireland and Greece, authorities have threatened large fines and jail time for people who refuse the vaccine.
As we have previously documented, the swine flu vaccine was rushed through safety procedures while governments have provided pharmaceutical companies with blanket immunity from lawsuits arriving out of the vaccine causing deaths and injuries.
It was previously revealed that some batches of the vaccine will contain mercury, a toxin linked with autism and neurological disorders. The vaccine will also contain the dangerous ingredient squalene, which has been directly linked with cases of Gulf War Syndrome and a host of other debilitating diseases.
It was also recently reported that the UK government sent a confidential letter to senior neurologists telling them to be on the alert for cases of a brain disorder called Guillain-Barre Syndrome (GBS), which could be triggered by the vaccine. The CDC in America replicated this warning weeks later….”
…Then they came for the daycare workers….also from infowars.com, a story about a daycare worker at a hospital who was told she’d be fired if she didn’t take the vaccination:
“A daycare worker employed by Northeast Health in Albany New York was shocked to be told by her boss that she would be fired if she refused to take a seasonal swine flu shot on the spot. Similar stories have been pouring in to us from all over the country as fears that the upcoming H1N1 shot will also be mandatory continue to grow.
The case emphasizes why President Obama’s claim that the swine flu shot will be voluntary is completely deceptive and misleading. Americans across the country, even those not directly connected with health care work, are being ordered to take the mandated seasonal and swine flu shots or lose their jobs.
The story of what happened to the daycare worker, who would like to go by the pseudonym “Clare,” was sent to us by her sister who also provided Clare’s real name and the full name of the facility she is employed with.
Clare works in a daycare center which is affiliated with the local hospital but in a completely separate building. It was reported earlier this month that all hospital workers in the entire region would be forced to take the seasonal flu shot or lose their jobs and that the vaccine would become a condition of employment.
“On the Tuesday morning following the Labor Day weekend (Sept 8th), the director of the daycare of Northeast Health announced to employees on the spot (without a meeting, memo or discussion) that everyone had to go get a flu shot immediately and staff would be rotated so that everyone would be inoculated by the end of the day,” writes Clare’s sister.
“Clare said “I don’t get flu shots” and was told “well then you’ll be fired.”
The director told Clare that the H1N1 shot would also be mandated in the same way when it becomes available. When Clare warned the director that the swine flu shot contained mercury, squalene and other dangerous additives, the director told her that regardless of her objections, if she refused to be vaccinated she would be suspended from November 13th and then formally fired on November 30th.
“Clare asked how she can be fired for something that was not a condition of her employment when she was hired? She was told it was not Northeast Health’s policy, it was the director of the New York State Department of Health who made the shot mandatory,” writes her sister.
However, according to the NYSDOH decree for mandatory vaccinations, exemptions exist for “personnel who have a medical contraindication and for workers, such as those offsite, who would have no contact with patients and only incidental contact with direct-care staff.” Clare clearly falls into this category as she works in a separate building from the hospital and has no direct regular contact with hospital workers….
And in Canada, here’s an excerpt from a more hopeful story, from the Ottawa Citizen:
“OTTAWA-Front-line city workers, including police and firefighters, will not be forced to get the H1N1 flu vaccine, according to municipal and current provincial influenza planning.
The only exception to the rule in Ottawa is paramedics, who must get flu shots unless they have experienced bad reactions in the past, Gloucester-Southgate Councillor Diane Deans, chairwoman of council’s community and protective services committee, said Wednesday while briefing council on the city’s pandemic preparedness.
“I think a carrot rather than a stick approach is probably the best approach,” Deans told reporters after the briefing.
Ottawa’s medical officer of health, Dr. Isra Levy, also told the council he would not recommend mandatory flu shots for city workers.
“I would not recommend that we do that. I would recommend that we continue to educate … and respect individuals’ choices about what they want to do,” Levy said.
But Rideau-Rockcliffe Councillor Jacques Legendre said the voluntary flu-shot policy is “regrettable,” adding that if people like city workers and medical professionals do not get vaccinated, it feeds public suspicions about the safety of vaccines.
Also, workers who deal with the public could pass influenza on to vulnerable people, even if the workers themselves don’t get seriously sick.
Levy told the council that only about 40 to 60 per cent of health-care workers typically choose to have the seasonal flu vaccine, compared to a provincial target of 60 to 80 per cent.
He said some people refuse the shot because they have fallen ill after getting flu shots in the past, and they rightly or wrongly attribute the illness to the shot. Others worry about rare complications such as serious allergic reactions or Guillain-Barre syndrome, while others simply don’t like their employer telling them what to do with their own bodies.
Last month, New York state introduced emergency regulations mandating seasonal and swine flu vaccinations for all hospital and some health and hospice workers. It is the first North American jurisdiction to do so. In the U.S., only an estimated 42 per cent of health care workers get an annual flu shot, only slightly better than the 33 per cent national average, according to U.S. federal health officials.
While health officials in New York welcomed the move, unions bristled at it.
