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?

[GrumpyRN, NP]

18 hours ago, Hannahbanana said:

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.

???????????

I too am a boomer. I agree with everything you said. I too remember it exactly as you do, albeit from a UK point of view. Friends in hospital that you could not visit because they had an infection or relatives banished to TB hospitals.

I wish Allnurses had a "love it" reaction.

 

[Hoosier_RN, MSN]

I was flipping through the channels last night and caught a program talking about a year ago this time with talk of vaccines. The head of the FDA and CDC both stated that these vaccines would need years of data before they could be deemed safe. Candidate team Biden/Harris claimed they would never approve of, nor take a vaccine developed under Trump's watch, or that came out so quickly without studies. What has changed in a year, to make the vaccines a cure all for everything, and so safe that no one needs to question it? Now Biden says everyone needs a booster,  but many health professionals (in the political chain) have put on the breaks and are questioning this. I think this is why so many are vaccine hesitant.

The current message of get the vaccine to protect yourself and the vaccinated makes no sense. If you're vaccinated, and it's that effective, being around the unvaccinated won't harm you. Too many mixed messages, and we wonder why people are hesitant, especially when our leaders (all countries) have been known to bend the information to fit their narrative. 

This is not to start an argument, but to bring an understanding as to why otherwise intelligent people would be hesitant. I'm vaxxed, but I get it. It also does not run on political lines, that narrative has run its course with many of us

[Hannahbanana, BSN, MSN]

17 hours ago, SmilingBluEyes said:

17 hours 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.

I beg to differ. Apples and cotter pins. 

[toomuchbaloney]

8 minutes ago, Hoosier_RN said:

 

The current message of get the vaccine to protect yourself and the vaccinated makes no sense. If you're vaccinated, and it's that effective, being unvaccinated won't harm you. Too many mixed messages, and we wonder why people are hesitant, especially when our leaders (all countries) have been known to bend the information to fit their narrative. 

The only leader who is famous at this moment in time for lying about covid to the American people is the previous American president.  He is the fellow that lied about the seriousness of the pandemic. All leaders didn't deliberately lie about covid. 

Imagine how differently this might have gone for Americans had the previous president encouraged masking and social distancing, had not praised people for protesting the mitigation and had encouraged full participation in vaccination rather than ranting about imagined election fraud at every opportunity.

Yeah, the message to vaccinate ASAP to protect the vulnerable makes perfect sense.  We are suffering through a pandemic.  The disease, running unmitigated through communities is harming our local economies and health systems.  The coronavirus is doing exactly what we expect from a coronavirus with its rapid mutations that slip past prior immunity and the only way to slow that is widespread vaccination to reduce viral load and replication.  The messaging from the CDC and the NIH had been pretty consistently delivering the science and public health recommendations.  How that is reported by media is pretty varied. However, since the current administration has been in office, there are regular presentations that can be accessed. 

 

[Hannahbanana, BSN, MSN]

30 minutes ago, Hoosier_RN said:

The current message of get the vaccine to protect yourself and the vaccinated makes no sense. If you're vaccinated, and it's that effective, being around the unvaccinated won't harm you.

If you are vaccinated, you may well be protected from serious disease; even if you have a breakthrough case it will very likely be mild and almost certainly you will not be sick enough to be hospitalized or die. However, recent findings indicate that you *can* still acquire and carry the virus asymptomatically. More effective vaccinations can decrease the societal/community viral load. This is also why even if you are vaccinated, you should wear a mask to protect others. 

[Hoosier_RN, MSN]

1 hour ago, Hannahbanana said:

If you are vaccinated, you may well be protected from serious disease; even if you have a breakthrough case it will very likely be mild and almost certainly you will not be sick enough to be hospitalized or die. However, recent findings indicate that you *can* still acquire and carry the virus asymptomatically. More effective vaccinations can decrease the societal/community viral load. This is also why even if you are vaccinated, you should wear a mask to protect others. 

I get that, but I can see where it's a very confusing message to others. 

[Hoosier_RN, MSN]

1 hour ago, toomuchbaloney said:

The only leader who is famous at this moment in time for lying about covid to the American people is the previous American president.  He is the fellow that lied about the seriousness of the pandemic. All leaders didn't deliberately lie about covid. 

Imagine how differently this might have gone for Americans had the previous president encouraged masking and social distancing, had not praised people for protesting the mitigation and had encouraged full participation in vaccination rather than ranting about imagined election fraud at every opportunity.

