Yesterday was the 21st anniversary of the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. The event that we here in Central New York remember as killing "35 Syracuse University students, and a couple from Clay." But as we've reached the point now where there are students at SU who weren't even born when Flight 103 went down, I've come to wonder about the "half-life of grief." How long do we feel that we have to remember? When will we finally be allowed to forget, without seeming to be disrespectful to those who were killed? When will we finally be allowed to no longer define ourselves by one terrible day, and to finally let it become history?
As I’ve thought about our “one terrible day,” I thought about Kent OH and Bath MI, and how they’ve handled their respective memories through the years.
I was in 8th grade on May 4, 1970, and I can't hear the names "Kent State" or "Kent OH" without thinking of that "one terrible day," and the famous picture that was on the front of every newspaper. But almost 40 years later, how many people are still on campus, or in town for that matter, who were there and still remember? Any faculty or staff members have long since retired or died, most students have long since moved away, and I wonder how much of the town itself has "turned over" since then. In addition, not only did the events of May 1970 happen long before any of the current students were born, it's getting close to happening before the parents of those students were born.
How are Kent and the University handling the memory now? Are they are still actively trying to keep it alive, or are they letting it take its natural course of fading - much like the memories of students killed during WWI, WWII, Korea, and even Vietnam. At some point the memories have to fade. We can't remember and hold onto every tragedy. It's not good for us...or those we remember.
Which brings us to Bath MI. I had never heard of it until the random Wikipedia "article of the day" brought up a piece about the Bath School Disaster of 1927. Then I got to thinking of how the people in this town have handled things in the 80-odd years since. Are they still actively "honoring the memory" of their "one terrible day," or are they trying to get past it?
I wrote to people in both towns, and only heard from Bath. I guess it really does pay to "ask a librarian," because that's exactly who I asked.
The response was that Bath does not want to be solely identified by that tragedy, and tries to play it down. There is a memorial in town, but no big formal observances. The youngest victims would’ve been 89 years old this year, and the remaining four or five people in town who still remember steadfastly refuse to be interviewed about it, and want to be left alone. It is history, and they wish it to be left as such.
At some point the memory of our "one terrible day" will fade, except for a few people still directly affected by it, and a few historians. It has to. It will become a historical footnote much like the Split Rock explosion - something that happened here, but doesn't define us. At some point it will have happened before the parents of the incoming class of SU students were born.
Hmm...maybe you remember every year for the first 10 years. Then every five until you get to 30, and every ten until you get to 50. At that point, most people with any ties to it will have been long gone anyway. Then you have one last observance at 100 years, and you put it to bed. Maybe that's what the half-life of grief is.
The time when the parents of the incoming class will have been born after our "one terrible day" will be around 2032, just six years short of the 50-year mark, and I'll be 76 then. I hope I'm still around to see the day.
Tuesday, December 22, 2009
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
Good Grief! It's the Holiday Season.
Well, Charlie Brown, Thanksgiving has come and gone, and we're now into the holiday season again.
"Oh, good grief!" I can hear both you and Linus saying. You're thinking that it's bad enough that Christmas has become as commercialized as it is (which is even more than it was when you first brought it to our attention back in 1965), but now I've made things worse by wimping out and using the politically correct, all-inclusive phrase "holiday season," when everyone knows we're really talking about Christmas.
Well, Chuck (May I call you "Chuck?" Peppermint Patty seems to be about the only other person who does.), I used to feel that way too. I used to get about as crabby as Lucy is on a daily basis when I thought about how much people have commercialized, trivialized and watered down my religious holiday - while all the time never refusing a gift from anyone.
Then I did a little reading and found out something interesting. You see, despite all the signs we see to the contrary, Jesus is not the reason for the season. I know, you're thinking I'm nuts here, but hold on a second and I'll explain.
Long before anyone was celebrating Christmas, there already was a pretty established December holiday season in the Roman Empire, and it entailed a lot of the trappings (and the excesses) of the current secular celebration of Christmas. When the church finally decided to make Christmas an official holiday, they picked a time when everyone was already celebrating - Dec. 25.
