Social Obligations & Immunization
 

I see some merit in both sides of the Herd Immunity argument. My gut reaction is: I don't care about the population as a whole, I care about my own kids (and pets). And in that vein I do what is most right by THEM rather than what is better for the common good. I'm myopic and selfish like that. And okay with it. That said, I think natural immunity from natural exposure to a disease really is better for the population as a whole, than is artificial immunity derived from artificial exposure to a disease. But hey, I also think Coke is better than Pepsi ... YMMV.

My reasonable reaction is that there would never be a smooth transition from a fully or mostly immunized population to a non- or lowly immunized population; so sure, there would be a transitory period whereby disease levels may appear to rise. But that would have to also take into account the many other factors that go into assessing levels, including but not limited to a rise in inaccurate diagnoses based on a larger but not necessarily more accurate awareness of disease/symptoms. Or even a rise in accurate diagnoses based on ever-improving awareness of disease/symptoms.

I don't think there is a clear right/wrong WRT immunizations, I really don't. We all just look at the data available, and do what feels right. I reserve judgement for those who don't bother to investigate the data available, and make uneducated decisions (whichever decision they make). Ignorance isn't bliss, it's irresponsible.

So .... Herd Immunity. Reporting of Disease Levels. Coke v. Pepsi. Will she ever realize she is the only one here using internet shorthand in every single post. Did Joanie love ChaChi???

Discuss.

I will not allow any immunizations that are made from/with toxins and have not.
Fortunately our Dr. has access to the newest versions and agrees with me.

So, Vivant, talk smallpox to me. I really want to know your take on that. Also, what's your background, qualifications?

I think people who live in cultures where millions of people from past generations have gone to the trouble of immunising their children, not only for the benefit of their children (as a personal choice) and for the betterment of society (as a moral choice), and then choose not to immunise their children are being incredibly short sighted.

Have a look at the number of people who died from diseases like tetanus and polio during pre-immunisation days before you make any claims about mild rises in disease resulting from populations who all of a sudden choose to stop immunising.

With regard to the possible chance of your child having serious side effects from immunisation, it's all a crock of shit if you even take your child in the car with you because I'm telling you now as a fact, that your child is more likely to suffer damaging side effects from a car accident than they are from immunisation.

We live in a society that has worked miracles to make our lives healthier. If you choose not to take advantage of that then that's your personal choice, but before too long we'll see parents being sued by their partners or getting court orders for immunisation over this issue, if in fact it hasn't already happened.

And one other thing also, if you think the risk of catching the disease is lower than the risks associated with the immunisation, why do you think that is?

It's because a few generations ago the risks of catching the disease were far higher than the risks associated with immunisation.

What that means for those people now considering not immunising their children is that they're going to send society back to the times when parents lived in fear of their healthy child being stuck down by some terrible disease, only now they'll have the guilt of knowing they could have prevented it.

But what about diseases that for the vast majority of the population were not devastating, such as chicken pox? They have recently begun immunizing all children against chicken pox, to prevent the very rare cases where a child would be permanently scarred or blinded due to an unusually severe case--a total of about 100 a year across the entire country. But meanwhile, it is a known fact that the immunization does not protect as well as immunity from having the disease, and completely wears off after ten years. So what happens when a whole chunk of twenty-somethings don't get their second booster, because they've forgotten, or they don't have insurance, or because they figure they're immortal, and all of a sudden there's an outbreak among all these adults, who now actually are in danger of being crippled or killed from the disease?

Well, I think chicken pox are a different kettle of fish. Similar to flu vaccines you have to get every year.

They don't fall into the same catagory as polio etc.

Are flu vaccines required over there? I don't get the flu shot, and I don't get the flu.

Do the people who immunize think that there is a finite list of diseases and that we can just make vaccines and check them off the list until human are disease free?

Do they not notice the rise in immune system related disorders - or do they think it's ok because kids don't get measles or chicken pox anymore? Oh, wait, they still do.... its just more frequent now to have a kid drop dead from an asthma attack or a peanut allergy than miss a week of school from measles.

What about the possibility of some diseases protecting against others? What about the dangers of an overly hygienic society?

Which vaccines are toxin free?

I've never had a flu shot or a chicken pox shot. No vaccines are compulsory here. The government does give you a bonus these days if your child is fully immunised though which really helps some families out.

I don't think so. Not from my perspective anyway.

I don't agree with a sterile upbringing either. I believe parents are too quick to clean the dirt off their kids these days, and too quick to give them anti biotics when a bit of tlc and hot soup would probably suffice.

