never gotten the shot, Never gotten the flu.

 

Leave it to grady to school you guys. lol JFWY grady

 

Eh Im all for knowledge but my personal experience will trump whatever is published. We've all seen the published research about granatelli wires and E3 plugs that gain 5,000hp. If Im getting a vaccine and its not keeping me from getting what the vaccine is suppose to protect me from regardless of the strain, there is no point to getting it if Im going to get it regardless. Thats if you subscribe to the idea that the vaccine really does do something which at this juncture Im not totally convinced of.

 

See my previous statement about people who already have their minds made up about vaccines.

Again, when you tested positive for the flu, you didn't have any of the strains that you were vaccinated with so the vaccination worked. However, there are other strains of the flu virus that are less common that don't make it into the vaccination because it's impossible to create a vaccination that contains them all (plus there are always new mutations creating new strains). Also, you'll remember that many other viruses causes flu-like symptoms besides influenza.

There will always be those who don't believe in vaccines (a la Jenny McCarthy and the "different" (I mean that in as nice of a way as possible) parents you come across during a pediatrics rotation). That's fine, however, vaccinations are probably the single greatest advancement in medicine. You don't think they're a big deal because you never had to deal with measles, mumps, small pox, polio, etc., etc., but if you told your great grandfather that a once deadly and widely prevalent disease can now only be found in a laboratory, he'd be astonished.

The bottom line is I could care less if a healthy adult doesn't want the flu vaccine for whatever reason. A physician's time is wasted trying to convince that person to get a vaccine. If the patient is elderly or immunocompromised, the time spent convincing those patients would be well worth it. Surprisingly, the patients who need it the most are usually the ones that don't need convincing.

 

Like he said, the flu shot contains pieces of virus that our attenuated, or weakend. The chosen strains our produced and given to people, if you have "symptoms" a few days after the shot, you have to keep in mind the strain are still viral enough to make sure your body has an immune response. If it didnt elecit one, it would be completely worthless shot.

If at a later time you still get the flu, chances are you got a completely different strain than the one you were immunized from.

IIRC the flumist is actually live? I have to look it up for sure but im pretty sure it is.

 

IIRC all a vaccine does is trick your body into thinking it has whatever virus you've been injected with, causing your immune system to learn how to fight it - creating antibodies and such.

 

I said Im all for being educated, didnt say it would change my mind

Im not against the other vaccines, Id be ignorant to say that they do nothing as all the ailments you cited have all but been wiped out. I also understand that the strain of influenza I contracted is probably a different strain than what I was vaccinated for. My whole point has been, in the years that I DIDNT get a vaccine I DIDNT get the flu and two out of the three years that Ive gotten the vaccine in my 25 years of exitence Ive gotten sick. Call it stupidity or whatever youd like to attribute it to, I feel there is a correlation there.

 

I've never gotten a flu shot, but I get sick all of the time...usually sinus or upper respiratory infections...I smoke so that's probably why. I quit smoking for 10 months once and didn't get sick the whole time. My daughter is required by her day care to get a flu vaccination, which is a inhaler that the doctor gives her IIRC, and she hasn't gotten the flu from it. It effects everybody differently...I know of folks who get their flu shots and immediately get the flu, and others that the vaccine has no affect on.

 

Also like he said, a lot of its in the mindset. I really never get sick, but I dont have time to waste laying around the house either.

 

There is zero correlation there. I see people everyday that think x happened to them because of y when, in fact, they are not related. The myth that the flu vaccine causes the flu is pretty rampant among the general public so a lot of people who get the flu vaccine start manifesting normal body processes as something more serious, then attribute it to the flu. The people who think they got sick because of the vaccine are much more vocal then the people who got the vaccine and went about their business so the numbers seem skewed. It's sort of a squeaky wheel gets the grease type of thing.