Had the Flu yet?

Tomas

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Are you assuming all CPFers are 'healthy adults,' Ryan? /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif

For most people these are probably rather startling numbers. "The flu" is usually viewed as a "short term feeling miserable thing" not a "gee, I might die" thing.

Take care, everyone!
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eluminator

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The flu virus is an import. This country is importing a lot more people than it used to, no matter how sick they are.

Here's one link about the origin of flu, but if you are suffering from the politically correct mental condition, you might want to take your medication before you read it.
http://www.youngagain2000.com/feces.html
 

PhotonWrangler

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[ QUOTE ]
Sasha said:
...I think that the reason all of these new strains keep popping up and mutating is because of the virus itself is becoming immune to the antibodies. We ourselves are facillitating the mutation of this virus...

[/ QUOTE ]

Whenever anyone gets the flu, the body manufactures antibodies. If they get a flu shot and thus avoid getting the flu, they still have the same antibodies in their systems afterwards. While your point is well taken, one could argue that getting the flu is also contributing to virus mutation. I suspect that viruses are mutating all the time due to variances in antibodies, genetic predispositions, changing lifestyles, etc.

I don't believe in overdoing it with antibiotics or other meds for that matter, but I do take the stuff when I have to, especially when it's a "me or them" situation because of certain risk factors that I have.
 

Empath

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[ QUOTE ]
Wingerr said:
I'm not a gamblin' man by nature, but 1 in 7036 are odds I could live with! /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif

[/ QUOTE ]

"Odds I could live with" is a rather interesting choice of wording. I wonder if the 7035 feel any responsibility toward the one. The one person only dies if they get the flu from one of the 7035. The one person shouldn't have been so unhealthy to begin with, huh? There's no need to avail oneself of the resources to avoid spreading the disease, since the non-survivors weren't healthy anyway? If you didn't give them the flu they'd just get it from someone else or, or die from something else. That is good reasoning isn't it? Well, isn't it? /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/rolleyes.gif
 

Wingerr

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Maybe I should have prefixed a <pun alert> marker on it.. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif
Not so sure of the validity of regarding it as a panacea which will shield everyone from the disease- the virus is a moving target, and it's not going to be eradicated by everyone taking these shots. For that one person, maybe he'd be worse off having everyone carrying around multitudes of these weakened strains of the disease. What if that one person can't handle even the weakened strain, and introducing it into his system becomes the problem? Who knows? It's all speculation anyway, since the issue is probably far more complex when it comes to the way the human body works to counter disease. I'm just more skeptical on total reliance on modern medical technology than most..
 

James S

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You guys shouldn't confuse a vaccination with an antibiotic. This has already been covered by other folks above, but it needs repeating. The flu shot teaches your immune system to recognize the flu virus as something it should attack, it does not kill the virus itself. In this way it sounds a lot like some holistic or homeopathic stuff you might think of taking to "strengthen your immune system" Thats all the shot does. Your body will figure out that the flu is an invader eventually after you get infected, but with a virus as virulent (hey recognize the root of that word?) as the flu, it's too late, by that time the bug has a foothold in your system. By getting shot of the "inactivated" (read as dead, broken up, not alive and able to infect you) virus, your body responds to the proteins that make up the shell of the virus without you actually having to have the virus in your system. So when you are finally exposed to it your body will know what to do immediately and kill the thing off before it has a chance to make you sick.

Any vaccine is not medicine in the sense that an antibiotic or an aspirin is. It just contains a tiny amount of the stuff that your immune system can use to find the real bug when it shows up. Since the flu shot doesn't kill the flu itself, it doesn't become resistant to it in the same way that a bacteria becomes resistant to an antibiotic. Instead the flu mutates the proteins that make up it's shell, changes it's clothes so to speak and your immune system will no longer be able to recognize it as a bad guy unless you get a different shot. Some viruses change like this all the time, they are made from RNA rather than DNA and it mutates very easily. HIV is like this too which is why they haven't been able to make a vaccine for it yet, while others such as polio are DNA viruses and therefore very stable. The same vaccine they made for it 40 years ago will still work today. There is no pressure put on the virus to mutate by getting the shot. I don't think that there has ever been an example of the flu as it is spreading changing into an immune strain. It mutates over the summer in the pig pens and chicken coops of asia and then comes to visit us when it gets a combination that works for it. It is always doing this.

Healthy adults are certainly more likely to survive the flu than the young, the elderly or the sick. I don't know about you, but if I can get the shot and avoid getting sick, even knowing that I will almost certainly live thorough the experience, I would rather do that. I can also not afford to be completely bed ridden for 3 or more days and then be unable to work for a week or longer and feel miserable for several weeks. I have to work, I have to help take care of my daughter, I can't afford to be out of commission that long. Not to mention the fact that getting the flu is just miserable! I'm not going to get the shot because I'm not in the demographic that dies from it is not a valid argument against it.