I guess they figured that by putting the religious holiday in the middle of all the other celebrations, it would tone things down a bit. What happened instead was that Christmas picked up all the trappings and excesses of the other celebrations. It was sort of like trying to celebrate Easter on the 4th of July.
And this 800-pound-gorilla of a December holiday season has been sucking up everything in its path for centuries, including, ironically enough, Hanukkah, which started off as a holiday celebrating the success of the ancient Jews in resisting forced assimilation.
So we sort of did it to ourselves by deciding to put Christmas where we did. Had we put it in the middle of the year with no other general celebrations anywhere near it, we'd still have a rowdy, commercialized end-of-the-year celebration, but we'd also have a quiet Christmas that attracts about as much outside attention as Pentecost.
Linus is nodding his head. I think he understands what I'm saying.
So the peace I've made with the whole thing is that there is a December holiday season that includes Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Divali, Beethoven's birthday (I had to say that for Schroeder), New Years and who knows what all else. I've also decided that there are two distinct celebrations that happen to fall on Dec. 25, one secular and one religious. I celebrate them both, and have been able to lighten up about it, no longer getting into a snit about people who only celebrate the secular one or people who ignore the "true meaning" of the holiday.
So, Charlie Brown, I'll wish everyone a "happy holiday season" without feeling that I'm wimping out, or being blandly politically correct, knowing that in today's diverse culture I'll I get someone's holiday in there no matter what they do or don't celebrate. But to you and Linus I'll make a special point of saying "Merry Christmas!"
First published in the Syracuse Post-Standard on November 25, 2001
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
A Small Town
When I tell people up here in Central New York that I’m from a small town of about 77,000 people, they just look at me funny. There’s no way that 77,000 people is a small town. Fabius, with only 1974 people, is a small town. East Orange is not.
But you have to consider where East Orange is. In addition to telling people that I’m from a small town, I also tell them that I grew up 20 minutes from New York City – at 2.00 in the morning, when there’s no traffic. Compared to Newark with 281,000 people, Jersey City with 242,000, Elizabeth with 124,000, and of course the 8 million people across the river in NYC, East Orange was a small town.
Then there’s size. Neighboring Newark was 26 square miles. Nearby West Orange was 12, and Montclair was 6. East Orange was barely 4 square miles. I could walk it from end to end in less than an hour, and since I was usually on a bike, it took even less time. While it’s true that you could fit the entire population of Fabius into my old high school, the town itself is a whopping 47 square miles. So who’s from a small town?
Obviously, my perception of East Orange as being a small town was based on its size, but there’s something else. My father grew up in East Orange, and I went to the same grade school and high school that my father went to. I just barely missed having some of his teachers as my teachers, but I did have kids he grew up with as teachers. I also went to school with the children of kids he grew up with. Kids he grew up with were police officers and firemen. Not only that, by my grandmother was a beautician, and it seemed like between her and the other three “operators” in her shop, they knew everyone else in town.
With all these people knowing my family, and knowing who I was, if I got in trouble on one side of town, the news got home before I did. But it wasn’t just a case of these people waiting to report on my misbehavior, they were also there to help if I needed it.
Isn’t that what a small town is all about? Isn’t it about the librarians knowing you by name, or the teacher who lives across the street from you giving you a ride to school every morning? Isn’t it about the local pharmacist calling your father to report that he almost ran into you as you were riding your bike, and then taking the time to talk to you about it himself when you went in to buy candy? Isn’t it about the school nurse saying that your grandmother left in the middle of doing her hair when your mother went into labor, and the guidance counselor being one of her bridge playing partners?
Isn’t it about being able to run into people you know when you went grocery shopping, no matter whether you were at the Acme around the corner, King’s or ShopRite on Main St, or Good Deal across town on Central Ave?
If this is what a small town is all about, then isn’t East Orange, with its 77,000 people every bit as much of a small town as Fabius with its 1974?
If it is, and I believe it is, then I am from a small town.
But you have to consider where East Orange is. In addition to telling people that I’m from a small town, I also tell them that I grew up 20 minutes from New York City – at 2.00 in the morning, when there’s no traffic. Compared to Newark with 281,000 people, Jersey City with 242,000, Elizabeth with 124,000, and of course the 8 million people across the river in NYC, East Orange was a small town.
