Let’s say that you work in a hospital. Let’s say that the hospital is mandating everyone have vaccinations against H1N1. Let’s say you don’t want to get vaccinated. What should happen to you?
In the case of two people working at a children’s hospital in Philadelphia, they got fired. Their excuse for not getting the vaccination?
God doesn’t want them to.
Of course these people have a right to their faith. They have a right to refuse vaccination, and the hospital has a responsibility to remove them from the staff if that’s what these people choose to do.
A little more annoying, though, is this quote from the article I linked to above:
Some of the fired employees, including Gary Cowlay, are members of the health care union. A union spokesperson said some people were granted a religious exemption but others were not.
Now that’s just not right. First off, no one should be given a religious exemption. If you work in a hospital, and you are told you need to be vaccinated against H1N1 in order to continue to work, you need to be vaccinated. If you don’t want the shot, you need to find another job.
Second, if there’s going to be any religious exemption, it should be applied fairly and to everyone who asks for it. Letting some people have it and some not really isn’t right.
To those who say that these poor people shouldn’t have lost their job over this, let me ask you: what if they’d said their religion wouldn’t allow them to wash their hands? It’s not out of the question. If there’s sects of Christians out there who so fucking stupid they believe vaccines are the tool of the Devil, you can be there’s ones out there who are so fucking stupid they believe soap is evil. Should they be allowed a religious exemption so they can keep working at a hospital?
“Sure,” you might say, “they should be fired, because hand washing has been proven to work, but vaccines haven’t, or even if they have, this particular one hasn’t!”
Well, they have been proven to work and while the H1N1 vaccine hasn’t undergone as many tests as one might like and while there hasn’t been much time to do those tests, from all the tests done so far, it seems to work fine. But, hey, if you don’t want to take the risk, don’t. Just don’t expect to work in a hospital.
Ultimately people have the right to their religious beliefs, and well they should. But when those beliefs come into conflict with an issue of public health, guess what needs to happen?
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