Nursing shortage begins to pinch
The nursing shortage is beginning to pinch in the city, with some maternity wards having to close temporarily, and nurses alleging that some emergency departments are understaffed.
As for the Quebec government’s bonuses, nurses say their main issue isn’t so much their pay as the mandatory overtime. And the bonuses are making other healthcare workers mad.
steph 13:03 on 2021-09-29 Permalink
How many more are going to be forced out of work because they don’t want 2 vaccines?
DeWolf 13:13 on 2021-09-29 Permalink
Maybe they should find jobs where they won’t kill someone because of their negligence.
John B 13:50 on 2021-09-29 Permalink
@steph a CTV article yesterday says there are 15,000 healthcare workers, 7000 of whom have direct contact with patients, who are not yet vaccinated. I doubt all of the 7000 are nurses, but some must be.
We have regular contact with one unit at the MUHC, and in that section of the hospital there have been at least two retirements recently, and I think some people have quit. The nurse I was talking to last time we were there said her vacation has been cancelled until at least April.
jeather 14:27 on 2021-09-29 Permalink
I am betting that most of the people refusing to be vaccinated are playing chicken, hoping/believing that the mandates will be repealed, and if it turns out they in fact stop being allowed to work they will change their tunes quickly.
Kevin 14:31 on 2021-09-29 Permalink
@John B:
Healthcare workers, in this context, includes everyone from senior management to the people who mop the floors.
In March 2020 lots of nurses and doctors were told they were not allowed to leave the country or take vacation. Since then, however, there’s been a considerable increase in people burning out and being put on leave for a month or two.
Kate 14:40 on 2021-09-29 Permalink
At this point, what are the vaccine-resistant folks waiting for? A lot of us have had 2 shots. We’re fine. Nobody’s collapsing, nobody’s turning up with illnesses caused or conditions worsened by the vaccine. It works and it’s harmless, how much more proof do people need?
Randall 15:33 on 2021-09-29 Permalink
I know/know of 5 people in Montreal, all women, who suffered extreme adverse reactions to the jab. One was a frail 70-year-old. She complained to me about the shot hours before being found lying dead in her hallway. Two others I know spent a week in hospital in serious condition. One, a fit 30-year-old McGill student, was irate that the hospital refused to acknowledge that her condition came from the shot she received. The other two were women I saw at hospital. One was quickly carted away with severe convulsions immediately after the jab and the other was screaming in the emergency room that the shot caused her to be unable to feel her hands. I don’t know what became of those two.
Frankie 16:02 on 2021-09-29 Permalink
@Kate I developed heart inflammation within the first week after the shot but my doctor does not believe it is related. Three months later, I am finally feeling better. My physiotherapist knows of two other cases, also unreported as vaccine-related. I know someone who had a seizure 3 hours after his second shot. He was told it was not vaccine-related even though no tests were done.
Anecdotal, sure, but at this stage, anecdotal is pretty much all we have. If incidents of adverse effects are not being consistently recorded and not part of the official statistics, it is difficult to build a full picture of the side effects.
John B 16:12 on 2021-09-29 Permalink
> At this point, what are the vaccine-resistant folks waiting for?
I have a couple of vaccine-hesitant extended family members, here’s what I have heard, (hopefully the list formats ok):
We don’t know long-term side effects / consequences of the vaccine.
This is new technology, (referring to mRNA), we don’t know long term side effects of mRNA technology.
There should be an option using older, more normal vaccine technology, (never mind that those ones seem to have way worse side effects).
It causes changes in our brain that we don’t fully understand.
There haven’t been enough autopsies comparing the brains of people who got the vaccine with people who haven’t got the vaccine.
Anti-vaxx family members also collect stories of people with horrible side effects as a reason the vaccine is “dangerous.” Stuff like someone they know that had to be hospitalized for a week after getting the vaccine, or a friend of a acquaintance, (who may or may not be real), that had huge problems. They are often stories like Frankie’s or Randall’s. I also have a family member that passed out after taking each of his two doses, so that’s being used by the anti-vaxx family members as another example of why the vaccine is dangerous. Stories like these reinforce the “we don’t have enough info / it’s not tested enough” sentiment. Of course, I would trade most of the side effects for not dying from COVID, but they still suck.
I also find the government’s approach quite paternalistic. All the messaging is basically “The vaccine is safe, take it.” There is little to no room for questioning, and little to no attempt to address the concerns that hesitant people have. While the government probably doesn’t want to get into a game of whack-a-mole with anti-vaccine theorists, at least making a good honest attempt to engage on some of the leading reasons for hesitancy might help.
Tim S. 16:39 on 2021-09-29 Permalink
I have no anecdotal stories about vaccine side-effects to share. Anyone else?
steph 16:42 on 2021-09-29 Permalink
My nurse friend that is refusing to get her 2nd vaccine, hoping october 15th she can finally have some time off.
