Where have all the anti-vaxxers gone?

[icowden]

Personally, I don't like the idea of any medical treatment being compulsory.

I agree with you on general principle. However if your work setting is such that you might cause harm, then this overrides any personal preference. If you work in a care home - you should be vaccinated. If you work on wards, in a hospital, in theatres (medical), visit patients at home etc, you should be vaccinated.

I also think that if you work in a setting where you have mass exposure, you should be vaccinated. My local Sainsbury's annoys me. The staff manning the self checkouts and smart checkouts don't wear masks but have the greatest exposure to Covid of almost any location given the volumes of people passing through that area and the proximity that they have to maintain to approve and fix the checkouts.

 

[DCBassman]

Anyone in healthcare without medical exemption should be vaccinated, no exceptions. As a healthcare worker, how stupid would you have to be to refuse?

 

[KnittyNorah]

Personally, I don't like the idea of any medical treatment being compulsory.

You may not like it, but would you - if you were pregnant - like to be exposed to rubella and its potentially devastating consequences for your unborn baby?

Or would you have been happy for me to have been kept on in my research post in ultrasound despite my posting a clear and ever-present possible threat to my early-pregnant patients because I had no immunity to rubella, and could very easily have carried it to any of them who had low or waning immunity, with possibly-disastrous results to their unborn baby? Or is that somehow 'different' because it involves baybeez?

Does anybody in their right mind think I should still have been kept on to potentially devastate a family and their future hopes? Or aren't there enough possibilities for tragedy already that we need to add some deliberate ones? I most certainly don't, and any disappointment I felt was at my own body for not responding as expected to the rubella vaccine, not for the regulations around my job.

I emphasise that in my case I simply did not respond to the rubella vaccination with a measurable antibody titre. I forget how many rubella vaxx I had in total - four, I think. So I changed my direction of work. I was not so irresponsible or self-centred as to think that I should be allowed to continue in post.

On a personal basis, for the patient, I don't believe in principle that treatment - be it medical, surgical, pharmaceutical, psychological or any other - should ever be made actually compulsory.
HOWEVER that is a decision which is impossible to carry out, as it presupposes that there are facilities and legislation available which can - if someone's untreated illness causes them to be a danger to others or to themselves - swiftly and efficiently remove and safely and humanely contain them, while still complying with their wished for non-treatment. And it is abundantly clear that is rarely, if ever, possible, and frequently entirely the wrong thing to do.

Now I will grant you that C-19 vaccination is a very different kettle of fish to eg smallpox or rubella vaxx. It isn't a sterilising vaccine, for one (probably the main!) thing, if we to compare it to the 'transmission STOPPED' effect of the aforementioned vaccines. However, along with regular lateral flow tests and appropriate masking, it is a very large contributor indeed to maintaining the health of NHS and social services staff, and the continuity and safety of its services and functions.

And as someone has already stated, a vaccination isn't treatment, it is prevention and protection. There are precedents for making certain vaccinations compulsory in certain medical and caring professions and and if you, as a member of one of those professions, or associated directly with them, don't like it, the answer is very simple ...

 

[Johnno260]

Call me naive but if all these anti vaxers bother you so much why do you go out of your way to expose yourself to them ( not literally) I picked up on martial art man 'handing out leaflets ' for example, it seems a lot of you read their posts on social media also?

They're idiots, let them get on with it.

I don't always go out of my way but for example I was asked to pick my nephew up from school when I was finishing work early, anti vax outside the school, but no issue just ignore them.

but and here is the kicker once they bring out the phones and cameras and start grilling minors and livestreaming it, I and any other sane adult is then allowed to challenge them, being told to f off when the questions been asked isn't a valid answer and neither is this is public ground I can film, fact is without parental consent you can't.

All I did was stand in front of them filming, they got aggressive not me, my only reply was it's public ground I can stand where I want, and I repeated it whenever they got angry and shouted something.

Edit: I'm glad I have confronted them previously, it equipped me with knowing their likely responses would be, and also with regards to the school how to block them without being overly aggressive, it's not the first time they appeared at this school either.

