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Every Fall, my wife hectors and harrasses me to get a flu shot. Which I'm never inclined to do. I usually wind up getting it, though. This year, I had a doctor's appointment yesterday, decided to get the shot while I was already there. Because of my age, they gave me the "high dose" version. Which according to the paper they gave me afterward said it contains four times the amount of a certain ingredient than regular flu shots.

In addition to the usual sore arm, early this morning (around 2:00 AM) I was pretty sick. My body ached all over, even my gonads hurt. I climbed into bed and lay there shivering feverishly. I got up typically late this morning and I felt better. I'm pretty much back to normal now. But this was not a pleasant experience.

Okay, half a dozen years ago when I got a flu shot, I was sitting down. The person who gave me the shot was standing and stuck me at an angle. That was a bad scene. My arm hurt all the way down for months. Apparently, when I was given the shot, the needle went into the bursa instead of the muscle. All the juice from the shot went into the bursa and just stayed there, festering away. It mostly cleared up over the course of about a year. When I talked to my doctor about this at the time, they said my arm pain couldn't be the result of the vaccination. I knew that wasn't true in my case.

So we get these vaccinations to reduce the probability of getting an illness. But nothing is perfect. Occasionally there are serious reactions to vaccinations. Like one or two per million for the common ones. Nobody wants to be that one person in a million. Did you know the government passed regulation to compel pharmaceutical companies that make the vaccines to contribute to a fund for people who suffer illness from a vaccine? It's called the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program. The very existence of such a thing tells me a person is at some risk in getting vaccinated, however small.

Lately there has been a bunch of stuff in the news about parents who refuse to get their school age children vaccinated. Some of us may wonder why parents would do this. But I can say that there have been cases of infants and children being severely injured from childhood vaccinations. Like brain damage. However low the risk, some parents don't want to take it.
 
#1. The reason people feel like sch!t after a flu shot is because the body doesn't know the diff between a created but inert flu virus, a weakened flu virus, and a real flu virus. So the body starts marshalling it's forces against the invader. The body wants to kill the invader by creating all kinds of chemicals to kill it, as well as raising the body's temp. Feels bad. Even the real flu virus itself doesn't make you feel bad. Blame your body. And THAT is what confers a resistance to future infection.

#2. I took a look about a year ago at the National Vaccine Injury fund. What you want to do is look at the cases it is based on. IMO it is a forced program brought about by litigious parents who want somebody to blame/pay, and lawyers getting rich off of yet more personal injury claims. It's garbage representative of our current society, not actual vaccine injuries.

#3. The public at large needs a better understanding of vaccine theory and how the body works. They are clueless. Back when Jonas Salk developed his polio vaccine, we all knew. Even as a 8yr old. Now you have all the FB and interweb hype messing people up.

#4. If one wants to avoid the infinitesimal amount of mercury or other preservative in multi-use flu vaccine, insist they use the single dose version.
 
Here's my take on things, as written to an anti-vaxxer.

Here's the deal and a source for ya: Deaths following vaccination: What does the evidence show?

Some highlights:

Section 4.1 said:
Another study published in 2003 using electronic health record databases found that after 7,644,049 doses of vaccination in children and adolescents, there were five possible cases of vaccine associated anaphylaxis and none resulted in death

Section 4.3 said:
One study estimated that among a hypothetical 4.3 million US birth cohort followed to age 5 years, currently licensed rotavirus vaccines prevent 14 deaths, more than 53,000 hospitalizations and more than 169,000 emergency room visits; by comparison the vaccines are estimated to result in an excess of 0.2 deaths, 45 hospitalizations, and 13 short stay visits from vaccine associated intussusception

Conversely, here's some more data from Measles Complications

CDC on Measles said:
Ear infections occur in about one out of every 10 children with measles and can result in permanent hearing loss.

About 1 in 5 unvaccinated people in the U.S. who get measles hospitalized

As many as 1 out of every 20 children with measles gets pneumonia, the most common cause of death from measles in young children

About 1 child out of every 1,000 who get measles will develop encephalitis (swelling of the brain) that can lead to convulsions and can leave the child deaf or with intellectual disability.

