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Did You Get A Flu Shot?
So, I was talking to a mom friend of mine who was coming down with a cold. I asked her if she had her flu shot this season. She said, “No. I don’t get flu shots. I’m a little skeptical of them.” Skeptical? She explained that she never got them as a child and thought that they really weren’t that effective. After I picked my jaw up off the floor, I asked her if her kids get them. Nope.
Are there a lot of flue shot skeptics out there that I haven’t met yet? Having been raised by a mother who was a nurse, yearly flu shots were mandatory. My family got their flu shots this season. My sons’ school even offered free vaccines. Now, I know that there has been some controversy regarding this year’s flu shot strain.Even if this year’s shot is less effective than in years past, is it wise to skip it? Are there justifiable and informed reasons to not get the flu shot every year?
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I don’t, for four reasons:
1. I hate needles.
2. I don’t believe in their effectiveness.
3. Actually catching the flu and surviving will make me stronger when I reach old age, and finally . . .
4. I want to see if the government will start to make them mandatory for us old folks under Obamacare (go ahead, take me to prison for refusing a shot!).
Because it’s basically betting $40-ish bucks a year and the time it takes to go and get it done that I’m gonna get the flu when I haven’t had it for the last 25.
Okay so if your work had free shots and an onsite clinic then you would do it?
1) They have a mist versions now that is supposed to be even more effective
2) Really? Even with all the evidence?
3) Probably not true for the same reason that you have to get a new shot each year (i.e. the flu mutates)
4) Well I can’t help you there.
Yes, fair point. “Moderate” is a lot higher than we’ve been led to believe, as that fellow’s case indicates.
Heat stroke is a funny thing—although one ought to distinguish between getting locked in a car in the sun, and the type of heat stroke that’s typified by a runaway temperature. The second might have some bearing on this discussion, but it’s not well understood what causes it, which is why I wanted to avoid the topic. :)
It’s pretty clearly not caused by dehydration, however, and it’s also rare enough that there’s not much reason to worry about it.
“We propose either that the heat-losing mechanisms in these athletes were inadequate or that, and perhaps more likely we think, excessive endogenous thermogenesis, initiated by unknown factors, may have produced the heatstroke.”
But to your point, heat stroke may be more akin to your allergic reaction. Some normal process that runs away.
They won’t give it to anyone over 49 years of age. Harrumph.
What evidence?
My understanding from earlier in the thread is that they guess in advance which flu strain will be spreading and that’s what they give out in the vaccine. If they guess wrong, you aren’t protected.
That doesn’t seem particularly helpful in preventing me from getting sick. Seems like a “maybe” helpful not a “definitely.” Similarly, it doesn’t seem particularly helpful in preventing others from getting sick.
Also, even if they happen to pick the right strain:
via http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2013/01/08/168814935/can-you-get-a-flu-shot-and-still-get-the-flu
Which takes me back to my original question. Why given the nominal cost of the vaccine wouldn’t you want even that little bit of protect it might give you.
I just have to step in here and take aim at this “don’t treat a fever” meme, Tuck.
Yes, maybe there’s some diagnostic advantage of letting temperature elevate above normal, but once you know the patient has something like, oh, bacterial meningitis, the treatment is of both the infection (with massive antibiotics), and the fever.
Letting the fever take its natural course is of no medical advantage if you’re dead. The body has all kinds of natural responses — like shock and dehydration — which will certainly lower your temperature suddenly and dramatically — by killing you.
And I’m not a doctor. I’m speaking from personal experience. Modern medicine is a miracle. It doesn’t fix everything, but choose to begrudge it at your peril.
There seems to be some link between a mother contracting flu while pregnant and autism in her child. I don’t think it’s known whether it’s the fever or the virus itself which places the child at higher risk, but if I were the pregnant mom, I’d treat the fever. No question.
You know, having read all of this thread, I’m going to get one next year. It is foolish of me to forego the protection at such a low cost.
I just really don’t care if I get sick. What’s the big deal?
With respect to fevers:
Isn’t it the case that the body’s fever reaction works much better against bacterial infections, and not as well against viruses? Because the virus is in your own cells, but the bacteria are floating around somewhere else, and are more vulnerable? Am I totally wrong there? So for a cold or flu, you might as well use drugs to tamp down the fever, but for a bacterial infection, let ‘er rip?
Casey
I just really don’t care if I get sick. What’s the big deal?
At your age (which is also about my age) this makes some sense, as long as you can afford the days off work. But when you get older, these things can kill you.
The fever won’t fix your pneumonia or bacterial meningitis. Letting it run its course will just make you miserable as you die.
Remember, people used to say “he died of fever?” No, actually, he died of infection which drove his fever. I see no reason to forgo treatment of both.
That’s a fair question. But I have to wonder what other rare potential hazards we should pay annually to maybe, if we’re lucky, secure ourselves against.
Millions of deaths are nothing to sneeze at. But taking that gamble every year because of something that happened once, a century ago, seems a bit like worrying that a volcano or hurricane will kill you. People accept deadly risks all the time. There are too many dangers to count. Some we can avoid with small actions. But small actions, like small expenses, add up.
