The Jabbers

(Background articles : http://hpanwo.blogspot.com/2009/04/emergency-swine-flu-meeting-with-ian.html and: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2009/04/outbreak-of-swine-flu.html
Jane Burgermeister’s website: http://www.theflucase.com/)

I’m a Hospital Porter (did I mention this before?) and as a result I’m considered among the people who are at the highest risk of catching Swine Flu. To protect me from this appallingly lethal plague (Just how lethal, see here: http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2009/07/swine-flu-diary.html), we health staff have been the first offered the H1N1 Swine Flu vaccination. I had many vaccinations in my younger days in the Hospital Portering Service, but that was because I didn’t know any better. When I used to go for my vaccinations I always made an appointment at the hospital’s Occupational Health Department. I had to see a nurse or doctor and fill in a form before being given jabs. With the Swine Flu this practice has totally changed. Last week two of my colleagues told me that that some people came into the hospital from outside, people dressed in suits, and just set up stalls in various departments and wards. They issued the vaccine to anybody who showed up and presented a staff ID badge. Then a couple of days ago posters started appearing all over the hospital advertising a ad-hoc Swine Flu jab clinic. I noticed that they’d misspelt the hospital’s name; the hospital media department probably wouldn’t make a mistake like that, so who produced the posters? I was very curious in a HPANWOy kind of way, so I went along.

The vaccinatorium yesterday was in the academic centre outside the lecture theatre. The “Swine Flu Men-in-Black” were now dressed in novelty T-shirts with a reassuring caricature of a pig on the front. Some of them were people I recognized from Occupational Health, but others were people who wore temporary ID badges, indicating that they were not Trust staff. I pretended that I wanted to have the vaccine and queued up with everyone else. We were made to fill out a form, just a basic one listing my name, staff number and position in the hospital. It asked if I had any allergies or had ever had bad reactions to vaccines; it also listed a few of the more common side-effects. There was a separate queue for people who answered “yes” in allergies box. When it was my turn one of the pig-T-shirted people gave me a card with the letter “C” on it and told me to go to cubicle C. There were also cubicles “A,B and D”. I asked him why they had set up this separate location to issue the Swine Flu vaccine and he replied: “Because this programme is too big to do at the Ockie Health office”. It’s true. The H1N1 is the biggest vaccination scheme I’ve ever seen being promoted in the NHS. As you’ll see in my Sine Flu Diary on HPANWO TV and in the many websites critical of the Swine Flu scare, Swine Flu is only a little bit worse than normal flu. Yes, for a small number of sufferers it proves fatal, but then so does normal flu. As I’ve said before, there is a distinct political agenda attached to Swine Flu which is summed up very well by Our Dave here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMinIt5Yq2E and Jane Burgermeister here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PelTWCUmTsU . I went to cubicle C, which was just a couple of chairs and a table surrounded by screens. The jabber inside was a woman I don’t recall seeing before. I saw the ready-drawn orange syrettes of H1N1 vaccine lined up in a tray on the table beside her; they gave off a dark and sinister aura. She ran through the same questions I answered on the form and then asked me if I had any further questions. This was what I’d been waiting for. I outlined my fears. I asked her about Jane Burgermeister and she responded: “Who’s that?” I explained in a sentence or two and the jabber shrugged and said: “Dunno about that. But at the end of the day, everything carries a risk, and you’ve got to weigh up the risks of having the vaccine against those of not having it; as well as the risk to the patients if they catch it off you. You can discuss this with the Ockie Health consultant if you like. She’s busy now, but you can meet with her later.” I thanked her and said I’d go away to think about it and come back later... I didn’t.

I’ve done my best to persuade my Brother and Sister Porters and civilian colleagues not to have the H1N1 jab, but I couldn’t reach everyone. It was sad to see the long queue of people waiting in line for the vaccine. One girl I knew had it done who really should have known better because she is an Alex Jones fan.