Resistance To Mandatory Flu Vaccine Grows In Health Workers

Healthcare workers staged a protest outside New York’s capitol building last week. Their protest was against choosing between getting the seasonal and H1N1 flu shot or losing their jobs.

 NEW YORK CITY, N.Y. – Healthcare workers staged a protest outside New York’s capitol building last week.

Their protest was against choosing between getting the seasonal and H1N1 flu shot or losing their jobs.

This choice was mandated from the New York state health officials.

“We are health care workers and we are not even given the credit or the respect to make the decision,” said Carole Blueweiss, a physical therapist of 15 years at New York hospital. “It’s outrageous and it feels criminal and anti-American.”

Blueweiss also told CBS News that she will give her son the seasonal flu vaccine but the H1N1 vaccine is not going in either of their bodies.

Other healthcare professionals say that those who don’t take the flu shots risk hurting their professions.

“That’s kind of intolerable that patients should come to a hospital and not know that the healthcare workers are vaccinated,” said Dr. Richard Daines, New York State Commissioner of Health.

New York is the only state to carry such a mandate in the United States.

Studies have shown that only 40 percent of New York’s 925,000 healthcare workers get vaccinations voluntarily.

A recent Harvard poll indicated that the general public is resistant to getting the H1N1 shot as well.

Only four in 10 adults said they would receive the shot, while six in 10 said they would to their children.