Then there’s size. Neighboring Newark was 26 square miles. Nearby West Orange was 12, and Montclair was 6. East Orange was barely 4 square miles. I could walk it from end to end in less than an hour, and since I was usually on a bike, it took even less time. While it’s true that you could fit the entire population of Fabius into my old high school, the town itself is a whopping 47 square miles. So who’s from a small town?
Obviously, my perception of East Orange as being a small town was based on its size, but there’s something else. My father grew up in East Orange, and I went to the same grade school and high school that my father went to. I just barely missed having some of his teachers as my teachers, but I did have kids he grew up with as teachers. I also went to school with the children of kids he grew up with. Kids he grew up with were police officers and firemen. Not only that, by my grandmother was a beautician, and it seemed like between her and the other three “operators” in her shop, they knew everyone else in town.
With all these people knowing my family, and knowing who I was, if I got in trouble on one side of town, the news got home before I did. But it wasn’t just a case of these people waiting to report on my misbehavior, they were also there to help if I needed it.
Isn’t that what a small town is all about? Isn’t it about the librarians knowing you by name, or the teacher who lives across the street from you giving you a ride to school every morning? Isn’t it about the local pharmacist calling your father to report that he almost ran into you as you were riding your bike, and then taking the time to talk to you about it himself when you went in to buy candy? Isn’t it about the school nurse saying that your grandmother left in the middle of doing her hair when your mother went into labor, and the guidance counselor being one of her bridge playing partners?
Isn’t it about being able to run into people you know when you went grocery shopping, no matter whether you were at the Acme around the corner, King’s or ShopRite on Main St, or Good Deal across town on Central Ave?
If this is what a small town is all about, then isn’t East Orange, with its 77,000 people every bit as much of a small town as Fabius with its 1974?
If it is, and I believe it is, then I am from a small town.
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Veteran's Day
On the way back from the 6th grade class trip, I saw our bus driver’s reflection in the rearview mirror, and in that reflection, I saw the word on his hat: Vietnam. This got me thinking about how horribly many people treated the soldiers returning from over there 30-odd years ago. It also got me thinking about why they treated them so horribly.
Vietnam was a different kind of war from anything that the American general public was used to. Our reasons for fighting World War I and World War II seemed very clear to most people. In addition, the people we were fighting tended to fight according to the “European” rules of engagement that we were used to. Both sides understood that it was about taking out the ball bearing plant, or the refinery, or all the bridges across a certain river so that the other side couldn’t fight anymore. Despite the fact that there was always collateral damage, the battles and the bombings were generally always about the people in uniforms and the supply lines to them. Both sides understood the difference between combatants and civilians. Both sides had a minimum age for combatants, and would never send a child into battle.
And when our soldiers came back from those two wars, they were treated like heroes.
Vietnam was much less clear. Not only was the average person not really sure what we were doing there, but we were fighting an enemy that didn’t follow our rules of engagement. When that last ball bearing plant, refinery, or bridge had been destroyed, they would send children, people we would consider innocent noncombatants, in to attack us, or use them as decoys.
But that could only happen so many times before we caught on, and regretfully changed our rules of engagement to match theirs. Not that we’d send our children into battle, but we would shoot at theirs. And not fully understanding what the other side was doing, many of us at home naively referred to our soldiers serving over there as “baby killers.” Unlike the heroic return we gave to our soldiers from WWI and WWII, we treated our soldiers from Vietnam like pariahs. They were so often spat at by people that many of them refused to wear their uniforms in public.
It’s been almost 30 years now, and I’d like to think that we’ve all grown up. I’d like to think that we understand just what a complicated situation Vietnam was. I’d like to think that we understand just what hellish conditions our soldiers over there often worked under, and that they weren’t happy about having to shoot at children carrying bombs.
The fact that our driver, and many others, could wear a hat that said “Vietnam” in public, shows that things have indeed changed, and that we quietly recognize them as heroes, even though they never got their parade.
I’d like to say that I stopped to thank our driver, not for the ride, but for serving, but I didn’t think about that until much later. But the next time I see someone with one of those hats on, I will.
