WATCH: Nurse Protesting Vaccine Mandate for Hospital Workers Calls Decision Not to Vax ‘A No-Brainer’

Caryn Helms, a nurse who organized protesters against a mandate that health care workers be vaccinated against COVID-19, called her decision not to get vaccinated “A no-brainer.”

Helms organized hundreds who protested outside the governor’s mansion and the legislature in Raleigh, North Carolina Wednesday because local hospital associations Duke Health and UNC Healthcare have announced vaccine mandates for all staff, with limited exemptions.

Helms was interviewed by local reporters, and told CBS 17’s Joseph Holloway that although nursig is “my passion,” she intends to defy the mandate, even if it costs her her job.

“Yeah, it was a no-brainer. I’m still not taking it,” Helms told Holloway. “You know, my husband is backing me 100%. I will find something else to do, it may not even be in the healthcare business.”

Helms told WRAL “I’ve been a nurse for 30 years. This is my life. This is my career. And now I’m stuck between a rock and a hard place. But I’m choosing my body. Because this is not an approved vaccine. We have no long-term known effects of it.”

She and another nurse involved in the protest claim they are not anti-vaccine, but that “We need more time. Don’t mandate this now. We need more time. Let’s see how well it works.”

Dr. Anthony Fauci, however, has been warning in a series of interviews that the longer the coronavirus is allowed to spread among the 93 million unvaccinated Americans, the greater the chance is that a more harmful and vaccine-reistant variant will appear and “push aside” the dominant Delta variant.

While the vaccines are currently under an emergency use authorization — which is expected to become a full FDA approval within weeks — the safety and efficacy of the vaccines have been extensively verified, and demonstrated in hundreds of millions of recipients.

Watch above via WNCN and WRAL.