Nearly 1 to 3 of every 1,000 children who become infected with measles will die from respiratory and neurologic complications.

When you look at complications due to vaccines - you're looking at millions of vaccines administered and single digits of complications. When you look at complication/death from the measles alone, you're looking at deaths per thousand. Not deaths per ten thousand...or hundred thousand...or million. Deaths / Thousand.

Traveling through PDX Airport with my then newborn (too young to be vaccinated) while the antivaxxers all got the measles was terrifying. Thank God nothing ever happened and I can now stop worrying so much due to my daughter finally aging enough to get her first round of MMR.

We don't have the luxury of knowing when we're communicably sick. The people that walk around thinking, I don't believe in vaccines, besides I've lived this far and I'm fine, are so insanely arrogant and narcissistic...not even pausing to think that it's not them, in their prime, that a disease will strike down but the most helpless among us; the elderly, the immunocompromised, and the babies.

I never get sick and can't remember the last time I had a fever...middle school maybe? But I don't get vaccinated for my health. I do it so that I'm not the cause of my child, or any other's child's death. Simple as that.

You want to live alone out in the country? Great, do what you want. You want to interact with society (including sending your kids to public school) then grow the hell up and act responsibly.
 
Sorry to hear of the negative experience. That is not fun at all. I get the flu shot every year since I had a hellaciously bad influenza bout in early adulthood and never had a problem.

The less I say about the anti-vaxxer thing, probably the better. :s0165:
 
Yes. Get the flue shot ...

Is there an echo in here? :rolleyes:

Not only does it help you to avoid the flu, by not getting it you can't pass it along to someone else.

As stated by @bbbass, you don't get the flu from the shot. You do feel the effects of your immune system kicking in to "combat" the virus. It's those chemicals our body produces to fight the infection that make us feel bad. You can simulate the flu by injecting a person with these chemicals. They will feel poorly without any exposure to the virus.

A full-blown case of the flu puts you down for a full week to ten days … and you want to be dead the entire time. That's if your healthy. If you are young, old or otherwise compromised you may very well end up dead.

Very few folks have ever contracted a full-blown case, because of the effects of the population getting vaccinated. Even if the vaccine "misses" a bit (they try to guess what strains will be in the wild by the time the vaccine is manufactured and distributed) even a partial immunity is helpful. If you get the flu under these conditions the severity and length of recovery will most always be less.
 
Got the flu shot, the new upgraded pneumonia shot, and the first dose of the new upgraded shingles shot, all in one sitting. Both arms felt like a punching bag for a good week, and I just didn't feel very good most of that week. All better now, and I'm glad I did it.
:s0133:
 
A full-blown case of the flu puts you down for a full week to ten days … and you want to be dead the entire time. That's if your healthy. If you are young, old or otherwise compromised you may very well end up dead.

^. True. The incident I mentioned in young adulthood turned me into the walking dead for just over a week. (I was young and otherwise healthy, but back in that era I was way underweight for a man my age, so I suspect that and a particularly nasty strain knocked me on my butt.)
 
Get one every year at work. Got last one couple weeks ago. Could feel a little something next day. Took me a while to remember why and what it was. Never been any worse for me than it was when I had my S2K in 40. When I would burn a couple hundred rounds in that little thing the next day my shoulder would feel like I had been hit there.
Couple years ago one of my partners and I were both not feeling well when time came. They ask a couple times, are you feeling sick today? We both said no as we did not want to have to come back on our time off to get the damn thing. Both of use were sicker than Dogs for a couple days after and laughing about it. Said I guess this is why they ask if you are already sick before letting you get it :D
They of course are not 100% and I don't care. I will take what they offer. Had the flu a few times in my days and never want to have it again. I the 10 years working where I get one each year have not had a bought with it and I work around a lot of people who are sick with it this time of year.
 
