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Flu shots? For them or against ?

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  • comptonelizabeth
    comptonelizabeth Posts: 1,701 Member
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    I don't think any flu vaccines are live vaccines - curious as to where poster lives that she believes this is so.

    Poster is also wrong about live vaccines spreading the disease: if that were so, vaccines that are live vaccines would result in outbreaks of the disease. The main live vaccines used in western world are measles, mumps, rubella varicella ( chicken pox)
    Use of these has not resulted in more outbreaks of the disease - would be pointless vaccinating if that were so. :s

    No. You are wrong. This is the FDA's drug insert for one of the chicken pox vaccines. See section 5.4. https://www.fda.gov/downloads/BiologicsBloodVaccines/Vaccines/ApprovedProducts/UCM142812.pdf

    "Post-marketing experience suggests that transmission of vaccine virus may occur rarely between healthy vaccinees who develop a varicella-like rash and healthy susceptible contacts. Transmission of vaccine virus from a mother who did not develop a varicella-like rash to her newborn infant has been reported.
    Due to the concern for transmission of vaccine virus, vaccine recipients should attempt to avoid whenever possible close association with susceptible high-risk individuals for up to six weeks following vaccination with VARIVAX."

    I could go on and on but I will leave it at just this one. I challenge every person who is just fine with vaccines of any sort to get the ACTUAL vaccine insert from the manufacturer (not the "fact" sheet the doctor's office gives out). Take note of every vaccine (even "attenuated" which simply means "weakened" not "dead") that states there is at least some verifiable shedding of disease with every vaccine. Most of the inserts state to stay away from vulnerable populations for 4-6 weeks following vaccination. Guessing your doctor didn't tell you that when you went home to an immune compromised person ten minutes after getting any one of the vaccines available that is known to shed. :s But then, since the incidence is suppose to be "low" it really doesn't matter ---- until it's your immune compromised family member that gets it from you being vaxxed.


    I work in the area of vaccination.

    Yes there is an extremely low theoretical risk of transmisson of virus to severely immuno compromised people - that is not the same as live vaccines causing more outbreaks of the disease ,as was the original claim.

    Severely immuno compromised people should not have live vaccines themselves - but their household contacts should.

    The risk of the immuno compromised person catching the natural disease, especially if the household contacts are not vaccinated, is FAR more than the theoretical risk of vaccine shedding.
    Vaccine shedding, on the extremely rare occasions it does occur, also results in a much milder case of the disease, than natural disease does.

    Staying away from vulnerable persons if you get a rash from the vaccine (which most people dont) makes sense in terms of not visiting people in aged care homes, keeping away from chemotherapy patients etc - but doesnt make sense if you are going to have contact with the immuno suppressed person whether or not you are vaccinated - ie you live with them.
    In that case the risk to the immuno suppressed person is greater if you are NOT vaccinated - for reasons explained above.


    Please note - none of above applies to flu vaccine anyway - as it is not a live vaccine.

    This,and especially the last sentence. The flu vaccine (for adults anyway)is not a live one.
  • paperpudding
    paperpudding Posts: 8,984 Member
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    Nor for children - none of them in Australia are anyway.

    i think the nasal spray one may have been (I guess a spray is not technically a flu shot - it was never used in Australia anyway.

    and from what I can gather has been discontinued in countries that did use it now too.
  • ladyannique2017
    ladyannique2017 Posts: 52 Member
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    I don't personally get the flu shot. I don't see the point. It's like a game of Russian roulette but with a moving target. You don't know whether the 3 strains in the vaccine will be one of the half a million possible strains that come around that winter. Too the effectiveness is only 50% or so for the 3 strains it vaccinates against because flu mutates so fast. Every year I read of roughly same number of both vaccinated and unvaccinated people dying of the flu, so it doesn't seem worth the money to me. I am happy to take my chances.
  • johnwelk
    johnwelk Posts: 396 Member
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    I don't think any flu vaccines are live vaccines - curious as to where poster lives that she believes this is so.

