Got the flu shot on Saturday.
I teach.
If you figure I have about 25 students in some classes, and each of them has people living with them at home, there are a lot of “cooties” flying through the air in those classrooms for the next few months.
I also don’t get paid when I am home sick, so I consider a flu shot money in the bank.
Oh, and the shot was free from my insurance, and it didn’t hurt a bit.
I got it. My boss has two young children and he’s notorious for spreading their germs in our office. By accident but it’s hard to forgive coming down with the flu, strep throat, colds…whatever they have gets passed around to at least one person in the office.
I’m going to belize & hawaii in prime flu season so if I can decrease the chance of flu (at the least), I’ll take it. I’m looking forward to those trips dammit.
I agree with Antigen. ABSOLUTELY get it if you work in a hospital. Touching anything public in a hospital is a good way of spreading infection. Even though I’ll be working in mostly hands-off specialties like psychiatry over the flu season, I still chose to get the flu shot this year (as I have every year since I started working in medicine).
Everyone is at risk for the flu. The Spanish Flu epidemic of 1918 was actually more deadly to healthy young adults than it was for children and elderly, who you’d normally expect to be vulnerable.
Even though I do think that some people have reactions ot the shot that make them feel a little bit sickly for a while, it’s no comparison to the real flu and I think it’s well worth it.
Have never gotten the shot. I’ve had the flu once in my childhood and once as an adult. Once I hit 50 or if my immunity is shot, I’ll get one. Otherwise, I’ll pass.
Got mine yesterday. Will always get one.
Please get the shot. It’s fast, easy, and you never know whose life you might save. You might even save my nephew Jack, who is a year old and had a liver transplant at 6 months. His immune system is suppressed to avoid rejection of the donor liver, and we depend on herd immunity as one of the things to help keep him safe.
Risks of getting the shot:
[ul]
[li]You’re out 30 bucks (not an issue here as it’s free for you)[/li][li]Your arm gets sore[/li][li]You might feel flu-ish for a day or so (note: this is different from “the shot gave me the flu”. I’ve heard that sometimes when you get a shot, and you haven’t had one before, you may have overall aches. This was true for me when I got the shot in 1986 but never since then).[/li][/ul]
Risks of not getting the shot:
[ul]
[li]Feeling bad[/li][li]Praying for death[/li][li]Secondary infections (bronchitis, pneumonia, pleurisy)[/li][/ul]
The risks of getting the shot seem to be outweighed by the risks of not getting it, and catching the flu.
I had flu (or something very flu-like) one year about 10 years ago; that was a year where a lot of people who’d had the shot caught the flu anyway.
I didn’t exactly want to die - perhaps the shot limited the severity somehow - but had the Angel of Death shown up, I wouldn’t have argued all that much for a couple of days there. I was on both Advil and Tylenol to try to get the fever down, one evening, and I was lying in bed covered with all the blankets, in a fetal position, teeth chattering with chills as the fever spiked.
I did wind up on antibiotics for the secondary infection - I have asthma, and things like that nearly always evolve into bacterial problems.
I always get shots. Even in 2004 when there was such a shortage, I stood in line for an hour to get into one of the last vaccination clinics in the DC area. I felt bad - I was among the small minority of folks who were under 70 in that line - but I am high risk.
No for me. I’m allergic to aminoglycosides, so I cannot get the shot.
I’m 32, relatively healthy and I have never had a flu shot. I also haven’t had the flu in probably about 15-20 years.
So, no flu shots for me.
Anecdotally, my father-in-law (now 60-ish) quit getting flu shots about 10 years ago, because he got the flu every year that he got the shot that was supposed to keep him from getting it. He hasn’t had the flu since.
Second thought… you work in a hospital, you should get the flu shot.
Dontchya know hospitals are full of sick people 
I’d just like to say how relieved I am to see someone use the phrase “yea or nay” correctly spelled in the title of this thread.
It’s such a rare event online, that I felt it was worth noting.
