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Flu shots? For them or against ?

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  • Alatariel75
    Alatariel75 Posts: 17,959 Member
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    jospen83 wrote: »
    RedSierra wrote: »
    GottaBurnEmAll wrote: »
    I said this upstream and I will repeat it again:

    Anyone in this thread who is saying they had the flu who is willing to have it again...

    NEVER HAD THE FLU.

    If you were not praying for death, you did not have the flu. You had a bad cold. Full stop.

    If you had ever had the flu, you would move heaven and earth to never, ever have it again and to ensure your children never had it.

    It is awful.

    I say this as a person with a very much above average pain/discomfort tolerance. I cite as reference the fact that I had a broken ankle that I soldiered through with just OTC pain meds and ice packs because I couldn't tolerate the prescription pain meds.

    The real flu is not something people who have had it are blithe about.

    ^^ I agree with this.

    I used to never get flu shots, for 2 reasons.

    One, they scared me because when I was young, my mother had a reaction to a flu shot. She was intolerant to a lot of things like penicillin, so who knows what happened. This was decades ago. Second reason, I didn't get the shots because I almost never get sick with anything -- maybe a cold every 10 years.

    Then I came down with the flu and was ghastly sick for 3 weeks. I'm a widow, live alone, and it would take me HOURS to work up the energy to get up and get something to drink. Friends who were concerned about me would leave takeout food and drinks on my porch because I wouldn't let them in the house. I had 103 fever and puked up everything for days.

    That's why I get a flu shot now. The shot might not cover the flu strain going around, but then it might. Flu can weaken your heart and kill you.

    II also know I have done the responsible thing in case I'm a carrier and not sick myself -- so I don't pass on this horrible virus to frail people in public places.

    THANK YOU, to you & @GottaBurnEmAll

    Drives me bonkers when someone with a bad cold for 2-3 days or an upset stomach claims they had "the flu." I always ask if they had the actual scraping swab jammed up their nose for proper testing & usually get, "Uh, no...my doctor just said it's probably the flu..."

    :unamused: No. No, it's not.

    Yeah, I got the flu in mid-June. I think I finally got over it my mid-August, and then got a cold. Today is actually the first day I've felt human, literally since the beginning of winter.
  • johnwelk
    johnwelk Posts: 396 Member
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    GaleHawkins wrote: »
    jgnatca wrote: »
    The only reason I get emotional about anti-vaxx is the virulent spread of misinformation. I take Vitamin D and I line up first day for flu shots.

    The non-emotional reasons:

    http://www.who.int/bulletin/volumes/86/2/07-040089/en/

    Do you have a link that applies to the flu shots which is the subject of this thread?

    If you find independent evidence of the validity of getting the flu shot please post but please do not keep trying to change the subject from the flu to other health conditions. There are places that I would not go without specific shots because of their need.

    Here's more:
    http://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.0050211

    http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0066312

    https://academic.oup.com/jid/article/184/6/665/841892/Influenza-Vaccine-Effectiveness-in-Preventing

    https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23966030

    https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24046301


    Now how about posting that Vit D study?
  • GaleHawkins
    GaleHawkins Posts: 8,160 Member
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    John are you even reading the links you are posting? I think many of us have had a need to beleive government marketing materials to sell the public on getting the flu shots even when they are paid for by all tax payers.

    Your link journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.0050211 states the below:

    "..... Limitations of this study include the ecological study design, the nonspecific outcomes, difficulty in modeling baseline events, data quality and availability, and the inability to control for potentially important confounders.

    Conclusions

    Compared to targeted programs in other provinces, introduction of universal vaccination in Ontario in 2000 was associated with relative reductions in influenza-associated mortality and health care use. The results of this large-scale natural experiment suggest that universal vaccination may be an effective public health measure for reducing the annual burden of influenza.

    John do you agree "may be" and "may not be" terms are not medical proof of anything?

    You may want to read the full study details from your link including this:

    "Funding: This study was supported by an operating grant from the Public Health Agency of Canada, a Fellowship Award (to JCK), a Canada Research Chair Award in Primary Care Research (to REGU), and a Chair in Applied Public Health (to DGM) from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, and a Career Scientist Award from the Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care (to DGM). The Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences (ICES) is supported in part by a grant from the Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care. Funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. The findings and conclusions in this study are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences, the Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care, or Manitoba Health and Healthy Living.

    Competing interests: AJM reports receiving travel grants from Sanofi Pasteur and Solvay Pharmaceuticals for speaking at meetings, and payment from Sanofi Pasteur for chairing a safety committee for a clinical trial.    "

    ALL researchers with advanced degrees know you throw a marketing bone to the people paying your house and car payments. "May Be" terms about results are red flags to healthcare workers.

    Grant results that dump on the ones paying for the studies can (not may be) put you at risk of getting your next research grant.

    Missing the red flags can be of concern.

  • GaleHawkins
    GaleHawkins Posts: 8,160 Member
    edited August 2017
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    lemurcat12 wrote: »
    johnwelk wrote: »
    Still waiting for that study out of England showing that Vit D protects better than the flu shot.

    Great posts, but also I'm wondering where it was made law that one can only take Vit D OR get a flu shot. I take Vit D in the winter, and no one told me I was doing that instead of the flu shot and therefore cannot get one.

    This Vit D distraction is 100% irrelevant to the thread.

    The major distraction no one has posted medical proof that getting the flu shot is of any net medical value.

