Flu Vaccination - Yes or No?

[mco65]

No..
of course i work from home and am usually isolated from the work bug..

A buddy of mine got his flu shot recently and was sick for a week after.. no good deed goes unpunished.

 

[smiths02]

This is from the CDC:
There have been several studies of the risk of GBS after flu vaccine and CDC monitors for GBS during each flu season. The data on an association between seasonal influenza vaccine and GBS have been variable from season-to-season. When there has been an increased risk, it has consistently been in the range of 1-2 additional GBS cases per million flu vaccine doses administered.

Studies suggest that it is more likely that a person will get GBS after getting the flu than after vaccination.

 

[wvjules]

It's not a live virus. You canNOT get sick, or get the flu, from the flu shot.

I got the flu shot yesterday. Today my right shoulder is hurting. Could it be from the flu? No. I slept on it wrong. Just because the shoulder pain followed the flu shot doesn't mean it caused it.

 

[chicagodisneyfan]

It's not a live virus. You canNOT get sick, or get the flu, from the flu shot.

I got the flu shot yesterday. Today my right shoulder is hurting. Could it be from the flu? No. I slept on it wrong. Just because the shoulder pain followed the flu shot doesn't mean it caused it.

What??? You want to invoke FACTS to support your position!! How dare you?
Did you see the article this week at the Orlando Sentinel - 50% of parents think you can get the flu from the vaccine. And 30% think the flu vaccine is a conspiracy and 28% think it causes autism.
Can someone please come up with a vaccine for stupid? It seems to be everywhere!

 

[NYCgrrl]

What??? You want to invoke FACTS to support your position!! How dare you?
Did you see the article this week at the Orlando Sentinel - 50% of parents think you can get the flu from the vaccine. And 30% think the flu vaccine is a conspiracy and 28% think it causes autism.
Can someone please come up with a vaccine for stupid? It seems to be everywhere!

I think depending on social media and listening to one sided medical professionals (quacks have been around as long as the medical profession existed) that feed into your fears to keep up to date with vaccine info is at the heart of the matter as opposed to willful stupidity. People really should get back into reading credible printed media for my way of thinking.

 

[katie01]

What??? You want to invoke FACTS to support your position!! How dare you?
Did you see the article this week at the Orlando Sentinel - 50% of parents think you can get the flu from the vaccine. And 30% think the flu vaccine is a conspiracy and 28% think it causes autism.
Can someone please come up with a vaccine for stupid? It seems to be everywhere!

Thoughts? I’ve heard this same conclusion expressed elsewhere regarding the study on flu shots during the first trimester of pregnancy. https://www.focusforhealth.org/prenatal-flu-vaccine-asd-good-research-bad-conclusions/

 

[FairestOfThemAll37]

We all get flu shots every year. For a long time (before we had kids), DH & I were in the "we don't need flu shots!" camp. Then one winter when DH was working in retail, he caught the flu from a coworker. Then I got it from him. We were both sick as dogs for 2 solid weeks and then we bought got pneumonia at the tail end of it.

It was awful. We never want to experience that ever again.

If you have a legitimate medical or religious reason for not getting flu shots, then you shouldn't get them. But if your reasoning is because you just don't like them or you don't like going to the doctor or you just don't want to bother, then you should suck it up and get one anyway. Why?

To help out others in your community. Like my friend's son who has a compromised immune system. He's been vaccinated for everything, but it never 'sticks.' He sees an immunologist regularly. They've done blood work and confirmed that all of those childhood vaccines that everybody gets...whooping cough, rubella, etc....he's had all of those shots. But according to his bloodwork, he has zero immunity to any of it. Everybody else getting vaccinated gets people like him "herd immunity."

There was an excellent book I read a few years ago about the Spanish Flu. It was fascinating. And also very scary. Millions of people died because when the virus mutated, it took advantage of healthy young adults & their vigorous immune systems. Thus, their immune systems went into overdrive and millions of people died as a result. Plus, World War I helped spread it in all of the military barracks. It totally overwhelmed everyone. Imagine going to the ER not being able to breathe and there are so many other sick people there with the same thing that you have and so many doctors and nurses sick that there's not enough resources to help you. Imagine having to completely quarantine your entire family from the outside world for months at a time.

