A hospital in Ontario has fired 57 employees for being unvaccinated after the deadline to get a vax. The purpose of the mandate, of course, was to prevent spread of COVID-19 to patients and other staff by unvaxxed caregivers. A spokesperson invoked the basic principle of medicine: First do no Harm (attributed to Hippocrates, dubbed the Father of Medicine).
It’s perhaps surprising to hear that medical staff members are among the 57 fired and additional medical consultants have been suspended. I estimated perhaps 27 nurses were among the fired staff. I continue to find it astounding that they felt they could safely render care to very ill patients and failed to consider that they could unwittingly spread a deadly virus to them when they are at their most vulnerable and likely unable to fight off such a serious infection in addition to their pre-existing illness that took them to hospital in the first place, whatever it may be.
The word ‘iatrogenic’ means illness caused by medical examination or treatment. It includes physical, mental or emotional effects. An example is if a health care worker doesn’t wash their hands between patients, thereby spreading infection. We’d rightly be appalled at such carelessness or negligence. Even comments by nursing or medical staff can cause iatrogenic illness, such as remarks that can demean a person, leading to emotional issues or perhaps worsening an existing psych condition.
If failing to wash one’s hands to curtail spread of infection is considered an iatrogenic event, and rightly condemned, how much more so then if you’re spewing a potentially deadly virus around the room as you take a patient’s temp, adjust their IV, insert a catheter or change a dressing?
https://globalnews.ca/news/8251013/windsor-regional-hospital-fires-unvaccinated-employees/Religions should adopt the principle First do no Harm, applying it to their own flock and to non-members.
When I went back east to Quebec to proselytize for the JWs (unsuccessfully!) we did a lot of door-to-door, seeking out converts. Many of us spoke quite appalling French and the French folks, although friendly, couldn’t help wincing at our English accents stumbling over their French words. We learned Parisian French in school (badly), and certainly not the regional accents of the small towns in Quebec in which we found ourselves. I thought at first they were kidding us and weren’t really speaking French because I couldn’t understand them and their accents were different than I’d heard from B.C.ers speaking French. Of course, that could be a dreadful insult if you were to utter the thought aloud. Around 20 of us finally achieved the amazing result of finding exactly one convert, a very nice and friendly French guy who became quite the missionary for the cause, although I don’t recall that he converted anyone else in the predominantly and faithfully Catholic areas where we tracted.
Meanwhile, back home, a JW friend’s non-member father died by suicide. I had always thought he looked so sad. His wife was gorgeous and his daughters even more so, making them noticeable and memorable. Even though the father attended meetings he never joined. Non-members are looked down on. The unspoken but somehow common assumption was that he couldn’t live up to the standards, or something. His death was never spoken of, that I knew about, as it’s considered such a “sin”, rather than a perhaps preventable tragedy, one they may have had a part in. I still see his sad face and remember what a shock that incident was.
One of the worst outcomes of joining JWs is that their methods include separating newcomers from their non-JW families. I was already separated just by joining in the first place and then I had left B.C. to move indefinitely to Quebec, with little family contact. I only realized much later that that is a deliberate move to try and retain the convert within the group. The fewer outside influences, leaders feel, the less chance they will lose the convert. I didn’t notice this as much with the Mormons. Perhaps it exists but is more hidden.
I’ve mentioned a few times before that while I was in Quebec my father had a serious accident. He was repairing a roof and fell, getting entangled in a ladder on the way down. That perhaps saved his life, as he didn’t fall on his head, but his leg was fractured in several places and his ankle/foot was nearly ripped off. They lived in an isolated spot a ways out of town. My three younger siblings were still in grade school. Mom didn’t drive. Dad was in a hospital in the city. Mom called me in Quebec to tell me about Dad’s accident. (I was so relieved I’d given her my phone number – it wasn’t encouraged by the JWs). Mom didn’t ask me to come back, just wanted me to know, but of course it was the obvious thing to do. First, Dad’s survival wasn’t guaranteed. He’d had a rough time in surgery, awakening from the anesthesia (giving him nightmares for years after) and he developed a near-fatal blood clot during recovery. He had told the surgeon not to amputate, which is what they had recommended. They managed to put his leg back together but he had a long, painful recovery, prolonged rehab and lifelong pain afterwards in that ankle. However, he got to keep his leg, which was his priority.
Of course I’d want to see my dad, especially if he wasn’t going to survive, but also my mom needed so much help with the kids and with transportation. There was no regular bus service and Dad drove Mom to work in town every day. Fortunately, there was a school bus for the kids. I took over as driver, getting Mom to work and home again and doing the shopping and other errands, which in itself was a big help. Too, they wouldn’t have been able to visit Dad in hospital in the city if I weren’t there to take them (again, no bus route from there to there). We were able to see Dad every day, take him tea (our universal salve) and save him from the hospital diet by smuggling in supper.