    In the USA access to Vitamin D3 is not under the control of our government. While there is evidence Vitamin D3 can be of value for many medical conditions its main use seems to prevent our bones from thinning and breaking as we age.
  • midlomel1971
    midlomel1971 Posts: 1,283 Member
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    100% for them! I never miss getting one and I have never had the flu.

    My 7 year old got his flu shot last fall and still got the flu this past spring, but he got a mild case and missed a day of school. So yes, you can still get it, but I'm certain his would have knocked him out for a week without the shot.
  • Rosemary7391
    Rosemary7391 Posts: 232 Member
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    jdlobb wrote: »
    get your damn flu shots people, come on! Anti-Vaxxers are cancer.

    Not getting a flu shot doesn't make you an anti-vaxxer any more than not getting your rabies shot, not getting the yellow fever jab, cholera etc etc does. It probably just means you don't live in an area where flu/rabies/yellow fever/cholera/etc is a major problem. I'm getting a bit annoyed that folks don't seem to want to distinguish and I don't think it helps to convince people who are genuinely anti vaccine either - lets face it, if they're in an area where flu isn't an issue it's one of the harder ones to convince them about since you have to go and get it every year and it's known it's a best guess effort. Measles is measles is measles - better to start there+similar I'd think?
  • janejellyroll
    janejellyroll Posts: 25,763 Member
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    Rosemary7391 wrote: »
    jdlobb wrote: »
    get your damn flu shots people, come on! Anti-Vaxxers are cancer.

    Not getting a flu shot doesn't make you an anti-vaxxer any more than not getting your rabies shot, not getting the yellow fever jab, cholera etc etc does. It probably just means you don't live in an area where flu/rabies/yellow fever/cholera/etc is a major problem. I'm getting a bit annoyed that folks don't seem to want to distinguish and I don't think it helps to convince people who are genuinely anti vaccine either - lets face it, if they're in an area where flu isn't an issue it's one of the harder ones to convince them about since you have to go and get it every year and it's known it's a best guess effort. Measles is measles is measles - better to start there+similar I'd think?

    Several of the people actually arguing *against* the flu shot in this thread are located in the US, where the flu is an issue.
  • jdlobb
    jdlobb Posts: 1,232 Member
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    Rosemary7391 wrote: »
    jdlobb wrote: »
    get your damn flu shots people, come on! Anti-Vaxxers are cancer.

    Not getting a flu shot doesn't make you an anti-vaxxer any more than not getting your rabies shot, not getting the yellow fever jab, cholera etc etc does. It probably just means you don't live in an area where flu/rabies/yellow fever/cholera/etc is a major problem. I'm getting a bit annoyed that folks don't seem to want to distinguish and I don't think it helps to convince people who are genuinely anti vaccine either - lets face it, if they're in an area where flu isn't an issue it's one of the harder ones to convince them about since you have to go and get it every year and it's known it's a best guess effort. Measles is measles is measles - better to start there+similar I'd think?

    nope, sorry, not buying it.

    The "not an issue in my area" is a disingenuous cop out. We live in a massively interconnected planet. People travel to and from cities, states, entire countries. A flu epidemic could spread into an area where it's "not an issue" in a matter of days, and overwhelm the medical infrastructure.

    Unless you live in a bubble, get your damn shots.
  • jgnatca
    jgnatca Posts: 14,464 Member
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    A cost benefit analysis done in 2010.

    http://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.1000256

    If a persons potential earnings a year tops $10,000, the flu shot provides economic advantage. Not that we want to put a price tag on a life.

    The cost of a single immunization, under $2.00.

    And, nobody is suggesting that Vitamin D is an either-or proposition with the flu shot. Anecdotally I think I caught fewer colds when I increased my Vitamin D.
  • jgnatca
    jgnatca Posts: 14,464 Member
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    1918, people. The flu is everywhere. I did research on the family histories of a First Nations community in the remote foothills of the Canadian Rockies. The community was devastated by the Spanish Flu. There was a tragic story of a pair of orphans who lost two sets of foster parents before the epidemic wore itself out. That's six adults including their natural parents.
  • Rosemary7391
    Rosemary7391 Posts: 232 Member
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    jdlobb wrote: »
    Rosemary7391 wrote: »
    jdlobb wrote: »
    get your damn flu shots people, come on! Anti-Vaxxers are cancer.

    Not getting a flu shot doesn't make you an anti-vaxxer any more than not getting your rabies shot, not getting the yellow fever jab, cholera etc etc does. It probably just means you don't live in an area where flu/rabies/yellow fever/cholera/etc is a major problem. I'm getting a bit annoyed that folks don't seem to want to distinguish and I don't think it helps to convince people who are genuinely anti vaccine either - lets face it, if they're in an area where flu isn't an issue it's one of the harder ones to convince them about since you have to go and get it every year and it's known it's a best guess effort. Measles is measles is measles - better to start there+similar I'd think?

    nope, sorry, not buying it.

    The "not an issue in my area" is a disingenuous cop out. We live in a massively interconnected planet. People travel to and from cities, states, entire countries. A flu epidemic could spread into an area where it's "not an issue" in a matter of days, and overwhelm the medical infrastructure.

    Unless you live in a bubble, get your damn shots.

    Have you had every vaccine going then? There are quite a few... I suspect if there was a flu epidemic it wouldn't be the strain that was in the vaccine - if it was then it wouldn't spread so quickly. If it was recommended for travel I would of course get it (as I have other vaccines), but I've just checked (for travel to the US) and it isn't.

    Just think about this - you've annoyed me, and I'm for vaccines as recommended by the relevant medical practitioners. Do you think you're likely to persuade people who are really anti vaccines to join the queue every year with your current approach?
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