That sort of thing can totally happen again.

I'm a pretty healthy adult. Another winter, I got pneumonia right out of the blue and within 2 days' time, I had to go to the ER because my oxygen levels were so low (83%), heart was racing, couldn't walk, fever of 104.5. I spent 5 days in the hospital on 3 different antibiotics and was on supplemental oxygen for 3 weeks. It was horrible. You get the flu and you are totally susceptible to developing a serious secondary infection like that.

If the vaccination is free to you, you'd be a fool not to take advantage of it.

We’re really far removed at this point from so many illnesses that crippled and killed in the past that I think it’s easy for some to forget and take for granted the great vaccines have done.

I think it’s amazing that there are a couple of groups working on a universal flu vaccine. I think the biggest issues with the flu vaccine are that 1) a surprising number of people believe whole heartedly that you can get the flu from the vaccine 2) it’s can be a miss on the strain, and 3) people think the flu is relatively harmless so it’s not worth any potential vaccine risk.

Like you mention, it only takes a particularly nasty mutation to come around like the 1918 H1N1 strain and poof goes a rather scary percentage of the population. The flu is terrifying.

 

[Kitty 34]

What??? You want to invoke FACTS to support your position!! How dare you?
Did you see the article this week at the Orlando Sentinel - 50% of parents think you can get the flu from the vaccine. And 30% think the flu vaccine is a conspiracy and 28% think it causes autism.
Can someone please come up with a vaccine for stupid? It seems to be everywhere!

Just today I passed a huge semi that had written on his back door "You can't fix stupid". I always believe what I read on the back of trucks.

 

[pigletto]

We also know a girl (who is a nurse and got the flu shot, though she has been told it wasn't related) who was diagnosed with Guillain-Barre. She is now on the mend, but it got so bad that she was paralyzed and had to be intubated. She is in her early 30s.

My father in law got it as well. He was also paralyzed and sent to a teaching hospital with several people on his ward with Guillain Barre. All they had in common was the same batch of the flu shot. They were told that it was the likely cause and told to never get one again. He was partially paralyzed and in rehab for a year.

I don’t think we’ve ever had the flu. We’ve never had the shots. It’s hard to watch something like what happend to my father in law and still get the shot. I’m not completely opposed as I know it’s relatively rare. I might this year as I work with children and they are always sick and as I get older the likelihood of fighting it off isn’t as good as it once was. We’ll see.

 

[ronandannette]

It's not a live virus. You canNOT get sick, or get the flu, from the flu shot.

I got the flu shot yesterday. Today my right shoulder is hurting. Could it be from the flu? No. I slept on it wrong. Just because the shoulder pain followed the flu shot doesn't mean it caused it.

Interestingly, the practitioner that administered my vaccine on Wednesday told me to expect muscle pain in the deltoid that was injected. Apparently it is such a common (yet harmless) side-effect that more people actually have it than don't have it. Yep - I got it. It's resolving and I was also advised to "work" the arm as much as possible and to take modest doses of ibuprophen to reduce inflammation.

There are other, less common side effects that are experienced by a fair number, such as a headache and slight fever. But side-effects of the vaccine, even if they seem somewhat flu-like are NOT the flu and I suspect many people don't understand that.

 

[Pooh2]

Getting my shot tomorrow.
We had a close family friend die of the flu last winter.
Still in shock over this loss.

 

[Professor_Cookie]

I got my flu shot and now I have to wear this danged tinfoil hat to keep the government from listening to my thoughts.

 

[mamamary]

Interestingly, the practitioner that administered my vaccine on Wednesday told me to expect muscle pain in the deltoid that was injected. Apparently it is such a common (yet harmless) side-effect that more people actually have it than don't have it. Yep - I got it. It's resolving and I was also advised to "work" the arm as much as possible and to take modest doses of ibuprophen to reduce inflammation.

There are other, less common side effects that are experienced by a fair number, such as a headache and slight fever. But side-effects of the vaccine, even if they seem somewhat flu-like are NOT the flu and I suspect many people don't understand that.

I got the flu shot on Sunday with dh. By Sunday night we both had the pain in the arm. I actually still feel it a little this morning. I’ll take that over the flu anyday.

