Our large, soulless corporation got 100 flu vaccines, and said they’d innocuate the first 100 people to turn in their forms. I, of course, knocked pregnant ladies and elderly men outta my way and turned my form in.
Now I’m reading in the paper about nursing homes and hospitals and AIDS clinics turning people away because they ran out of vaccine. Should I feel guilty about getting a shot? If I gave up my turn, another young, healthy employee would get it instead of me. I know my company; I tried to get them to drop morally dubious investments from our 401(k) plan and was told flat out to mind my own business. If I suggested we donate our 100 vaccines to clinics who really needed it, they’ll just laugh me out of the room. It’s not like I can take “my” needle and give it to some old lady somewhere.
Well, there ya go, then. It wouldn’t go to a truly needy place, just to someone else in your office. Within those parameters, decide how important is for you to have one. Those outside your office don’t enter into the equation. ymmv, imho, iane, etc…
Well, personally, I don’t think anyone except the elderly, children, and the sick/frail should get a flu shot anyways. I’ve never had one past age 10, and I don’t plan on getting any more untill several years after I retire. However, I’m not going to yell at you for getting one, If you want one, that’s your decision.
But, in regards to ‘stealing’ a flu vaccine from someone who needed it: Is there actually someone else in your office that needed one more than you that didn’t get one? To compare your shot with the nursing homes that have no vaccine is not accurate, because your company would still have used all 100 of the shots they got whether or not you got one. They wouldn’t have had one left over and then donated it to a clinic. If you did, indeed, knock pregnant ladies and elderly people out of the way, then yes, you’re a bad person and going to Hell , but I assume you meant that figuratively. In that case…eh, maybe.
If there are honestly several people in your office that you knew when you filled out your form needed the vaccine more than you, then maybe you should feel guilty. The thing about feeling guility is yes, people can tell you to feel it or not, but only you can actually feel it. Personally, I have found that I either do or do not feel guilty about things. No amount of mulling it over, talking about it, or being lectured to will make that feeling go away or appear. My morals dictate my feelings, but YMMV.
So, in closing, you’re a heartless skank for stealing precious flu vaccine from old, pregnant, diseased people.
I briefly considered dropping a dime on them, but to whom? And if they obtained the vaccines legally (if not morally), what good would it do? Except get me fired . . .
I’d just as soon have the shot as one of my blooming-with-health 20-something coworkers, but I can’t help thinking about clinics and hospitals going without.
What the company should do . . . maybe I’ll suggest this, since the shots aren’t being given out till the 29th . . . Is give them to the 100 people who need them most, who have health problems or are over 65 (nope, none in our company). I think I’ll e-mail HR on Monday and suggest they do that.
I’d like a flu shot, as the one year I didn’t get one I was sicker than three pups. But I think the company could distribute them more wisely. So, yeah, I think I will forward my suggestion to HR on Monday.
I have a feeling their answer will be a Nelson Muntz-like “Ha-ha!”
I strongly doubt your company will risk putting itself in the position of arbiter over people’s health. They would have to be insane to do so.
Scenario One (virtually inevitable, by the way): the company HR director or nurse picks 100 “lucky” people with fragile health to receive the shot. Someone who requested but did not receive the vaccine gets sick – and sues the company’s ass off for not giving the vaccine to them.
**Scenario Two ** (somewhat less likely, but hardly far-fetched): the company HR director or nurse picks 100 “lucky” people with fragile health to receive the shot. Someone who DID receive the vaccine gets a reaction or has some other health problem which they attribute, rightly or wrongly, to the vaccine – and sues the company’s ass off, on the theory that the company’s decision to take responsibility for who SHOULD get the shot based on their health implies an equal responsibility to determine who should NOT get the shoget t based on their health.
Lastly, there are probably plenty of people who should be bumped to the front of the line to receive he shot based on their health, but who wisely choose not to reveal their ailments to the company. Your scenario would actually REDUCE these people’s chances of receiving the vaccine.
My advice to you is that if you really feel that you will get sick without the shot, just take it, for God’s sake. If you do not, then bow out if it makes you feel virtuous to do so, but don’t expect recognition for your charitable decision, and for fror your own sanity’s sake stay away from the testing site so you won’t develop a major resentment from watching all those healthy young bucks and lasses bellying up to the nurses’s station for their shots.
Your heart is in the right place, but you should probably just let this one go.
Well the thing about morality is; you only have to worry about YOUR actions and not the actions of some one else.
The above statement is something along the lines of: If your best friend robs an old lady of her pension fund then offers to give you half the cash even though you did nothing to helop said friend to rob the old lady. Would you still reason “Well if I don’t take it she/he will just give it to another friend…”
Eve, dahlink, look at it from the point of view of your cow-orkers. The shots are for the sick and elderly, but they can’t take offense because you are probably the oldest person most of them know outside of their immediate families.
Tenar, The HR person does not need to picky some lucky people and has no responsibility for any consequences unless (s)he does as they are doing and goes against the extremely clear guidelines that are well publicized*. They are well insulated from such lawsuits by following the guidelines; they expose themselves by deciding to administer based on something other than the guidelines. Some states are even threatening docs with jailtime if they ignore the guidelines.