With regard to immunisation, I think there are a few key diseases which were once prevalent which are now not due to immunisation, and I think it would be foolish to return to the days when these diseases claimed the lives of so many kids.

You can get all of them that way. You generally have to wait for them to come once ordered if you ped/Dr. does not carry them.
I agree with Alia, my Dad is a germphobe and we argue all the time about my son getting "dirty"... I think it is good for em' and science backs me up.

I don't know this guy but he expresses my reservations.

Goldman's research supports that shingles, which results in three times as many deaths and five times the number of hospitalizations as chicken pox, is suppressed naturally by occasional contact with chicken pox.

A friends young daughter contracted shingles last year and another kid I know was diagnosed a couple weeks ago... I don't know about the other vaccines but this was apparently quite a con job.

oops what's this?

Based on Dr. Goldman's earlier communications with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Goldman maintains that epidemiologists from the CDC are hoping "any possible shingles epidemic associated with the chickenpox vaccine can be offset by treating adults with a 'shingles' vaccine." This intervention would substitute for the boosting adults previously received naturally, especially during seasonal outbreaks of the formerly common childhood disease.

Nice little money pump they've built.

What way? With no toxins? I'm having a hard time believing that, can you tell me a brand name of a specific vaccine that is toxin free? No mercury, formaldehyde, sorbitol, phenol, aluminum, 2-phenoxyethanol, sodium tetraborate etc etc.?

Hi, Sam. I'm hesitant to share a background for a few reasons: (a) I'm new here and leery of sharing personal information beyond what I've already shared, and (b) the nature of my post isn't to convince anybody to change his or her mind, simply to start a discussion - so it shouldn't matter if my background is in epidemiology or in waste management, I just want some dialogue, and (c) if I did say epidemiology would any one believe that now anyhow? LOL So in that vein, my immediate relevant qualifications are simply that I have an opinion on the data I've researched. I'm not putting myself out in cyberspace as an expert on anything other than my family.

Smallpox has been successfully treated homeopathically for centuries. On the off-chance I contract smallpox (most likely to happen from an act of terrorism) this will be my first course of action. I might still die. I might still die of smallpox even if I had been immunized for smallpox. It's a gamble either way, and we all have to weigh the odds unique to our respective situations.

My biggest concern about smallpox: Do we trust that the live-virus vaccine of decades past will hold up to the genetically reproduced version of the disease that we are most likely to encounter today?

Your thoughts? Again, I'm not out to change anyone's mind OR to have my mind changed. I simply enjoy exchanges of information and understanding where other people come from in reaching the decisions and beliefs that they do.

I'll spare you the Kumbaya. this time. ;)

I think if we stopped all mandatory immunizations and allowed people to get a number of really nasty communicable life threatening diseases it would help our current population problems and assist in stemming the tide of global warming. We could do more for less people and that might be a good thing. Now if you choose not to immunize and do get a communicable disease you will need to be immediately quarantined to a secure militarized area similar to Gitmo until you spontaneously recover without medical assistance or just die off and then we would incinerate your body at no cost. Yea, I am all for the idea, where do I sign you all up?

lol...nice post there Merc

Short-sighted, how so? Millions of people from past generations have always "gone to the trouble" to do many things that seemed right at the time for the benefit of children and/or the betterment of society; but many things came and continue to come under scrutiny as society modernized/-es. It's been the case for centuries, no?

Morality is a trickier topic, and the main interest of my original post. I do feel a certain morality towards society, as indicated by many of the personal choices I make day-to-day. However at the end of the day - an d I've already admitted my myopia here, my primary responsibility (and therefore my moral obligation) rest with my children. I won't do what I personally perceive to be wrong to them, for the socially perceived better good.

I have. It's tragic. Any death is tragic, really. But while we're discussing the numbers, let me also say that this is exactly what I meant when I said earlier that we all interpret the same data differently. Because when I examine the numbers I see that diseases were already experiencing a natural (if mild) decline when immunization became all the rage. Did people still die? Sure. It sucks all around, but .. people die. And need to die. Disease serves a purpose, however ugly a purpose that is.

I ask, then: if our moral obligation is to eradicate all disease, and/or to "take advantage" of the "miracles" that "make our lives healthier" ... what is our moral obligation in addressing issues that stem from compensating for the rise in population and resulting further taxing of resources?

