Flu Shots

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I also love Sartresue's post headers. Epidemiological studies have supported the efficacy of flu vaccines because people who are vaccinated are less likely to get sick. Now, it's harder with influenza, because there's a new strain each year and the virologists have to try to come up with a vaccine BEFORE the season's flu strain actually emerges, making for an imperfect science and some gaps in coverage. It's pretty tough to come up with a vaccine for an as-yet-nonexistent illness, but that's what the flu vaccine developers have to do. That's the reason why it didn't turn out so well last year, not because vaccines are inherently worthless.

This has been acknowledged and discussed by both sides....

Shot of health topic

lekiwi, I have had nasty vicious bronchial flus which necessitated staying in bed for weeks. I even needed oxygen, painkillers and costly antibiotics. My weak spot is my respiratory system. This is what the flu is. I am healthier now than I was in my thirties. I will continue to have this vaccination. I will not go through one of those horrible problems again. If I ever get the flu again, after getting the shot, then I will rethink my position.

If your solutions work for you, great. But I will not change my mind on this. I cannot go through that pain in my chest and breathing problems. The last time I got the flu in 1993, I thought I was going to die, and I had a young child to look after. Since 1994 I have had another child and NOT ONE FLU ILLNESS.

Thank you for your compliment about my post titles.

Fair enough, I've had some pretty nasty flu-induced bronchitis/chest infections myself (last time I ended up having asthma-type attacks and being dragged to hospital for lack of oxygen!), but antibiotics or drugs do nothing for them. Even amongst that last awful bout I refused more than a week's worth of the mildest antibiotics possible because they just don't work, and refused to see the doctor again. The only thing that's ever fixed it was homoeopathics combined with a herbal mixture from a herbalist friend. The one time I did take a preventative - not the flu vax but a similar drug for the same purpose - I ended up sicker than I've been in my life, and it was that that started my trip down flu lane last year.

I honestly don't know one person who's had the vaccine and not ended up incredibly ill with the flu, Perhaps this is just speaking from my own experiences but there's no way that thing should be anywhere near small children like they want it to be, having seen what it does to grown men and women. Adults can make up their own minds, and that's fine, personal choice and all that, but kids? No way.



My biggest problem with all these vaccines isn't so much that they're there - if you're an adult then it's your choice whether you take them or not, and that's fine. It's the lack of accurate information about them, the lies the governments put out about them, the falsified trial data from their criminal manufacturers who would have been jailed long ago in any other circumstance, and the way they're being pushed more and more on our babies and children whose systems cannot handle the overload, and that's fact.

That's what gets me so riled up.

But there is information that, unless they've got the strains wrong as happened recently, then it protects a lot more than it is ineffective. And just because someone got sick anyway doesn't mean that the vaccine caused it, just that it failed to protect from it.

For thorough analysis of the papers regarding mercury and autism, I redirect anyone reading to http://leftbrainrightbrain.co.uk

They frequently analyze papers and claims about vaccines and autism. A news report, by the way, doesn't qualify as scientific evidence. I suggest you look up on that website information on the Hornig paper, as well as some other ones (including a recent post about Bernard et. al located at http://leftbrainrightbrain.co.uk/?p=835). That site explains things a lot better than I can.

A landmark study that states that there is no connection between thimerosal and autism can be found here: http://jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/full/290/13/1763

Citation and Abstract:

Association Between Thimerosal-Containing Vaccine and Autism

Anders Hviid, MSc; Michael Stellfeld, MD; Jan Wohlfahrt, MSc; Mads Melbye, MD, PhD

JAMA. 2003;290:1763-1766.

ABSTRACT


Context Mercuric compounds are nephrotoxic and neurotoxic at high doses. Thimerosal, a preservative used widely in vaccine formulations, contains ethylmercury. Thus it has been suggested that childhood vaccination with thimerosal-containing vaccine could be causally related to neurodevelopmental disorders such as autism.

Objective To determine whether vaccination with a thimerosal-containing vaccine is associated with development of autism.

Design, Setting, and Participants Population-based cohort study of all children born in Denmark from January 1, 1990, until December 31, 1996 (N = 467 450) comparing children vaccinated with a thimerosal-containing vaccine with children vaccinated with a thimerosal-free formulation of the same vaccine.

