Flu shots, should they be required?

[Andy80F]

Never had the flu jab, never had time off sick. Same risk of carrying and spreading a virus as others. The group is as safe as it is from those who despite having had the vaccine are to host it in their nasal passages, from surface contamination and pass it on in the usual way. Vaccination does not stop the spread as such and therefor individual choice is relevant.

 

[bribrius]

If you got the flue shot last year, and something new is going around that wasn't in last years cocktail I believe your body is still more capable of dealing with it as the antibodies are closer from its starting point than where your immune system would be otherwise. So your immune system has less to catch up on... While the difference may only be "not as sick" or "recovered more quickly" rather than a all out "didn't catch it at all" it still gives your immune system a leg to stand on. I think these flu shots get a bad rap because people think they wont get sick at all but that isn't really the purpose of it but rather to develop your immune system to handle it better. There are other factors that come in to play too just as prevalent. How much rest you get, how healthy you eat, how many people are around that could transmit something, how often you wash your hands, what medications you may or may not be on. The list is endless. Getting a shot isn't a cure all but a piece of the equation. I know me smoking cigarettes sure don't help.. lol.

 

[bribrius]

Never had the flu jab, never had time off sick. Same risk of carrying and spreading a virus as others. The group is as safe as it is from those who despite having had the vaccine are to host it in their nasal passages, from surface contamination and pass it on in the usual way. Vaccination does not stop the spread as such and therefor individual choice is relevant.

corporations often allow free flu shots for employees, insurance companies do as well. There is a reason for that.
a. less likely to get REALLY sick, limits lost time from employment (saves company money)
b. less likely to carry it long, limits exposure to others in employment (saves company money from lost time)
c. same as a. and b. but replace company with insurance company who really doesn't want to pay for people to pass it around among a group insured and have them all going to their primary care physician with more $ spent..

they don't give out free flu shots to be nice. They really don't give a rats azz if you get sick other than how it effects the bottom line. It is all about $$$$$$$$$$$$$

 

[Gary A.]

... Okay, as I said, I'm not a doctor. Explain to me then how it works. I am injecting "dead" disease into my body so that my immune system can create antibodies which will "kill" the live disease when I come in contact with it, correct? Over time (I'm talking generations, not a couple of years), the virus is going to adapt and overcome. Had our immune systems been allowed to evolve naturally, they would, I suspect be much more able to combat the disease.

Vaccines are not the introduction of a foreign coping/defense mechanism into our bodies. It is a methodology of using our inherent and natural defense mechanisms to prepare for an attack from an outside virus. The vaccines triggering of the body's defense mechanism is similar to what bribrius described with his door knob example, only the vaccine is a lot safer for the individual.

And yes, natural selection works, but natural selection preys on the weak. The vaccine allows the weak a better chance in combating the virus. (Weak does not necessarily mean physically weak, but immune system weak. The flu can take down a physically strong/healthy person if their immune system isn't up to the task of defending against against the flu virus ... it just may take a bit longer than for a weak person.)

Gary

 

[JustJazzie]

Keeping my typing fists tightly closed on this issue, in order to keep my blood pressure from boiling over. Let just say I leave 98% my healthcare in the hands of raw garlic, and essential oils. ;-) better go do some yoga and refrain from reading this thread.

 

[Gary A.]

Never had the flu jab, never had time off sick. Same risk of carrying and spreading a virus as others. The group is as safe as it is from those who despite having had the vaccine are to host it in their nasal passages, from surface contamination and pass it on in the usual way. Vaccination does not stop the spread as such and therefor individual choice is relevant.

Vaccines stops the breeding of the virus. Most viruses have a finite amount of time they can live outside the host organism. That time ranges from minutes to days. A virus trapped on a doorknob or inside a nasal passage and unable to reproduce is doomed. If that virus is able to travel to another vaccinated person, the odds are again no joy for the virus. et cetera

 

[pixmedic]

Wait...what?
You can get a shot that keeps you from getting the flu?
The hell you say?
Sorcery!

 

[gsgary]

If the job requires it, okay, but should the job require it? I understand the reason why nurses and teachers would be required - they are more at risk of getting the flu and transmitting it to people who are more vulnerable to it (sick people and children) and who could have more serious consequences if they get the flu. There's a question of public health involved.

Having said that, there should be (and I think there is) an option to waive the requirement, either temporarily or permanently, depending on the circumstances.

My mother works in a pre-school and had to start getting the flu shot. One year, she started feeling numbness in her hands and feet. Didn't know what caused it. The next year, right after she had the flu shot, she ended up in the hospital with Guillain-Barre, an auto-immune syndrome. The body attacks the peripheral nervous system. And yes, it can be the result of a reaction to the flu shot.

