The flu shot - your thoughts?

[bogan]

You should save your money, unless you're fighting off the possibility of scurvy those things are useless

Source?...

[Scuba_Steve]

Source?...

It's a 3D game engine made by Valve. No real relevance here tho

[328FTW]

My mother died to the flu, it can be really nasty.

I've also had it so bad I've been in the emergency room because I could barely breath properly and swallowing was on a new level of pain, flu + staph infection from your immune system being beat to shit means a bad time. That said vaccine isn't some cure all in that it's sorta like condom, you use it right it's a layer of protection not some sort of full proof immunity, sorta like how briscoes sometimes actually isn't having a sale, it's a reduced risk but not impossible.

Personally I don't get a shot, that's just observation from me reacting bad to it but like all things I just manage that by being aware of who has flu and making sure I'm careful around them....or just not around them at all.

[cold comfort]

Haven't read the thread, but the fact is very very few people catch actual influenza.

“[According to CDC statistics], ‘influenza and pneumonia’ took 62,034 lives in 2001—61,777 of which were attributable to pneumonia and 257 to flu, and in only 18 cases was the flu virus positively identified.”

A little more info here http://www.bmj.com/content/331/7529/1412
Plenty more on the net

So why would you bother?

This is the issue here for me. Where are the double blind studies done annually to prove the effectiveness of the vaccine ( not funded by the industry itself). For the record I work in a frontline medical facility, never had the flu,never had the jab, and am treated like a pariah for my choice. Of the many presentations with "flu like illness" most are treated onsite to alleviate their symptoms and discharged. Seldom are swabs taken and the causative organism identified. I am NOT antivax, having had the Hep A and ADT updates for a recent Asian trip. I just prefer my choices to be evidence based, which I am not convinced the influenza data is.
A worrying trend now is more people than ever are living with weak immune systems (hospitals, nursing homes etc) . Once fatal illness is now chronic and, with the over use of antibiotics, we are seeing super-resistant infections. So then the industry tells us we need even more vaccines...

[Paul in NZ]

This is the issue here for me. ...

Do some research - the info is out there. I wrote the company policy when te bir flu was going to devour us all... It works BUT its a percentage game - no absolutes...

Its a bit like rider training - you can give it to everyone but no guarantees it will stick