    Poster is also wrong about live vaccines spreading the disease: if that were so, vaccines that are live vaccines would result in outbreaks of the disease. The main live vaccines used in western world are measles, mumps, rubella varicella ( chicken pox)
    Use of these has not resulted in more outbreaks of the disease - would be pointless vaccinating if that were so. :s

    No. You are wrong. This is the FDA's drug insert for one of the chicken pox vaccines. See section 5.4. https://www.fda.gov/downloads/BiologicsBloodVaccines/Vaccines/ApprovedProducts/UCM142812.pdf

    "Post-marketing experience suggests that transmission of vaccine virus may occur rarely between healthy vaccinees who develop a varicella-like rash and healthy susceptible contacts. Transmission of vaccine virus from a mother who did not develop a varicella-like rash to her newborn infant has been reported.
    Due to the concern for transmission of vaccine virus, vaccine recipients should attempt to avoid whenever possible close association with susceptible high-risk individuals for up to six weeks following vaccination with VARIVAX."

    I could go on and on but I will leave it at just this one. I challenge every person who is just fine with vaccines of any sort to get the ACTUAL vaccine insert from the manufacturer (not the "fact" sheet the doctor's office gives out). Take note of every vaccine (even "attenuated" which simply means "weakened" not "dead") that states there is at least some verifiable shedding of disease with every vaccine. Most of the inserts state to stay away from vulnerable populations for 4-6 weeks following vaccination.

    Let me guess, you dug this up on Naturalnews or WAPF or Mercola? The only common vaccines give that are live in the US is:

    MMR
    Varivax
    Rotavirus vaccines

    MMR - extremely rare chance that the rubella part can shed into breastmilk, but rubella is a mild disease.

    Varivax - only shed if vaccineed person had vesicular rash, only 5 cases reported by CDC with 55million doses given

    Rotavirus - only shed in fecal matter.

    I'm guessing the pseudoscientific antivax websites that you frequent didn't tell you that.

    Here is some reading for people who are truly interested:
    http://insidevaccines.com/wordpress/2008/02/24/secondary-transmission-the-short-and-sweet-about-live-virus-vaccine-shedding/
    https://www.verywell.com/live-vaccines-and-vaccine-shedding-2633700

    Guessing your doctor didn't tell you that when you went home to an immune compromised person ten minutes after getting any one of the vaccines available that is known to shed. :s But then, since the incidence is suppose to be "low" it really doesn't matter ---- until it's your immune compromised family member that gets it from you being vaxxed.

    Let's see what real scientists, researchers, and doctors say about vaccines and immunocompromised:
    https://medicine.stonybrookmedicine.edu/system/files/Vaccines in Immunocompromised patients - Pediatrics in Review-2010-In Brief-38-40.pdf

    https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24582311



  • aleahurst
    aleahurst Posts: 325 Member
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    I don't personally get the flu shot. I believe it is a choice each individual should make.
  • crooked_left_hook
    crooked_left_hook Posts: 364 Member
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    I always got them them every year because I know the the protection is incremental. I'm all for being immune to as many of the strains of flu as possible. The ONE year I didn't get the flu shot I got the flu...not once, but TWICE. Now I live with someone with an autoimmune disease so longer optional, I have to get it to protect him from getting sick.
  • dfwesq
    dfwesq Posts: 592 Member
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    Every year I read of roughly same number of both vaccinated and unvaccinated people dying of the flu, so it doesn't seem worth the money to me. I am happy to take my chances.
    I suppose that depends on what you are reading. At least in elderly populations, the death rate from influenza is far higher among unvaccinated people. Here's some reading, if you're interested. (There are summaries of other studies about 3/4 of the way down.)
    https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2728831/

    As for the cost, I suppose that depends on where you live. Even in countries without free national health care, such as the US, flu vaccines are still very cheap or free. Not to mention, the cost of getting the flu is quite high, not only for the person who gets it, but potentially for others who are infected by that person.
  • ladyannique2017
    ladyannique2017 Posts: 52 Member
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    dfwesq wrote: »
    Every year I read of roughly same number of both vaccinated and unvaccinated people dying of the flu, so it doesn't seem worth the money to me. I am happy to take my chances.
    I suppose that depends on what you are reading. At least in elderly populations, the death rate from influenza is far higher among unvaccinated people. Here's some reading, if you're interested. (There are summaries of other studies about 3/4 of the way down.)
    https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2728831/

    As for the cost, I suppose that depends on where you live. Even in countries without free national health care, such as the US, flu vaccines are still very cheap or free. Not to mention, the cost of getting the flu is quite high, not only for the person who gets it, but potentially for others who are infected by that person.

