Several thoughts. It is absolutely wrong to give you a shot without your consent.
You should give consent. If you get the flu, you will have several days around your mother before you know you are sick. Flu shots in the elderly are somewhat effective, but not entirely. She can still get it from you. Both of you being protected is a lot better for the safety of everyone around both of you.
The flu can kill. A really crappy cold is not the flu. Those with a bad case of the flu are in the hospital and near death. Widespread vaccination reduces cases of the flu dramatically.
In 1918 more people died of the flu than in all of The Great War. Healthy people too. If vaccination happens to protect against the strain you get, you may not get it at all, or a much milder case.
This was my thought. What if the OP had just received a shot from another doctor? And as someone else pointed out, what if the OP is allergic to eggs or whatever else is in the shot?
I’d report this doctor to the proper agency. It is NOT OK to give someone a shot without their informed consent.
I’ve been getting flu shots for a few decades now. Never had the flu, don’t want it. Also, I make sure that my pneumonia shot is always current, because I HAVE had pneumonia and never want it again.
Lynn Bodoni, what do you think the rule is for how often one should get pneumonia shots, to keep current?
What I’ve read is, once at age 60-something, and once again some number of years (how many?) thereafter, and that’s all. (I got my first one about a year ago.)
A few weeks ago I went and got a shingles shot. I’m so proud of myself!
I was getting pneumonia at least twice a year starting when I was in my 30s, and when my doctor recommended the vaccine, I was all in favor of it. Since then, I’ve just let my doctor know that it’s been X years since my last shot, and let him or her decide if I need a new one. Some doctors like a new shot every 5 years, some every 10. I don’t have an opinion on how often it should be. I just enjoy being pneumonia free.
The Spanish Flu killed, by conservative estimates, upwards of 50,000,000 million people. John M. Barry, who wrote The Great Influenza, believes it killed closer to 100,000,000 million people, and many of the deaths went uncounted because the virus was the first true global pandemic. Villages in Alaska were wiped out. Australian aboriginals died. It went everywhere. The war only helped it.
Anytime there’s a big point mutation (swine flu, bird flu), we run the risk of another pandemic, and while we can whip up a vaccine to protect the general population, there’s a ramp-up time of more than half a year after the vaccine is created to get it manufactured in the amount needed for mass inoculation.
There’s some indication that even if the yearly strain of flu is not covered by the vaccination, the vaccination may still provide some protection. Getting vaccinated not only protects yourself, it protects all the immuno-compromised people around you - the very young, the very old, pregnant women, AIDS patients, and so forth.