Considering how frequently viruses mutate, such regularity of vaccination seems as likely to cause an epidemic as to prevent one. And if I haven’t caught a weak strain of flu in my lifetime, then it seems no more likely that I will catch a stronger strain tomorrow, if there is one.
I don’t object to the annual vaccination. And I’ll consider it in the future. But it doesn’t strike me as an obvious choice.
Then I suggest you follow its directions, and not go against the evidence it offers about the best way to treat disease.
“Fever is one of the most common reasons that parents seek medical attention for their children. Parental concerns arise in part because of the belief that fever is a disease rather than a symptom or sign of illness. Twenty years ago, Barton Schmitt, MD, found that parents had numerous misconceptions about fever. These unrealistic concerns were termed “fever phobia.” ”
Don’t succumb to fever phobia.
The reason is that treating the fever makes it more likely you’ll die of the infection.
It’s sort of like locking your gun into your holster. It does not increase your chances for survival.
It works against both. That’s why you get a fever when you get the flu, which is viral.
“The adaptive value of fever [10–13] is well known to immunologists; for example, Janeway’s Immunobiology [14, p. 110] notes that ‘At higher temperatures, bacterial and viral replication is less efficient, whereas the adaptive immune response operates more efficiently’. Others argue that the adaptive value of fever arises instead from activation and coordination of the immune response [12]. ”
Do you buy every insurance policy that is offered to you?
That’s just nonsense. It may apply to already terminally ill elderly patients. I’m willing to bet more kids die from dehydration due to fever than infections themselves.
I’m not saying every little rise in temperature should be treated aggressively and I have no doubt many parents are inclined to overreact to fever. However, once you know what you’re dealing with (particularly in kids), I see no reason to leave them miserable. Every parent should determine their threshold of comfort. Mine is about 102 degrees before I start to treat.
We have weeks of experience with a kid with poorly controlled temperature (due to brain surgery and meningitis). I guarantee you there was no imaginable advantage to letting her suffer. I hope people don’t take your advice.
We don’t get the flu vaccine. My husband probably would get it if you showed up at work and offered it to him, but he’s not going to make a special trip to the doctors’ office for one. I can barely talk him into an appointment when he’s sick!
I have gotten it twice in the past. Both times the injection site swelled like there was about to be an alien creature coming out of me. Not an experience I wish to repeat. In fairness to the flu shot (?), I had to stop my allergy shots because the reactions to the shots were worse than the allergies so there is a pattern here.
My daughter was given the flu shot once and suffered a similar reaction. So, no, we won’t be trying it again any time soon.
I’m tolerant of fever up to a point. But having experienced temperatures up to nearly 105 twice in my life, at which point I was terrified by hallucinations and difficult for caretakers to control, I won’t refuse a fever killer once it passes 102.
That’s was the experience my kids had too.
When they went to college, their pediatrician ran a blood test to see if their immunity was still okay so they wouldn’t have to get another shot–the CDC advised against giving second shots to kids who had one of these two reactions. My kids’ immunity was okay, and we have a note stapled to their birth certificates to that effect.
I wish people would not criticize as crazy and irresponsible the people who are not getting their children vaccinated.
Because I wonder how I would feel today about vaccinations.
When my kids were babies and toddlers, I had to contend with only the MMR, DPT, and polio vaccines. Today’s parents are looking at something like 35 shots. And a very tiny arm. Plus, they are signing these legal waivers that run two to three pages. I think if I were looking at these today, after a couple of them, I’d be taking them home and prowling the Internet too.
A parent’s job is not to protect the herd. It is to protect only his or her single child. Just as lawyers aren’t supposed to worry about anyone but their client, doctors aren’t supposed to worry about anyone but their patient, so too are parents charged with considering the well-being of only their own children. For the most part. If there are conflicts between the herd and a parent’s child, that parent’s obligation is to the child.
That said, it is interesting that parents are not trusting the vaccine part of the healthcare system in the belief and trust that that same system will save their children if they succumb to these diseases the vaccines are try to prevent.
How many people will die before you give up your scientific and medical ignorance?
“Taken at face value, our results indicate, for example, that if
then at least 700 deaths per year (95% CI: 30–2100) (and many more serious illnesses) could be prevented in the US alone by avoiding antipyretic medication for the treatment of influenza (see table 1). While subject to large uncertainty, our estimates in table 1 should be considered conservative, as we have ignored concomitant antipyretic-induced increases in infectious periods and contact rates.”
“Population-level effects of suppressing fever”
See, the injection site reaction is about the only thing keeping me from getting the flu shot. When I had one of my childhood vaccines (dont remember which; it was one of the later ones), I couldn’t walk for a couple days after because my backside and thigh were so swollen up. This would have been early 1980s.
Does the flu vax have similar side effects? What I don’t want to trade is an arm that’s all messed up for a couple of days for a small decrease in risk of being sick.
“Okay so if your work had free shots and an onsite clinic then you would do it?”
Sure, why not.
Though I think a question at this point is why it’s such a big deal to not get a flu shot?
700 / 330,000,000
Whelp, I’ve spent too much time reading this conversation.
She died of a fever
And no one could save her
And that was the end of sweet Molly Malone
The gov’t is currently stringing up GM over 50 total deaths for their ignition-switch problem. Influenza is only one disease…
And no, not everyone in the US gets influenza each year or buys a GM car…