Last Edited:
I was trying to think about the reaction I had to the shot. My only recollection in recent memory was feeling slightly tired. Either body responding to the "infection" or just a coincidence; I don't know.
 
The goal of a vaccine is to trick the immune system into thinking it has the real disease without actually introducing it. There are killed versions, modified live, adjuvanted, bacterins, etc. But guess what? While the immune system is amazing, it ain't perfect. When it goes haywire, stuff gets real in a hurry. But guess what else? Almost everything incites a response from the immune system and can do the same thing. Bee stings, vaccines, natural infections, antibiotics, etc., etc.

The odds of all that are near infinitesimally small. People in other countries and times would literally kill for these vaccines.

The goal of any vaccine program is, ultimately, communal immunity. You don't have to vaccinate everyone. If most are vaccinated, no one gets the disease.

Every person who doesn't get the vaccine weakens the communal immunity, which puts the whole population at risk.

Another thing about vaccines - they strengthen the immune system by upregulating certain cell lines and mediators that not only protect against that one illness, but might help against other diseases as well, because some of the cell lines are more universal than a particular antibody to a specific virus.

So, get it.
 
Well, if the aches and pains of this morning are a sign that my body is reacting properly to the vaccine (and building up an immunity), I guess I'm good to go. At least if the influenza that I'm exposed to turns out to be the "right" strain.

Yes, I agree that mass vaccination is for the general welfare of society. If parents are going to send their children to public schools, vaccination requirement should be complied with. The one or two per million who have an issue is the price we pay for the common good.
 
I grew up getting all the shots my dad could convince the doctor to give me. I plan on doing the same with my kids, except, personally, I don't bother getting the flu shot every year. If the strain mutates every year and they have to guess what it might be like to vaccinate against it, and they can't really guarantee that their vaccination will be the correct work up to prevent that strain that year anyway, what's the point.

Someone who knows more on the subject might be able to enlighten me.
 
Every Fall, my wife hectors and harrasses me to get a flu shot. Which I'm never inclined to do. I usually wind up getting it, though. This year, I had a doctor's appointment yesterday, decided to get the shot while I was already there. Because of my age, they gave me the "high dose" version. Which according to the paper they gave me afterward said it contains four times the amount of a certain ingredient than regular flu shots.

In addition to the usual sore arm, early this morning (around 2:00 AM) I was pretty sick. My body ached all over, even my gonads hurt. I climbed into bed and lay there shivering feverishly. I got up typically late this morning and I felt better. I'm pretty much back to normal now. But this was not a pleasant experience.

Okay, half a dozen years ago when I got a flu shot, I was sitting down. The person who gave me the shot was standing and stuck me at an angle. That was a bad scene. My arm hurt all the way down for months. Apparently, when I was given the shot, the needle went into the bursa instead of the muscle. All the juice from the shot went into the bursa and just stayed there, festering away. It mostly cleared up over the course of about a year. When I talked to my doctor about this at the time, they said my arm pain couldn't be the result of the vaccination. I knew that wasn't true in my case.

So we get these vaccinations to reduce the probability of getting an illness. But nothing is perfect. Occasionally there are serious reactions to vaccinations. Like one or two per million for the common ones. Nobody wants to be that one person in a million. Did you know the government passed regulation to compel pharmaceutical companies that make the vaccines to contribute to a fund for people who suffer illness from a vaccine? It's called the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program. The very existence of such a thing tells me a person is at some risk in getting vaccinated, however small.

Lately there has been a bunch of stuff in the news about parents who refuse to get their school age children vaccinated. Some of us may wonder why parents would do this. But I can say that there have been cases of infants and children being severely injured from childhood vaccinations. Like brain damage. However low the risk, some parents don't want to take it.
It's funny because Hector got Achilesed.
 
The mongols got it and the rest is history.

These guys?

F4686B2F-5156-4F65-A209-671282FF7917.jpeg
 
I get it every year . It makes feel like rough a couple days latter. But this year it did not ,No side effects at all. Might have been fake vaccine from china
 

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