I appreciate all the feedback. Thanks.
Here’s what I don’t understand. Some here are saying it’s irresponsible NOT to get a flu shot because the unvaccinated infect others endangering them.
Let’s take an example of 100 people. 90 get a flu shot. 10 do not. All 100 are exposed to the virus. The 10 unvaccinated get the flu. How do those 10 adversely effect the health of the 90 who get the vaccine?
For other diseases like measles, I get it. Vaccinations of all people eradicate the disease because it has no hosts and can’t survive. But the flu virus isn’t ever eradicated; it drifts or even mutates. It gets passed from one person to another even those vaccinated.
I understand the flu was largely responsible for ending WWI. There were millions of soldiers living elbow to elbow in wet trenches. Yes, I get that another super bug could kill millions, but that bug would likely mutate far from what the vaccine would protect you from anyway.
The flu vaccine doesn’t create some Star Trek like invisable shield around those vaccinated. It simply exposes the body to an inert virus in order trick your system to respond like it has the real thing, but without the nasty symptoms. So when the person gets exposed to the real deal it’s ready to fight it.
As for the preservatives in the vaccine, some are saying it’s a small amount and can’t hurt you. I read about an EPA hearing where a scientist explained how small doses of radiation are beneficial to humans.
I will likely get the vaccine. I just refuse to line up like a dutiful lemming because the government told me to do so.
I want to be an educated lemming.
There are two reasons. The first is that there are populations out there that can't get vaccinated, like infants, or people with immune systems that are so compromised that they're particularly vulnerable irrespective of whether or not they've been vaccinated, like cancer patients etc.
The second is that even if the vaccine is a particularly good match for that year's flu strain, the efficacy of the vaccine can vary considerably from one person to the next, and even within the same person depending on whether or not they are sick with something else when they get the shot, the amount of physiological strain that they are under, etc. The only way to objectively assess how someone has responded to a particular flu shot is to draw blood and quantitate the concentration of antibodies that their body produced against the flu strain they were vaccinated with, or the "titer" the vaccine produced. It's not uncommon to see a fairly significant variation from one person to the next.
The upshot is that degree of protection that the 90% get from the vaccine will vary quite a bit, and every person who comes down with the flu and becomes contagious - even if they have very mild symptoms - will put everyone that they come in contact with at risk to some degree. If 100% of the vaccine-eligible population gets vaccinated in a given year, the risk will be driven down to the lowest level possible given the tools available to us, and the number of flu-related fatalities will be as low as it can be. Everyone who abstains from getting the flu shot is reducing that level of protection and making a higher body-count a statistical certainty.
At the end of the day, all of this argumentation and data is often less persuasive than stories, and there is no shortage of first-hand testimonials available from, say, parents who had their children die from the flu. If anyone isn't persuaded, I'd hope that plugging "child died from flu" into Youtube, looking at the faces of the dead kids and listening to the anguished testimonials from their parents would flip a switch that abstract reasoning couldn't. I'm admittedly kind of a softy when it comes to that sort of a thing, it makes for mighty tough viewing.
It's an undeniable fact that every person that dies from the flu had to have the virus passed onto them from someone else. We're all free to make our own choices, but I can't understand the ethical reasoning that would lead someone to conclude that reducing the probability that they're going to be the "someone else" that transmits a lethal infection to another human, even if they'll never know their names, and even if the certainty that getting the shot will do so is significantly less than 100%.
Kudos to you for getting the shot this year, even if it's only to protect others.
If folks don't want it even then, it will be beneficial as I doubt there'll be enough to go around anyway.