It's a possibility, and I agree - a sad one at that. It's an important conversation to have before bringing a child into the world together, for sure.

Might you have a source for such a claim? Any studies of areas that had massive outbreaks of smallpox that stopped the spread through the use of such "homeopathic" treatments? Basically there is no treatment of the disease, only prevention. If 3 out of 10 people die from the most serious forms of the disease I would say those are odds I would not want to bet against. Would you take the chance if your kids were going to get it and die?

http://www.bt.cdc.gov/agent/smallpox...ease-facts.asp

Your kids are vaccinated against smallpox Merc? Man, you're old...

No, but I am. :D

And Anthrax, yellow fever, and host of other stuff.

Sorry if you don't like my post, but I don't like other people putting me and my family at risk because of their choices. But hey, that is just me. :3eye:

Then, what are you talking about here? Doesn't make sense...

It's short sighted because you currently have the luxury of saying, I'm not going to immunise my child because the chances of him/her catching a particular disease are so slim I'll take that risk. If previous generations had taken that view, then I'll bet you'd be lining up at the door to get your kids jabbed first before they had a chance to get sick and die of something preventable. This follows that if everyone stopped immunising today, in a couple of generations time, we'd be back where we started from.

That could also be attributed to the normal flux of disease. There is not enough empirical data to know either way.

Yeah, and what happens when one or the other gets swayed by selfish arguments like the one you've presented after they've already discussed and agreed on a course of action?

The obvious retort here goes back to "Herd Mentality" ... so long as you have faith in your immunizations, and maintain a majority of the population then "society" won't go back to those times, only those people who choose not to immunize will/may succumb to said terrible diseases.

But I think that is a bullshit answer, so I'll retort with this instead:

How did people survive disease and outbreak before the advent of popular immunization? The weak died; they always do whether it's disease. poverty. internet forums. The strong survived, and became naturally immune. They then passed these natural immunities down to their descendants via genes, and even through social behaviors such as breastfeeding.

Statistically, a "healthy child" would survive a "terrible disease" ... a weak child (whether recognized as such, or not) would not. This is true even within the immunized population; side effects DO happen, however statistically minute you desire to present them as. (I don't care either way, as it isn't my reason for not immunizing). But I'll remove my evol. biologist hat for just a second to ask for clarification -

What (other than immunization schedules) can share attribution to the decrease in disease? Increased hygiene. (As opposed to over-hygiene as seems the case of late) Better standards of living. Less crowding. Even for someone who supports immunization, surely you acknowledge that the decrease in disease isn't derived SOLELY from immunization ... right?

Nope, there's no herd mentality. You may think you're the only person capable of making an informed decision, but you're not. You'll have to get over that one in your own time.

you take your pot luck with your children and just thank god you live in a society where these diseases are not prevalent due to the dilligence of people with more sense.

That's all I've got to say on this thread. I think I've made my point very clear.

:alien: :)

Thuja occidentalis. I may have spelled that incorrectly, it's been awhile. And I stand corrected; in reviewing the quoted box I see that I mistyped - it has been used successfully to treat EXPOSURE to smallpox and reactions from the live vaccine.

My ex-husband has been vaccinated for the same diseases. It's been a few years, though, but at the time the recommendation was NOT to immunize the entire population for smallpox. Is smallpox now a recommended immunization for civilians?

If 3 out of 10 people become infected with smallpox, the recommendation at the time of my ex-husband's last shot was to isolate the outbreak. Vaccinate those who came into contact with the infected; then vaccinate those who came into contact with those who came into contact with the infected. There was a 3-5 day window from the point of exposure, where the smallpox vaccine was believed effective. Maybe that has changed in the few years since we were married, I don't know. I don't lose sleep over smallpox. Or my ex-husband ;)

As Aliantha points out, we take chances with our kids every day. Preventable chances, be they car rides or immunizations or exposure to disease. 3:10 seems a safe gamble to me, even if the stakes are higher I still feel comfortable with the numbers.

General statement about the use of vaccines. I know we don't vaccinate our kids against small pox, yet.

Hey Merc, are you having trouble taking my posts at face value today? :alien:

No it has not changed. We take our chances with our kids every day but that does not give you the right to take chances with other people by risking that your kid may get a communicable disease and pass it on to others.

No, you are on target. I am in a bit more of a mode to lay it all out for those who do not recognize that the decisions they think they are making for themselves actually put the rest of society at risk. I fully support people who want to kill off themselves but not when it places the rest of society at risk.

