Picture of the Week: Lonely Dog

The news is out: as of today, Octo­ber 26^th, the H1N1 flu vac­cine is avail­able in Canada.

A pri­mary group should get the flu vac­cine as soon as pos­si­ble: peo­ple under 65 with chronic health con­di­tions; preg­nant women; chil­dren 6 months to less than 5 years of age; peo­ple liv­ing in remote com­mu­ni­ties; health care work­ers involved in pan­demic response or the deliv­ery of essen­tial health care ser­vices; and pop­u­la­tions oth­er­wise iden­ti­fied as high risk. As for the rest of Cana­di­ans, it will be up to them to show up at their local vac­ci­na­tion clinic.

So, should we get vac­ci­nated? I’m won­der­ing. I don’t believe in mas­sive con­spir­acy the­o­ries but yet, as your aver­age Cana­dian, I can’t help being con­fused by all the mixed infor­ma­tion we have been get­ting so far.

First, is the vac­cine safe? The WHO is brac­ing for a sec­ond wave of H1N1 out­break this win­ter. As a result, some sug­gested that the pro­duc­tion of the swine flu vac­cine have been fast-tracked and haven’t been fully tested. I do believe the Min­istry of Health Canada has pretty high health secu­rity stan­dards and I can’t imag­ine it bow­ing to polit­i­cal pres­sure, so this is not what bugs me the most. How­ever, I am con­cerned about the vac­cine side-effects. For exam­ple, I’m aller­gic to quite a few med­i­cines, includ­ing some antibi­otics and even anaes­thet­ics. Is the vac­cine safe for me? Would the ben­e­fits of immu­niza­tion out­weigh the risks?

One of the prob­lems is that in Canada, we are fac­ing a severe short­age of health prac­ti­tion­ers. Like most Cana­di­ans, I don’t have a gen­eral prac­ti­tioner. When I’m sick and when I need it, I just go to the walk-in clinic. While the care pro­vided is usu­ally good, most patients see a dif­fer­ent doc­tor each time — basi­cally, who­ever is on duty — and con­sul­ta­tions are often a bit rushed. There­fore, we lack health care prac­ti­tion­ers who know our health his­tory and could dis­cuss with us the ben­e­fits and the risks of the vac­cine. And I’m sure get­ting a professional’s opin­ion on the vac­cine would really help to debunk some myths and make peo­ple more com­fort­able with their choice. 

Yet, it is true that get­ting vac­ci­nated is a pub­lic health issue, not just a per­sonal one. Some peo­ple can­not get the vac­cine (infants, for instance), so it’s up to us to pro­tect them. The more peo­ple immu­nized, the less are the chance of wors­en­ing the pan­demic. So, are we just being selfish?

Gen­er­ally speak­ing, I am being more care­ful. I wash my hands often and more than once, I shot other pas­sen­gers in the bus dirty looks because they were cough­ing on me. I use the hand san­i­tiz­ers made avail­able in most pub­lic build­ings. I try to have a bal­anced and healthy diet, to rest — basic com­mon sense, with turn­ing paranoid.

One major issue that wor­ries me is the lack of social wel­fare in North Amer­ica and our labor laws. Offi­cials are urg­ing peo­ple to stay home when they are sick to avoid spread­ing the infec­tion. How­ever, a lot of peo­ple don’t get sick days. In Canada, for exam­ple, those who work for employ­ers that reg­u­larly employ at least 50 employ­ees are enti­tled to per­sonal emer­gency leave, which is basi­cally unpaid, job-protected leave of up to 10 days each year. Most casual or con­tract work­ers don’t even get that. And a huge chunk of the work­ing pop­u­la­tion don’t get paid sick days. For exam­ple, when I was teach­ing, we had 2.5 paid sick days a year! Unless you work in the pub­lic sec­tor or for major com­pa­nies, you are unlikely to get good social benefits.

The effects of this kind of social pol­icy could be dis­as­trous. How many times did I see co-workers com­ing in sick before they didn’t have any more sick days and couldn’t afford to lose a few days’ wage? How many times did I show up at work myself, instead of rest­ing at home, just because I didn’t want to lose a day worth of salary? How many times did I drag a cold for weeks because I hadn’t taken the time off to rest and to get rid of it?

It seems to me that if gov­ern­ments are seri­ous about curb­ing the pan­demic, var­i­ous Employ­ment Acts through­out the coun­try should be updated to guar­an­tee all work­ers some kind of paid sick leave.

So, how about you? Are you going to get vac­ci­nated? Why and why not?

Related posts:

1. Woman Seek Doctor
2. Things That Freak Me Out
3. First Steps As A Per­ma­nent Res­i­dent (9÷10)
4. The Other Side Of The Story
5. 5 Things to Do When You Land in Canada (That No One Told You About)