While there seems to be many people here that are ‘pro vaccination’, or perhaps better defined as anti-anti-vax (IMHO).
And we, for the purpose of this, can all agree on ending such horrible diseases as small pox.
What is your stance on the flu vaccine? It does seem pretty ineffective, as event those who are vaccinated if they receive protection can still pass it to others. It also has been claimed only to protect from last year’s flu, so very limited effectiveness.
I put this out as a intro cite…
I will also add, due to my work and in normal annual physicals, I have been asked if I wanted to get the (free) flu vaccination, I always responded no, to which each and every time the heath care provider admitted that they wouldn’t get it either.
So as for a GD what is the limit for vaccinations? and does the flu vaccine go over that limit?
Please get it anyway. Even if kanicbird is right and it’s not as effective as it could be (which I’m sure someone will come up soon with stats about), every little bit helps.
I get a flu vaccine every year, and encourage everyone around me to do so as well. The claim that it only protects against last year’s flu in nonsense; that’s not how the strains for this year’s shot are chosen.
It’s a good reminder for me to see when the signup is for the shots at work this year.
It’s not protection from “last year’s flu”; in simplest terms, it’s protection from what they think this year’s flu is going to be. Sometimes they get it wrong, as they did last year. Most years they get it right (or close enough).
I used to get the flu every winter. I’ve not had it since I started getting the vaccine every year. Make of that what you will.
You have to look at the number needed to treat (NNT) to determine the effectiveness of a vaccine. If the odds of getting a disease are one in a thousand, and the vaccine cuts your odds of contracting it by 90%, you need to treat 1,100 people to avoid one case of the disease. If the odds of contracting the disease are 20 in a hundred and the vaccine is only 50% effective, it only takes 10 people treated with the vaccine to avoid one case.
The flu vaccine is a coin toss, no doubt about it, not very effective, but the flu is easy to catch and a lot of people get it. I get the shot.
When I was 51 (so still relatively young) I didn’t get a flu shot. I did get the flu. My temperature stayed up around 103 (39.5C) for a week, I developed pneumonia and I was laid out for more than two weeks. It was the sickest I’ve ever been as an adult.
I’ll take my chances with the flu vaccine, thankyouverymuch.
When I first went to work at a school district, even though I wasn’t around children, I was around people who were around children. Like kunilou I was early 50s and had never had a flu shot. First year working there I had the worst flu I ever had. High fever, awful aching etc. The next year I got the flu shot and have had one every year since, and have not had the flu since. Definitely glad to have it.
I tend to avoid it when given the option. For a lot of my life the Army made up my mind the other way. My immune system tends to overreact. The shot is almost guaranteed to produce a couple days of mild to moderate symptoms even though the virus isn’t actually alive and contagious. It’s upside isn’t big enough for me to basically choose to get “sick” annually as a result.
Well, it’s not so much that it’s ineffective, as the CDC and whoever else try to prognosticate what strains of flu will be prevalent in the upcoming season. If they get it right, then pretty much everyone who was vaccinated is in the clear.
If they get it wrong, or if they get it right, but one of the prevalent strains mutates (what happened last year), then the vaccine is less effective, or not effective at all, if the vaccine doesn’t even cover it at all.
There’s so little downside to getting the flu vaccination that it’s negligible, and in 2 out of 3 situations, it’s either effective or somewhat effective, so go get your flu shot.
In the interest of full disclosure, I got vaccinated last year, but got the flu anyway, as one of the strains had mutated. However between the partial immunity from the vaccination, and prompt Tamiflu administration, I only was miserably sick for a day, and had quit running fever in 3.
I’m asthmatic, and two of my great-grandparents died in the 1918-19 pandemic. I get the vaccine. And I’ve never had a side effect worse than a sore arm for a day or so.
The last time I had the flu was the winter after my daughter was born, and the wife and I had it simultaneously. We had not lived in the neighbourhood long, and both of our families lived overseas.
To give an impression of how bad it was, at one point I was desperately trying to think of which of our friends (none of whom lived nearby) we could entrust our infant child to if things got any worse and we ended up hospitalized. Man, that was a bad time.
Luckily our daughter didn’t catch the flu and after about a week we improved enough to be less worried about imminent death.
Like others who have reasons, like fighting cancer, to wish that everyone in the community is vaccinated, I have a tendency to develop pneumonia. I have been advised to always get a flu shot (even when they weren’t telling healthy adults to do so). I would appreciate it if everyone else got one too. Pneumonia sucks.
My stance is the same. I get it. I encourage others to get it. The CDC recommends getting it. I also encourage others to take the flu seriously…for some reason, people don’t seem to realize that literally 10’s of thousands of Americans die each year from the flu (more than from guns), and millions die world wide. It’s no joke.
Oddly enough the 1918-1919 flu used ones immune system against one, and so healthier people were more at risk of dying. That is why it was bad at military bases.
My wife wrote a book on the flu (they know so much about the 1918 strain because they recovered the virus from frozen victims in Alaska) which didn’t get published because the last avian flu pandemic never took off. But she got paid.
So my wife is my cite. And we both get flu shots every year.
I’m getting mine in two days. It may not be perfect protection, but for me there’s no down side.
As for limits for vaccinations, I don’t think there is a limit. I only get one vaccine a year, two if the tetanus or whooping cough protections have expired, and that doesn’t happen often. Oh, and I’ll be getting a shingles vaccine soon.
I think our bodies could handle a couple thousand vaccines a year, if necessary. No one would be happy with that many shots, but barring reactions, the sore arm would probably be the worst of it.
Humans used to go through life laden with parasites and infections that I’m guessing no one reading this is bearing. Vaccinations are chump change in comparison.
That statistic applies to the flu vaccine developed for the 2014-15 flu season, not to the current season.
*"Last year’s flu vaccine didn’t work very well. This year’s version should do a much better job protecting people against the flu, federal health officials said (in October).
An analysis of the most common strains of flu virus that are circulating in the United States and elsewhere found they match the strains included in this year’s vaccine, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said.
The results will hopefully encourage more people to get their flu shots, CDC Director Thomas Frieden said during a news conference."*
While work continues on a different type of flu vaccine that won’t be affected by yearly viral antigen drift, the vaccine we now have still is our best bet not only to protect ourselves, but the vulnerable people around us.
I just got my annual flu shot today (mandated at our hospital for health care workers; if you’re going to be around patients and want to be exempted from the vaccine requirement, you’ll have to wear a respiratory mask).
If you don’t like “pro-vaccination”, try “pro-evidence-based medicine” or “pro-public health”.