It all seems such an obvious, simple and easy thing to do for one’s family in a difficult time. Yet, the JWs had told me I should stay in Quebec and continue with the (fruitless) door-to-door efforts as it was the most important thing anyone could do. I’ve said here before that my “best friend” commented “They’re not your family, we’re your family now” in her efforts to convince me to stay. I am so very thankful, to this day, that her comment totally backfired on her and them as it was so completely appalling that it slapped me in the face and woke me up. I flew home the next day and achieved more good than if I had knocked on 10,000 doors in Quebec, trying to convince French-Canadian Catholics that Jehovah’s Witnesses had all the answers and they should convert toute de suite (“toot sweet” = “with all haste” – ha!). I never attended another JW meeting.
Another outcome was that I lost all my JW “friends” overnight. I guess I had made my choice clear or else they didn’t care that I was headed for death and destruction, according to their theology. Death for caring for one’s family? Strange, strange religion.
You’d think I’d have learned my lesson about proselytizing religion then but no. I had to try out the Mormons too, years later. I finally get the basics: Ask questions first! Don’t be leaping into fonts incautiously! When a friend told me last year that her son was into Scientology I didn’t even want to see him. Even I, too often so gullible, wouldn’t give Hubbard the time of day, but I won’t take any chances either, haha. People think JWs are so strange – likely due to their semi-isolationist approach and end-of-the-world theology. Compared to them I thought Mormons were normal. Or at least not too extremely weird. Of course, I didn’t see at first that they too have a seamy underbelly that (ex)BICs here describe well. Converts aren’t told about all the history or beliefs – their first order of business before converting should be to independently research these groups. Somehow, you trust these “nice” people and take things at face value and next thing you know you’re part of a group that’s making you miserable and even though you can just walk away, certainly more easily than can most BICs, with fewer repercussions, there are still emotions involved and broken relationships that may have been meaningful as well as the self-recriminations that likely follow.
You can also internally chastise yourself for a long time for being such a dupe. So easily swayed. So oblivious. I didn’t realize, for instance, that polygamy was not only a past Mormon practice, that it still goes on in some offshoot groups and causes great harm to women and children and even to the non-leader-type men. When I visited SLC and saw the pictures (?location – some museum?) of BY and all his wives, I accepted without question the stated pretence that he was just caring for them. (Otherwise, why would they post photos of it all?) I had NO CLUE what it was really all about. I thought he was a nice man who looked after some poor widow women. What a DOPE (I was).
One major aspect of my Mormon interlude that says it all is that I never told my parents I had been baptized in the Mormon Church. If you thought it was a good thing why wouldn’t you share it around? I think I sensed the underbelly but ignored it, perhaps figuring I’d gone too far down the Mormon road and couldn’t back out. I don’t remember that I either knew or believed much of the doctrine – that which they share with converts anyway. The missionaries’ desperate rush to get me to the font should have been a wake-up call but again, I had to learn the hard way to think first, take the plunge later, or preferably not at all.
Too, of course, there’s the Catholic Church and the ongoing scandal of the residential schools for Aboriginal children here in Canada where so many died and were never returned home (among other scandals in the CC). Indeed, their parents were never even informed about what happened to them. Imagine sending your child to school and never seeing them again and not knowing why. And now, decades later, you hear that unmarked graves and mass graves have been verified at many of the school locations. (I won’t say the graves have been “discovered” as the Aboriginal people have always known of their existence. The recent findings – with ground-penetrating radar - have verified what they already knew).
I remember my Irish Catholic grandmother with great fondness and my refined English aunt, her daughter, whose name I carry, the only one of Nana's four girls to remain a practising Catholic throughout her life. My two sisters both baptized their kids Catholic, to my amazement as we hadn't had Catholic influence from our parents. So it's not as if the people in the pews are monsters. The overlords though...
If religious leaders were held to the principle of First do no Harm, think of the isolation, suffering, anguish and even death that could be avoided. For a religion to masquerade as a benevolent body and then perpetrate such misery is the true sin of all the “sins” they preach against.
It’s Thanksgiving weekend here in Canada. My parents are both gone now, my sibs scattered, COVID-19 the uninvited, unwanted spectre at the feast. I even forgot to buy my turkey. Looks like I’ll be eating cheese sandwiches, the English staple according to my dad, for Thanksgiving, as well as the potatoes and apples from yesterday's farmers market. But the sun is shining, I’ve got a good book, I’m not going to church, any church, and things could always be worse. That’s my motto now. And it’s definitely true in my world. Unlike the faux religiosity of these offshoot Christian groups to which I was inexplicably attracted and which never gave a thought to the harm their proselytizing ways was causing, then, now or, I suspect, in the future.
First. Do. No. Harm.
But, I’m not holding my breath on that one.
Edited 4 time(s). Last edit at 10/10/2021 03:47PM by Nightingale.