Vietnam was a different kind of war from anything that the American general public was used to. Our reasons for fighting World War I and World War II seemed very clear to most people. In addition, the people we were fighting tended to fight according to the “European” rules of engagement that we were used to. Both sides understood that it was about taking out the ball bearing plant, or the refinery, or all the bridges across a certain river so that the other side couldn’t fight anymore. Despite the fact that there was always collateral damage, the battles and the bombings were generally always about the people in uniforms and the supply lines to them. Both sides understood the difference between combatants and civilians. Both sides had a minimum age for combatants, and would never send a child into battle.
And when our soldiers came back from those two wars, they were treated like heroes.
Vietnam was much less clear. Not only was the average person not really sure what we were doing there, but we were fighting an enemy that didn’t follow our rules of engagement. When that last ball bearing plant, refinery, or bridge had been destroyed, they would send children, people we would consider innocent noncombatants, in to attack us, or use them as decoys.
But that could only happen so many times before we caught on, and regretfully changed our rules of engagement to match theirs. Not that we’d send our children into battle, but we would shoot at theirs. And not fully understanding what the other side was doing, many of us at home naively referred to our soldiers serving over there as “baby killers.” Unlike the heroic return we gave to our soldiers from WWI and WWII, we treated our soldiers from Vietnam like pariahs. They were so often spat at by people that many of them refused to wear their uniforms in public.
It’s been almost 30 years now, and I’d like to think that we’ve all grown up. I’d like to think that we understand just what a complicated situation Vietnam was. I’d like to think that we understand just what hellish conditions our soldiers over there often worked under, and that they weren’t happy about having to shoot at children carrying bombs.
The fact that our driver, and many others, could wear a hat that said “Vietnam” in public, shows that things have indeed changed, and that we quietly recognize them as heroes, even though they never got their parade.
I’d like to say that I stopped to thank our driver, not for the ride, but for serving, but I didn’t think about that until much later. But the next time I see someone with one of those hats on, I will.
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
Skeletons in the Closet
Halloween is coming up, and it’s time to talk about skeletons. No, not the kind that hang out with the ghosts, witches, and goblins, scaring little kids. I’m talking about the kind that are hiding in your closet, scaring you and threatening to ruin your career.
Everybody’s talking these days about how thanks to the Internet, people can dig up some of our deepest, darkest secrets and use them against us. Indeed, colleges and potential employers have been known to check out the Facebook and MySpace profiles of potential students or employees before making them offers, with the result that that one drunken picture of you holding up your middle finger to the camera could cost you a job offer.
In addition, “intimate” photographs that were meant only to be shared between you and a significant other can end up posted to the Internet to embarrass you after a breakup or by a roommate who had access to your significant other’s computer and wanted to have a little “fun.”
The snarky comment you posted online about wanting to “stick it to the man” back when you were in high school can come back to haunt you when the company you work for 10 years later has an important government contract, and you’re denied security clearance.
But I think this is just a fad. I hope this is just a fad. And this fad comes from our newly-found ability to dredge up stuff on people that was there all along, but that we just weren’t able to find before.
Let’s face it, we all have skeletons in our closets. We all said or did stupid things in high school or college that we wouldn’t want held against us now, and that we’re thankful that no one had the technology to find out about. Even the people who are doing the dredging have skeletons, which would make you think that they’d be a little more sensitive about it.
And what about those “intimate” pictures? As recently as 10 years ago a lot of those photographs wouldn’t have existed to be passed around by hand, let alone posted to the Internet. That’s because Kodak, or whoever the processor was, served as a filter. You could take all the intimate photos you wanted of someone, but unless you knew how to develop film yourself, you very likely wouldn’t ever get prints back of them. Sure, you could use a Polaroid to get “instant prints” that didn’t need to go out to be processed, but then you couldn’t get copies.
Then came the digital camera, and you could take pictures of anyone wearing (or not wearing) anything, and doing anything, without having to send them out to be processed. Now there was nothing to prevent you from taking a “funny” picture of your roommate on the toilet, and emailing it to 30 of your “closest friends.” And there was nothing to prevent one of those “friends” from posting the picture to the Internet, where millions of other people, including potential colleges and employers, could see it.