Yeah, the message to vaccinate ASAP to protect the vulnerable makes perfect sense.  We are suffering through a pandemic.  The disease, running unmitigated through communities is harming our local economies and health systems.  The coronavirus is doing exactly what we expect from a coronavirus with its rapid mutations that slip past prior immunity and the only way to slow that is widespread vaccination to reduce viral load and replication.  The messaging from the CDC and the NIH had been pretty consistently delivering the science and public health recommendations.  How that is reported by media is pretty varied. However, since the current administration has been in office, there are regular presentations that can be accessed. 

 

Throughout history, leaders of countries, agencies, etc have been known to bend the truth about any information, to get their desired result. Hence, the many wars, and other situations over the globe. I wasn't being specific to covid. 

[JKL33]

12 hours ago, DedHedRN said:

After talking to 7000 people this year about their health, and many of them having an adverse reactions to the vaccines, I’m not getting one. And if any of you care to know why, I don’t mind having an in-depth discussion with you.

I care to know why.

I will tell you my perspective up front: I have personally talked to many people (though not thousands) who describe hearing about, knowing someone who experienced, or reading about untoward things that have been reported following vaccination.

My problem is that the majority of the experiences being described are either 1) not objectively a serious health threat and/or 2) are things that those people might also experience in other situations that have nothing to do with covid or vaccines. Many of the reported scary things have been seen innumerable times by every ED nurse for as long as I've been a nurse. Well before covid-19 and covid vaccines. They are relatively common reports by ED patients and they are associated with many different things, practically an innumerable amount of things. Which means they are not (solely) associated with covid-19 vaccinations. This is a delicate conversation and it's difficult to talk about. Ask an ED nurse about all the things that are capable of making people perceive numbness/tingling or pass out or have abdominal upset or have ringing in their ears or dizziness or vertigo or visual changes or weakness, etc., etc. The answer is that it runs the gamut from serious life-threatening event to garden variety anxiety and panic to somatization disorders.

On a separate track: How many nurses have heard patients say that the influenza vaccine gave them the flu? And worse, upon subsequent questioning the symptoms described are gastrointestinal?

I am all for healthy skepticism. Go ahead and hear what others are saying, give them due consideration. Try to vet the information they shared. But at the end of the day, making important health decisions based on others' perceptions is downright DANGEROUS. This really can't be overemphasized.

That's my problem with the "so many people have reported [x, y, z]" line of thinking. I am not seeing skeptics maintain their skepticism upon hearing these things. Suddenly it becomes, "Well she said ______, so I'm not getting that vaccine," or "So-and-so's uncle had bad effects, so I'm not getting that vaccine." Where's the part where you try at least some sort of vetting to help further inform your understanding of what all those personal reports might mean?

Meanwhile, we are maintaining databases to hear about all of these reports, no matter what their (actual) cause may be, so that researchers can comb through the information looking for concerning trends on purpose. Because people are actually doing science. 

[toomuchbaloney]

4 minutes ago, Hoosier_RN said:

Throughout history, leaders of countries, agencies, etc have been known to bend the truth about any information, to get their desired result. Hence, the many wars, and other situations over the globe. I wasn't being specific to covid. 

However, in this moment in history it is not a mystery which leaders lied to their populations and the biggest liar in the United States political arena was and is Trump.  This thread is about covid and people like the previous president or nurses  giving credibility to lies about covid which results in lower vaccination rates.  

[Wuzzie]

14 hours ago, DedHedRN said:

After talking to 7000 people this year about their health, and many of them having an adverse reactions to the vaccines, I’m not getting one.

What "adverse affects"? What constitutes "many"? 

[Hannahbanana, BSN, MSN]

2 hours ago, Hoosier_RN said:

3 hours ago, Hannahbanana said:

If you are vaccinated, you may well be protected from serious disease; even if you have a breakthrough case it will very likely be mild and almost certainly you will not be sick enough to be hospitalized or die. However, recent findings indicate that you *can* still acquire and carry the virus asymptomatically. More effective vaccinations can decrease the societal/community viral load. This is also why even if you are vaccinated, you should wear a mask to protect others. 

I get that, but I can see where it's a very confusing message to others. 

[Hannahbanana, BSN, MSN]

Quote

After talking to 7000 people this year about their health, and many of them having an adverse reactions to the vaccines, I’m not getting one.

Did you have a sore arm after your tetorifice shot? Have you traveled overseas to Africa, South America, or other places where yellow fever is still a factor, and had a sore arm from that? Is that an “adverse reaction” that you fear? Boo-hoo.