Last year they were ‘angels’ willing to risk their lives when no vaccine was avaliable. This year these same unvaccinated nurses are ‘carriers of death’. She has my support – and I hope she enjoys her time off.
DeWolf 16:45 on 2021-09-29 Permalink
Every single one of my friends and family, plus dozens upon dozens of acquaintances, has been vaccinated without any adverse effects.
You’d think that with just under 90% of the eligible population vaccinated we’d have more concrete stories of serious side effects, rather than just “I know a guy” anecdotes that pop up from anonymous people on the internet.
DeWolf 16:47 on 2021-09-29 Permalink
Steph, you know your friend can quit her job without being forced into an unpaid leave of absence, right? She doesn’t have to be refuse the second dose and all the protection that comes with it. She can just… quit.
walkerp 16:49 on 2021-09-29 Permalink
Zero anecdotes here either of any significant negative side effects from the vaccine from anybody I know.
I am very sympathetic to health-care workers wanting time off/more pay and suffering from burnout. That sympathy ends when the few of them who think their youtube education is superior to the experts around them and refuse to take the shot that has already significantly reduced the capacity issues that caused the burnout (well also govt neglect of the health care sector).
John B 16:53 on 2021-09-29 Permalink
> You’d think that with just under 90% of the eligible population vaccinated we’d have more concrete stories of serious side effects,
The problem is that what you & I think of a minor side effect is considered a “serious” side effect by the hesitant. Fever for a couple of hours? You & me: “That’s the vaccine doing it’s job, sweet!” Anti-vaxxer: “OMG the vaccine gave you a huge fever! You might die if you get a second shot!”
jeather 17:10 on 2021-09-29 Permalink
Like many women, I had some weird changes to my period post vaccine, including, most irritatingly, that the cramps responded less to ibuprofen than they used to. It’s over(and the ibuprofen sympom is the only one that lasted), but that’s still 5 months since my first shot, 3 since my second. (I usually get very sick for the rest of the day with other vaccines.) I don’t think it’s a long term concern, but anecdotally it’s something I heard a lot of and it would be nice if that were studied in the future.
Kate 18:18 on 2021-09-29 Permalink
Randall, I do not believe your anecdotes, and from the sound of it, nobody else here does either (although they’re politer than I am about it). If the vaccines were anything like so dangerous, they would have been withdrawn from use, or would never have been made available.
Frankie, anecdotes are not “all we have”. We have science.
thomas 18:53 on 2021-09-29 Permalink
I was hoping to read some juicy swollen testicles stories in this thread.
Blork 19:00 on 2021-09-29 Permalink
As usual, the truth lies somewhere in the middle. The COVID-19 vaccine is not as safe as just taking a Tylenol; there are actual cases of serious side effects and even death, as well as lingering milder side effects such as menstrual disruption, stomach issues, etc. But the number of such problems is extremely low. That doesn’t mean they’re non-existent, just very low. But if you’re one of those unlucky people who are so affected, or even if you know of such a person, then suddenly it seems very real and present.
Or if you’re someone who is on the lookout for such side effects, you will find them. But that doesn’t mean they’re not rare. They’re rare AF.
But it’s a risk worth taking. People need to grow TF up and take the tiny risk for the sake of the greater good. That’s what adulting is all about.
BTW, the above applies to all vaccines, not just this one. The autoimmune system is very complicated and not fully understood. Many people — including me — suffer from autoimmune diseases (MS, Lupus, GBS, Lyme, dozens of others) and many of these are acquired, not genetic. But how do we acquire them?
Anything that messes with the immune system can trigger an autoimmune disease. It could be a tick bite or a mosquito bite. It might be a bacterial infection from eating unwashed lettuce. Or it could be a vaccine or other drug.
“Vaccine injury” is a term that anti-vaxxers toss around a lot, and I regret to inform you that it’s a real thing. There are several government-operated vaccine injury compensation programs in the US that compensate people who have bad reactions to vaccines. Unfortunately the nutty antivaxxers and conspiracy theorists use this as evidence that the whole thing is a big sham and propel themselves into polarized corners where they can wave their stupid flags along with their like-minded COVIDIOT friends.
All things in moderation. Be aware that there is a risk, but the risk is very low, and the risk of having an unvaccinated population is orders of magnitude higher. These people who wave their anti-vaxxer flags are often the same ones who applaud the “patriots” who go off to war in Iraq or Afghanistan, which is far riskier than getting a COVID vaccine. So if it’s heroic for those soldiers to go risk their lives for the sake of their society, why is it so hard for an anti-vaxxer to “get it” that they can be a bit of a hero by taking the risk and getting the vax?
