Did youhave a flu shot and still got the flu?

[Bill Watson]

My wife and I both got shots this year and we both got the flu. In both cases, 2 weeks of down time with extended recovery in her case.

The shots are never 100% effective but they are good safeguard. This year, maybe not so much.

If you can stay in and away from the contagious, try to do it. It's a tough one going around here.

 

[douglas393]

For that matter you would be much healthier if you avoid hospitals altogether, .

Hey you said something that actually makes some sense. You are right if you can avoid hospitals you would be healthier. Unfortunately, hospitals are where we take ourselves and our family members when they are too sick to be taken care of at home. It should be of no surprise to anyone, even you, that people(patients) in hospitals tend to be sick and people not in hospitals tend to be healthier.

to bad doctors seldom make housecalls. .

Some doctors do, but give the way modern medicine is practiced it is impractical and often dangerous to make diagnosis with the equipment that can be brought with a physician on a house call(stethoscope, sphyngomanometer, thermometer, and tongue blades). Furthermore, the greater good is served by the patient coming to the doctor or the hospital then the doctor or the hospital coming to the patient. Using your logic, you probably feel its too bad babies are born in hospitals as well!

If the Doctor is so smart why is the average life expectancy for a doctor less than the population as a whole? They cannot even protect themselves, how can they protect you. .

Because unfortunately doctors make the worse patients, often do not take care of themselves as well as they take care of their patients, and are under levels of stress that most cannot not even imagine. A recipe for a premature death.

I am not saying Doctors are corrupt, although many are, I am saying that they are busy and they rely on a system of trust carefully orchestrated to feed them information directly controlled from AMA and big Pharma where big money makes the decisions of which information is to be sent down the straw.

Not only you are saying doctors are corrupt, you are saying they are naive, and easily led astray by obviously transparent conspiracies between big Pharma and the AMA. As Dr Bruce would say SIGH.

 

[douglas393]

More Traditional advice is that if you very young, very old, or have some immune issues such as you speak then you should get your flu shot each year. Last I heard the pneumonia shot is more than every 5 years but I don't know. Only a few hundred people a year die from flu, thousands die from pneumonia.

There are 3 flu widely distributed strains going around this year where is normally there is 1 big flu and occasionally a 2nd smaller and possibly few that are not widely distributed.

You should be protected by the flu shot you got however only for the one flu that vaccine was created to protect against. To protect yourself by getting another flu shot you would need to find out which flu you already were immunized with and then ensure that you get the other two flu shots if they even have a vaccination for them. I am not sure this is possible as my understanding is that there is only 1 flu prepped for each season. Whether they have left over flu vax from prior years that is still within code date is unknown.

You should know enough to ask for a single doze vax rather than a dose from a multi dose pack. They do not put mercury in the single dose shots however the multi dose packs have mercury as a sterile.

Each year CDC tries to predict the most likely flu and prep for it. This year they might have gotten it wrong and thus people are unprotected against the flu that did blow up on us. Now they are saying there are three separate widely distributed flu strains. Some people are getting the flue twice (its different flus).

I would strongly recommend you avoid going out to public places, carry antiviral cleaner and clean your hands whenever you touch anything in public as the virus can live at least 8 hrs so if you go down a walkway that 100 people walked down in 8 hrs odds are good you got some on your hands, don't touch your eyes, nose, mouth without first cleaning your hands. Also if you go shopping wear a tyvex mask over your mouth. It is not that uncommon to see older folks wear these in public during the winter and in your case I think it smart.

Stay far away from anyone coughing......

Good luck.

Some advice we can agree on, though I believe the vaccine for this year provided potential protection from three strains of flu causing virus. Some years have been for othe numbers of strains. The problem is the virus will not help you if you have already contacted the flu when you got the vaccine, nor from virus strains that causing the "flu" not included in the vaccine. The make up of the flu vaccine is determined base on complicated statistical analysis of what the strain of the virus causing the flu in the upcoming season will be. Unfortunately, sometimes this forecast is about as accurate as the weather forecasting, or predicting who will be win the world series prior to the season starting. It is not that it is bad medicine it is just the best methodology available has inherent inaccuracies.

 

[Tony_Scarpelli]

My disappointment is not so much with Doctors as it is with Big Pharma who since 1997 started advertising not just to Doctors as it has always been but advertising to end users who do not have the knowledge to know what medicines they should take and avoid. At the same time Big Pharma went from a rather small industry to the Giant that it is today up there with Chemicals companies. Marketing budgets averaging 30-35% of sales, R&D only 15%, Profits of 18.5% 3x-4x Fortune 500 average. Directly with this increase in hype so too has the voluminous injury caused by all these wonderful new drugs to hundreds of thousands of Americans. Vioxx is just one drug that is attributed to Kill 50,000 Americans although it worked no better than Tylenol.

Most Americans would be surprised to know that a drug does not have to be better than any other drug on the market to pass FDA and enter the market. It can work less, be less safe, cost more and only be marginally efficacious to be approved. It need only work slightly better than a placebo. FDA is run lock stock and barrel by the Drug companies and Most Americans have no idea.

Most Americans would be disgusted to know that the Heads (Director, Asst Director, Top Specialist) of FDA, EPA and CDD were all either executives of Big Pharma or Partners and counsel at the law firms of same. The revolving door between regulators to Law firms, Pharmacological companies and big fat pay check lobbying jobs is air tight.

Yes you are correct I do absolutely know beyond a shadow of a doubt that most doctors are too busy, don't care, don't want to make waives, its not my problem whatever excuse you want... They do not tell their patience to beware.

I had to call my granddaughters pediatrician to find out why they gave my grand daughter antibiotics 9 times in 7 months and no one thought to do an allergy test to see what she gets a caught or stuff sinuses? And why always a antibiotic and never an antiviral? I am sure there are good Docs and bad docs but the system is built to work against the patience and if you have any knowledge and were honest you would admit that.

And yes it is easy for you to paint me as a heretic as most people have not a clue of what I am talking about however that doesn't make it Untrue. My eyes were opened by a close relative working with R.F.Kennedy JR doing consumer protection looking into CDC/Medical and pharma issues in 2005 and the cover up of the vaccines that caused deaths and autism and the direct correlation between MMR vacinne and incidence of autism and the removal the sterilizer put in many vaccines but left in others.

I do not disagree with the AMA being a worthless association. Fully well over half of the physician population does not even belong to the AMA. I believe it is about 25%. My post had nothing to do with the AMA and so I do not even know why you brought them into the discussion. The AMA does not speak for physicians as much as it speaks for itself, and more often than not has done things harmful to medicine. That being said the AMA and its decisions do not affect the practice of medicine at all and are more about the business and administration of medicine. As for medical research, having spent years performing basic science experimentation I can tell you the vast majority of the articles in medical journals are full of inaccuracies, bad scientific design, and incorrect conclusions. As for you taking someone off chemotherapy I doubt the sole determiner of why an oncologist chooses a particular treatment is how much they can make off it.

Anyhow, all I said was the best place and most likely for the OP to get the correct recommendations as the the pros and cons of taking a flu shot is his own personal doctor, because believe me when he takes your advice and ends up worse for the wear it will be his personal physician fixing the mess and not you. You want to give medical advice, go to medical school. Until then be careful, because a little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing, and it is often not what you know that hurts you, but not knowing what you do not know.

Doug

 

[douglas393]

My disappointment is not so much with Doctors as it is with Big Pharma who since 1997 started advertising not just to Doctors as it has always been but advertising to end users who do not have the knowledge to know what medicines they should take and avoid. At the same time Big Pharma went from a rather small industry to the Giant that it is today up there with Chemicals companies. Marketing budgets averaging 30-35% of sales, R&D only 15%, Profits of 18.5% 3x-4x Fortune 500 average. Directly with this increase in hype so too has the voluminous injury caused by all these wonderful new drugs to hundreds of thousands of Americans. Vioxx is just one drug that is attributed to Kill 50,000 Americans although it worked no better than Tylenol.

Most Americans would be surprised to know that a drug does not have to be better than any other drug on the market to pass FDA and enter the market. It can work less, be less safe, cost more and only be marginally efficacious to be approved. It need only work slightly better than a placebo. FDA is run lock stock and barrel by the Drug companies and Most Americans have no idea.

Most Americans would be disgusted to know that the Heads (Director, Asst Director, Top Specialist) of FDA, EPA and CDD were all either executives of Big Pharma or Partners and counsel at the law firms of same. The revolving door between regulators to Law firms, Pharmacological companies and big fat pay check lobbying jobs is air tight.

Yes you are correct I do absolutely know beyond a shadow of a doubt that most doctors are too busy, don't care, don't want to make waives, its not my problem whatever excuse you want... They do not tell their patience to beware.

I had to call my granddaughters pediatrician to find out why they gave my grand daughter antibiotics 9 times in 7 months and no one thought to do an allergy test to see what she gets a caught or stuff sinuses? And why always a antibiotic and never an antiviral? I am sure there are good Docs and bad docs but the system is built to work against the patience and if you have any knowledge and were honest you would admit that.

And yes it is easy for you to paint me as a heretic as most people have not a clue of what I am talking about however that doesn't make it Untrue. My eyes were opened by a close relative working with R.F.Kennedy JR doing consumer protection looking into CDC/Medical and pharma issues in 2005 and the cover up of the vaccines that caused deaths and autism and the direct correlation between MMR vacinne and incidence of autism and the removal the sterilizer put in many vaccines but left in others.

Sometimes painting with a broad brush leaves you with an ugly picture that jas no connection with reality. Sometimes not.

 

[Tony_Scarpelli]

I do not disagree with the AMA being a worthless association.

...... and more often than not has done things harmful to medicine.

Thank you

That being said the AMA and its decisions do not affect the practice of medicine at all and are more about the business and administration of medicine.

That is the problem, no?

As for medical research, having spent years performing basic science experimentation I can tell you the vast majority of the articles in medical journals are full of inaccuracies, bad scientific design, and incorrect conclusions.

Then you no doubt are witness to some of the Creative Reporting of experimentation and other shenanigans that I am speaking off. Drug companies do their own tests and provide only those tests which support their drugs positively but they are under no obligation to report experiments that show negative results. So they recreate the trials in any number of iterations until they can sustain a FDA challenge.

As for you taking someone off chemotherapy I doubt the sole determiner of why an oncologist chooses a particular treatment is how much they can make off it.

Big money maker to hospitals, I am sure they never pressure Oncologists. I am sorry once the tracks of dirty hands are seen in the drug industry it drapes filth from the top down and makes everyone decisions questionable. The mere size of the numbers make it questionable.

We have already seen how hefty fees effected the quality of judgement at moodys, standard and poors and other rating agency's. Money corrupts and lots of money corrupts absolutely.

The medical industry is quickly earning the efficacy of Donald Rumsfeld and DICK Cheney because they won't stand up and they just fall in line lest they be pointed out as whistle blowers..

Anyhow, all I said was the best place and most likely for the OP to get the correct recommendations as the the pros and cons of taking a flu shot is his own personal doctor......

And I am saying that judgement is questionable. Naive, corrupt, take your pick. Doctors and Nurses if they are not part of the solution they are the problem.

You want to give medical advice, go to medical school.Doug

I'm afraid most if not all medical schools, particularly research hospitals with the money pay offs and joint research by Pharma, are completely corrupt and therefore a waste of time, effort and money.

 

[N801BH]

I am in my mid 50's, never had a flu shot in my life.... I Maybe had the flu 20 years ago, altho it might have been just a cold..

The CDC guesses at what strain is going to hit the population.. Sometimes they guess right, sometimes wrong... The drug companies spend billions to produce the flu shot. and they need to sell every vial of it as it does not carry over to the next year.. You can bet they will hype the "get your shots, this year is bad" drum beating to sell all the inventory..... The guvmint will agree and help them dump all the drugs so none of them have egg on their faces............
And , it was posted in an earlier post that the guv gives the drug out for free.... In my 55+ years I cannot EVER remember the flu shot was free...
Do the math, 168 mil doses@ 20 bucks a shot is BIG money..

 

[Tony_Scarpelli]

Sometimes painting with a broad brush leaves you with an ugly picture that jas no connection with reality. Sometimes not.

You know the one about the three blind men in a room with an elephant?

One guy feels the trunk and says its a snake; one guy feels the leg and says its a tree trunk, one guy feels the tail and says its a lion....