Asked to compare the risk of a healthy person developing a serious or deadly case of H1N1 influenza, compared to the risk of that same person experiencing a serious side-effect from the vaccine, Levy said he could not quote exact numbers.
However, he said, according to Canada’s regulations, vaccine producers must prove that the vaccine itself poses a lesser risk than the risk of remaining unvaccinated.
He said new vaccines, such as the H1N1 shot, are tested for safety and effectiveness, either by the pharmaceutical companies that develop them or by academic institutions on behalf of pharmaceutical companies. The results of the tests must be submitted to federal regulators for review before the vaccine is approved, he said.
“From the public health point of view, vaccines are a tried and true intervention,” Levy said, adding that when the vaccine is available, “I will be as close to the front of the line as equity and justice allow.”
Ontario will not force H1N1 vaccinations on health care workers, either, Premier Dalton McGuinty said in Toronto.
“I don’t think we can hold anyone down and inject them with a vaccine if they don’t want it,” McGuinty told reporters….”
Of course, this is from the man who also promised “no new taxes” before he was elected, and now Ontario is facing a 13% HST (beginning July 2010) on lots of goods and services that were not sales-taxed before. Let’s hope that the “no compulsory vaccination” promise is one that McGuinty manages to keep!
And in France:
“According to a survey by the French national union of professionally qualified nurses (SNPI CFE-CGC), 65% of all nurses in France will refuse the “swine flu” vaccine over safety concerns.
The results of a survey of 4,107 nurses which was conducted on September 16th show that only 26% of French nurses will accept the H1N1 vaccine with a further 9% still undecided.”
The Bovine 
Also see our related story from last December:
60% of Doctors Just say No to Flu Shot
This story just in:
Mandatory Flu Vaccine for Health Care Workers
Commissioner Tells Health Care Workers: Mandatory Flu Vaccine is in the Best Interest of Patients and Workers
ALBANY, N.Y. (Sept. 24, 2009) – State Health Commissioner Richard F. Daines, M.D., today released this open letter to health care workers in New York State:
As health care workers, we share one of the proudest traditions of all professions: we put our patients’ interests ahead of our own.
As a physician who spent more than 20 years working in hospitals, I had the honor of working side by side with other physicians, nurses, food service workers, technicians and transporters in the early and uncertain months of what would become the HIV epidemic, in those first confused days of the anthrax attacks, and when any new international traveler with a fever might have been carrying SARS. Never once, no matter what our private fears might have been, did we shirk from our duties or put personal anxieties ahead of the interests of our patients. We took the recommended precautions, worked carefully and cautiously, and gave our patients the compassionate and selfless care for which our professions and institutions are rightly given a special place in our society.
In furtherance of that tradition, on August 13th the New York State Hospital Review and Planning Council adopted a regulation recommended by the New York State Health Department making approved annual influenza vaccinations mandatory, unless medically contraindicated, for health care workers in hospitals, outpatient clinics and home care services. Legislation applying the same standards to nursing home workers has also been proposed. The new regulation will apply first to the routine annual seasonal influenza vaccine now available. With the recent FDA approval of the vaccine for novel H1N1 flu (“swine flu”), the regulation will also apply to that vaccine, just in time for the second wave of novel H1N1 influenza already returning this fall.
Questions about safety and claims of personal preference are understandable. Given the outstanding efficacy and safety record of approved influenza vaccines, our overriding concern then, as health care workers, should be the interests of our patients, not our own sensibilities about mandates. On this, the facts are very clear: the welfare of patients is, without any doubt, best served by the very high rates of staff immunity that can only be achieved with mandatory influenza vaccination – not the 40-50% rates of staff immunization historically achieved with even the most vigorous of voluntary programs. Under voluntary standards, institutional outbreaks occur every flu season. Medical literature convincingly demonstrates that high levels of staff immunity confer protection on those patients who cannot be or have not been effectively vaccinated themselves, while also allowing the institution to remain more fully staffed.
Throughout this fall and winter, more patients than ever may enter our hospitals and clinics without effective influenza immunity. Some will be too young or have other contraindications to vaccination or will have failed to receive vaccinations for a variety of reasons. Others will be too frail for vaccination to be effective. Large numbers of people quite clearly would like to take the new H1N1 vaccine as soon as it is available but will be denied that opportunity because they do not fall into one of the first prioritized groups. For all of these individuals, safety lies in being treated in institutions and by health care personnel with the nearly 100% effective immunity rates seen with other long-mandated vaccinations for health care workers, such as measles and rubella.
In recognition of health care’s noble tradition of putting patients’ interests first and understanding the need to keep our health care system functioning optimally during this challenge, federal authorities made a remarkable decision regarding the first groups to be given access to the new H1N1 vaccine. In addition to giving highest priority for the new vaccine to those who would receive the direct or personal benefit — pregnant women, caregivers to infants, children and the chronically ill — authorities declared that health care workers would also be given earliest access to the vaccine, ahead of millions of other individuals who have roughly equal or even higher risks of contracting H1N1 influenza with all the discomfort or worse that could mean for them as individuals.
