Help me out with the NHS vaccine debate

[LeafPrintWrapDressMum]

This may be down to my lack of scientific knowledge so I apologise.
With omnicrom seeming to be much, much milder in most cases, there is mutterings about doing away with testing for most. Is it not within reason that we would not have to vaccinate for much longer? Because the illness would be mild so wouldn't warrant a huge vaccination programme.
Or would the strain get more deadly if we weren't vaccinated anymore?
Therefore if we let go of all the nhs staff who haven't had the vaccine, would they be allowed back to work in a few years if none of us in the UK were being routinely vaccinated anymore?
Full disclosure: triple vaccinated and no anti vaccine leanings.

Therefore if we let go of all the nhs staff who haven't had the vaccine, would they be allowed back to work in a few years if none of us in the UK were being routinely vaccinated anymore? that would be up to the government at the time I guess.

I doubt they would want to go back, not exactly the best of jobs is it

@User6397254 exactly! I am stunned they are doing this when the nhs struggles to recruit now

With omnicrom seeming to be much, much milder in most cases

Do we know for sure that the virus is actually mild, or seems mild because of vaccine immunity and natural immunity? There was WHO warning the other day, wasn't there?

@rainrainraincamedowndowndown I'm not sure I can only speak from my experience. Nearly all the kids in dds class and their parents caught it straight after Christmas. Symptoms no worse than a common cold, I know at least one of the parents is unvaccinated and didn't suffer terribly with it. Obviously this is all anecdotal.

Omicron is a bit milder than previous strains - I think I read it was 16% less likely to put an unvaccinated person in hospital. But vaccination and naturally acquired immunity are doing a huge amount of the work, and they will fade over time.

However, now we know vaccination doesn't prevent infection with Omicron, I think it would be foolhardy to sack NHS staff. I did previously think they should go, but as things have changed it seems silly to further cripple the NHS at this point.

I suppose it depends if we get a new, more deadly strain circulating.
Who knows what position we would be in now if we’d never had a vaccine.

My unvaccinated relative has it- middle aged and asthmatic. He had a day or two of feeling like he had a cold and now he’s fine.
I’m not antivax at all - I’ve had three doses but I’m not having any more unless a more potent strain rears its head. I was so ill with the first vacc it put me in bed for 3 days. Didn’t feel gear with the second and 3rd either. That’s enough for me.

@TulipsGarden I agree it seems ridiculous to do this when we are discovering new things about the virus all the time. Some vaccinated people I know had delta in October and caught omnicrom in January, no vaccine could have prevented that.
We know that the vaccines don't prevent transmission. So why make such a drastic decision.

*great
Why is there no edit function?!

I am all for vaccines and think all NHS staff should be vaccinated.

However I am not comfy with the idea of mandatory vaccination for current employees (new starters is different as they know it’s a criteria)

I think if we are at a time when we are saying pretty much all mitigating measures are being removed then it seems extreme to then sack people for not being vaccinated. We are either still in a very worrying situation or we aren’t but the two stances at the moment seem contradictory

@Sirzy
I agree, I even asked if it was possible for those staff to step into admin roles (where we have many vacancies) if appropriate and was told that it wasn't and admin staff (who might never see a patient) would also need to be vaccinated.

@User6397254

I doubt they would want to go back, not exactly the best of jobs is it

Well its all relative isn't it....I'm sure you earn 100k and get huges bonues and unlimited annual leave....but compared with retail/hospitality nhs is A good employer IMO....I earn 46k as a nurse in community...no weekends .....retire at 55 on full pension option... 33 days leave plus bank hols....6 months full and 6 months half pay..... there's mot many who will give this up....many nurses are now running round getting first jabs in order to be double jabbed by April....people have families to feed. They can't afford to unvaxxed.....theywo t even be leaving never mind crying to come back

They are asking staff to have certain vaccinations. This is not new, the requirement to be fully immunised against some diseases has been around for decades - there's no new principle here, it's just that many people haven't ever thought about it, so people are commenting as if it were new. Though it is new for social care staff, but that's an expansion of who is affected, not change in rationale

I don't think they will keep offering the public the original jab. The requirement will be either 2 or 3 jabs to count as fully vaccinated and the world - all rich countries at least - will settle on the same standard. And that'll be what is required.

I think it's far too soon to say if that requirement will ever be dropped - we are still learning about the disease.

I'm not sure we're even close to a position where we can track variants in time to get updated jabs out in time. It's not like flu in the way it moves - with seasonality and distinct patterns across the hemispheres. This is like lightning - look at a heatmap of how quickly omicron produced a huge spike in cases. And we don't know when a next variant will pop up, nor what sort of disease it'll produce.