Once again, I’m hoping this is all just a fad. I’m hoping that once we realize that we all have skeletons in our closets, and that we all know stupid people with digital cameras, the novelty of being able to find those skeletons will wear off. I’m hoping that once we realize that we all have skeletons in our closets, one drunken or naked (or drunken naked) photograph won’t sabotage a career.
Everybody’s talking these days about how thanks to the Internet, people can dig up some of our deepest, darkest secrets and use them against us. Indeed, colleges and potential employers have been known to check out the Facebook and MySpace profiles of potential students or employees before making them offers, with the result that that one drunken picture of you holding up your middle finger to the camera could cost you a job offer.
In addition, “intimate” photographs that were meant only to be shared between you and a significant other can end up posted to the Internet to embarrass you after a breakup or by a roommate who had access to your significant other’s computer and wanted to have a little “fun.”
The snarky comment you posted online about wanting to “stick it to the man” back when you were in high school can come back to haunt you when the company you work for 10 years later has an important government contract, and you’re denied security clearance.
But I think this is just a fad. I hope this is just a fad. And this fad comes from our newly-found ability to dredge up stuff on people that was there all along, but that we just weren’t able to find before.
Let’s face it, we all have skeletons in our closets. We all said or did stupid things in high school or college that we wouldn’t want held against us now, and that we’re thankful that no one had the technology to find out about. Even the people who are doing the dredging have skeletons, which would make you think that they’d be a little more sensitive about it.
And what about those “intimate” pictures? As recently as 10 years ago a lot of those photographs wouldn’t have existed to be passed around by hand, let alone posted to the Internet. That’s because Kodak, or whoever the processor was, served as a filter. You could take all the intimate photos you wanted of someone, but unless you knew how to develop film yourself, you very likely wouldn’t ever get prints back of them. Sure, you could use a Polaroid to get “instant prints” that didn’t need to go out to be processed, but then you couldn’t get copies.
Then came the digital camera, and you could take pictures of anyone wearing (or not wearing) anything, and doing anything, without having to send them out to be processed. Now there was nothing to prevent you from taking a “funny” picture of your roommate on the toilet, and emailing it to 30 of your “closest friends.” And there was nothing to prevent one of those “friends” from posting the picture to the Internet, where millions of other people, including potential colleges and employers, could see it.
Once again, I’m hoping this is all just a fad. I’m hoping that once we realize that we all have skeletons in our closets, and that we all know stupid people with digital cameras, the novelty of being able to find those skeletons will wear off. I’m hoping that once we realize that we all have skeletons in our closets, one drunken or naked (or drunken naked) photograph won’t sabotage a career.
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
The Paperless Classroom
There’s been a lot of talk about the paperless classroom. There’s been talk about it ever since the beginning of the personal computer era. And now that we’ve got ecological concerns, we’re hearing more and more about the paperless classroom, and paperless assignments. Be “green,” don’t give your students individual handouts anymore, put them online, where they can’t lose them, and can always refer to them (provided the connection is up and running).
But there are a few problems with this scenario. Aside from the obvious courses like art and music where it’s still pretty hard to be paperless at this point, there are problems. There are questions.
The first is whether going paperless really helps the environment at all, or just pushes the problem somewhere else in the system. On the one hand, we think of all the paper saved, and all the trees not cut down. That has to be better for the environment. But I’ve known a Forestry student or two (“Stumpies” we called them around here), and I know that for things like paper and Christmas trees, trees are treated like crops, and are planted and harvested systematically for those purposes. It’s not like they’re hacking down the Black Forest to make printer paper. If we’re going to worry about the environmental effects of planting and harvesting wood for paper, then shouldn’t we start worrying about the environmental effects of planting and harvesting corn, wheat, potatoes, etc.
Related to this is the issue of whether or not going paperless solves a problem or just pushes it somewhere else in the system. What does it take to build all those computers and to create the infrastructure that allows them to send documents all over the world paperlessly? What are the environmental effects of producing all those batteries and other electronic components?