And as Empath has pointed out, you might not die from it, but what about your mom who you visited the day before you came down with symptoms when you're the most contagious? What about your sisters baby who you baby sat for them last night while they went out? You may only get sick, your neighbor who came over to join you for dinner last night might die.

evan's comment above of [ QUOTE ]
I think that a lot of this year's outbreak has to do with lots of healthy people exposing themselves to infectious environments to get a flu shot, then bringing infection back with them to spread in other areas. They'd be better off staying at home!

[/ QUOTE ] I find almost tragically funny. If you can "bug in" and not leave your house all winter then you're not very likely to catch the flu or give it to anybody else. Thats not realistic for most of the population. And as far as hospitals, there is actually a very large population of perfectly healthy people that work there all day every day who are as stressed out or tired as anybody else and they don't get sick just from working in the place. That is a non argument.

We all have heard stories of people that got sick after getting the shot, just like Thomas above. Not being an immunologist I don't know what's going on there. I do know how the shots are prepared though and there are no live virus in them. There is a hotline for your doctor (or you) to call if there are any reactions to the shot, they KNOW that some people will react poorly or even dangerously to it and they track that very carefully. Just for fun, here's the number for the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) 1-800-822-7967. There are no government secrets about this stuff, if there was a bad batch of it there would be hundreds or even thousands of people given the flu by it and it would be front page news. Anybody who thinks that the government could call up the new york times and tell the editor "umm, we want people to keep getting the shot so could you please not print that article?" needs more medication than just the flu shot... There were 80 million flu shots given in America last year. there were not 80 million extra cases of the flu.

The incubation period for the flu can be as short as 24 hours in the already very sick, but averages around 4 days for the rest of us. even if I got a shot full of live virus I wouldn't have a symptom for almost 4 days. (i'll post again in 3 more days and let you know how I'm doing) You may be contagious only a day after you are exposed even though you don't start to feel sick for 4 days.

It's been 24 hours since I got my flu shot now /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif I can still feel it in my arm when I flex the muscle. The cold I had is slowly getting better and so far, no flu /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif
 

Wingerr

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Ultimately, if you consider that it doesn't kill the virus, but allows the body to add to its lexicon of virus strains, and enables more people to successfully go walking around with active strains when they do encounter them, isn't there the risk that it's increasing the threshold required to survive? The native Americans didn't do so well when they encountered the visitors from Europe, who were "immune" to the diseases they carried over... maybe that's zooming out too much though-
Seems like everyone needing to buy large trucks and big cars so they can survive in an environment where all the other cars are getting bigger and bigger.
I take a pill to ward off pink elephants, and so far it's been working- haven't had a problem in over 30 years (just kidding! /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif )
Again, I don't think things are nearly as clear cut as we'd like-
 

James S

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Wingerr, how contagious you are depends on your virial load. Once you've had the shot your immune system is mopping up the invaders and you have far fewer of them in your system and therefore far fewer to be leaving your system for others. You also finish mopping them up a lot quicker. So even if you get enough to give your system a workout, you are much less contagious for a much shorter amount of time, and probably in a healthy adult you are never contagious at all.

Without the shot you're nothing but a virus factory until your immune system catches up which takes a couple of weeks.
 

Wingerr

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If it's giving the system a workout, then what if it diverts your body's resources fighting off these dummy loads, and distracts it from a genuine threat coming in? This is assuming the body doesn't have unlimited resources in generating antibodies, which I would assume it doesn't. Unless they anticipated every possible variation, there's always the possibility they miss that one type that floats in despite all best efforts.
I'll continue as I have been, and leave the dwindling supplies of vaccine to those who need it more, and are genuinely at risk-
 

Greta

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Ok... taking this slightly off-topic...

I officially don't have the flu. But I have my annual cold... which is really not that bad but seeing as how I only get one cold a year, it does make me whiney and cranky. In addition, I've had to go to work while trying to get through this cold so I haven't had the luxury of letting nature and chicken soup take it's course... I've had to resort to drugs. And I've discovered that everything has psuedoephedrine in it!!! What the hell is up with that?!?!? That's the crap that meth is made out of and it works the same way on me as meth does on tweekers... I tweek... and I tweek hard. Can't sleep, head tingles... the only thing that it doesn't do for me is suppress my appetite... I could eat a cow... on the hoof!