Knowing that our privileged access to the new vaccine is earned not by our personal risk factors but by the special trust society places in us, then how can we as health care workers maintain that our cooperation in protecting the most vulnerable members of society is nevertheless optional? Without mandated vaccinations, many ethically troubling situations may occur. A health care worker unconcerned about “ordinary flu” might refuse the routine seasonal vaccine, but then expect to be in the front of the line for the “good stuff” – the new and strictly rationed swine flu vaccine. Institutions may find themselves short staffed and less than fully capable if their workers fail to get the seasonal influenza vaccine but then proceed to consume hundreds of doses of the new vaccine, therefore denying those doses to other groups. This scenario will certainly not achieve the staff-wide immunity levels needed to assure patient safety and optimal staffing — the very reasons for which health care workers received their priority in the first place.
Influenza vaccination has saved thousands upon thousands of lives over the last three decades, and thousands more could have been saved if the vaccinations had been more widely used. This year, through effective use of vaccination, we have perhaps the best opportunity to save lives and keep our society and institutions running more smoothly than we have had in 50 years or more. This is not the time for uninformed or self-interested parties to attempt to pump air into long-deflated arguments about vaccine safety in general or to use a single 33-year-old episode to deny decades of safety and saved lives achieved by influenza vaccines prepared in the same way as this year’s formulations.
The seasonal influenza vaccine has completed, and before its approval the new H1N1 vaccine also underwent, the most careful development, production and testing processes leading scientists, clinicians and public health authorities can devise. Approval of the H1N1 vaccine was based on the application of the same scientific standards and methods that we believe should govern all our health care practices. We, as health care workers, owe it to our patients and to society in general to demonstrate our confidence in those scientific standards. Even more importantly, we should reconfirm our noble commitment to the tradition of putting patients’ interests first by supporting the mandatory influenza vaccination requirement.
Richard F. Daines, M.D.
New York State Commissioner of Health
Regarding the statement by Richard Daines, NY State Commissioner of Health in the comment above:
In sympathy for the nurse in Missouri who just lost her husband (he died 30 hours after taking the vaccine), forced to take the vaccine along with her, nurses and patients across the country may want to protest the patently false statement on vaccine safety by Richard Dainers, Head of the NY Health Department, mandating vaccines.
His minimizing of constitution rights is also something people may have feelings about.
“Questions about safety and claims of personal preference are understandable. Given the outstanding efficacy and safety record of approved influenza vaccines, our overriding concern then, as health care workers, should be the interests of our patients, not our own sensibilities about mandates.”
“Personal preference”? This is how he describes constitutional rights? “Sensibilities about mandates”? As in “let’s not be sensitive about them”? Is he implying that exercising one’s constitutional right is an emotional issue on people’s part?
He minimizes the most profound violation of constitutional rights, one concerning life and death, and tries to turn democratically asserting guaranteed constitutional rights into an implied lack of concern for patients (selfishness) or emotionality.
Here is the NY medical misconduct office for anyone who wishes to file a complaint against Raines.
NY Office of Professional Medical Conduct (OPMC)
Complaints and Inquiries
1-800-663-6114
Today is the Health Workers Demonstration in Albany, New York, the state capital. May they have great weather and lots of support!
Here’s a followup story on the subject titled “Mandatory Flu Vaccine splits workers”:
“Despite a planned rally in Albany Tuesday to protest a state regulation requiring health care workers be vaccinated against influenza — both seasonal and swine flu — New York’s top public health official predicts dissenters will ultimately extinguish their anger and roll up their sleeves.
The regulation, which was approved in August, comes with a stinging addendum: Get vaccinated or get fired.
But some nurses and many other health care providers say the regulation violates their personal freedom and leaves them vulnerable to vaccine injury. And they cite deaths associated with the last federal government swine-flu vaccination program in 1976.
Refusing to be immunized against H1N1 because of the vaccine debacle in 1976 “is like saying a plane crashed 33 years ago so I’ll never fly again,” said Dr. Richard Daines, New York State health commissioner.
New York is the only state in the nation to require that health care workers be vaccinated, though other states are considering such measures. Health workers, including doctors, must be immunized by Nov. 30. Opponents say it’s simply unnecessary.
Several registered nurses said they will neither contract nor transmit the flu because they’re constantly washing their hands.
While dozens of demonstrators are expected at the rally from throughout the state, many are from Stony Brook University Medical Center. A meeting was held last week for hospital staff on the importance of vaccination for health care workers; a special session was held for employees in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, because many nurses there had expressed concern about the vaccination plan.
“We cannot force employees to be vaccinated; however we do not have an infinite number of non-patient care positions available to reassign those who simply refuse the vaccine,” said hospital spokeswoman Lauren Sheprow.
Darcy Wells, spokeswoman for the Public Employees Federation, which represents 9,000 health care workers statewide, including 3,000 at Stony Brook, said the union disapproves of mandatory vaccination, but is urging members to comply with the regulation….”
Read it all on Newsday.com:
http://www.newsday.com/long-island/mandatory-flu-vaccination-splits-workers-1.1481242?print=true