Considering different strains of flu are born all the time, does the flu shot work for the most part?
Not a Doctor, nor do I play one on TV, but the Flu shot is designed to counter the strain that’s expected to hit the USA in the near future.
Sometimes they hit it right, other times not. 
A medical expert will be along soon.
Generally, each year’s new strain starts in Asia and slowly works its way east. By the time it hits here, there’s been plenty of time to prepare the vaccine. And yes, it works.
Usually the shot covers several strains of flu. Where I work we trialled giving them for free at one of our offices some years ago. It cut sick leave so much that work now pays a doctor and nurse to come in for a few days and give thrm to anyone who wants one. Because they were free I started having them and haven’t had flu since - probably 7 or 8 years.
Here is the Department of Health and Ageing statement on the composition of the 2006 vaccine:
The Australian Influenza Vaccine Committee (AIVC) met on 6 October 2005, and agreed to adopt the September WHO recommendations.
The Committee decided that the influenza vaccine components for the year 2006 Season should contain the following:
A (H1N1): an A/New Caledonia/20/99 (H1N1) - like strain, 15 µg HA per dose
A (H3N2): an A/California/7/2004 (H3N2) - like strain, 15 µg HA per dose
B: a B/Malaysia/2506/2004 - like strain, 15 µg HA per dose
The following viruses are recommended as suitable vaccine strains:
A/New Caledonia/20/99 (IVR-116)
A/New York/55/2004 (NYMC X-157)
B/ Malaysia/2506/2004
It’s completely anecdotal, but I’ve received flu shots for something like 12 of the past 15 years, and for whatever reason, I got raging cases of the flu in those 3 years that I didn’t get the shot, and never got the flu when I did get the shot.
I like to believe that the shot works, but I really don’t have any proof.
Short answer: Yes
Long answer: Influenza is being monitored all year, all around the world. The groups that monitor have years of data indicating which flu viruses are present, how they are changing (slow changes are called “antigenic drift”, big changes are called “antigenic shift”) and how many people in what age groups are being infected, and the death rate from infection in each age group.
The influenza vaccine is new each year. It is made of the 3 virus strains that these monitoring folks think will cause the most problems in a particular year. Most times, they are on target. Sometimes there are surprises.
If you get a flu shot and have a reaction (mild or not so mild case of “the flu”) it usually means that your immune system has not “seen” that particular flu strain before and it is generating a response.
Alot of people say “I have the flu” when they are talking about many kinds of illnesses. If you have what I call “real, live, influenza”, you are really, really sick. You ache all over, your BONES hurt. You are afraid you are going to die, and you are afraid you are NOT going to die and you are going to continue to suffer terrible pain for a long time.
If you have ever had “real, live, influenza” you NEVER, EVER want to feel that way again.
The big scare right now is with the bird flu that is in Asia. This is a strain that humans have never encountered before (big change called “antigenic shift”). So right now, if a human gets infected with this virus, it is killing close to 50% of the people who get it. Right now, this bird flu is not easily spread from human to human like most flu viruses. If it changes (as flu viruses do all the time) and becomes easily spread from human to human, the world will be in BIG trouble. What usually happens is as it changes to become spreadable human to human, the changes will also weaken it so it won’t kill 50% of the people who get it (only about 20% death rate in the last big world wide outbreak in 1919-1920)
Anecdotal: I’ve gotten a flu shot (free through my workplace) for the past four years, and the year before that through a doctor as my mother was immunocompromised (dying of cancer). I haven’t had the flu since 1997.
Holy cow, do I remember the '97 flu, though. I was sick. Having a bad cold is nothing like having the genuine flu.
I wonder if this is the same outbreak: I had it in December of 1996. The description of feeling like you’re going to die is exactly right. My then-husband got it first, and I poo-poohed his suggestion of possibly needing to go to the emergency room. Well, I quickly found out what he meant. I literally couldn’t lift my head from the pillow. I pushed tiny bits of food into my mouth from the pillow. Thankfully I was only this bad for about 24 hours.
I’ve gotten the flu shot every year since.
I’ll add my anecdotal evidence to this…
I didn’t get the flu shot my first year of college in 1997. I wanted to but it is my best friend’s fault that I didn’t (I will never let him forget it! 
) I got a horrible horrible flu that year.
I got the shot every year since then until 2004, and never had the flu again. I didn’t get it these past 2 years but I am not “in the public” as much as I used to be.
Does the Flu Shot really work?
Well enough that Medicare and many businesses are willing to pay for it.
The cost is offset by fewer flu problems for Medicate and better work attendance for businesses.
OTOH I had the flu shot in the fall when the gov’t sponsored a mass program of giving the shot with a high pressure needleless gun.
I had such a bad case of the flu the next March that I thought I was going to die and afraid I wouldn’t. :rolleyes:
I have had flu shots for the past 6 years and have not had any flu symptoms. Also have had only one cold. I truly believe from experience that it works.
Well, as long as we’re going anecdotal here: The last time I had a “real, live, influenza”, by pudytat72’s definition, was probably around 1988 or so (yes, eighteen years ago). And I have NEVER had a flu shot.
Similar to Roadfood, I haven’t had the flu since at least 1994 or earlier. And I have never gotten a flu shot.
Does that mean I have a really good immune system, or that I am just lucky?
You’re probably just lucky.
May you remain so!
I remember lying in bed for a few days, freezing and burning at the same time, and aching right down to the bone. I remember it hurt to have my flannel nightgown and the blankets against my skin, but at the same time being so cold (while burning with fever) that I couldn’t not have them on. I remember getting up to go to the bathroom and getting as far as the end of the bed, and just kind of… collapsing. I remember not being able to croak loudly enough for my husband in the other room to hear me. I think I just went to sleep there.
It was just before Hallowe’en, and a few days later, I could sit on the couch, swaddled in blankets, and watch vampire and ghost-themed television.
I remember lots of ginger-ale, but no food, except for potato-leek soup when I started to feel hunger again.
The thing that is beginning to concern me is that right now I’m starting to feel… a little bit funny. You know, a little tired, achy, hot, spacy…
Crossing my fingers that I’m just catching my husband’s horrific cold.
I’ve only had the flu once. It was winter of 2001 and I could barely crawl to the bathroom. The good thing was that that was when I read the first 4 Harry Potter books (in the last 3 days of an 8-day illness) and I had cool hallucinatory dreams about them.
I have gotten a flu shot every year since then, even though it often makes my lymph nodes swell up in th arm where I get the shot. I had it on Monday, in fact, and am a little achey and have an icepick headache, but I think I did it early enough this year that I haven’t been exposed to these strains yet–only mild axillary tenderness.
I work in a large (250 bed) residential health care facility. The difference in the rates of illness in the place, (both staff, and clients) is startlingly lower than it was before flu shots became free, and regular. I have not had the flu in seven years, and I don’t even get the shot!! (and yes, I am protected, because I live in an environment where the flu doesn’t get passed around for months every year.) The client rates of infections related to flu like symptoms (for which we have very reliable records) are much less than half of the rate that was common before routine flu virus innoculation. Some years, even less than a quarter of the prior state. In addition, duration, and intensity of illnesses are down as well.
The flu shot works. (I don’t get it because I react strongly to innoculations of any type.)
Tris
The Flu is like being hit by a truck…
…then hoping the truck would backup over you to finish you off.
Oops, forgot to justify my post in GQ.
Here is a link to some good references about publish studies on Influenza vaccination effectiveness, side effects, etc. Gives some food for thought.