But... it is a necessary evil if I want to get through an 8 hour shift of being perky at work. I've been taking Dayquil and it has gotten me through. I have managed over the past two days to stop taking it at around 2PM so that I could at least get some sleep at night.... switching to Robitussin at night to suppress the cough and help me sleep. Couldn't figure out why I still couldn't sleep... then I finally read the ingredients of the Robitussin CF that was in my cabinet. Sure enough... psuedoephedrine!! /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/icon8.gif ... I hate the people who managed to get phenylpropanolamine banned... /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/twakfl.gif ... that was the only drug that I could take that worked and allowed me to get some rest. Stupid people need to be shot... /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/xyxgun.gif

So today I am going cold turkey. No meds at all. My head is throbbing and my nose and throat are raw. I did get a tip from a woman at the store today though... and I'm trying it out now... Hot decaf tea with a teaspoon of honey and a shot of Southern Comfort. I'll see you all later!
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James S

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Wingerr, I had actually investigated that as a question myself /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif The shot doesn't actually have anything in it your system needs to fight. All your white cells are doing is filing away the info on the strange protein for later.

If you have HIV getting a flu shot can actually cause a short term spike in your HIV viral load, the reasoning being that your body creates more immune system cells, which are the ones that HIV lives in. This goes back to normal in a few days.

I can't find any reference that getting a flu shot diminishes your ability to fight off a secondary concurrent infection. While this question isn't answered directly in any of the literature I could find there is a very specific note in the administration docs that says that the only illnesses that contraindicate getting the shot is an acute respiratory illness, or very high fever.

it is my understanding that the response to an attenuated or "inactivated" vaccine like the flu shot will not reduce your immune systems while it's working with it, as the response is not to fight the bug, but to learn how to fight it in the future. This may not be true for a live virus shot like the MMR. But having another severe infection at the time of the shot can reduce the effectiveness of the shot as your immune system is already busy on that. Unless you're severely immuno-comprimised your immune system has enough guns to fight off several different things at once, the vaccine is only a momentary distraction.

The dose is .5ml, very tiny amount of the stuff.

They can't anticipate every possible variation, they pick 3 or 4 that they think are most likely. They are generally pretty good at that, but as I mentioned above there is an 8 month lead time between them making this decision and producing the shot. This year a new strain jumped to the forefront after it was too late to get it specifically into the mix. However, it is closely related to one of the strains that they did pick. I can't find any stats published yet, but they are claiming that it will provide immunity because of the parent strain that is in there, just slightly reduced from the ideal. Even on a good day it only works for between %70 and %90 of people and bugs. But add that on top of the chances that I won't get it anyway and we're talking a pretty good chance that I'll be flu free this year. (as I was last year without the shot, I haven't started getting it regularly until my daughter started going to school and bringing me home so many interesting viruses /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif )

And, the most popular strain isn't the only one floating around out there, the others that they put in the shot are too and it will protect you from those.
 

James S

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Sasha, I am the same way the last few days, hopped up on psudoephedrine and having trouble sleeping. It does a good job of drying out my mouth, but not too good on my nose /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/frown.gif

I hate all those combination drugs, if I want to clear up my nose and my cough I'll take 2 specific things of my choosing thank you! But it makes people feel like they are taking fewer drugs which is a very in thing to do, when in fact they are taking MORE than they normally would.

And the ones with tylenol in them are the worst, you could be getting a 3x dose of the stuff if you take a cough medicine, a stuffy-nose medicine and then a real tylenol! That starts to be bad for you after a while!

I remember phenylpropanolamine fondly myself. It actually worked without all the side effects of the new formulation.
 

raggie33

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just rub ya body with helmans maynase and drink 23 beers .and you wont get the flu. trust me i watch er
 

Greta

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[ QUOTE ]
It does a good job of drying out my mouth, but not too good on my nose...

[/ QUOTE ]

It dried everything up on me! To the point where I don't think it's healthy for all of that "stuff" not to come OUT! ... It sure as hell is now though... (insert smilie with runny nose... B@rt?)... BTW... the concoction that I posted above? MMMMMMMMMM... I still have a runny nose but I really don't give a poop anymore... /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/crazy.gif
 

Greta

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[ QUOTE ]
raggie33 said:
just rub ya body with helmans maynase and drink 23 beers .and you wont get the flu. trust me i watch er

[/ QUOTE ]

ROTFLMAO!!!... I don't want to know... /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/ooo.gif /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/yellowlaugh.gif
 

raggie33

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[ QUOTE ]
Sasha said:
[ QUOTE ]
raggie33 said:
just rub ya body with helmans maynase and drink 23 beers .and you wont get the flu. trust me i watch er

[/ QUOTE ]

ROTFLMAO!!!... I don't want to know... /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/ooo.gif /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/yellowlaugh.gif

[/ QUOTE ]
sometimes thats smart with me /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.giflol
 

UK Owl

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I don't know if the one in the US is the same as the one here in the UK, but I am just getting over it after 5 days. It may not last long but it hits you like a tornado!
 

200fr

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Not yet, i hope i dont though, i hate being sick. Besides they gave out flu shots at my work, so i hope that works in my favor.
 
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