She doesn't get the shot anymore and her job waives her requirement to do so. And because there's still a question about whether or not this kind of reaction is hereditary, I don't get the flu shot either. (To be honest, I never got a flu shot before that, either.)

If someone has an adverse reaction to the shot, of course, they can't require it. But, if they don't have any allergies or reactions to it and it's required by the job, then they need to do it to keep the job.

It's not that I just"don't believe" in them. The information shows that all of the things you hear about how the vaccine does so many great things is biased information that the vaccine manufacturers and your government have tailored to fit what they need to portray to the public. The fact is that your chance of getting influenza decreases from 2% to 1% and that is if the vaccine is perfectly manufactured to fit the strain in the environment which is almost impossible because the influenza virus is always changing. Also the facts show that children under 6 months of age did not show any significant results to require vaccination and children under 2 years of age have the risk of cataplexy, narcolepsy and febrile convulsions.

Here is the real facts:
Vaccines for preventing influenza in healthy children. - PubMed - NCBI
Vaccines for preventing influenza in healthy adults. - PubMed - NCBI

It's easy to find data to support your own beliefs (see below).

The problem arises when you're not a doctor and you didn't do the study. You can read this, but can you actually understand what it means on a day to day basis, including all the nuances that you can't learn from reading a study? I'm not in the medical field, so I'll just make an informed decision after listening to my doctor and reading studies. In the end, I'd rather be safe than sorry.

Influenza vaccine given to pregnant women reduces hospitalization d... - PubMed - NCBI
The efficacy of live attenuated, cold-adapted, trivalent, intranasa... - PubMed - NCBI
Effectiveness of influenza vaccine in reducing hospital admissions in people with diabetes.
Influenza vaccination in secondary prevention from coronary ischaem... - PubMed - NCBI
Effectiveness of Influenza Vaccine Against Life-threatening RT-PCR-confirmed Influenza Illness in US Children, 2010–2012
Relation between influenza vaccination and outpatient visits, hospi... - PubMed - NCBI
Influenza vaccination reduces cardiovascular events in patients wit... - PubMed - NCBI
Effectiveness of seasonal vaccine in preventing confirmed influenza... - PubMed - NCBI
Effectiveness of influenza vaccine for preventing laboratory-confir... - PubMed - NCBI
Association between influenza vaccination and cardiovascular outcom... - PubMed - NCBI

Yes it is easy to find information to support my belief. The problem is how hard it is to find substantial evidence to discredit it. There is a lot of estimating and guessing with "the results". Also the only way you can refuse a shot is religious beliefs or medical issues. So I think I am going to make my own religion that does not allow them[emoji6]

I would think there is a religion in the US to cover that what about Scientology

 

[bribrius]

Keeping my typing fists tightly closed on this issue, in order to keep my blood pressure from boiling over. Let just say I leave 98% my healthcare in the hands of raw garlic, and essential oils. ;-) better go do some yoga and refrain from reading this thread.

meh,

while I am not a advocate of the medical and pharmaceutical "industry" in general I think past history of much higher fatality rates and spread of disease pretty much killed off most of the successful witch doctor meme...
The mortality rate is much lower now per percent than in the 1600's me thinks and they had garlic then while being exposed to much LESS population and much LESS little virus and bacterial culprits being passed around. I get ya though friend of ours is like that. Seems somewhat beneficial but I wouldn't trust my kids to most natural remedies that came around while we had such high mortality rates but to each their own. Humans are amazing though. All those thousands of years locked into the dna of survival capability, we probably just weren't meant to be locked up together like sick caged animals so much hence the problem of passing all this crap around..

they put immunizations in livestock feed now too, just think every time you have a steak you are getting whatever that cow got. All the gmo food. Must be a nightmare trying to be a naturalist these days..

 

[Braineack]

if you're a stakeholder in a company that profits from it: yes
if you're a citizen with individual rights: no.

 

[runnah]

Must be a nightmare trying to be a naturalist these days..

Well most of died off from easily treatable ailments.

 

[Tailgunner]

if you're a stakeholder in a company that profits from it: yes
if you're a citizen a with individual rights: no.

Exactly.

 

[runnah]

if you're a stakeholder in a company that profits from it: yes
if you're a citizen a with individual rights: no.

When does the good of the group supersede the rights of the individual?

 

[Braineack]

When does the good of the group supersede the rights of the individual?

never. see: Soviet Russia. Unless you like subhuman misery.

Also, ask that same question to the individual store owners in Ferguson about what they think of the mob--acting under what they considered was good.

 

[snerd]

I get flu shot every year and pneumonia shot every 5 years.


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