I get it at low cost at my campus clinic every year. I figure it’s a good idea since I look after my elderly mom and also work with college students who don’t always take care of themselves.
I didn’t get it my freshman year of college (even tho I wanted to - long story) and spent a week in bed being very angry at myself. I got it for the rest of my time in college.
I haven’t gotten it regularly since college because I work at home, but this year I am back to working out at the gym and Lord knows I can pick up nasties of all sorts from there. So I dutifully paid my $30 and got the shot in 10 mins.
According to the sheet from the clinic I got the “inactivated vaccine” so it can’t make me sick. I did have a bit of an allergic reaction in the area of the shot and my arm was sore and a tad itchy for 3 days. But, much better than the flu.
Thanks for all the responses! Looks like I’ll hie myself down to the clinic asap…
I say ‘Yes’
Look, the best case is that you don’t get the flu - high probablity.
Worst case is that you have a violent reaction to it and die - low probability.
Never had a shot, nor the flu.
I work in a hospital so the shot is free.
About an hour ago I happened to be in the right place at the right time and got mine anyway.
My arm is fine but my eyeballs feel like they’ve had a liberal dusting of sand.
I never got one before, and have never had the flu, but was walking by the set-up in the hospital and decided what the heck. I didn’t have an side effects that I noticed.
She made the point that they hope they matched up to what will hit this year–that would bug me if I finally got it and then get hit by a different flu, for the first time. :smack:
Flu shots are a crapshoot. Nay.
I get free flu shots (indeed, I am required to get them, being in the military.)
Actually, the whole “vaccinations make you sick” meme was one of the stupid rumors that really pissed me off when I was in Basic. Guys convinced that the shots they gave us during inprocessing were what made half of us come down with the dorm crud two weeks later. Just because it would make Air Force Basic Military Training that much more intense and challenging for us!)
Heh, my vaccination experience (and some of those of my family) are good fun. Our first week of Basic, they line us up outside of a longish room with a door at either end, with instructions to drop trou as soon as we walk in. Medical person sticks me in the right butt cheek with a needle to give me the Fat Boy mother of all penicillin shots (known colloquially as “The Peanutbutter Shot”), and then you quickly pull up your pants and try to get to the other door as fast as you can while another for or five medical type people grab prepped needles from tables and stick you in either arm as you flee past.
I’m convinced that the first week of Basic Training is to make you feel like livestock, except that our instructors were not allowed to use cattle prods to get us moving faster, and that cows probably get more sleep.
Last year, half of the squadron gets called to the gym to get our flu vacs, this time in the form of a nasal spray. THAT was more unpleasant to me than the shot would have been. Waited around for an hour so I could stand in line for 5 minutes to have a Major ask me the rhetorical question “Ready, Airman?” I say rhetorical because before I could say “Yes, Sir” he shoved the spray nozzel up my nose and sprayed. THAT was a weird sensation.
As for my family… hehehehehe, when I was a kid, we lived at Yokota Air Base (dad worked at the BX there as an assistant manager), and we were getting our required shots for the school year. I went in first, got the shots, no problem. My sister? She has what even then she recognized was an irrational fear of needles. It hasn’t gone away with age and childbearing, from what I understand. The Airman at the base hospital who tried to give her the shot stumbled away with a black eye. Took six airmen to restrain one wildly flailing 12 year old girl so she could be given a shot that took three seconds to administer.
If you get the shots for free, go for it, especially working in a hospital. Better to wear the helmet and never need it then to not wear the helmet and need it only once.
Never have I gotten the Flu shot. Never will I.
Besides the fact that they have to guess which strains to put in there (and typically are wrong.), the FLU shots are some of the few vaccines that still contain mercury - which is toxic to life, and never leaves the body. Whether you believe mercury causes autism or not, it is clearly a toxin. And using it is all in the name of preserving the vaccine longer - so they don’t have to use individual sized doses. That’s it. That’s why they’re poisoning us. For profit. :smack: