Flu shots

[12string]

No way those things cause bone spurs!

[Randomguy]

Only imbeciles get the flu shot.  It will make you die and allow the government to track your corpse if you become a zombie.  Do you want that?  

Didn't think so.

[shootingstar]

No, not for a long time yet.

[Square Wheels]

I have to.

[Page Turner]

6 hours ago, bikeman564™ said:

rubbers prevent getting the flu?

[Page Turner]

8 hours ago, MickinMD said:

The flu only protects you, in any avg. year, from about 60% of the strains of flu going around. The CDC has to guess ahead of time each year which 3 strains of flu are most likely to be the major ones so the pharma companies have enough time to make the vaccine. Some years they make better guesses than others.

...I don't get a flu shot any more, mostly for this reason.  Also, I'm careful what I do with my body after that 4.5 year experience with CFIDS.  My wife gets one every year.  It's been a long time since either of us got the flu, mostly because we we're retired and stay home a lot, hardly ever eat out, generally avoid crowds like movie theaters and concerts.

I do wash my hands a lot more in flu season than other times of the year, but I probably wash then obsessively all the time because when I get an ordinary cold virus or other URI, it sometimes seems to drag on forever.  I don't bounce back in a few days or a week like I used to.

 

Influenza is a particular case in terms of vaccination.  It's not a good hill to die on arguing either for or against vaccines. There's a phenomenally well written book about the pandemic of 1918-19 called "America's Forgotten Pandemic" by Alfred Crosby.  I'm just about finished with the last chapter, so if anyone wants to read it, let me know and I'll send it to you. The magnitude of the numbers who perished is astonishing, as is the speed with which they died.  It's got some swell stuff on the subsequent research trying to figure out the cause of the disease, and where it led.

 

For example, penicillin was first used in making it easier to culture Pfeiffer's bacillus, by killing off some of the other competing bacilli. And only later did it become obvious that it would work well as an antibiotic in people.  And it turned out that the best research animal for human influenza of many types was the ferret.  

 

[Randomguy]

I have said it before, but every time I got the flu shot I ended up with flu-like symptoms (with the same severity as the flu) for at least a week, and then STILL ended up getting the flu later that winter.  I stopped getting the flu shot and I haven't had the flu since.

Even though I have probably just been lucky in not getting the flu the last few years, it is clear to me that in my case, I should just take my chances.  Yeah, I might still get the flu, but getting the flu AND an additional voluntary week of severe flu symptoms immediately after getting the shot seems pretty stupid. 

[The_Karen_Cooper_Incident]

I get them all the time.  They are fun.

Couch