    Thank you for the study. First it was a comparison of overall death rates among the elderly and didn't actually measure who died of the flu, but rather who died period of anything at all. A death rate of +4.6% among unvaccinated elderly with a margin of error that goes from 0.7% to 8.9% is not what I would consider to be far higher. Also they listed six limitations of the study one of which is they only tracked Kaiser flu shots and don't know if anyone who died but was logged as unvaccinated had actually got a flu shot elsewhere. Another limitation is that many elderly who know they are at deaths door for other health conditions will skip a flu shot because what's the point when you're dying anyway? The other limitations of the study are equally serious as well and would also affect the results. It's a nice study but they didn't measure people dying of the flu, the data is so limited and the differences so small, I'm just not convinced.

    Not sure what you mean by the cost of the flu. If I get it, I see a Dr and get some antivirals and stay home until well. The cost of that even if I got the flu once every five years (highly unlikely) is still cheaper than a flu shot every year especially considering that the flu shot is not a guarantee against the flu and you can still catch it anyway.

    It's an individual choice to get it or not.
  • paperpudding
    paperpudding Posts: 8,984 Member
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    I do not have statistics but in Australia I would not be at all surprised if the number of vaccinated people dying of flu is greater than number of unvaccinated ones.

    But consider this more carefully - these deaths are only counting people who died of flu. Not those who didnt get the flu because they were vaccinated.
    And the vaccinated vs unvaccinated group is not the same - ie is not an 'all things being equal' comparison

    The govt here supplies free flu vaccine to the following groups- Aboriginal people over 15, everyone over 65, pregnant women, medically at risk groups (people with asthma, diabetes, cardiac conditions etc)
    By far the biggest uptake is in the last 2 groups - medically at risk and over 65's.

    Of course if they get the flu anyway ( and remember ,the death from flu stats are not including those whom the vaccine prevented from getting the disease) they are far more likely to die of it than under 65's and people without medical risk factors. That is common sense.

    One thing I do know though - as part of my job is doing infectious disease notifications:
    By far the biggest group who got influenza (and recovered) were young healthy people - precisely because they are the group least likely to get vaccinated
  • kshama2001
    kshama2001 Posts: 27,897 Member
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    AnvilHead wrote: »
    I'm against them for me personally because the one year I got a flu shot, I got the worst case of flu I've probably ever had about a week after getting the shot. I rarely ever get sick, but I sure did that year. Maybe it was just a coincidence, but I've never gotten one again since.

    I'm not at all against them in general, not against them being offered, not against other people getting them if they so choose. I'm not an anti-vaxxer and have no tinfoil hat theories about them.

    Yup, haven't had a flu shot since I was in the military and had no choice. After getting the shot was the sickest I've ever been from the flu. Haven't had the shot or sickness since.

    I do take Vitamin D. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4463890/
  • dfwesq
    dfwesq Posts: 592 Member
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    Thank you for the study. First it was a comparison of overall death rates among the elderly and didn't actually measure who died of the flu, but rather who died period of anything at all. A death rate of +4.6% among unvaccinated elderly with a margin of error that goes from 0.7% to 8.9% is not what I would consider to be far higher. Also they listed six limitations of the study one of which is they only tracked Kaiser flu shots and don't know if anyone who died but was logged as unvaccinated had actually got a flu shot elsewhere. Another limitation is that many elderly who know they are at deaths door for other health conditions will skip a flu shot because what's the point when you're dying anyway? The other limitations of the study are equally serious as well and would also affect the results. It's a nice study but they didn't measure people dying of the flu, the data is so limited and the differences so small, I'm just not convinced.
    The summaries I was talking about are here: "Voordouw et al. (6) found that flu shots reduce winter deaths by 50%, on average; and in a more recent study, Nichol et al. (19) reported a 48% reduction in all-cause mortality among the elderly during flu season." Obviously, this is just one article. If studies of different population groups would be helpful, I'd be glad to post them.
    Not sure what you mean by the cost of the flu. If I get it, I see a Dr and get some antivirals and stay home until well. The cost of that even if I got the flu once every five years (highly unlikely) is still cheaper than a flu shot every year especially considering that the flu shot is not a guarantee against the flu and you can still catch it anyway.
    I'm glad that the flu is never severe or costly for you, but for others it's often miserable and expensive. Sometimes worse. People who are employed have to miss work, which results in expenses to them and/or to their employers. Other people may have additional medical expenses. Also, have a look at what people posted earlier, about constantly throwing up and praying for death.
    It's an individual choice to get it or not.
    Lots of things are a matter of individual choice, but it doesn't mean that every choice is equally good. I truly hope you don't get seriously ill or die from the flu, and that you don't infect someone else so that they get seriously ill or die. If you are able to get a flu vaccine and prevent those bad things from happening, I hope you will do it. That's why I'm posting this.

