Using Your Nursing Credentials to Validate Anti-Vaxxer Theories

[Helen Crump]

As nurses we are supposed to understand and follow science. Yet all over the country nurses are using their background to validate crackpot theories about Covid and the vaccine. Should there be consequences for leading an effort to hurt the public health? After all, it violates basic nursing ethics in particular, do no harm. Should boards of nurses sanction these people or should the ANA or other associations put out a statement saying these folk don't represent us?

[Hannahbanana, BSN, MSN]

What would have happened to you as a child had your parents decided to “wait and see” on polio vaccines? Or MMR? 

[toomuchbaloney]

15 minutes ago, Hannahbanana said:

What would have happened to you as a child had your parents decided to “wait and see” on polio vaccines? Or MMR? 

Mostly they are protected by vaccine mediated herd immunity to those illnesses if they were born after the boomers. I ran a PICU geographically near a large Amish community in the midwest for a decade.  You learn a bit about the suffering associated with vaccine preventable diseases in that environment.  Tetorifice and pertussis were the worst.  At least tetorifice was not shared between victims. The worst was when the toddler AND the newborn from one family was infected and in the PICU with pertussis. Often the older kids did better and didn't require as much support as the younger family members. 

[Leah Hona, RN]

2 hours ago, BostonFNP said:

Why can't you just say "no I don't"? That seems to be your answer?

That is correct. We don’t know if they are safe in the long run, but they are effective in stopping COVID. We DO know that getting COVID is NOT safe and it DOES have long term side effects. That is what we know so far. 

[Hannahbanana, BSN, MSN]

1 hour ago, toomuchbaloney said:

1 hour ago, Hannahbanana said:

What would have happened to you as a child had your parents decided to “wait and see” on polio vaccines? Or MMR? 

Mostly they are protected by vaccine mediated herd immunity to those illnesses if they were born after the boomers.

Boomer here. I remember being held home and no swimming at the community pool because there was polio around.

I had classmates whose mothers lost pregnancies to rubella, or who had babies born blind and brain-damaged. There were kids who were brain-damaged from measles.

My uncle was rendered sterile after having mumps as an adult, which he caught from his kids.

A friend’s father died recently having spent the last years of his life trached  on a vent, because his aging lungs couldn’t do it with the paralyzed hemidiaphragm he was left with after polio.

I had chicken pox at 4, gave it to my 2yr old brother AND my 6-week-old and our mother, who grew up in a very isolated area and did not have it as a child. The baby, of course, couldn’t take advantage of any parental immunity even though breastfed, because of that. We kids all recovered fine (except now we’re still at risk for shingles, even though we have had the Shingrx vaccine) but my mother’s eyes were permanently affected, so she had to wear glasses c rotating lenses depending on how out of sync her eyes were on any given day. My boss had chicken pox as an adult and damn near died c lesions all down her throat and into her lungs. 

There are fewer people, and pretty much none of childbearing age, any more who remember what it was like in every town, city, and neighborhood in the US before these vaccines. This whole vaccine refusal (*I* refuse to call any part of it “hesitancy”) is just stunning to us.

OK, so we’re older than most of you. Vaccines are one reason we got to do that. This recent pandemic is illustrative of what can happen —is happening— in our time now. People should thank their lucky stars that modern science can now, in fact, respond to such a dire threat so rapidly c so useful a preventative measure.

Get your damn immunization.

[SmilingBluEyes]

Such privilege; it's astounding.

[Guest219794]

4 hours ago, Jeckrn1 said:

At this time I do not know what the long term effects on the body will be just like everyone else. Is it effective, that is a relative judgement because one knows if they are effective over the long term. If this was the case there would be no discussion about booster shots starting soon. 
 

Are you able to tell your patients that these vaccines will not have any long term effects and long term effectiveness?  You can tell them that you believe there will be no long term effects which for most people it will be, but what about the few it could have devastating effects?  Can you also tell them that we will not need to get boosters or how often?   

I would say since 2008 instead of 2016. 

Presumably you do with this with every single medication on a med list.  "There are no long term studies on Pradaxa, as it has only been out 5 years.  There is no definitive proof that in 10 years, it will not cause irreparable harm."

Absolute load of baloney.  

Curious-   How much have you been dealing with Covid? I ask becaue I rarely hear this silliness from folks who are hands on dealing with this thing.  what is your field?  How much damage can you actually do by shedding doubt on vaccine safety?

[Hannahbanana, BSN, MSN]

1 hour ago, SmilingBluEyes said:

Such privilege; it's astounding.

It’s indeed astounding that the privilege we enjoy as a first world country doesn’t make more people grateful for what they could do to protect all of us. I have friends in Tanzania who would give almost everything they have for the opportunity to vaccinate themselves and their children for COVID. 

[SmilingBluEyes]

I have friends in the Philippines, New Zealand, Europe and Australia that are stunned by our sense of privilege and lack of gratitude----and lack of sense of community when it comes to vaccination. I work with a gal from Kenya who is also astounded,  as there, they are happy to stand in line hours to get any vaccines or medications they can.

We really are spoiled here.

[Jeckrn1, ADN, BSN]

I would like to see the same out rage for abortions. There have been almost 30 million lives lost so far this year.   Don’t say it’s because it’s the women’s choice and then say anyone does not have the right to say no to the Covid vaccines. 

[SmilingBluEyes]

7 minutes ago, Jeckrn1 said:

I would like to see the same out rage for abortions. There have been almost 30 million lives lost so far this year.   Don’t say it’s because it’s the women’s choice and then say anyone does not have the right to say no to the Covid vaccines. 

Apples/oranges. Different thread.

[jive turkey]

5 hours ago, BostonFNP said:

I have the covid vaccine discussion with patients multiple times per day. I think that anyone that is talking with patients right now about vaccines are hearing the same thing: politico-media rubbish excuses. When I talk with patients I don't tell them their excuse is invalid or dismiss them but I do counter them with objective facts and most people just move down to the next excuse and it repeats. 

 There are going to be those people who's reasons for deferring are very irrational and you won't be able to convince at all.  I hear you.

I'm not in the room with you and the patient to say how well of an acting job you do.. If you have the attitude your patients' reasons are excuses it's quite possible they can sense that and become more resistant. 

I'd like to ask, when your patients tell you their reasons they don't want to vaccinate, do you give them the facts and science right away like you said?

 

[Jeckrn1, ADN, BSN]

10 minutes ago, SmilingBluEyes said:

Apples/oranges. Different thread.

Personal choice is personal choice. If posters imply that it’s not right for someone to make a personal choice which might kill another human being.  Why are they not up in arms when a personal choice will always kill another human being?