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jfields

Flu Shots - Get Them?

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I am getting mine Friday. It worked last year and that was the first year I decided to do it.



I have a question...if you got a flu shot last year, and you didn't get the flu, how do you know it was the shot that worked? :S

Et moi...no flu shots for me please. I try to follow George Carlin's idea on the body's immune system: it needs practice! ;)
So I try and I scream and I beg and I sigh
Just to prove I'm alive, and it's alright
'Cause tonight there's a way I'll make light of my treacherous life
Make light!

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I got them a few times in the military. Along with other things like Yellow Fever and Anthrax!!! I dodged them most of the years I was in. They caught me a couple times. I think it's kind of dumb really. Unless you have a compromised immune system I think they are pretty worthless.

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got one every year for the last 4 years... the military likes to shoot us up with whatever and then study us... i wonder if it really has been a flu shot.......havn't goten reallyu sick in the past 4 years but once....and that was from excesive amounts of rum (half a liter)....

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"i have no reader's digest version"

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we get 'em for free at work....Due to the high mutation rate of influenza, they always say in January that the strains going around at that time are not the same as the ones used to make the vaccine distributed in November. Nevertheless, I've noticed that people who get them almost never get the flu, whereas people who don't get it more frequently.

That said, there are some individuals (like my Mom) who have a bad reaction to the flu vaccine (even if they're not allergic to eggs), for no adequately understood reason.
Maybe shit like this will eventually be figured out from all the gene chip technology that's starting up right now...
Speed Racer
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Et moi...no flu shots for me please. I try to follow George Carlin's idea on the body's immune system: it needs practice!



In a sense, that's true, but what a vaccine generally is is practice against an easy opponent. You'd probably want to practice tennis against someone slightly less skilled before taking on Agassi. That said, I'm convinced the obsession with cleanliness and abuse of antibiotics and other antibacterial agents will lead to a crisis of immune deficiency and resistant microbes. Not a pretty thought...

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>That said, I'm convinced the obsession with cleanliness and abuse of
> antibiotics and other antibacterial agents will lead to a crisis of
> immune deficiency and resistant microbes. Not a pretty thought...

What's happening in hospitals is bad enough. MRSA, VRE - all essentially created (and now exacerbated) by liberal use of antibiotics. I cringe whenever I hear about someone on antibiotics because they have a virus, or when vancomycin is used as a first line of defense.

And then there's the whole antibiotic soap-wipes-detergent thing! What sense is there in breeding colonies of antibiotic resistant bacteria in your _house_?

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What's happening in hospitals is bad enough. MRSA, VRE - all essentially created (and now exacerbated) by liberal use of antibiotics. I cringe whenever I hear about someone on antibiotics because they have a virus, or when vancomycin is used as a first line of defense.

And then there's the whole antibiotic soap-wipes-detergent thing! What sense is there in breeding colonies of antibiotic resistant bacteria in your _house_?



Yeah, it's a frightening prospect. One problem is that people demand some sort of treatment, even when none is available. So doctors hand out antibiotics, knowing they won't do anything. Then people don't even do the full course of the antibiotics, which just leaves one with a colony of the stronger microbes. Already, there are staphs that don't respond to *any* antibiotics.

Another shining example of evolution in action, I guess.

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No flu shots for me please and thank you.

Personnaly, I think the idea stinks. I also agree all too much with bill regarding the anti-bacterial wipes, soaps etc. When you think about their uses in hospitals and whatnot, they serve a great purpose.... The home, classroom or espesially day-cares; That's were they ought not to be used. The immune system needs to fight things in order to exist! Viruses/bacteria attampt but so does the immune system. Combat the virus/bacteria outside the body, (i.e. wipes and disinfectants -Also considering the shots as an "outside the body" remedy) and you take away your immune systems 'intel' and thus, a portion of it's ability to fight the new threat. One can only hope, after having taken the flu-shot, that we can keep up with the changing virus by developing a new shot... Or that the children of todays daycares don't ever come into contact with nasty germs in their teens and adulthood, having never run into them while growing up and developping an adult body.



My Karma ran over my Dogma!!!

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Yeah, antimicrobial soap for household use is dumb. We use it in the lab, but we have an excuse: we're handling concentrated virus!!

The only consolation is that the antibiotics used in medicine are different than the ones used in the soap.

The problem with society is this: Stupid people are taking over the world.

I'll bet there are some people out there who will reach into their medicine cabinet for the bottle of pennicillin that's been sitting in there for a year (leftovers from a previous prescription) to give to their kids when they get a cold!:o

The average joe sixpack has the scientific knowledge of a dust bunny and doesn't know the difference between a bacteria and a virus.

Another form of abuse: People with serious infections (such as TB) are put on an antibiotic regimen, but stop taking them when they start to feel better: End result, They've wiped out 99.9% of the bacteria, but they've selected for antibiotic resistance in that last 0.1%. In fact, that's exactly what you would do in the laboratory to purposefully create antibiotic resistant cells.


So, unless you absolutely have to & a doctor prescribed it, don't take antibiotics! If you do need to take them, you gotta take the antibiotics for the whole prescribed period in order to completely wipe out the little bastards. It's all out, or not at all.

rant over.

Speed Racer
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I've been getting the flu shots for about 10 years now. The thing that I find amusing is when people say "I've got a touch of the flu", or "I've got stomach flu" ... Many people confuse a cold or food poisoning with the flu -- flu is influenza!! It kills tens of thousands of North Americans each year ... granted, most are elderly or have suppressed immune systems, but flu is serious shit, and anyway I can avoid it, I will.



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