Flu Shots Mandatory For Employment?

We are getting a taste of the cold weather to come here in Western New York. Along with the drop in temperature comes Flu Season.

With the Flu Shot being available at nearly every pharmacy and convenient store, we are reminded at every turn to get our flu shot, still many people are saying no-thanks! Which is their personal choice, right? Well maybe not for long.

On Friday Rhode Island became the first state in the nation to mandate seasonal flu shots, many other States are not far behind. 

In California, they were "Stop and Shot" drive through clinics set up in an effort to distribute the vaccination to as many people as possible, for FREE!

Health care workers in Rhode Island, Michigan and Colorado feel they are being given a choice: get a flu shot or lose your job.

“I don’t want to get the flu shot and to me it seems I’m getting forced to put a virus into my body that I object to,”

said one hospital employee who didn’t want to be identified.

Despite the objections of health-care workers’ unions and the Rhode Island affiliate of the American Civil Liberties Union, Health Director Michael D. Fine filed new regulations requiring seasonal flu shots for doctors, nurses and others — employees, temporary workers and volunteers — working for hospitals, nursing homes, home-care agencies and other health-care organizations in RI.

They tried to pull this on New Yorkers back in 2009, but a shortage of vaccinations during the H1N1 scare prevented the mandate.

A C.D.C. survey found that 67 percent of all U.S. health care workers were vaccinated during the 2011-12 flu season, up slightly from 64 percent the season before.

Ok, so roughly 40 % of our doctors and nurses are refusing the readily available flu shot?

Conspiracy theory aside, this is an alarming figure. If these vaccinations are God's gift to humans prone to catching influenza, why the heck aren't 100% health care providers receiving them? The most common answers were they did not need it, concern about whether the vaccine was effective and worries about side effects.

Digging deeper into the research, the survey found that 95 percent of workers in hospitals that required vaccinations got them, compared with only 68 percent of those in hospitals without such a rule.   So Doctors are putting their own judgement aside, in efforts to keep there job!

My daughter is allergic to eggs and this is my indisputable reason for keeping her away from the Flu shot. In her 4 years here on Earth, she has never had the flu!

I have heard so many horror stories about folk getting sick AFTER they got the shot! Some even died!