Well, I happen to agree with your stance on this subject. Whole heartedly in fact, which is as much of a shock to me as it is to you I suspect. ;)

Each vaccine is an individual product with unique risks and benefits. Do you consider that at all or are you just gung-ho for all vaccines to the point of being angry at those who don't choose to buy (and inject into their offspring, with no guarantee or warranty expressed or implied) all the same products you do?

Since we don't still use the smallpox vaccine (why is that exactly?), which vaccines actually on the mandates schedule do you feel are most important. Which nasty communicable diseases were you referring to in your earlier post?

Perhaps there is a cultural issue at bay here - if so, allow me to clarify:

The phrase Herd Mentality is not a direct insult on you or on anyone who disagrees with me. I've been clear from the get-go that I'm not out to change anyone's mind, and I've stated that we all do what we think is best for our respective families.

Herd Mentality is a common phrase in biology (and I thought socially, though maybe just in the US?) used to describe the theory you support (among other theories). Namely, that the "herd" (society) works as a whole, so that to keep the "herd" safe from disease, the entire "herd" must be immunized against said disease. Re-read what I said, with that in mind.

I have no need to attack people for what they believe. I'm perfectly comfortable with my choices in life; I don't need validation from faceless internet personalities or the illusion of numbers on "my side" to pump me up. I extend that same respect to others BECAUSE I know that I'm not the only person capable of making an informed decision. I'll thank God for that good sense ;)

The most obvious and most frequently ignored is the flu shot. That is a big one. Hundreds of people die in the US from the flu each year. Everyone should be getting it.

The next big ones are MMR, Polio, Hepatitis, HPV (females), meningococcal, and varicella.

Because through an agressive world wide vaccination program we essentially eliminated it. I believe the last case was in Somalia some years ago. I believe the only reason to continue to get it would be if you were to be exposed to a weaponized form. Even the military stopped giving it to everyone, only certain groups still get it.

If that's the case, regardless of how you put it, you consider yourself to be apart from the 'herd'.

By your actions, you're considering yourself to be more important than anyone else.

You are putting the 'herd' at risk.

Oh, and if you don't want to change anyone's mind and you feel quite comfortable with your decisions and choices, then stop arguing your point.

Lay it all out - I'm curious to hear more.

If an immunization is worth having, how protective can it be if you're still at enough risk to worry about contracting a communicable disease?

I'm sincerely interested in understanding how one can have faith in immunizations, but still believe society is at-risk from the minority few who opt not to immunize.

Goodnight my new friends; I look forward to reading more in the morning.

Very simple. Not all of them will protect you 100% of the time. It is a risk benefit ratio. But the more people that do not get them, such as you seem to advocate, the more people are at risk, the more at risk, the more prevalent the disease becomes, the more people die from it or are severely disabled which eventually costs society through health care costs, time lost from work, the list goes on. Disease and illness through communicable disease is not a good thing for any organized groups of people living in community with each other.

It has been explained to you already.

You would not feel anywhere near as safe and smug about your choices if it weren't for the majority of people who immunise which in turn creates a society where the disease is not as prevalent.

How difficult is that for people who think like you to understand?

Wow - tough crowd. Sensitive much?

I've already stated more than once that yes, I choose my family over society. So it's not only by my actions, but straight out of the horse's mouth, too. Still, that doesn't mean I think I am more *right* than the rest of the herd - which is what you alleged, and what I was addressing.

Who is arguing? It's a conversation. It's where grown-ups agree to disagree but can still discuss interesting topics. When asked, I answer. If you feel I am trying to change your or someone else's mind well ... I suppose you'll have to deal with that in your own time.

I am sensitive to people who think it's ok for them to put the rest of society at risk.

Yep, people who think like you do piss me off in a big way. Not just on the net but in real life also. You are making life more dangerous for future generations.

No heavy metals or active strains, to be more specific. No mercury or formaldehyde (I am allergic to formaldehyde and did not want it injected into my son)... yes, you can get them that way.
Now, most of the complex salts, no, they still have them, but we break them down pretty quickly.
But, if it has a heavy metal or solid toxin... no, he does not get it.
Again, he has not missed one and has had many of his voluntary shots for a four-year-old. We have a progressive Dr. Most won't even tell you that they are available.

Very interesting topic Vivant.

After thinking about this for a while and laying out the pros and cons I can say without a doubt that refusing to give children immunizations for diseases would spell certain disaster for whatever society that tries it.

