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