Flu shots, should they be required?

[runnah]

Well it does matter. For example, my whole family is getting rabies vaccines. One vaccine that I will happily take as the alternative is certain death.

Seriously?? Wow, I'm sorry. Those are some heavy duty painful shots from what I have heard. And only given to people who have come in contact with (or may have) rabies. Since there is no cure for rabies, I would definitely get that vaccine if I came in contact with it!

Yeah it's been a hard couple of weeks.

But anyway, back to arguing!

 

[photoguy99]

The lowest risk scenario for me personally is if everyone else gets vaccinated, and I do not. This doesn't work out, though, because it's never just me. It's me and a bunch of other idiots, and then we all get sick sometimes.

Vaccines to carry small risks to the individual. The government and industry certainly do their best to dance around these issues and minimize them, which creates an atmosphere of conspiracy. There isn't one, there's just bureaucrats.

The overall best outcome, for society as a whole, is for everyone to get vaccinated, and for occasional people to draw the short straw and to have some negative consequence.

Pretending that we live, or should live, in some libertarian utopia where the rights of society never supercede the rights of the individual, and equating such a thing with the USSR, is just silly and wrong. See, for instance, traffic laws. Waiting for a red light is giving up a little personal freedom for the good of the whole (the widely misquoted Ben Franklin notwithstanding).

 

[Braineack]

The overall best outcome, for society as a whole, is for everyone to get vaccinated, and for occasional people to draw the short straw and to have some negative consequence.

unless another H1N1 strain comes along... Because guess what strain wasn't in the flu shot that year.

 

[Designer]

Except all the dictators here that want to make these decisions for you...

Coming soon to a city/state/nation near you.

 

[xzyragon]

Well it does matter. For example, my whole family is getting rabies vaccines. One vaccine that I will happily take as the alternative is certain death.

Seriously?? Wow, I'm sorry. Those are some heavy duty painful shots from what I have heard. And only given to people who have come in contact with (or may have) rabies. Since there is no cure for rabies, I would definitely get that vaccine if I came in contact with it!

Vaccinations are preventative. You have to have them in your system BEFORE you come into contact with the pathogen. Getting a rabies shot after the fact is pointless because if you survive, you're immune...

 

[runnah]

It does amaze me that we have the best medicine in the world in an era where science improves everyday and people still don't take part in it.

 

[runnah]

Except all the dictators here that want to make these decisions for you...

Coming soon to a city/state/nation near you.

So would either of you quarantine yourselves if you came into contact with Ebola or would you just say "screw everyone else I am going to Dairy Queen"?

 

[Msteelio91]

Glad I got in this thread early and then had to actually do work, it's been a great read lol

 

[paigew]

Vaccinations are preventative. You have to have them in your system BEFORE you come into contact with the pathogen. Getting a rabies shot after the fact is pointless because if you survive, you're immune...

wrong. that is how it works in animals but they do NOT vaccinate humans for rabies unless they (may) have come into contact with rabies.

 

[runnah]

I have become an expert on rabies in the past 2 weeks.

 

[pgriz]

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

Vaccines present a portion of the virus or bacteria to the immune system, and when the immune system recognizes that portion as "not-self", it sets off a cascade of actions that result in antibodies being created. In producing the vaccine, the developer of the vaccine has to consider which parts of the virus (or bacteria, for that matter), are essentially unchanging (usually some of virus capsule components and some of the viral enzymes), which are changing quickly (also some parts of the virus capsule), and which are dangerous to have (the viral genome, either in RNA or DNA form). A good vaccine will incorporate a number of components of the virus without incorporating the dangerous elements. The problem for us is that the human immune response is not perfect, and sometimes the immune system will characterize something as "not-self" which is actually "self" - and this get the auto-immune response attacking components of our own body.

As for viruses not being able to live outside the body... I really wish that this would be true. Depending on the viral capsule structure, some viruses can exist in dormant state for centuries. If they are not exposed to UV, ionizing radiation, or oxygen, they can stay dormant but viable for a long time.

An interesting bit of information came out of the genome sequencing study - it appears that more than half of the genetic endowment we carry is made up of "junk" DNA, which apparently doesn't code for anything. Further studies determined that much of this "junk" was very similar to viral gene sequences, leading some researchers to consider that the genome represents millions of years of infections of viruses of the basic eucaryotic cell. There is a link between cancers caused by viruses, and cancers caused by damaged DNA, which seem, in some cases, to re-animate the dormant viral sequences.

Conspiracy theories aside, vaccinations DO reduce the chances of getting sick from a virus or bacteria, but only IF the right strain was used, and if the vaccine developers were clever enough to select those components which are present across a number of strains.

 

[photoguy99]

The overall best outcome, for society as a whole, is for everyone to get vaccinated, and for occasional people to draw the short straw and to have some negative consequence.

unless another H1N1 strain comes along... Because guess what strain wasn't in the flu shot that year.

You are completely missing the point.

 

[xzyragon]

Vaccinations are preventative. You have to have them in your system BEFORE you come into contact with the pathogen. Getting a rabies shot after the fact is pointless because if you survive, you're immune...

wrong. that is how it works in animals but they do NOT vaccinate humans for rabies unless they (may) have come into contact with rabies.

Rabies | Vaccines.gov

Yes they're vaccinate you after you've come into contact. I haven't looked into the science behind that as far as what booster the vaccine does while you're fighting a rabies infection, but I stand my ground on the fact that vaccines, are by their very nature, preventative measures. At least that's what the professors in my microbiology, immunology, and virology classes taught...

 

[runnah]

A bunch of photographers discussing medicine is like asking an engineer how to make love.

 

[pixmedic]

A bunch of photographers discussing medicine is like asking an engineer how to make love.

yea, you gotta ask a real blue collar worker....like a professional pipe layer.