Kevin 19:04 on 2021-09-29 Permalink
The vaccine trials list every side effect of people taking part and all of that has to be evaluated by Health Canada before a vaccine is approved. It’s 100,000 pages of data.
And they list everything, absolutely everthing that happens to anyone involved, from swelling, to a fever, to myocarditis to stubbing their toe to being beaten to death by a mob weeks after getting a jab.
As I have said many times, medical science has come so far that the average person cannot understand it. It’s easier to take your car apart and put it back together.
Kate 19:34 on 2021-09-29 Permalink
The key thing most of us don’t grasp is statistics. Medical research is all built on stats, and if you don’t understand them, you will not understand where medical knowledge comes from.
MarcG 20:28 on 2021-09-29 Permalink
Almost every day there is someone responding to the Santé Quebec daily stats on Twitter asking, I’ll use a real quote for an example: “50% des hospitalisations sont du monde doublement vacciner?”. And that’s really basic math, imagine something more complex.
jeather 20:30 on 2021-09-29 Permalink
Honestly I don’t think menstrual disruption — which is, as a rule, mild — is particularly rare, I think it’s understudied. This is not talking about the safety of the vaccine (very safe) or the overall risk of side effects (very low — I complain about the menstrual effect, but it was the only significant side effect I had, far and away less bad than any other non-RNA vaccine I’ve had), this is talking generally about undertesting of or not believing side effects in women, which is a much larger issue than one shot..
Raymond Lutz 21:21 on 2021-09-29 Permalink
https://health-infobase.canada.ca/covid-19/vaccine-safety/ has an extensive list of ALL reported adverse effects. Take Myocarditis/Pericarditis reported adverse events declared after immunization: 774 reports (that is not to say those events were caused by the vaccination). According to my medical literature googling, combined natural (off-pandemic) occurrence of those diseases are, for our 38M Canadian population, 7700 cases/yr , well over the reported number… so, does covid vaccines cause Myocarditis/Pericarditis?
Blork 22:11 on 2021-09-29 Permalink
There’s no doubt the the COVID-19 vaccine *CAN* cause Myocarditis/Pericarditis (it’s right there in the literature), but that’s a long ways from saying it *DOES* cause Myocarditis/Pericarditis.
In the first case (*can*) it means it can cause it in rare cases, the way Aspirin can cause stomach ulcers and Advil can lead to high blood pressure and stroke. But it rarely happens, so it’s a risk we take instead of suffering that headache or rheumatism or whatever.
But if you say it *does* cause Myocarditis/Pericarditis (or stomach ulcer, or HBP/stroke) it means you can reasonably expect it will likely happen, which in these cases it does not.
Alcohol DOES cause intoxication.
Advil CAN cause HBP/stroke.
The COVID-19 vax CAN cause Myocarditis/Pericarditis (probably more rare than the Advil problems).
Raymond Lutz 08:19 on 2021-09-30 Permalink
Merci Blork, j’avais trop la flemme pour expliquer qu’essentiellement ça se ramène à une gestion du risque (à partir des données factuelles). Vaccination = really lower risk of covid death + _slightly_ higher risk of adverse effects (compared to background) so vaccination = good.
Randall 18:35 on 2021-09-30 Permalink
@Kate. Indeed I might not have believed it either. I don’t know thousands of people and I don’t hang around hospitals so that’s why I was surprised that these examples all happened within my limited Montreal circle within a few months. The name of the woman who died, by the way, is Jocelyne Marleau. I saw her body on the floor and she was definitely dead. Anecdotal evidence isn’t significant though because it’s not statistically representative and indeed is often misleading. The thing that worries me more is that one of those vaccine victims stated that the hospital refused to properly categorize her adverse reaction as a response to the jab. So that’s evidence of inappropriate statistical manipulation. I’m not ok with that. Ultimately everything comes with a risk and those who choose to take the jab have to measure that risk against that of getting infected with covid. Both risks seem pretty small but it’s up to the individual to decide which one is more worrisome.
ant6n 09:18 on 2021-10-01 Permalink
If the trust is low that problematic cases will be properly reported, then people may end up not trusting that the vaccine is actually safe. In some sense it`s in the society´s interest to play down potential problems, because the pandemic´s dangers are exponential, whereas potential vaccine problems are only linear.
I´ve some anti-vaxxers in my close family, and talking to them is like pulling teeth. It´s impossible to agree on basic facts or even just math, no reporting is trusted, a hidden agenda is assumed everywhere. For example its assumed that any studies done on the vaccine are done by people who are in the vaccine industry, and therefore have a vested interest in pushing the vaccine. So you should probably trust more in research done by people who aren´t immunologists (there exist some doctors who are anti-vaxxers…), because they have no vested interest.