Some fear vaccines more than flu viruses
For three Moses Cone Hospital employees, not wanting to get a seasonal flu shot was worth losing a job.
While they might have paid a high price for their stance, they’re not alone. Many Americans, urged on by prominent skeptics such as Rush Limbaugh , say they don’t trust the vaccine and don’t want a shot.
The aversion raises a thorny question: Is flu-shot paranoia spreading faster than the illness itself?
Keith McCrary, associate director of UNCG’s student health services, said generational factors are at work.
“They’ve never seen this kind of a mass vaccination before,” he said, speaking of students. “So they’re a bit skeptical.”
A national study by the C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital in Michigan found that only 40 percent of parents planned to have their children vaccinated against the H1N1, or swine flu, virus. A majority said they were worried about possible side effects, although public health officials say no serious problems have been reported.
In the Moses Cone case, the hospital required employees to receive seasonal flu shots for the first time this year. The H1N1 shots will be required as well, said hospital spokesman Doug Allred . He said the requirement is an effort to protect those at the hospital. More than 8,000 shots were given, but three employees refused.
Distrust has flowered in an environment in which many serious diseases have been all but eradicated and pandemics are only faintly remembered.
Very few people remember the 1918 flu pandemic, which killed more than 500,000 Americans and millions more globally. For younger Americans, the polio epidemics that swept the country after World War II, emptying swimming pools and killing and crippling thousands of children, are distant history.
Dr. Ward Robinson, medical director at the Guilford County public health department, said that for many people, the level of concern about some diseases has fallen so far that they are now more concerned about the effects of the vaccine.
The reluctance also comes in the context of a backdrop of anti-government rhetoric.
According to the watchdog group Media Matters, Limbaugh recently weighed in on the H1N1 vaccine. “You have some idiot government official demanding, telling me I must take this vaccine. I’ll never take it,” he said.
“The next time you hear 'The government says ...’ don’t believe it. You’ll be healthier, trust me,” Limbaugh said.
Attitudes were different when diseases such as polio were prevalent, said McCrary of UNCG.
“That’s just stuff that we grew up with, and we had faith that the government was going to give us something that’s OK,” he said.
In the case of the H1N1 vaccine, some concerns deal with the newness of the vaccine and whether it is being rushed out.
“This is using the same process as the seasonal flu vaccine,” McCrary said. “All they did is alter it just a little bit to address the difference in the virus.”
Contact Jason Hardin at 373-7021 or at jason.hardin@news-record.com
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