Nurses are leading the way in getting the vaccine. As more and more people get vaccinated, we are closer to being able to return to a more normal life, protecting ourselves, our families and the economy.
Nurses as a group lead the way in getting vaccines. Although some still hesitate—particularly outpatient nurses—as a group, professional nurses continue to set an example of willingness to combat the epidemic by getting vaccinated themselves. Statistics are still being gathered but in March 2021, 64% of hospital nurses were already vaccinated. The effort to get that number to 100% is underway. How can we help our peers and our patients who hesitate about getting the vaccine?
Going the Extra Mile
Nurses have been heroes every step of the way. Nurse Vaccinator Jaquelyn Chartier stated in a New York Times article, “I saw on the news they were going to roll out these mass vaccination sites but they needed nurses because they were short. And I was, like, I gotta go. I gotta go help.” Her spirit echoes the voices and actions of so many nurses who have stepped up to the plate and gone the extra miles to help conquer this pandemic.
Working in health care, many of us have seen the worst of COVID: patients struggling to breathe, suffering a variety of maladies, and some even becoming “long haulers” finding themselves besieged by symptoms months after the disease should have packed up and left their bodies. Countering that are the 80% of people who have symptom-less or mild symptom infections of COVID-19 and recuperate uneventfully and quickly. The two extremes are hard to reconcile. We continue to have a lack of current science about what makes one person get acutely ill and another barely suffer a sneeze. Because of these disparities, we hear divided reports—everything from doomsday reports to a fantasy of denial. As nurses, we are sometimes stuck in between trying to educate people, help them understand, and lead by example.
Vaccine Risks vs. Deadly Virus Risks
The fact that vaccines have some degree of inherent risk is well-known and undisputed. But this risk must be weighed against the potentially much greater risk of severe illness from contracting this coronavirus. With a mortality of 1% (this number is still being determined), it is much deadlier than the flu (<0.1%), even after we have had over a year to develop strategies to treat it. All of us know of stories of young, healthy men and women becoming gravely ill, ending up on a ventilator and dying. Our stories in this country are numerous, but in other countries, the situation is becoming even direr. Globally, the pandemic has been devastating.
The risk of getting the vaccine is extremely small. Not getting the vaccine is also a calculated risk. It is important to understand this and to encourage our patients to consider that they are still taking a risk when they choose not to be vaccinated. The recent pause in the administration of the Johnson and Johnson vaccine was due to blood clots in 6 persons out of 6.8 million (1/100th of the risk of getting struck by lightning).
Misinformation
Misinformation and outright lies about the vaccine are plentiful for those who are willing to read it and give it credence. The internet has an overabundance of bogus “information” about vaccines going into your DNA. “The truth is that the vaccines cannot modify anything in your embryo or your child.”
Miraculous Preparation for Such a Time as This
The scientific literature describing the development of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines with mRNA is fascinating and reads like something out of the future. The men and women scientists who were able to rapidly develop these vaccines for COVID-19 did not come upon this technology overnight. It had been in development for a number of years and was miraculously ready just when it was needed. According to associate scientist Katherine Calhoun, “Rarely do you work on something in the lab and go home and turn on your TV and see the top 10 headlines are about the thing that you were working on today.” The miraculous preparedness of the scientific community “For such a time as this” seems to have escaped our imaginations during the crisis of COVID-19. It may be time for us to step back and reflect on how fortunate we are that events in the cosmos came together to give us these tools to combat the infection.
Senior scientist Amy Barnes who is part of the development team for the Pfizer vaccine states: “This kind of reminds me of September 11th. It’s that same feeling of What were you doing at the time?”
Prevention - the Best Treatment
Prevention is the best treatment we have for COVID-19. Vaccines are our best hope for staying safe, keeping our families and patients safe, and preserving the economy. Like most viruses, it mutates and this one spreads aggressively. We have a short window of time to poke holes in its armor and then watch it crumble. If we work together, we can make it happen!
What is objective about your point of view? If I'm not mistaken, you are the member commenting broadly about the liberal agenda of MSM. Perhaps you believe that comment conveyed an impression that you consider a wide and varied compliment of "sources". It doesn't.
