Flu-Shots, why not?

[Liv]

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So I'm walking down Spring Garden Street today and I see our local pharmacy offering flu-shots, anytime. I've got time now, I think. I speak to the pharmacists on duty and he tells me the laws were changed about two years ago to allow normal CVS pharmacy staff to inject you with the season's deadly blend of inactive flue molecules. Of course I pay $31 for this privilege and leave CVS with a band-aid.

It seems like a good deal. A big box of cold medicine and tissues is $31, so it makes perfect sense to get it right?

Yet I'm a very skeptical person. Especially when it comes to all things American. You would think, I'd be one of those people screaming that this is pharma-propaganda, and someone is getting rich off it all (which is likely true). People claim it's ineffective, or dangerous, but I say why not? I find it interesting that I hold this dichotomy of thought because on most subjects, I must admit, that America is a capitalist society that markets its prey, and cannibalizes those too ignorant not to see through it. I don't own an Iphone, never purchased an SUV, and I don't have a pink-ribbon on my car, but I find it a responsible and proper thing to get a flu shot so I am not the weak part of the chain, so I don't go off and shake hands with some elderly person and kill them. Perhaps my Republicanism values (self-responsibility) are stronger than most Republicans?

In fact, has it become more American not to get the flu-shot?

I'm not sure the answer of any of this to be honest. I don't have the data, just a sore arm and a prayer that this year I'll be flu free. Suddenly I'm a Republican, spewing my faith in healing, and the American way of life. What the heck has happened to me?

[SouthernFriedInfidel]

I'm only going to look into a flu shot if I get a job. I spend about 80% of my time at home, and don't get near others, generally. If I get a job, that would certainly change, so that'd be no problem.

[Liv]

Watch you be the one to evolve the cross-over virus that kills mankind.

[A Person]

Flu vaccinations are not like other vaccinations such as smallpox, measles, rubella, polio etc, in that the flu vaccine is different every year and is nothing like as effective as the others.

The flu virus mutates rapidly and there are a great many strains of flu. The annual flu shot inoculates you against a selection of viruses that are in circulation and that are expected to be a problem. That's why a late comer (like swine flu) can be such a shocker.

The flu vaccine is worth getting IMO, but it's not a guarantee against flu and skipping it isn't a big deal. Especially if there are no children in the house - and you're not going out much

However, people that refuse to vaccinate themselves or their children against potentially lethal viruses on the basis of dubious and debunked myths on the other hand are foolish and dangerous. There is a concerted campaign to blame vaccination for any childhood illnesses - which is supported by the 'evidence' that the illness started after the child was vaccinated. Post hoc ergo propter hoc.

Unfortunately now any internet search on vaccinations brings up many more seemingly authoritative anti-vax sites than science based sites. There's even a book explaining how wonderful diseases are

Melanie's Marvellous Measles
a children's story written by Stephanie Messenger

This book takes children aged 4 - 10 years on a journey of discovering about the ineffectiveness of vaccinations, while teaching them to embrace childhood disease, heal if they get a disease, and build their immune systems naturally.

Oh yes, let's embrace measles. Death from pneumonia or acute encephalitis is so much fun.

As this movement gains ground we can expect to see the disease rates which plummeted after the introduction of the vaccine, rise again and for more children to die in agony from an inflamed brain lining, just as they did in Dublin in 2000 where three hundred people caught measles after vaccination rates dropped below 60%. Three children died.



As a direct result of the ant-vax movement three children died in Dublin

[Liv]

Well one day in, and I feel great.

Very glad I had it.

In fact, feel better today than yesterday.