For the pros, I can only think of two good ones. Population reduction and a rise of fitness of the human population against certain diseases.

For the cons, I can think of many more that tend not only to affect individual families, but the society as a whole. First of all, it will drastically affect individual families. How many parents would be willing to take the risk of their child dying to slightly help society in a way they can not see the effects? That type of sacrifice is unheard of, especially in societies that are naturally resistant to sacrifice, the US middle and upper class for example. Our society would be just as likely to face the effects of overpopulation than sacrifice their greatest love. The priorities of our culture just won't be able to handle it. The only way this type of practice could be implemented would be by force, which would be met with fierce resistance that would put the whole nation in danger of violent revolt.

The society aspects scare me just as much. One of the biggest changes in Western culture occurred in the early 1900s when families and society went from expecting a large number of their children dying early to expecting all of their children to live longer than their parents. If this practice did take place, what would be the consequences of our culture changing back to to a mindset where we expect many of our children to die? I mean seriously, I have seen many times how my high school has handled a single death of a classmate, what would happen if five classmates started dying a year, ten, twenty? How would the mindset of our children be changed? It would not only affect the dying children but everyone around him or her. How would that affect our society and aspirations?

Second, we would most likely revert back to a strong patriarchal society. Since a family can expect all of their children to survive childbirth and grow to be healthy adults, a mother only has to give childbirth only a few times in her lifetime. When we go back to a large number of children dying, the number of childbirths per woman will rise in order to maintain a stable population. That means women, especially married women, will start being expected to be at home more and the solidifying of gender roles will arise again. Not to mention the number of woman dying in childbirth will rise, changing another mindset of our culture.

With the number of women leaving their jobs because of childbirth, how will that affect our economy? Who will take their jobs?



Weighing the pros and cons, I will definitely say that refusing to vaccinate children would be devastating for our society and the only way you could justify it morally would to say that the effects of overpopulation would be worse than the consequences shown.

Keep in mind that this is not the only way to limit a population, and even though it would be more brutal and worse in the short term effects, outright infanticide would be better in the bigger picture than this to curb overpopulation. It is a good thought but I think a massive backfire would be inevitable and there are other ways to curb overpopulation and as long as we have vaccinations, raising the fitness of our population would never be worth it.

Because of the recent scares in the UK, linking MMR to Autism (a link which has now been discredited), growing numbers of parents have been refusing to immunise their children with the MMR vaccine. The result is that over the last two or three years recorded rates of measles have gone up noticably. Last year we had our first measles death for about fifteen years.

From the BBC News site:



http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/6970525.stm

Lost of refusal to vaccinate here, two cases of measles this month......

but I'm still on the fence about vaccinations against diseases which are non-fatal to the majority. How's that for taking a position? :lol:

My kids are vaccinated against most stuff. I didn't want them to get the chicken pox shot, but it was included on the list of vaccinations required for their greencards, so... They do not get a flu shot, I do. They've never had flu, I haven't had flu for 10 years.... (what's the betting that this is our lucky year..... ;) )

(I'd be more inclined to get them a flu shot if I could see more evidence of it's effectiveness, but anecdotally it seems that many people who get the shot still get the flu, and I've heard from several friends in the biz that the model used for predicting the flu strains prevalent each year is off-kilter, so the vaccines are only against a few of the more long-lingering strains.)

I do subscribe to the idea that one should consider the impact on society as a whole when considering whether to vaccinate, but I'm always going to put my kids first, and I'm really wary of injecting all sorts of nasties into the body just in case they help.

People could do more good by staying at home when they're sick.

In terms of the MMR vaccines, I'd be inclined to give it a great deal of thought and do a lot of research prior to making a decision. I do believe that one has to take into account the bigger picture: given that my (fictitious) child would be vulnerable up to the point of completing vaccination, I would hope that other children they might come into contact with would be vaccinated and free of these infectious diseases. The reverse of that argument is that should I choose not to vaccinate my child against the disease, they may well develop a natural immunity, but in doing so they may be infectious themselves at some point when they come into contact with an unimmunised child.

The need for research, however, is necessary. When I was little I was given the first part of the vaccination, and my ordinary childhood excema exploded into one of the worst cases the specialist had ever seen, pretty much overnight. Mum is convinced, and some of the doctors suspected, that the vaccine was responsible. I didn't have the second vaccination, nor did I have the later vaccinations and boosters.