I agree with the majority of your post except this. When using the actual Google search engine you will only see what Google big tech wants you to see. They put the info upfront they want you to see first and the vast majority of people will not even go beyond page one and they know it and totally take advantage of it. Big tech has been censoring what they deem as "misinformation" and kicking people off their platforms who they do not agree with politically. Unfortunately the MSM and big tech have a liberal agenda and feel free to politicize anything and everything including the covid pandemic.
You are not the only one! Most people just get tired of arguing with those who blindly follow the MSM and "experts" who clearly have allowed their judgement to be altered by their politics. Just sad all the way around, IMO.
I get my statistics on Covid-19 cases and deaths primarily from ECDC (European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control) and Johns Hopkins. Are those the kind of sources that you label ”liberal MSM”?
I get my statistics on Covid-19 cases and deaths primarily from ECDC (European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control) and Johns Hopkins. Are those the kind of sources that you label ”liberal MSM”?
Not sure why you are asking me this but I will answer anyway. I have always used Johns Hopkins as a reliable medical resource. That said the info is not infallible. For instance when covid first started it was Johns Hopkins that had a interactive map of cases and was widely used by news sources. How accurate that map may or may not have been was dependent on where they got their info. Some info came from the ECDC, WHO, CDC, and some from the Chinese gov. So you can see that some of the info they obtained may not have been accurate for any number of reasons including politicizing of the pandemic. As far as the ECDC I would say that you, as a European, are probably in a better place to judge the reliability of that org than I. Just like I am probably in a better place to judge the reliability of US sources than you.
Specializes in NICU, PICU, Transport, L&D, Hospice.
52 minutes ago, Daisy4RN said:
You are just proving my point. Blindly follow "experts" and "fact checkers", and of course the requisite blaming of Qs, geesh!
Blindly? That's just your opinion, not fact.
You don't trust the experts and seek alternative facts instead? General lack of trust in institutions and established media can be associated with tendency to consume misinformation and nonsense. It's an interesting read.
You are just proving my point. Blindly follow "experts" and "fact checkers", and of course the requisite blaming of Qs, geesh!
What is the significance of putting quotes around experts and fact checkers? If someone has a verifiable background in virology, infectious disease, and or epidemiology , I tend to trust them. If their expertise is as a radiologist or media personality, then not so much.
I'm not sure what "blindly follow" means, (quotes are because I am quoting you) , but I read reports and articles with skepticism. I look at where data was gathered, the size of the study, and if its peer reviewed.
I work in public health and I know first hand how unreliable the numbers gathered by national organizations were and still are to a degree. Every state, and even every local health jurisdiction has it own way of gathering and reporting data. In the beginning we only had paper faxes as a means of reporting, meaning someone had to look at each and every page (sometimes 500 day) to gathering testing data. And it was well reported that at least one state, Florida, was skewing the numbers. So Johns Hopkins was useful, but not the be all, end all.
Media, any media, has bias. The ones that take the time to check multiple sources are going to be more accurate that the ones that cherry-pick sensationalized stories and spread them without investigation.
Specializes in NICU, PICU, Transport, L&D, Hospice.
3 minutes ago, nursej22 said:
Media, any media, has bias. Theones that take the time to check multiple sources are going to be more accurate that the ones that cherry-pick sensationalized stories and spread them without investigation.
The study that I cited called that "countermedia".
THANK YOU so much for saying that! I know I'm not the only one out there who feels this way! I appreciate your comment!
You're definitely not the only one ☺️. Your comments conveyed exactly what I was trying to get across in another thread (labeled "Did you just TRY to bully me") which got shut down.
Specializes in Educator, COVID Paperwork Expert (self-taught).
4 hours ago, Daisy4RN said:
ou are not the only one! Most people just get tired of arguing with those who blindly follow the MSM and "experts" who clearly have allowed their judgement to be altered by their politics. Just sad all the way around, IMO.
Thanks for the comment. I agree about Google--you can't solely trust the first thing that comes up. EVERYTHING has to be looked at with skepticism. Hopefully a direct link to the hospitals reporting ICU COVID admissions will be objective.
I AM very tired of arguing w/those who blindly follow the MSM! It's the lack of respect for making my own decisions, and the outright mocking for daring to consider a different point of view, that really gets me down. I appreciate being able to actually discuss different points of view, not being called names for having a different opinion. It's sad that health care workers aren't respecting each others' decisions at this already difficult time.
Specializes in NICU, PICU, Transport, L&D, Hospice.