 

[wvjules]

My arm is a little sore at/near the injection site but if only if I touch it. So I wont' touch it. lol My pain is in my shoulder blade (near the middle of the back) and up through the neck area. Some ibuprofen and a heating pad last night helped a lot. I don't think that's the deltoid pain referred to but maybe it is? Either way. Way better than the flu.

 

[DLgal]

My arm gets sore with EVERY vaccine I get. This is a super common side effect. It's barely worth mentioning. It's because this vaccine should be injected into muscle, not fat, and that hurts no matter what you are injecting.

 

[jaybirdsmommy]

We’re really far removed at this point from so many illnesses that crippled and killed in the past that I think it’s easy for some to forget and take for granted the great vaccines have done.

I think it’s amazing that there are a couple of groups working on a universal flu vaccine. I think the biggest issues with the flu vaccine are that 1) a surprising number of people believe whole heartedly that you can get the flu from the vaccine 2) it’s can be a miss on the strain, and 3) people think the flu is relatively harmless so it’s not worth any potential vaccine risk.

Like you mention, it only takes a particularly nasty mutation to come around like the 1918 H1N1 strain and poof goes a rather scary percentage of the population. The flu is terrifying.

THIS!!!!!!!!!!! I have been saying this for years now. I'm an older parent, my mother was an older parent, she remembers having measles and whooping cough (she said that one was so bad she wasn't afraid she was going to die, she WANTED to die). She also remembers being terrified of polio. When vaccines started coming available, her only question was "how soon can my kids get them?"

We have gotten to the point where we are now far enough removed from the last generations to have experienced these diseases on a widespread scale that it is much easier to fear the vaccines than the diseases themselves. I don't think this anti-vaccine stuff will stop until we start having widespread outbreaks again and the kids that have to live through them start having their own kids.

We haven't gotten our flu shots yet, but need to do so. Too many screwed up lungs in our family to take the risk. It's just been so busy lately that I only today realized we are over halfway through October.

 

[Mermaid02]

Unfortunately it's a no for me and I am asthmatic. I had an allergic reaction to the vaccine almost 10 years ago and my doctors will not give it to me again. I got the flu in 2015 and I was very sick, probably the sickest I can ever remember being. I asked the next year if I should get the shot and see what happened, but was told absolutely not. I try to stay away from big crowds and wash my hands a lot during flu season.

 

[CarolAnn856]

Unfortunately it's a no for me and I am asthmatic. I had an allergic reaction to the vaccine almost 10 years ago and my doctors will not give it to me again. I got the flu in 2015 and I was very sick, probably the sickest I can ever remember being. I asked the next year if I should get the shot and see what happened, but was told absolutely not. I try to stay away from big crowds and wash my hands a lot during flu season.

And people like you are the exact reason the rest of us who can get it should get it. Sometimes it's necessary to do something unpleasant for the greater good. Barring actual, diagnosed, flu shot related reactions, a sore arm or such is a very small price to pay to try to help keep others healthy.

 

[Forum Jumper]

I haven't gotten a flu shot in a lonnnnng time. They always seem to make me sick so I gave up. This year, we will be traveling in December. DH always seems to get sick when we leave home. So I went in, a couple of weeks ago, and got a flu shot. They are not free for me. This time, because I have asthma, the nurse opted to give me an "egg free" flu shot. My arm did not hurt and I have not felt sick in any way.....a first for me. The nurse told me that the "egg free" shot is stronger than the regular one. I don't get any of that.

 

[Wendy31]

Unfortunately it's a no for me and I am asthmatic. I had an allergic reaction to the vaccine almost 10 years ago and my doctors will not give it to me again. I got the flu in 2015 and I was very sick, probably the sickest I can ever remember being. I asked the next year if I should get the shot and see what happened, but was told absolutely not. I try to stay away from big crowds and wash my hands a lot during flu season.

Research elderberry & its flu-fighting properties.

We took elderberry all last flu season &, thankfully, did not get the flu. I don't know if that was just coincidental or not... but there are some scientific studies out there that support the use of elderberry.

Last year, we didn't get flu shots, but, this year, in addition to our flu shots, we plan to take elderberry again. If I couldn't have the flu shot, I'd definitely be taking elderberry. If you can find elderberry syrup made w/ local honey, it's even better.