The second question is whether or not going paperless really helps the student and the teacher. The answer to this is a definite “sometimes.” On the one hand, the assignments that are handed in to me electronically are the assignments that don’t get lost.
On the other hand, there’s the whole issue of handouts. I’ve tried working on my computer from an online manual, and unless that online manual is on my laptop and I’m trying to get the work done on my desktop, it just doesn’t work. Flipping back and forth between screens on the same computer is a disaster for me. Flipping back and forth between screens on the same computer has shown itself to be a disaster for my students. Sometimes you just need a piece of paper with the instructions sitting on your desk for you to keep referring to.
Even when I’m grading quizzes, which come back to me in email, I need a piece of paper to compile the results before putting them into the electronic gradebook. Once again, it’s that back and forth between two screens thing. Being able to jot it all down on a piece of paper and then quickly transfer the results to the gradebook is so much easier and faster.
Perhaps, rather than trying to go totally paperless, we should focus our efforts on eliminating the waste that comes when users don’t pay attention to what printer they sent their job to. Or the waste that occurs when students print out tons of the most inane ephemera - like posters on Pastafarianism.
The paperless classroom may arrive one of these days. But for now, as for me and my classroom, despite the fact that they’re available online, I’m giving out handouts again. My students will thank me, and their grades, which I’ll jot down on paper first, will go up.
But there are a few problems with this scenario. Aside from the obvious courses like art and music where it’s still pretty hard to be paperless at this point, there are problems. There are questions.
The first is whether going paperless really helps the environment at all, or just pushes the problem somewhere else in the system. On the one hand, we think of all the paper saved, and all the trees not cut down. That has to be better for the environment. But I’ve known a Forestry student or two (“Stumpies” we called them around here), and I know that for things like paper and Christmas trees, trees are treated like crops, and are planted and harvested systematically for those purposes. It’s not like they’re hacking down the Black Forest to make printer paper. If we’re going to worry about the environmental effects of planting and harvesting wood for paper, then shouldn’t we start worrying about the environmental effects of planting and harvesting corn, wheat, potatoes, etc.
Related to this is the issue of whether or not going paperless solves a problem or just pushes it somewhere else in the system. What does it take to build all those computers and to create the infrastructure that allows them to send documents all over the world paperlessly? What are the environmental effects of producing all those batteries and other electronic components?
The second question is whether or not going paperless really helps the student and the teacher. The answer to this is a definite “sometimes.” On the one hand, the assignments that are handed in to me electronically are the assignments that don’t get lost.
On the other hand, there’s the whole issue of handouts. I’ve tried working on my computer from an online manual, and unless that online manual is on my laptop and I’m trying to get the work done on my desktop, it just doesn’t work. Flipping back and forth between screens on the same computer is a disaster for me. Flipping back and forth between screens on the same computer has shown itself to be a disaster for my students. Sometimes you just need a piece of paper with the instructions sitting on your desk for you to keep referring to.
Even when I’m grading quizzes, which come back to me in email, I need a piece of paper to compile the results before putting them into the electronic gradebook. Once again, it’s that back and forth between two screens thing. Being able to jot it all down on a piece of paper and then quickly transfer the results to the gradebook is so much easier and faster.
Perhaps, rather than trying to go totally paperless, we should focus our efforts on eliminating the waste that comes when users don’t pay attention to what printer they sent their job to. Or the waste that occurs when students print out tons of the most inane ephemera - like posters on Pastafarianism.
The paperless classroom may arrive one of these days. But for now, as for me and my classroom, despite the fact that they’re available online, I’m giving out handouts again. My students will thank me, and their grades, which I’ll jot down on paper first, will go up.
Monday, October 12, 2009
Nothing to Sneeze At
There’s a group of nurses and other health care workers here in Syracuse NY who are protesting the fact that state law requires them to get the flu shot this year. They say that it violates their personal rights, and that it’s not fair for them to be forced to get the flu shot or lose their jobs.
I say, “You have got to be kidding!”