7 minutes ago, love2banurse89 said:
Thanks for the comment. I agree about Google--you can't solely trust the first thing that comes up. EVERYTHING has to be looked at with skepticism. Hopefully a direct link to the hospitals reporting ICU COVID admissions will be objective.
I AM very tired of arguing w/those who blindly follow the MSM! It's the lack of respect for making my own decisions, and the outright mocking for daring to consider a different point of view, that really gets me down. I appreciate being able to actually discuss different points of view, not being called names for having a different opinion. It's sad that health care workers aren't respecting each others' decisions at this already difficult time.
I'm tired of interacting with people who believe that complaining about MSM is a powerful argument.
By 1987, under Ronald Reagan, the Federal Communications Commission stopped enforcing, and effectively repealed, the Fairness Doctrine, which had required broadcasters to reflect contrasting views on matters of public interest. Talk radio and cable news shows, unhindered by speech regulations, proliferated: The Rush Limbaugh Show made its debut in 1988; Sean Hannity hosted his first radio program in 1989. Cable networks built out twenty-four-hour news cycles, including debate shows featuring the same talking heads who appeared in national newspapers and magazines and formed the basis of mainstream opinionating: “a tiny group,” as Eric Alterman writes in Sound and Fury (1992), his history of punditry—but one with “a healthy dose of self-promotional talent.”
Fox News Channel premiered in 1996. It's founder, Rupert Murdoch, the Australian media mogul, sought to compete with the major networks; in hiring Roger Ailes, a veteran of Republican politics and conservative media, as the founding chief executive and head of the network’s news division, he positioned Fox as an antidote to press coverage friendly to liberals. Ailes branded the network with a slogan that lasted twenty years: “fair and balanced.” By day, Fox reported on the news; at prime time, its opinion programming spanned from moderate to deeply conservative—and shifted rightward as the years went by. “There’s a whole country that elitists will never acknowledge,” Ailes told the New York Times in 2001. “What people deeply resent out there are those in the ‘blue’ states thinking they’re smarter. There’s a touch of that in our news.” He added, “If we look conservative, it’s because the other guys are so far to the left.”
Now Fox is engaged in countermedia...content that is mixed between partial truths, misinformation, partisan propaganda and opinion passing as reporting. Tucker Carlson’s program is an excellent example of that.
Specializes in Educator, COVID Paperwork Expert (self-taught).
23 minutes ago, underpressure said:
You're definitely not the only one ☺️. Your comments conveyed exactly what I was trying to get across in another thread (labeled "Did you just TRY to bully me") which got shut down.
I just read that one--yikes! Great job trying tho!
Specializes in Educator, COVID Paperwork Expert (self-taught).
4 hours ago, toomuchbaloney said:
Google reflects the media preferences of the user...if you Google and visit crazy right wing sites then Google will feature those sites and that content for your consumption on your next search. You choose the type of information and content that you enjoy and Google will find and promote that type in your feeds. It works essentially the same way for FB and Youtube...that's why so many who are afraid of these vaccines rely on the same misinformation. We call this phenomenon going down the rabbit hole...like a greyhound chasing a fake rabbit that it will never catch.
Maybe someone could tell us what that "liberal agenda" of MSM and big tech involves relative to vaccination during a pandemic...or maybe it's just a feeling that social "conservatives" have...kind of like that feeling that the covid vaccine might be more dangerous than the disease.
Your attitude is very pompous and condescending.
The "liberal agenda" relative to the covid vaccination? That's easy--and starts with money. (There may be a bit of desiring to do good in there...but the pandemic has definitely been a huge money maker by companies that are involved in the production of vaccines and COVID tests). The pharmaceutical companies have received billions of dollars to develop a vaccine. Of course they want to sell what they've already made--it's given for "free" but they are getting paid by the gov't...which means all of us who are working! While the vaccine does appear to offer some protection against COVID, we truly don't know how much or for how long. And they're already setting the scene for a vaccination every year (or perhaps every six months) and/or every variant.
Now Fox is engaged in countermedia...content that is mixed between partial truths, misinformation, partisan propaganda and opinion passing as reporting. Tucker Carlson’s program is an excellent example of that.
Daisy4RN
2,238 Posts
You are just proving my point. Blindly follow "experts" and "fact checkers", and of course the requisite blaming of Qs, geesh!