Anybody so passionate about a public health issue of this importance needs to be very careful. Fortunately our enthusiast against vaccinations and inoculations is not enlisting anybody here. I don't like to hammer ideas or people but this threatens public health and the CF community. It threatens me. Some people get sick from flu shots or are immuno-suppressed to the point where the shot might as well be an infection. When people contract influenza from the vaccination, many people are affected because an entire batch is not properly stored in most cases.
The once famous Walter Winchell held court at noon and six capturing a record audience for his clever radio commentary "The Walter Winchell Hour". Winchell was an institution, revered and reviled for decades. His program was airing in 1955(?) spoke out against a horrible and risky, large scale polio vaccine trial, being planned on some unsuspecting population. He had no idea if the vaccine would work, harm or turn people purple. It was either a gross miscalculation by Winchell or a desperate need for fame because it was total fabrication. Either way it delayed the introduction of polio vaccine a year for most people. An estimated 40,000 Americans contracted polio in that lost year. Loud mouth Winchell stuffed thousands of children and young adults in a grave. Oops!
Polio is an interesting way to understand vaccines and life without vaccines. Polio has been around a while, like a few thousand years, but most people contracted it as infants when nerves and the brain are actively growing and able to regenerate the damage from the infection, acquiring immunity in the bargain. As basic sanitation removed the threat of water born disease, less infant polio suddenly revealed the horror of post infancy infection. I grew up when it was common to have friends who had a family member strapped on a rocking table in a back room or other huge appliances so these poor people could just breathe.
Two ambitious scientists were on each other’s heels with a polio vaccine. Sabin and Salk took different but not untried methods of preparing a vaccine. One approach advocates "killing" the virus by destroying the genetic contents and providing the empty viral shell for antibodies to develop or template against, thereby doing its job with no risk of infection. This is not perfect because the empty viral shell may produce less effective antibodies. The competing approach was to weaken the virus in a super poison like phenol or formaldehyde. And what if they aren't weakened enough or too much? Every person I knew when polio vaccines came available had both vaccines and were happy to do so.
If you want the fear of God in you over vaccines, have an anaphylactic reaction to one! A couple years back I got treated to several Epi-pens going down after a shingles vaccination. As long as I don’t get shingles, I am a happy person and no worse for the experience. I don’t get my flu shots at the grocery store anymore but unless there is a medical reason, a flu shot is a simple guard against human extinction.
Guess what disease has killed more people than all the rest in the history of man? Actually it’s TB, but it edges influenza out of first place by a tiny percentage. Like the diamond of diseases, its grim tally is orders of magnitude above the next most lethal killer. The infamous Spanish Flu that hit as the world as was mobilizing for WWI. More soldiers on both sides died from influenza than were killed in this war to end all wars. Not only in the trenches across Flanders but it barracks and tents in Georgia and Nebraska or Mainz and Wroclaw. It was a true pandemic that preferred the most able aged people leaving the elderly to care for the young and their young.
CFJeff,
If you don’t want a flu shot, don’t get one. Your ideas are baseless in fact and sadly there are lots of very sick people on this site that could be harmed by your beliefs impressed with such conviction. Some of us can’t tolerate a flu shot. It doesn’t mean flu shots are wrong or bad, in fact the opposite, everybody healthy enough to be immunized needs to get flu shots to protect those who can’t, OR WON’T.
Whirled Peas,
LL