I could understand if these were auto mechanics, teachers, hairdressers, pastors, lawyers or people in a host of other jobs and professions we were talking about. There is absolutely no reason to require any of these people to get flu shots. Threatening them with the loss of their jobs if they didn’t get one would be stupid, totally unfair, and a violation of their rights. But hearing that complaint from nurses and other health care workers just rings hollow with me.
Because they’re health care workers, for Pete’s sake. These are people who will be around some of the sickest people there are and people with some of the most compromised immune systems. These are the people most likely to get it from one patient and give it to another, or to bring it home to their loved ones. These are the very people we need to keep healthy in order to take care of the rest of us. It’s just common sense that they should get it. We shouldn’t need a law to force them, but sadly, for some of them, we do.
Yes, I suppose you have the right to refuse to get a flu shot. And if you want to exercise that right, then you need to be in a field other than health care. Because as a patient, I have a right to expect that the people who will be attending to me have taken every reasonable precaution to stay healthy.
And these health care workers really should know better! They should understand how diseases travel and the importance of prevention. They say, “But I never get sick,” or “the last time I got a flu shot, it made me sick.” The “Spanish Flu” pandemic of 1918 killed more people in two years (at least 50 million) than AIDS has in 28 (25 million). It also unusual in that it killed healthy young adults rather than children, the elderly, or otherwise weakened patients. With that in mind, these people who “never get sick” are precisely the people who need to get the flu shot. And the sickness that they experienced after their flu shot was probably nothing like what the full-blown flu would have been like.
It’s funny though. What do these health care workers think of the laws that say that their children can’t go to school unless they’ve been properly vaccinated for a host of diseases? Do these laws violate their children’s right to an education, or do they understand the wisdom in these laws? You can’t even go to college now without a complete vaccination record.
It’s like this. Most people could understand getting the flu from a coworker or another patient in the doctor’s office, but if they found out that they got it from one of the nurses – who had chosen not gotten the vaccine – they would not be very understanding, and would have every right to bring a lawsuit.
And that is nothing to sneeze at.
For the record, I got my flu shot, as has everyone else in my family. Especially my wife, the nurse.
I say, “You have got to be kidding!”
I could understand if these were auto mechanics, teachers, hairdressers, pastors, lawyers or people in a host of other jobs and professions we were talking about. There is absolutely no reason to require any of these people to get flu shots. Threatening them with the loss of their jobs if they didn’t get one would be stupid, totally unfair, and a violation of their rights. But hearing that complaint from nurses and other health care workers just rings hollow with me.
Because they’re health care workers, for Pete’s sake. These are people who will be around some of the sickest people there are and people with some of the most compromised immune systems. These are the people most likely to get it from one patient and give it to another, or to bring it home to their loved ones. These are the very people we need to keep healthy in order to take care of the rest of us. It’s just common sense that they should get it. We shouldn’t need a law to force them, but sadly, for some of them, we do.
Yes, I suppose you have the right to refuse to get a flu shot. And if you want to exercise that right, then you need to be in a field other than health care. Because as a patient, I have a right to expect that the people who will be attending to me have taken every reasonable precaution to stay healthy.
And these health care workers really should know better! They should understand how diseases travel and the importance of prevention. They say, “But I never get sick,” or “the last time I got a flu shot, it made me sick.” The “Spanish Flu” pandemic of 1918 killed more people in two years (at least 50 million) than AIDS has in 28 (25 million). It also unusual in that it killed healthy young adults rather than children, the elderly, or otherwise weakened patients. With that in mind, these people who “never get sick” are precisely the people who need to get the flu shot. And the sickness that they experienced after their flu shot was probably nothing like what the full-blown flu would have been like.
It’s funny though. What do these health care workers think of the laws that say that their children can’t go to school unless they’ve been properly vaccinated for a host of diseases? Do these laws violate their children’s right to an education, or do they understand the wisdom in these laws? You can’t even go to college now without a complete vaccination record.
It’s like this. Most people could understand getting the flu from a coworker or another patient in the doctor’s office, but if they found out that they got it from one of the nurses – who had chosen not gotten the vaccine – they would not be very understanding, and would have every right to bring a lawsuit.
And that is nothing to sneeze at.
For the record, I got my flu shot, as has everyone else in my family. Especially my wife, the nurse.
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