I’m sorry, but I never get a flu shot. Not because I’m afraid it will give me the flu, but because I never get sick. I’m 65 and own a landscape company and have never missed a day of work since I bought the business 30 years ago. I’m working outside 5 days a week. I get up at 5 am everyday to work out. I don’t eat junk.
Why do you (or don’t you) get a flu shot?
I don’t get one because I have a debilitating needle phobia–like, vomiting, spasming, fainting and concussing.
Flu Mist saves me, because the vaccine is really freakin’ important, and you should get one for herd immunity if nothing else.
I really, really hope Flu Mist remains available.
I get the shot everytime. The $30 is worth it to offset what might be a week of misery and time out of work. Plus, the flu kills fifty thousand times more Americans annually than Ebola, or something like that.
My mom was one of the people who died after getting the flu in 2016. Needless to say, I get my flu shot.
I am required to get a flu vaccine every year. I probably wouldn’t bother getting it if I weren’t otherwise required by my employer.
I’ve had the flu. Getting the flu really sucks.
Getting a shot is fast and easy. It’s also free (either through insurance or the city department of health). Why wouldn’t I get it?
My dad got horribly sick from the flu a few years ago. Took him over a month to recover. I get a flu shot every year, like clockwork.
I’m allergic, so I don’t get them. Hives are bad enough, but when it moves from wheezing to being unable to breathe… well, I’ll take my chances with the flu, thanks.
Wish I could get them safely, though - with my asthma I’m at higher risk for complications like pneumonia than the average person. Also, getting the flu sucks.
They offer it free every year on campus, so sure. After catching the flu last year I’m never skipping it again. That was rough.
My sister died from the H1N1 flu in 2014. She was 50 years old and left behind six year old twin daughters. She didn’t get a shot and she got it from someone who didn’t get a shot and so on.
Other than people who, like Broomstick, have a valid medical reason not to get one, you’re a fucking idiot not to do so.
I’m a Foster Parent and, it is STRONGLY recommended to help protect the children in our care. Heck yes, I get one every year. I even get a $25 gift card for Fry’s/Kroger for doing it through my workplace.
I’ve never gotten one before. I may decide to one of these days/years, but there’s a fair amount of inertia I’d have to overcome. I’d have to figure out where, when, and how to get one, and take the trouble to get there and do so, and find out whether, with my current insurance, I’d have to pay for it. I do not like doctors, shots, or medical anything. And some years I hear how there’s a limited supply of the vaccine, and I figure there must be other people who need it way more than I do. Even without the vaccine, chances are good I wouldn’t get the flu, and if I got the vaccine, I could still get the flu.
Where to get it - piece of cake, virtually any major pharmacy such as Walgreens or CVS in autumn/winter. Just stroll in, ask, fill out a form, and wait ten minutes.
Cost - insurance will often cover automatically, and even if not, it’s just $30 at most out of pocket.
As for illness odds, sure, some have gotten flu even while vaccinated, but their odds are drastically lower of such than those who haven’t.
Not to mention, my CVS gives you a discount coupon if you get one. When I go to pick up a prescription I have to tell them that no thanks for a shot, I’ve done mine already.
And that’s exactly the reason more people should get flu shots - it would decrease the risk for people who can’t get flu shots for good reasons, not laziness.
Same with any vaccine - not getting it when you can increases the risk for those who have medical reasons not to be vaccinated.
I got mine, since I never have side effects, my clinic makes it real easy to get one, it is paid for by insurance, and I understand the benefits.
And also because my wife has written two recent books on vaccines, (PM me for details) so I’d better.
She also write a book on the flu which got paid for but not published when the expected flu epidemic a few years back fizzled out. So every silver lining has a cloud.
Seemingly all obstacles or reasons not to get a flu shot are absent. Cheap? Yes. Readily available? Usually, yes. Wait time? Short to nonexistent. Common and potentially deadly or debilitating disease? Yes.
It’s not like you are being advised to spend $400 to wait three hours in line for a shot to guard against Marburg hemmorhagic fever. The flu shot can’t make a more compelling case for itself than already has.
I wonder what it’d do to have reverse payments for vaccines: increase taxes, and use the surplus to pay for $100 bills passed out to folks when they receive their annual flu vaccine. Folks who don’t get the vaccine miss out on the payment.
A similar principle could be applied to childhood vaccines.
I haven’t missed a flu shot in over 20 years.
I never got them growing up, for some reason…not sure why. After entering the Navy after college, they pushed the flu shot hard during my initial training, so I got them for a couple of years, but I was a fairly hit or miss after that, especially since the Navy used to administer the vaccine with those jet injectors, which I never liked. (I was worried about what would happen if I or the operator flinched, and I was also worried about cross-contamination…which is ultimately why the U.S. military finally stopped using them in 1997.)
Regardless, what made me a believer in the vaccine was actually getting the flu twice in the mid to late '90s. I was teaching then, so I was exposed to a lot of people. Both times are indelibly marked in my mind as two of the worst illnesses I’ve ever had in my life. I laid in bed in a sick delirium, unable to move. I never, ever, want to be that sick again, so I always get the flu shot now.
I’ve gotten the flu only once since, and that was after getting the flu shot that year. It must have had some effect, because the illness was much milder. I was still miserable, but was able to sit up and watch TV.
Flu shots are mandatory for health care workers at the hospitals where I’m on staff. I’d get an annual flu shot anyway, as full-blown influenza* is a nasty illness which can kill, sometimes through secondary pneumonia.
Obligatory reminder to those who think their allegedly superior immune systems protect them: some groups especially hard-hit during past outbreaks (including healthy young people) have suffered due to over-active immune systems sparking damaging systemic reactions to flu infection (so-called cytokine storm).
*while it’s well-known that flu vaccine is not one of the most effective vaccines out there (largely due to difficulty predicting which strains will be most active for a particular flu season and having to go into production with vaccines to hit those strains), it’s less well known that even if you are vaccinated and get flu, the illness will likely be less severe than if you weren’t immunized.
Fun side note: we will soon have another antivax Congressman in the grand tradition of Bill Posey - Mark Green (R) - Tennessee. He’s also an ex-emergency room doc and should know better.