Letters: Nurse, vaccinate thyself

Re “Flu’s sticking point,” Jan. 19

I read your article with great interest, looking forward to my fellow nurses explaining how important it is for people — healthcare workers in particular — to get their yearly flu shot. Instead, I learned that the very people responsible for educating their patients were themselves believers of false science.

One nurse who tells postpartum mothers to get the flu shot for their newborns and themselves refused to get vaccinated herself. It surely wouldn’t encourage me to vaccinate.

Meanwhile, the California Nurses Assn. has the audacity to label as coercive asking nurses who refuse to get vaccinated to wear face masks during flu season. Then, Dr. Jonathan Fielding, the L.A. County public health director who supports forcing porn actors to wear condoms, doesn’t think mandating the flu vaccine for healthcare workers is necessary because the vaccine isn’t 100% effective.

We must be living in opposite land.

Geneviève M. Clavreul

Pasadena

We in the healthcare industry (I own a home for the elderly) have a responsibility to accept the flu vaccine. Those who do not get the shot place others, especially the frail and immune deficient, in jeopardy.

However, there remains quite a conflict between protecting people and violating certain rights. We can require those in contact with patients to have the shot or wear a mask during flu season. Those not in contact with patients, such as administrators and office workers, seem to feel that they pose no danger. The difficulty is that they still come in contact with the nurses and technicians who work with patients.

Frail patients and their families expect us to place guarding their health above our own rights.

Milton B. Rouse

Dana Point

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