Flu shots.

[rivka]

Normally, I get my flu shot at work. They're eager to vaccinate us because our immunocompromised patients would otherwise be at high risk of catching the flu from an infected employee.

I asked a couple of the nurse practitioners whether we were getting flu shots this year. One of them told me that the patient clinics haven't received any flu vaccine yet. Apparently, there's been some discussion about rationing within the patient population - saving the vaccine for patients with lower CD4+ cell counts.

So I called my primary care provider. They don't have the vaccine, and they're not expecting to get any in. The nurse advised me to call the health department. So I checked the health department website, and discovered that they don't have any vaccine and aren't expecting to get any in. They recommend calling your primary care provider.

I knew my midwife's office wouldn't have the vaccine, but I called to ask if they knew where I could get it. Nope.

Employee Health at the hospital doesn't have it, and won't be getting the injectible vaccine. They might be getting a few doses of FluMist, the intranasal vaccine, which pregnant women can't take.

I knew there was a shortage, but I had no idea it was this bad.

If it were just me, or just me and the Li'l Critter, I'd be willing to take my chances. I mean, if I were to get the flu, the danger to the baby would be either from (1) fever, which can be safely controlled with Tylenol during pregnancy, or (2) dehydration, which can be treated with an IV. The flu wouldn't kill me, and it wouldn't kill the baby.

But if I got the flu, it might kill one of my patients. I'm not being hyperbolic. I have patients whose ability to mount an immune response is damn near zero.

Meanwhile, in childfree, a healthy college student is bragging about managing to arrange a flu shot for herself. I quote: "I'm feeling good about it, because I keep telling myself I'm taking one away from some little brat who really doesn't need one."

Comments

[therealjae.livejournal.com]

To me that sounds like pointing at nasty heterophobes and saying: "They're the reasons I specify that I'm homosexual but not gay."

'Childfree' means 'someone who's made a conscious decision not to have children'. That's all. It's a useful word, and letting a few idiots poison it for the rest of us is just dumb.

-J

[johnpalmer.livejournal.com]

Herm. I was about to say something about how "next you'll be telling me how 'feminist' doesn't equal 'man hater'!, but then I thought about this and that, and...

Well, you know... it's a damn shame that words are so flipping limited.

Feminist, Christian, childfree... all labels that embody a huge number of ideas, that really say very little about a person's specific beliefs (even though they might say a great deal about a person's identity).

If we spoke in hypertext, with links to specific meanings for any ambiguous words, things would be a lot easier.

[thatwordgrrl.livejournal.com]

Do you point this out to the idiots?

It means nothing coming from me - who does not identify as 'childfree.'

It would mean something from you.

[therealjae.livejournal.com]

If by "this" you're asking whether I point out that they're being idiots, then yes, I used to, when I used to frequent childfree forums. I don't stop by forums I'm not a part of to tell people that they're idiots, though, whether childfree-related or otherwise. If I started doing that, I'd never stop.

That's venturing pretty far afield from my point, though, which was that it makes no sense to blame the word for a small percentage of people who use it who happen to be idiots. There's a kernel of truth to every stereotype, but overgeneralization doesn't help anybody. I have known many, many lovely people who refer to themselves as childfree, many more than the idiots who draw all of the attention. I cringe when I hear people tar all gay people with the brush of the heterophobes, all poly people with the brush of the flaky and commitment-phobic, and yes, all childfree people with the brush of the misanthropic.

-J

[thatwordgrrl.livejournal.com]

Good on ye, then!

Changing stereotypes starts from within. If you are willing to call BS on those within your community who use that word in a hateful manner, than you are making a difference.

It is the passive acceptance of hateful use of that word which leads to the assumption that all people who are childfree fit that horrid stereotype.

[therealjae.livejournal.com]

It is the passive acceptance of hateful use of that word which leads to the assumption that all people who are childfree fit that horrid stereotype.

Passive acceptance of idiotic behaviour is one thing that leads to that assumption. Failure to think rationally about the pervasiveness of that idiotic behaviour is another.

-J