A few years ago I had the flu vaccine for the first time. That winter I got one of the worst doses of flu I ever had. That said, my brother and my partner had flu around the same time and both were far worse than me, and ended up with temperatures so high they were delirious. So...I don't know if the flu I caght would have been worse had my body not already been exposed to it...if indeed it was a strain covered by the vaccine. Or, the flu vaccine may have had no bearing whatsoever.

Another thing to consider when deciding whether or not to go with the flu vaccine, particulary with regard to children, is the presence of chicken albumen in the vaccine. Egg is one of the most common foods that children develop sensitivity to, so it's worth checking that out with the doctor before making a decision on flu vaccines.

School email just announced now up to 4 cases of measles in two schools, but all related.

Ultimately I let my kid get the chicken pox shot too, because I figured that if everyone else in his school was immunized, there'd be nowhere for him to catch it from and get natural immunity until he was older and it was more dangerous.

We've had measles here, too, and they are requiring all kids going into middle school to get them.

Since I live on the US/Mexico border, we have a lot of public health issues not found elswehere. Things like TB make appearances here more than other places.

Fair enough. Thank you.

I, too, question the homeopathic treatment of smallpx. I also question another post where you say that disease kills the weakest. How do you define "weakest"? Many, many healthy people have died from infectious disease. A prime example is the Native Americans who were here in North America at the time Eurpeans arrived, bearing all sorts of infectious pathogens that the Native Americans had never been exposed to. Some researchers estimate that as much as 80% of the original American Indian population was killed by infectious diseases from Europe (including small pox). Were Native Americans "less fit"? I don't think so.

No one gets innoculated against small pox anymore. The disease is considered to be eradicated BECAUSE of widespread innoculations, NOT homeopathic treatments. So, if you were exposed to a small pox outbreak at some unknown point in the future, chances are good that it would be the result of terrorists getting hold of one of the two sources of small pox left in the world: a culture maintained by the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta or another culture which is maintained somewhere in the former Soviet Union.

Of course we don't. We are going to have to figure that any smallpox or other pox virus capable of infecting human beings is either a product of terrorist genetic tampering or a new form of pathogen which has naturally mutated to infect human beings with a high degree of virulence. Would I accept a vaccine against what amounts to a new disease if one could be found in time? Yes, I would.



"Kumbaya, my Lord, Kumbaya..." ;)

Genetically speaking, yes they were. Being fit means having whatever it takes to survive in the environment you find yourself in. That environment may change, and the definition of who is fittest may change because of it. The Native Americans also gave Europeans quite a few nasty diseases they'd never encountered before either... but they weren't as deadly to the Europeans as the European diseases were to the Native Americans.

The herd is much larger than I thought. I really thought there would have been at least a couple of others prepared to support the case presented in the original post of this thread.

My faith in society is restored somewhat.

Seriously rk, can you name some names here?
I don't understand how you can receive all the vaccines on the schedule and not be exposed to formaldehyde, for example. All of the vaccines licensed for use in the US for Hep A and Hep B are inactivated with formalin (A 37% aqueous (water) solution of formaldehyde, a pungent gas, with the chemical formula HCHO)

So did you skip those, or use unlicensed ones, or what?


...

This site has some interesting graphs. Notice the decline even in diseases we don't vaccinate for...


The adverse events are the other side of the risk/benefit ratio. It's a low benefit (its not a big threat, other than thru terrorism), high risk vaccine at this point.

Such as?

Take the Chickenpox. Kids get it and it is most always self limiting. When are you contagious from the Chickenpox?

http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/recs/aci...nza1-fiore.pdf

http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/news/new...006/200607.htm

But have that same asymptomatic child around a pregnant woman or an adult who has never had it and the consequences can be devestating.

How many people die from the flu every year?

As of June 2007, there have been pediatric deaths from 2006-2007.

19,000 people died each year from Influenza between 1976 and 1990. Since 1990 that number has increased to 36,000 deaths per year.

http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/pubs/pin...nloads/flu.pdf

Merc, why do you say that everyone should be getting the flu? I had either a flu or food poisoning last week, and I didn't like it.

:D
:comfort:

Dad went for his flu vaccine this morning. I think since he was rushed into hospital earlier this year he figures he should take all the help he can get.

Mum says she was offered it every year until she retired (last year) but refused it each time. She saw too many people ill immediately afterwards. I didn't question why Dad was having it in that case, it would probably have started her off on how stubborn he is.

The point I was trying to make is that most of us view the Flu as nothing more than a bother for about a week or 10 days, when in fact many people die from the common flu each year.