Nah, I'll skip. Never had a flu shot in my life. I'll live.
Will you have the Swine Flu shot?
- Thread starter Miss Chicken
- Start date
I personally never liked injections much. When the tuberculosis injections were required in school in year 8, I "neglected" to mention about it to parents. (Having pointy things stuck in my arm was less than appealing at 13 years-old) They were quite annoyed when they found out, so I ended up having to get it the following year.
Most of these innoculation things are based on controlling spread of infection, rather than being of direct benefit to the individual. ie, if one person doesn't get their innoculations, it's probably no big deal as they're unlikely to be exposed to those nasty viruses anyway, and that person could rely on the rest of society being immunised to keep the spread of the viruses minimal. But if everybody neglected to get their innoculations, then the viruses would run rife, and you would then be at greatly increased risk.Stephen! said:
I'm old enough to remember the last time Swine Flu made the news (In fact, that year I believe more people got sick from the *vaccine* than the actual flu!...ONE person died, yet at least 500 were hit with Guillain-Barré syndrome), and I'm not keen on that sort of thing. And I'm not in a high risk group either. So no, I won't have the shot.
I was thinking of not getting the vaccinations for my kids, but was talking to my sister today and she said that it's not so much the risk of getting H1N1, but the risk of it mutating with H5N1 (avian flu) and creating a varient of H5N1 that is easily passed to humans because it's that flu that will kill you.
So she convinced me that I should get the shot. So I look up the details on our local health web-site, and the public "at risk" vaccinations are taking place in the huge exhibition centre. And only there. So, for one week, every person who counts as at risk will be going to that building to get the injection. Talk about opening yourself up to get every infection swinging through the city!
So, now I can't decide again.
So she convinced me that I should get the shot. So I look up the details on our local health web-site, and the public "at risk" vaccinations are taking place in the huge exhibition centre. And only there. So, for one week, every person who counts as at risk will be going to that building to get the injection. Talk about opening yourself up to get every infection swinging through the city!
So, now I can't decide again.
It is only a hypothetical. It doesn't exist as far as we know. Would the current vaccine protect against the hypothetical flu hybrid you're talking about?
The H1N1/H5N1 mutation is the worst case scenario picture anyway - but when I'm trying to make a decision I like to consider those.
The vaccines should act to prime the body against the currently known forms of H5N1, and (with the new swine flu vaccine) H1N1. The problem is that these individual strains mutate relatively rapidly (no, not THAT fast
) producing antigenically drifted strains with varying and unpredictable degrees of virulence, so a vaccine would cover the vast majority of cases but there would still be a limited number of people with antigenically drifted (mutated) forms of H5N1 and H1N1 that may cause problems.Any possible mutation involving mixing genes from both viruses (and it is possible) would create a new Flu virus with its own specific antigenic profile (maybe, in a worst case scenario, its own new haemagglutinin and neuraminidase profile as per the theory of antigenic shift) which would not be recognised by a person's immune system vaccinated using the currently available vaccines. Traditionally, such major changes have been seen to occur within animal hosts, such as pigs and chickens - hence swine and avian flu.
ABSOLUTELY NOT... I'd rather die a slow and painful death than face a needle!!!!
I feel faint just thinking about it.
I feel faint just thinking about it.
Your sister seems to either read a lot of crack-pot websites or listen to crack-pot radio programs. Says the flu viruses will merge, mutate, and create a super strain that will be able to hop from people to carpeting and then to the moon is like saying mumps and measles will merge with the feline HIV virus and infect cattle populations.
When will people apply some common sense regarding these flu scares? Every year it's the same mayhem, panic, and hysteria drummed up by the news media. People are doing themselves no favors using anti-bacterial hand cleaners and spraying the ever loving piss out of anything they touch with Lysol.
Didn't you already have swine flu? You should already have the antibodies...ABSOLUTELY NOT... I'd rather die a slow and painful death than face a needle!!!!
I feel faint just thinking about it.
^ Goodness knows. Maybe it was, maybe it wasn't.
Your sister seems to either read a lot of crack-pot websites or listen to crack-pot radio programs. Says the flu viruses will merge, mutate, and create a super strain that will be able to hop from people to carpeting and then to the moon is like saying mumps and measles will merge with the feline HIV virus and infect cattle populations.
When will people apply some common sense regarding these flu scares? Every year it's the same mayhem, panic, and hysteria drummed up by the news media. People are doing themselves no favors using anti-bacterial hand cleaners and spraying the ever loving piss out of anything they touch with Lysol.
Neither actually, she's on the e-mail mailing list for International Society for Infectious Diseases. Like I said, it's a worst case scenario but it is being discussed.
Your sister seems to either read a lot of crack-pot websites or listen to crack-pot radio programs. Says the flu viruses will merge, mutate, and create a super strain that will be able to hop from people to carpeting and then to the moon is like saying mumps and measles will merge with the feline HIV virus and infect cattle populations.
When will people apply some common sense regarding these flu scares? Every year it's the same mayhem, panic, and hysteria drummed up by the news media. People are doing themselves no favors using anti-bacterial hand cleaners and spraying the ever loving piss out of anything they touch with Lysol.
Neither actually, she's on the e-mail mailing list for International Society for Infectious Diseases. Like I said, it's a worst case scenario but it is being discussed.
I'm still waiting for SARS to "take us all" as was the scare being thrust upon us a few years ago.
I probably won't get it. My mom can't get it because she's had Guillain-Barré Syndrome, but my dad is getting it because his work requires it. My brother, sister-in-law and nieces are getting or have gotten it.
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