Ah. Thanks.
:eek: Oh, don’t tell me that! I’m counting on the shot actually working! You mean it’s just some scam, something to make somebody somewhere rich? I can believe it 
but I don’t want to believe it!
Nonetheless, on payday I’m marching into Target’s pharmacy, $30 in hand, and will take my chances. Because as I (and many others) have already shared, getting the flu is one of life’s Big Miseries.
Poor analogy. You cannot be immune to car accidents.
We have every reason to believe the vaccine works just fine. The thing some people are tripping up on is that the flu vaccine isn’t tested by giving a bunch of the people the vaccine and not others, and seeing if fewer who have been vaccinated catch the flu during the flu season. I mean, that’d be great, but by the time you got your results, the flu season would be over, and you’d be holding last year’s formulation in your hand, see? Every year has new strains of the flu, so last year’s formulation does you no good this year.
So, since we know that when people make antibodies to a virus, they overwhelmingly tend not to get the illness that virus causes, we simply test the flu vaccine by giving it to people and then measuring to see if they make antibodies. They do. So yes, it works, for a scientific understanding of “works”. We can’t directly test that it causes fewer flu cases, but we know it provokes an antibody response, which we know causes fewer flu cases.
Walgreens gave it for free to Medicare part B payers. I got one last week.
Free to me, I don’t want to know what they charged Medicare to have a pharmacy Tech give me a shot.
So one can be “naturally” immune to influenza? I suppose this is theoretically possible, but I’ve never heard of anyone lacking the receptors that permit infection by all types of influenza virus, or having a SuperZowieOomph-Packed immune system that just shrugs off infection.
In either eventuality, the super-being owes it to society to donate blood or other humors to science so that the magical powers can be studied and the immunity transferred to all of humankind. 
Medicare’s reimbursement for the flu vaccine this year is $10. The vaccine costs $13 a dose in a 10 dose vial, so Walgreens is taking a $3 hit on the vaccine itself and a total hit on the tech’s pay, alcohol wipe, syringe, needle and band-aid, in the hopes that you buy something while you’re at the store.
As Whynot said, the flu shot does work. However, what most people don’t realize is that the flu shot only contains a vaccine to three different strains of the flu, two A strains, and one B strain. The strains are different every year (hence why you need a new shot annually). It is still possible to get a strain that isn’t covered by the shot. Also, it takes about 2 weeks from the time you get the shot to have the maximal immune response, so if you are exposed before, or within 2 weeks of the vaccine, you can still come down with the flu (though, the closer to the end of the 2 weeks, the less severe it would be).
I’m not aware of any states that allow a Pharmacy Technician to administer the flu shot, or any other vaccines. So, I’m sure it was an actual pharmacist who gave you the shot, unless you were at a “Flu Clinic”, when it might have been a nurse. However, I REALLY doubt it was a technician.
Heh. You’re probably right, although it’s so silly. I could train a 10 year old to give a flu shot in 5 minutes. Heck, I was giving flu shots last week as a nursing student who has only given one IM injection before! (They don’t let us practice on each other in school anymore because of liability issues, so our only experience with hands-on procedures comes with actual patients. Try not to think about it next time you’re in the hospital.)
Of courses, nurses are in an uproar if you suggest that with a little training, a pharm tech could give the shot. Good grief.
No, because I am allergic to the vaccine.
I really wish everyone I come in contact with would get one though, as herd immunity is my only chance to escape it. As I also have asthma this puts me in a bad position, though fortunately the times I have had flu I have weathered it alright. But I’m getting younger and real flu is absolutely miserable.
You really only gave one IM injection in school? Wow! A few weeks ago I took the class for pharmacists who want to become certified to give vaccinations. It was an 8 hour class, and we had to give (and receive) 2 IM injections, and 1 SQ injection. While in Pharmacy school proper (i.e., before my clinical rotations), I had to give and receive some more shots then that, I’ve given, maybe, 10ish (IM & SQ) injections throughout school including that vaccination class.
How can we properly teach a patient to give themselves their lovenox, or insulin, various infertility drugs, or whatever other drug, if we’ve never given and received them ourselves?
Yup. I don’t even remember what it was now. And 2 subq’s (heparin and insulin).
Now, I have one semester to go, so there will be more. But still, the 30 or so I did at the flu clinic last Friday did far more to teach me and get me comfortable with it than anything in school so far.
Goodness, though. 8 hours for vaccine administration? What on earth did you have to cover? “Here’s the deltoid, there’s the vastus lateralis. Use the deltoid when you can, use the V.L. if she’s got a double mastectomy. Wear gloves, wipe first, don’t recap the needle, here’s the Sharps container. Read the paperwork first and don’t give it to anyone with Guillian-Barre or an allergy to eggs.” How do they stretch that to 8 hours?
No.
There currently is no science that demonstrates the effectiveness of the influenza vaccine, by that I mean no double-blind, placebo-controlled studies demonstrating it to be effective.
Epidemiologic data does suggest that the vaccine may have some protective effect, but this could easily be due to the fact that people who get the vaccine tend to be healthier in general than those who do not.
Huh? Most of the people who were getting the vaccine in my dr’s office were older people with heart disease. Whenever there is a shortage of vaccine for any reason the vaccine is given first to “high-risk” people; sometimes my DH who has heart disease got it when I didn’t.
I just got mine an hour or two ago. Yay me!
Many well-designed studies have been undertaken to evaluated influenza vaccine effectiveness and safety, including some randomized placebo-controlled trials, as discussed here.
The evidence (including epidemiologic findings) is strong that influenza vaccine that closely matches circulating virus strains provides good protection against the flu. Given the difficulty in predicting what strains will be active and making vaccine ahead of time based on those predictions, effectiveness may vary year to year. But vaccination works.
Here are some informative links:
I don’t think I have ever had a flu shot, except as a child.
I spent almost 4 bucks before I left. So the loss gets smaller.
I didn’t need a bandaid because I don’t have time to bleed.
I seem to have developed a SuperZowieOomph-Packed immune system recently. I was a very sickly child, a sickly teenager, slightly less sickly age 20 and 21 after I started taking better care of myself (we’re talking many serious illnesses every year, including but not limited to horrific ear infections, strep throat, bronchitis, tonsillitis, sinusitis, severe bouts of flu - and garden-variety colds which would drag on for weeks with severe congestion and nagging cough). Then I changed my lifestyle majorly, and now I just don’t get ill more than minor ‘cold’ symptoms 3 days per year or so. I still work with the public and handle money all day, and my co-workers seem to be a sickly bunch generally, but I don’t catch what they have.
No, I don’t know how my body achieved this, scientifically. There have to be concrete reasons for why I’m so much better at resisting infection these days, though, and I assume there are reasons why other people I know why are exposed to an average amount of infectious individuals rarely or ever get certain infectious illnesses, or get ill at all…