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OT--flu shots, get them this year

I'd rather be forced to get a flu shot than wear my freakin seat belt whenever I drive...

WHAAAAAT?

With or without the flu shot you might still get the flu, but if you get into a serious accident without a belt your next ride might be to the morgue. That holds true even if your car is equipped with air bags.

I've worn seat belts long before they passed laws making it mandatory. Until and unless you've been a passenger in a vehicle that got violently "T-boned" you can't imagine the forces involved and how helpless you are to resist them. Getting bounced around the inside of a vehicle doesn't improve your survival odds.

I don't like mandatory belt laws, for the same reason I don't like so many of the other coercive laws but in the absence of laws requiring them I would still choose to use seat belts and wear a helmet on a motorcycle.
 
The last experience I had with a flu shot was in high school, when they used us as guinea pigs for a new vaccine. They lined us up like army recruits and blasted the shot through the skin with high-pressure air, hurt like hell for a good week. Was really fast and sanitary tho.

I think George Washington died of the flu so it's not trivial but ... a good friend, about 70, was told by his doctor that he's old now, should get a flu shot. He did.

Next day he couldn't get out of bed, was lucky his daughter came by to call an ambulance, stayed in icu for two weeks then finally was diagnosed with something similar to Guillan-Barre (sp) as an adverse reaction ? That was several years ago and he's not truly recovered even now. Did a little research on adverse reactions, they are more common than generally thought and at least in his case, devastating.

For myself, I'll risk the flu.

I am with you on this. Looks like we are the minority here though. My wife and kids do not get it either. So far we are more than healthy without them.
 
Occasionally researchers exhume victims of the 1918 Spanish Flu epidemic (now there's a dramatic way to test your vaccine) but I don't know if that strain has ever resurfaced, even in a lab. I would hope not. My Dad caught the flu several times, including the Asian flu in '57 and the 1918 flu when he was 14. That one killed a number of his friends.

I'm not anti-vaccination by any means, but unlike Smallpox and some of the other classics the influenza virus apparently mutates rapidly enough that by the time the vaccine culture is in production and stockpiled there's a strong likelihood it's no longer effective against the intended strain. I always get sick after the shot and would hate to think it was a waste of time.
 
Last time I had a flu shot was when they had the pig flu scare back in the late seventies. The shot was free so I got it then I spent the next 4 days in bed never again. I have even had the H.R. people at work try to push me into getting the shot but at seventy I am going to pass. I am semi retired now only work 40 hours a week and have no desire to go through that again.
 
Despite the current administrations best efforts, all science and scientists have not yet been banished from government. So, one does not have to rely on anecdotes to determine whether flu vaccine is safe and effective. Just cruise the National Institute of Health website and you can find science-based articles on the subject. Or look at the UK's national health sites.

NIH Fact Sheet: NIH Fact Sheets - Influenza

Factors affecting flu vaccine efficacy: NIH study finds factors that may influence influenza vaccine effectiveness | National Institutes of Health (NIH)

The bottom line is that the vaccine does entail minuscule risk but also comes with much greater likelihood of substantial benefit. It is far more likely to benefit anyone who takes it than to harm them even though an individual may know someone who was harmed by it some time in the last 50 years.

Denis
 
Despite the current administrations best efforts, all science and scientists have not yet been banished from government. So, one does not have to rely on anecdotes to determine whether flu vaccine is safe and effective. Just cruise the National Institute of Health website and you can find science-based articles on the subject. Or look at the UK's national health sites.

NIH Fact Sheet: NIH Fact Sheets - Influenza

Factors affecting flu vaccine efficacy: NIH study finds factors that may influence influenza vaccine effectiveness | National Institutes of Health (NIH)

The bottom line is that the vaccine does entail minuscule risk but also comes with much greater likelihood of substantial benefit. It is far more likely to benefit anyone who takes it than to harm them even though an individual may know someone who was harmed by it some time in the last 50 years.

Denis

I agree with that. I know there are risks but I'm particularly prone to getting the flu. I've had it really bad at least 4 times in my life, maybe more. The sort of flu that wipes you out so bad that you can't get out of bed for days. Now I'm getting on in years I don't want that again.

Regards Tyrone.
 
A very important thing with all vaccinations is herd immunity. The more people in the population that are resistant to a disease or strain of that desease, the less chance it has to spread to those that aren't resistant to it. If too few people get vaccinated (or the producers predict wrong on the likely strains, for flu), then you can end up with epidemics.

Not getting the vaccination might work if everyone else gets it, but it's selfish.

Don't forget that the 1918 flu epidemic killed more people world wide than the entire 1914-18 war and that was the bloodiest war in history.
 
Just returned from the local Rite-Aid...got the shot, free, took about 2 minutes!

Pharmacy Tech. "which arm?"
Me. "right'.

Pharmacy Tech. "are you left handed"
Me. "yes"

Pharmacy Tech. "me too, which hand do you write with?"
Me. "left..how about you?"

Pharmacy Tech. "right..in grade school they smacked you with a ruler if you used your left hand to write with"
Me. "where did you go to school?"