  • GaleHawkins
    GaleHawkins Posts: 8,160 Member
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    kshama2001 wrote: »
    AnvilHead wrote: »
    I'm against them for me personally because the one year I got a flu shot, I got the worst case of flu I've probably ever had about a week after getting the shot. I rarely ever get sick, but I sure did that year. Maybe it was just a coincidence, but I've never gotten one again since.

    I'm not at all against them in general, not against them being offered, not against other people getting them if they so choose. I'm not an anti-vaxxer and have no tinfoil hat theories about them.

    Yup, haven't had a flu shot since I was in the military and had no choice. After getting the shot was the sickest I've ever been from the flu. Haven't had the shot or sickness since.

    I do take Vitamin D. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4463890/

    Some claim with Vitamin D levels in the 75-100 range reduces premature death from most all causes. Of course it needs to be taken with Vitamin K2 to reduce the risk of calcium build up in the heart valves and arteries.
  • comptonelizabeth
    comptonelizabeth Posts: 1,701 Member
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    MeganAM89 wrote: »
    I'd love for this thread to die already.

    The anti-vaxxers in this thread are still anti-vaxxers and pro-vaxxers are still pro-vaxxers. There's no point in this thread continuing because we're all going in increasingly frustrating circles.

    I'm all for a debate but this is doing my head in now lol

    Me too. Yet again,I wish there were a. "Unfollow" option for threads.

  • paperpudding
    paperpudding Posts: 8,984 Member
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    Take them off your notification list and then just dont click into them if you are not interested in the topic?
  • comptonelizabeth
    comptonelizabeth Posts: 1,701 Member
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    I am interested but as Megan points out,it seems to be going round in circles. Still,I've learned a lot from it
    I can't remove specific threads from my notifications by the way - all I can do is in subscribe from all notifications concerning the forums which I don't want to do. But fair point- no one is forcing me to come back to this thread
  • T1DCarnivoreRunner
    T1DCarnivoreRunner Posts: 11,502 Member
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    I am interested but as Megan points out,it seems to be going round in circles. Still,I've learned a lot from it
    I can't remove specific threads from my notifications by the way - all I can do is in subscribe from all notifications concerning the forums which I don't want to do. But fair point- no one is forcing me to come back to this thread

    I've found it is easier to unsubscribe from all new posts in threads where I've commented and instead just bookmark the threads I want to follow. I can then go to my bookmarks and see when there are new posts in those threads. If I want to stop following that thread, I remove it from bookmarks.
  • comptonelizabeth
    comptonelizabeth Posts: 1,701 Member
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    I am interested but as Megan points out,it seems to be going round in circles. Still,I've learned a lot from it
    I can't remove specific threads from my notifications by the way - all I can do is in subscribe from all notifications concerning the forums which I don't want to do. But fair point- no one is forcing me to come back to this thread

    I've found it is easier to unsubscribe from all new posts in threads where I've commented and instead just bookmark the threads I want to follow. I can then go to my bookmarks and see when there are new posts in those threads. If I want to stop following that thread, I remove it from bookmarks.
    Yeah,I really shouid do that !
  • GaleHawkins
    GaleHawkins Posts: 8,160 Member
    edited March 2017
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    historyofvaccines.org/content/articles/viruses-and-evolution

    I found this article helpful in understanding why/how flu vaccinations work/do not work.

    There are many more links on the left side of the page that are vaccination related.

    This stemmed from my interest in preventing/recovering from cancer.

    Vaccinations over the past couple 100 years have been a net plus for mankind even though they have limitations that need to be understood.
  • ktekc
    ktekc Posts: 879 Member
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    i am all for them but they seem to give me a nasty rash everytime so i havent gotten one in a long time.
  • GaleHawkins
    GaleHawkins Posts: 8,160 Member
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    ktekc wrote: »
    i am all for them but they seem to give me a nasty rash everytime so i havent gotten one in a long time.

    We know there can be minor and major side effects. When it comes to food I do not keep going back for seconds if eating it gives me a nasty after effect. :)
This discussion has been closed.