Wednesday, January 2, 2013

When the State Owns Your Body

An Indiana hospital has fired 8 workers who refused to take a flu shot.

This was discussed here in Ontario a few months ago and I think it's outrageous. Here in Canada, it's bad enough that our health care system is nationalized-meaning that bureaucrats, not the individual and the physician, make decisions about our health and life.

It's an extra outrage when the state decides that your own body is not sovereign territory.

I understand that in the US, a privately owned hospital has the right to create its own conditions of employment and employees can like it or lump it.

However, the impetus for these regulations is certainly an over-bloated ministry of health, busy body health bureaucrats and/or aggressive pharmaceutical lobbying.

Most people that I know who get the flu shot get really sick when they get it. Not only that, they tend to get more colds and kvetch about being sick more than other people.

I have gotten one flu shot in my life.

I was particularly worried about the H1N1 when a few kids with special needs died during the flu season a few years ago. There was hysteria about medically and immuno-compromised kids being at a very high risk for DEATH. We bought into the hysteria and my whole family got the one shot.

As it turns out, the special needs kids who did pass away had very serious, underlying medical conditions that made them particularly vulnerable to any kind of infection or flu virus. That part wasn't discussed much in the media at the time.

So-no more flu shots for anyone in my family.

What kind of society do we have when you cannot refuse the injection of a substance into your body as a condition of employment? Standard, proven inoculations are one thing. This is a whole other realm of nanny-state interference in my view.