Main Outcome Measures Rate ratio (RR) for autism and other autistic-spectrum disorders, including trend with dose of ethylmercury.

Results During 2 986 654 person-years, we identified 440 autism cases and 787 cases of other autistic-spectrum disorders. The risk of autism and other autistic-spectrum disorders did not differ significantly between children vaccinated with thimerosal-containing vaccine and children vaccinated with thimerosal-free vaccine (RR, 0.85 [95% confidence interval {CI}, 0.60-1.20] for autism; RR, 1.12 [95% CI, 0.88-1.43] for other autistic-spectrum disorders). Furthermore, we found no evidence of a dose-response association (increase in RR per 25 µg of ethylmercury, 0.98 [95% CI, 0.90-1.06] for autism and 1.03 [95% CI, 0.98-1.09] for other autistic-spectrum disorders).

Conclusion The results do not support a causal relationship between childhood vaccination with thimerosal-containing vaccines and development of autistic-spectrum disorders.

And the CDC says that the flu vaccine is safe, as well:
http://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/qa/thimerosal.htm

1. My wife has a cousin with an autistic son. Now, when she first started talking about it, she took it for granted as genetic: she and her husband both come from pretty smart, engineering oriented families (he's a programmer), and her husband and her father are both kind of anti-social. After a while, she got into the mercury thing, but found out that her father used a kind of pesticide on his farm that's very high in mercury.

2. I'm technically in the "high risk" category that's supposed to get the flu shot. But every tiem I get the flu shot, I get pneumonia. If I just get the flu and let it take its course (without the studpid "fight your immune system" OTC drugs Americans take), it goes away quickly.

GodsGadfly, have you ever tried homoeopathy for it? I've found it's the only thing that's ever worked for me when I've had a serious flu (beyond the usuals like lemon and honey drinks, echinacea, high doses of vitamin C etc, but sometimes you need something extra on top of all that).

lets try some test on an animal who's body is completly diffrent from ours!

the results can't be wrong right!? right!?.

Anybody care for an outbreak of influenza similar to the one that killed an estimated 20 to 100 MILLION people in 1918?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_flu

Nope, why do you ask?

LeKiwi, you know damn well why he asked.

Not really...

If he's talking about H5N1 (as seems to be the only modern link to the Spanish Flu I can think of) suddenly morphing into the Spanish Flu because people refuse their annual flu shots, then clearly there's such little understanding of how the flu shots even work and the strains they are for that there's not much point in going into it. There is no vaccine against it, the only one who's ever benefitted from tamiflu is Don Rumsfeld, and it's not even happened yet and could never happen.

Beyond that, I'm not sure how my not vaccinating is going to lead to a repeat of the 1918 epidemic, so no - I'm not sure what his point was. Feel free to explain.

My English teacher last year benefited from Tamiflu. He greatly appreciates not being dead.

Clarify your pronouns. What is "it?" You mean another pandemic? Yes it could happen, and is expected in the relatively near future.


Refusing the benefits of modern medicine leaves society vulnerable to dangerous epidemics. That's been explained to you enough times before.

I don't shun all modern medicine, only some. Like vaccines. I've explained why.


"It" = H5N1 morphing into another plague as such; it hasn't happened yet, it may not ever happen. That's the only thing I could think of that the Spanish Flu post could have been making reference to, and it isn't affected by flu vaccines anyway, so again, I'm not entirely sure of what the point in that 'anyone care for another Spanish Flu' post was.

When I get a cold or flu, I take a lot of Vitamin C, echinecea (can never remember how to spell it--yes, I know it's not an antiviral, but I'm susceptible to pneumonia, and it keeps me from getting pneumonia), and eat a high-protein diet. It usually knocks the whole thing out, even with my crummy system.

My wife says that her college roomate was obsessed with using mouthwash and taking Vitamin C. During their freshman year, they were in an absolutely disgusting dorm building, with absolutely disgusting residents, but neither one of them ever got sick, because Mary followed her roommate's advice and gargled with mouthwash several times a day and took Vitamin C every day.

She fell otu of being quite so disciplined about it, but she still follows the basic principle, and she gets sick a lot less than the kids and I do.