 

[Bazzer]

I went for my booster yesterday, booked to a pharmacy about 10 miles away as it was the earliest date I could secure and at 72 hours notice, was pleased to get the appointment. The vaccination centre was a temporary building such as you might see on a building site, but in the pharmacy car park.
At 8am there were only 3 or 4 of us being jabbed and we were chatting to the healthcare worker administering the jab. Among other things, she said the pharmacy hadn't been used for the original mass vaccinations, but the siting of the temporary building for the booster programme had apparently been deliberate. - Anti vaxxers had been active in a couple of settlements, each within a less than 5 miles radius of the pharmacy.
Which may also account for the very large Covid vaccination centre signs outside the pharmacy.

 

[lazybloke]

After the pictures of the Prime Minister visiting an NHS hospital without wearing a mask, they can eff right off with vaccine compulsion.

That seems uncharacteristically negative.
If you disregard the lack of leadership from Boris for a moment, what are your objections to vaccinating frontline health workers?

To a certain extent I think that hand-washing, mask-wearing and daily testing are more important, but if there is evidence to suggest vaccination also helps, then why not? Would be good to see that evidence, and whether the expected difference would be trivial or non-trivial.

My 12 year old is at increased risk of covid complications, yet due to medical history is also at risk of severe/fatal reaction to vaccination, so I can see both side of the argument - yet I have no objection to mandating vaccinations as long as medical exemptions can be accommodated.

 

[Profpointy]

View attachment 616580

Lost for words on this one.

Surely that's a viz comic style joke ... isn't it? But it's increasingly hard to tell

 

[Profpointy]

After the pictures of the Prime Minister visiting an NHS hospital without wearing a mask, they can eff right off with vaccine compulsion.

"If the enemy is an ass and a fool and a prating coxcomb, is it meet, think you, that we should also, look you, be an ass and a fool and a prating coxcomb, in your own conscience, now?"

 

[FishFright]

Informed insider tells me that of all the patients in a local hospital and their ICU who are being treated for Covid none have had a Jab.

A similar informed insider has told me the vast majority in ICU/HD are not vaccinated but there are a few vaccinated in lower dependency beds too. He is no more surprised than I am .

 

[winjim]

"If the enemy is an ass and a fool and a prating coxcomb, is it meet, think you, that we should also, look you, be an ass and a fool and a prating coxcomb, in your own conscience, now?"

I get your point but I wasn't exactly in favour of compulsion anyway.

 

[Alex321]

Personally, I don't like the idea of any medical treatment being compulsory.

It isn't being made compulsory.

It is being made a condition of employment in certain positions. While I am still not entirely comfortable with even that level of requirement, I can understand it, and I really don't understand why anybody working in those positions who is medically fit to have the vaccination would not do so.

 

[Electric_Andy]

NHS workers are required to be fully up to date with training, competencies etc. Having a jab should be no different. It's part of safeguarding patients against harm.

 

[Profpointy]

NHS workers are required to be fully up to date with training, competencies etc. Having a jab should be no different. It's part of safeguarding patients against harm.

Quite - an anti vax health worker is in effect someone who doesn't believe in modern medicine. A view completely incompatible with the role surely. It's equivalent to not believing in germs, or cancer, or not doing the treatment the doctor asks for because they don't believe in it

 

[Punkawallah]

Health service workers joined knowing that vaccinations were a requirement. Goal posts are being moved after they have performed their jobs ‘heroically’. If your contract of work was changed without your consent and you were sacked it would be a case for ‘constructive/unfair dismissal’. I can see a few tribunals if push cones to shove.

 

[winjim]

That seems uncharacteristically negative.
If you disregard the lack of leadership from Boris for a moment, what are your objections to vaccinating frontline health workers?

To a certain extent I think that hand-washing, mask-wearing and daily testing are more important, but if there is evidence to suggest vaccination also helps, then why not? Would be good to see that evidence, and whether the expected difference would be trivial or non-trivial.

My 12 year old is at increased risk of covid complications, yet due to medical history is also at risk of severe/fatal reaction to vaccination, so I can see both side of the argument - yet I have no objection to mandating vaccinations as long as medical exemptions can be accommodated.

There are those who might take issue with your description of that post as 'uncharacteristically negative'.

Who are you describing as a 'frontline health worker'?