According to MK News, the UK Government has decided there is more than one way to force hospital staff into receiving this year’s flu vaccine. Knowing that many hospitals are struggling financially, the government has decided to turn their hand to bribery by offering extra cash to financially dependent hospitals, on the proviso that they vaccinate all their staff with this year’s flu vaccine. MK News, reporting on the story, said:
“Figures have revealed that less than half of all frontline NHS staff are vaccinated against flu, and at some hospitals, this can fall as low as one in five.
But in order to give hospitals an incentive for extra cash, the funds will only be released to them if they meet a robust target of vaccinating 75 percent of staff against flu.
And while the figures will not affect the hospitals’ £1.4m funding this year, if they do not meet the figures, it will affect the amount they are given next year.”
What this means is that any hospital failing to meet this year’s flu vaccination target will not only fail to receive this year’s extra funding, but they will also lose out next year as well.
UK’s Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt explained that he wanted every NHS trust to vaccinate more than 75 percent of their staff this year in order to protect vulnerable patients. [2]
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An Unofficial, Unethical, and Illogical Mandate
However, is force vaccination the way forward? Many irate hospital staff are extremely angry and have accused the UK government of emotional blackmail, calling the move unethical. One health care professional, commenting on the story in Nursing Times, stated:
“This isn’t giving people a choice to get vaccinated or not. Sounds like they’re holding trusts to ransom, saying you’ve got to get 75 percent of your staff vaccinated so that the underfunded A&E departments can receive a little top up (after years of under-resourcing). Or, it’s a great ploy of not paying anything at all, as a good guess that there won’t be enough staff getting vaccinated.
Flu jabs are no guarantee of keeping people out of A&E over winter.
Also, does this mean people who don’t work in the NHS or where there isn’t an A&E won’t have to worry?
I [would] like to see/hear chief execs, directors, senior managers and politicians all get their jabs first, then work a couple weeks as frontline staff would between Christmas and New Year, lead by example and put their money where their mouth is.” [3]
Quite right, too. They should indeed put their money where their mouth is.
While these idiots are force-vaccinating NHS staff around the UK, using their cash as nice, fat, juicy carrots, I wonder if they are informing the staff about the possible side effects of the vaccine and telling them that far from protecting them against the flu, the vaccine could give them the flu, instead!
The CDC says:
“The nasal spray (also called LAIV or FluMist®): The viruses in the nasal-spray vaccine are weakened and do not cause severe symptoms often associated with influenza illness. (In clinical studies, transmission of vaccine viruses to close contacts has occurred only rarely.)
In children, side effects from LAIV (FluMist®) can include:
- runny nose
- wheezing
- headache
- vomiting
- muscle aches
- fever
In adults, side effects from LAIV (FluMist®) can include:
- runny nose
- headache
- sore throat
- cough” [4]
The above list of impressive side effects from the vaccine, given by the CDC, certainly sounds like the flu to me. So, what is the point of giving nurses, who spend their time looking after sick and vulnerable patients, a vaccine that will cause the very symptoms they wish to avoid?
The Flu Vaccine Can Cause Death
In 2011, the co-founder of the Safe Schools Campaign, Mary Tocco, wrote that it is common knowledge that the flu vaccination has the potential to cause serious side effects including death:
“They combine various flu virus strains based on an educated guess and then recommend the shot to everyone, including children and pregnant mothers. According to the CDC Vital Statistics Report 1999-2003, influenza death for children under the age of 5 skyrocketed as they began to implement the flu vaccine for the children. From 1999 to early 2002, death rates were declining from 25 down to 10 per year. Then, the latter half of 2002 the CDC mandated the flu vaccine for children and the death rate climbed from 25 deaths per year in 1999 to over 90 in 2002! Death is a pretty bad vaccine side effect!” [5]
Given her evidence, I personally believe that it is far safer to catch the flu, than it is to risk a virtually untested vaccination concocted from an educated guess at what this year’s flu strain is going to be.
Conclusion
Nurses have always been thought of as natural born carers. To force them to have vaccinations by dangling a nice juicy carrot in front of them with a vaccine syringe on the end and saying that their patients will suffer if they do not have the vaccination is pure evil. This is nothing short of emotional blackmail.
Why should the government think that it is right to deny hospitals much-needed funds all year and then say that the money is only available if they vaccinate their staff with dangerous and unnecessary vaccines?
Let’s face it. If all staff members do decide to have the flu vaccine, “for the sake of their patients,” and 90 percent of them end up with the flu as a result, then what exactly is the government going to do? I can hardly see the UK Prime Minister, David Cameron and Deputy Prime Minister, Nick Clegg, changing beds and carrying bedpans. Can you?
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2. http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/nhs-make-sure-75-staff-2263045
3. http://www.nursingtimes.net/nursing-practice/clinical-zones/immunology/staff-flu-vaccination…
4. http://www.cdc.gov/flu/protect/keyfacts.htm
5. http://www.newswithviews.com/Tocco/mary108.htm
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