If there are not 100 people who meet the guideline’s cutoff in your company then the local public health dept must be contacted for redistribution. If a high risk person is in your company and fails to get the vaccine while a low risk person does (in direct violation of published guidelines) then your company is exposed for any flu complication that high risker experiences.
Yes, you should feel very guilty if you get a flu shot this year.
*You may be surprised who qualifies - not only the elderly and visibly ill, but those with asthma, diabetes, on any immunosuppressive medication, chronic renal disease, pregnant, has an infant under six months old in their household, etc. They may be there and you just wouldn’t know.
DSeid, how the heck are organizations other than employers deciding who gets the vaccine? My doctor can’t give me any, even if I’m in a risk group (asthmatic), because he doesn’t have any. My worksite program has been cancelled for lack of vaccine. My dad (asthmatic) can get one, because his allergist has vaccine, but my stepmother (lupus) can’t get one, because her doc doesn’t. I cant get a live human on the phone at the Health Dept. to tell me how they are allocating vaccine, but aren’t their clinics normally only for low-income people? Osco near me has cancelled their clinic fo rlack of vaccine; I cna’t get a live human on the phone at their corp. offices to tell me whether this is chain-wide.
Vaccine distribution has been complete mayhem. In past years, I usually haven’t bothered, but the whole shortage is making me a tad panicky. And yet I’m sure that there are doctors lucky enough to have vaccine who are giving it to people not in recognized risk groups. Sheesh, I’m seriously thinking about a trip to Toronto.
My office contracted with Adventis-Pasteur - we have plenty. We are following guidelines and have given it to parents who qualify as well, if they can’t get it elsewhere. (If I run out for the second shot in a child 6 to 23 months because I gave it to a high-risk adult, I won’t feel too bad, but more on that later.) If your office contracted with Chiron then you are probably SOS, although the CDC has worked with Adventis-Pasteur on how to prioritize distribution of the remaining supply and redistribution to needy sites (usually not allowed) of excess is being encouraged. Not doing so is unconscionable.
Another part of this problem is the continuation of placing the under 2 yo crowd as “high-risk.” I’ll follow the damn guidelines but these kids are high-risk lite. Yes they can end up in the hospital as often as the elderly, but the difference is that the kids are back out in a day or so … the adults might die. 36,000 deaths from influenza in this country every year; less than a few dozen of them in these newly targetted kids. Yet a large amount of the vaccine is being used up on them and really high-risk adults might go without.
I’m just a worker bee. I’ll follow the guideline. But I don’t have to like it.
No, because you’ll be immunized against the predicted, most nastiest flu strains this season. Then you won’t catch them. Then you won’t put your mom at risk when you go to visit her.
Re reading the article, I realized I probably overstated things. You might find it difficult (as in, you won’t be able to drop in to shoppers and get a shot) but it probably won’t be impossible.
I was told that Mom was vaccinated when she was in the hosp. for the first two weeks of Oct. I’m trying to get written confirmation so her assisted-living place doesn’t re-vaccinate her.
Of course, I do spend every other weekend at the assisted-living place, which I guess puts me in contact with enough sick, elderly people to count me as a “healthcare worker.”
As one of the “high risk” folks, barely, I have deigned to stand in line for 4-7 hours at the floating clinics at various pharmacies in my area last week. They were all scheduled to start giving shots (200 to 400 each) at 3 or 4 p.m. I called them at 3:15 and 4:15 for status reports and learned that all the forms had been given, to all the “high risk” folks (and the "pushers out of the wayers, probably). A co-worker who is 8 months pregnant is worrying that she will have to stand in line when more serum is available. Our at-work clinic got cancelled. As for me, I’ve been getting a shot thru visiting clinics at work for several years. One year I missed it and didn’t get the flu. Two of the years I got the vaccine, I also got the flu. The county health dept. has received 1200 shots for this coming week. This state (and perhaps others?) has made it a misdemeanor crime as of last week to give a shot to anyone not in the high risk categories. But it is an area with lots of retirees and other “old folks” like me, so queueing will be the norm. So the girl who pushed young, old and pg folks out of the way, well, I forgive her. And hope she gets the flu. Just kidding! (take your pick about which one).
I have never understood the line ups to get a flu shot. Sure, some people need them. But all the healthy people who don’t live in communal housing I see lining up for the things make me want to find a flamethrower. Boosting our immune systems up to deal with what is, for most people, a harmless affliction only gets the germs in a fighting mood. It’s like giving everyone penicillin, we don’t need to go out there and help the evolutionary process along when it’s trying to kill us.
Or, “we got caught.” Just got this e-mail from HR:
“Due to the shortage in influenza vaccines the service that is coming to our office on Friday will only be vaccinating employees who fall under the ‘People at Risk’ or ‘Priority Group’ category . . . . All of our unused shots will be portioned out to people at risk throughout the city.”
So I shan’t be getting the shot after all. I better stock up on “sick food,” just in case, and an easy-to-use ice crusher. I always get caught with an empty larder when I get sick.
Not really because the flu and the flu vaccine are different strains every year—you’re not building up immunity, beause it’s a different disease. The one year I didn’t get the shot, I got sooooo sick. This year I’ll just keep my fingers crossed.
, but I assume you meant that figuratively. In that case…eh, maybe.