We're gambling on the 3x shots providing worthwhile levels of immunity to keep the link between cases as weak as possible, and to keep hospitals as disease-free as possible so that treatments which wipe out someone's immune system (like chemo) can be delivered safely

The problem may be that it isn't always terribly mild for any patients who get and it isn't terribly stable as a virus and contrary to popular belief viruses can mutate to be more dangerous

But they have survived for years without making flu vaccination compulsory I believe

@kitcat15 I disagree I think the NHS has very little going for it in terms of perks now. In hospitals, the pressure for beds has never been greater, there's never been more agency on the rosters which irks staff as they don't tend to do the day to day jobs. There's no real job progression for HCA's and I could be £3 an hour better off in most supermarkets working nights where I wouldn't even have to serve a customer.
The pension would be great but for those on band 2 or 3 a lot are unable to contribute to it due to needing every penny to survive.
It is an applicants market out there and I doubt many nhs haven't thought about getting out over the last two years. Especially now that there doesn't seem to be any decent pay increase. It's just a slap in the face.

They are asking staff to have certain vaccinations. This is not new, the requirement to be fully immunised against some diseases has been around for decades

It is new because this is being applied retrospectively. All the other vaccines that HCPs are required to take have been known about, and well used, long before people applied for their jobs. That is not the same as telling people that they will lose the jobs they already have if they don’t take this new vaccine.

You admitted later in your post that we are still learning about this disease, so it follows that we are still learning about the vaccine. It’s completely disingenuous to pretend that this is nothing new, when it blatantly is.

[quote LeafPrintWrapDressMum]@kitcat15 I disagree I think the NHS has very little going for it in terms of perks now. In hospitals, the pressure for beds has never been greater, there's never been more agency on the rosters which irks staff as they don't tend to do the day to day jobs. There's no real job progression for HCA's and I could be £3 an hour better off in most supermarkets working nights where I wouldn't even have to serve a customer.
The pension would be great but for those on band 2 or 3 a lot are unable to contribute to it due to needing every penny to survive.
It is an applicants market out there and I doubt many nhs haven't thought about getting out over the last two years. Especially now that there doesn't seem to be any decent pay increase. It's just a slap in the face.[/quote]
So why have you stayed??? There's never been any great pay rises thats no new thing.....so where are you going to be a HCA that will give you better benefits than a HCA?? Absolutely nowhere thats where 🙄

I honestly think the government will backtrack on mandatory NHS vaccinations in the coming weeks.

This type of government dictated service-wide vaccine mandate is new (and illogical). It will cause serious problems if not repealed.

www.bmj.com/content/376/bmj.o139

@Quennofthe NimbleFlyningCat - Me too - it makes absolutely no logical sense, particularly if they're stopping Covid positive people isolating. It will just look like they're trying to undermine the NHS and break staff morale.

[quote LeafPrintWrapDressMum]@TulipsGarden I agree it seems ridiculous to do this when we are discovering new things about the virus all the time. Some vaccinated people I know had delta in October and caught omnicrom in January, no vaccine could have prevented that.
We know that the vaccines don't prevent transmission. So why make such a drastic decision.[/quote]
Vaccines may not 100% prevent infection and consequent transmission, but they do reduce the likelihood of contracting Covid. If you don't get Covid in the first place you can't transmit it.

That said, I'm opposed to mandatory vaccination as a condition of employment but I think, with the exception of staff who can't have it for medical reasons, that all staff should take up the offer of vaccination.

@UnmentionedElephantDildo

They are asking staff to have certain vaccinations. This is not new, the requirement to be fully immunised against some diseases has been around for decades - there's no new principle here, it's just that many people haven't ever thought about it, so people are commenting as if it were new. Though it is new for social care staff, but that's an expansion of who is affected, not change in rationale

I don't think they will keep offering the public the original jab. The requirement will be either 2 or 3 jabs to count as fully vaccinated and the world - all rich countries at least - will settle on the same standard. And that'll be what is required.

I think it's far too soon to say if that requirement will ever be dropped - we are still learning about the disease.

I'm not sure we're even close to a position where we can track variants in time to get updated jabs out in time. It's not like flu in the way it moves - with seasonality and distinct patterns across the hemispheres. This is like lightning - look at a heatmap of how quickly omicron produced a huge spike in cases. And we don't know when a next variant will pop up, nor what sort of disease it'll produce.

We're gambling on the 3x shots providing worthwhile levels of immunity to keep the link between cases as weak as possible, and to keep hospitals as disease-free as possible so that treatments which wipe out someone's immune system (like chemo) can be delivered safely

This is what I cant get my head around. Its all well and good for us in the west to settle on 3 jabs but some countries will never achieve this. Maybe people in poor countries won't be able to afford to visit the UK and similar anyway but is it not just another widening of the have and have not camp's.

@WiseUpJanetWeiss do we know that the vaccine reduces the likelihood of picking up omnicrom?

@WiseUpJanetWeiss Yes absolutely, but I think at the moment the vaccine doesn't prevent transmission enough to make it a condition of employment. The NHS is in trouble as it is, it needs staff. I would still be perturbed if I found out someone treating me was unvaccinated, but less so now because it's clear Omicron spreads easily even with boosters.

Hopefully in future we'll have a very effective vaccine which prevents transmission to a high level (and perhaps increased funding in the NHS for more staff to replace those lost, if people stop voting for the Tories), and then it would be appropriate to make it mandatory.