Pharmacy Tech. "Viet Nam"

The conversation was in very broken English. I thought that was sort of interesting!:)

Stuart
 
Seatbelts? It's really an issue of being forced to 'be safe' by people who feel they know better than I do. As for helmets....there are some very persuasive statistics compiled by the NHSTA that would argue you're better off without a helmet if you would rather be dead than in a vegetative state.

I'm not arguing against 'the odds' when it comes to seatbelts, but I've had two major accidents where I woulda been dead had been wearing a seatbelt.
 
If anyone doubts the effects of influenza, try the $50 bill (or £50 note) test.

If you see a $50 bill on the floor and pick it up, you have a cold etc, ........if you have flu, you wouldn't move a muscle for 100 $50 bills.
 
I am with you on this. Looks like we are the minority here though. My wife and kids do not get it either. So far we are more than healthy without them.

Agreed. Like the swine flu shots they hurried to have at every CVS, Walgreens. Yet no one in my zip code had it. I'm not a fan of preventative medicine. It tends to be overblown, and good diet and vitamins never get talked about. Not to mention exercise
 
I have gotten the shot every year, for the last 20+ years, hoping to avoid laying on the bathroom floor in a pool of filth (again) , unable to move.
Now I still get the flu occasionally, but the symptoms pass w/o drama.

We humans think we are so smart, but the microbes will win eventually, once a nasty strain gets loose in our ever more populated Earth.
 
There is a film on finding the original virus. A Swedish researcher attempted in the '70's and failed. Decades later he was approached to help isolate some more tissue. He returned to an Alaskan village and being known to the elders when he went in decades before they dug into the graves and recovered frozen tissue and from that they isolated the virus.
I talked to a guy who lived through the flu epidemic of 1918. He said you went to work and straight back home. No church, movies or large assemblies. His description got my attention.
Of course this was a time before antibiotics. My father grew up without antibiotics and would freak if I got a dirty cut as a child. It immediately had to be cleaned with soap and water.
We are ignoring the shots offered to us and are paying the price with outbreaks of measles etc. Especially people in shops should keep their tetanus shot up to date.
We Heard the Bells: The Influenza of 1918 - YouTube

This Youtube at 31:00 shows the original guy who tried too early when we didn't have the technology.
 
I don't know if that strain has ever resurfaced, even in a lab.

I think they have samples of it, think they found it in an Alaskan cemetery. Level 4 biohazard lab stuff, they have all kinds of other nasty microbes too. Kinda scary to think about really...

I got the vaccines last year, came down with a rough flu right in the middle of my final exams, that was fun. It's not a magic cure, but does help.
 
Agreed. Like the swine flu shots they hurried to have at every CVS, Walgreens. Yet no one in my zip code had it. I'm not a fan of preventative medicine. It tends to be overblown, and good diet and vitamins never get talked about. Not to mention exercise

Diet, exercise never talked about??? You kidding?


Again, to get some facts go to the NIH website on preventive medicine Right on the first page is their statements about exercise and diet being extremely important to disease prevention. Physical Activity: NIH and Federal Funded Prevention Research | NIH Office of Disease Prevention (ODP)

Their.nutrition statement is: Nutrition: NIH and Federal Funded Prevention Research | NIH Office of Disease Prevention (ODP)

The other three topics are tobacco abuse, substance abuse and immunization.
Take just a moment to read those statements They chose these topics as each has major health impacts and also can be significantly impacted by relatively inexpensive and safe behavioral changes.

Denis

Incidentally their is no good science to support vitamin supplementation outside of folate in pregnancy and Vit D in milk and some other special cases. Before I hear all the howls about BS, coverups, and research suppression, please supply supportive evidence in legitimate juried journals and not testimonials based on personal experience as there are testimonials supporting every notion imaginable. But scientific data carefully derived cuts through all that garbage.
 
Diet, exercise never talked about??? You kidding?


Again, to get some facts go to the NIH website on preventive medicine Right on the first page is their statements about exercise and diet being extremely important to disease prevention. Physical Activity: NIH and Federal Funded Prevention Research | NIH Office of Disease Prevention (ODP)

Their.nutrition statement is: Nutrition: NIH and Federal Funded Prevention Research | NIH Office of Disease Prevention (ODP)

The other three topics are tobacco abuse, substance abuse and immunization.
Take just a moment to read those statements They chose these topics as each has major health impacts and also can be significantly impacted by relatively inexpensive and safe behavioral changes.

Denis

Incidentally their is no good science to support vitamin supplementation outside of folate in pregnancy and Vit D in milk and some other special cases. Before I hear all the howls about BS, coverups, and research suppression, please supply supportive evidence in legitimate juried journals and not testimonials based on personal experience as there are testimonials supporting every notion imaginable. But scientific data carefully derived cuts through all that garbage.

I'm not taking a position against statistics, I'm referring to media. I just clicked 3 flu articles and all bottlenecked to flu vaccines giving 10percent chance to be protected . But that it could be not nearly as bad as not having it. None mentioned health or diet.
 
One day later, not a lick of improvement. Ya get a headache when you cough too much. If I get up to change the themostat and sit right back down again, I have to gasp for about 5 minutes afterwards. It's a ten-step round trip. So the anti-vaccine posts don't look so sensible right now.
 








 
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