I am sure we are both right.

But mark my words BIG MONEY is like a virus that cannot be inoculated against. Big pharma tarnishes you all.

Let me ask you a question. Why did FDA not catch Vioxx before it killed 50,000 people? Yet it spends, pushes and markets billions to promote a industry of vaccination when only a few hundred people a year die of flu?

Doesn't that seem like their sensitivities are a bit off? What happened when less than a dozen people died of e coli from eating raw hamburger meat within a few weeks, a few years back? They really get out and move when they want to, when it is not going up against big pharma.

you just told me how the bightest and smartest go to medical school but they missed that class of connecting the dots? I was just a business major.

The push for vaccinations all manner of vaccinations has nothing to do with financially promoting and supporting and maintaining a bio/chemical warfare capability? Sometimes to understand something you have to look at the motivations involved. This is not only my opinion but that of Robert F. Kennedy jr. after his research into the vaccine industry in 2005.

 

[Tony_Scarpelli]

I am in my mid 50's, never had a flu shot in my life.... I Maybe had the flu 20 years ago, altho it might have been just a cold..

The CDC guesses at what strain is going to hit the population.. Sometimes they guess right, sometimes wrong... The drug companies spend billions to produce the flu shot. and they need to sell every vial of it as it does not carry over to the next year.. You can bet they will hype the "get your shots, this year is bad" drum beating to sell all the inventory..... The guvmint will agree and help them dump all the drugs so none of them have egg on their faces............
And , it was posted in an earlier post that the guv gives the drug out for free.... In my 55+ years I cannot EVER remember the flu shot was free...
Do the math, 168 mil doses@ 20 bucks a shot is BIG money..

I was raised in NYC and every kid gets their shots free in school. The nurse comes to the school and you line up like we did in the Army to get our shots. Now that I live in KS I do see fees for flu shots for some but I also see free shots for this group or that group.

Either way, you are right the government or someone is paying $20 x billions to the drug industry.

 

[douglas393]

Then you no doubt are witness to some of the Creative Reporting of experimentation and other shenanigans that I am speaking off. Drug companies do their own tests and provide only those tests which support their drugs positively but they are under no obligation to report experiments that show negative results. So they recreate the trials in any number of iterations until they can sustain a FDA challenge..

Actually, not so much a conspiracy as much as many people who say they are researchers know about as much about the scientific method as I know about reading ancient aramaic.

Big money maker to hospitals, I am sure they never pressure Oncologists. I am sorry once the tracks of dirty hands are seen in the drug industry it drapes filth from the top down and makes everyone decisions questionable. The mere size of the numbers make it questionable..

Actually big pharma has little if anything to do with hospital practices. Big pharma will often provide money to support inividual physician research, but other than allowing the hospital to get money for rent etc from the researcher big pharma is not giving all that much money to the hospital itself. The lines of distinction may be indistinct but I do not believe it is a conspiracy. Believe me with the number of starving lawyers looking to make a buck on medical screw ups it is not worth it. Unless, I guess the lawyers are part of the conspiracy as well.

We have already seen how hefty fees effected the quality of judgement at moodys, standard and poors and other rating agency's. Money corrupts and lots of money corrupts absolutely...

What does this have to do with doctors and vaccines. The vast majority of physicians get absolutely nothing from the pharmaceutical companies. That was stopped years ago when congress decided that a doctor's prescribing habits could be bought for the cost of a few pens and a pocket calculator. Oh please give this one up.

The medical industry is quickly earning the efficacy of Donald Rumsfeld and DICK Cheney because they won't stand up and they just fall in line lest they be pointed out as whistle blowers.....

Believe me physicians want patients to be safe and will do almost anything to assure that. If something is unsafe they will be the first to report it.

And I am saying that judgement is questionable. Naive, corrupt, take your pick. Doctors and Nurses if they are not part of the solution they are the problem.



I'm afraid most if not all medical schools, particularly research hospitals with the money pay offs and joint research by Pharma, are completely corrupt and therefore a waste of time, effort and money.

See above. Your problem is you see conspiracies where they just do not exist. Unfortunately, therapeutic results depend on a number of variables and thus what helps one person may not help another.

 

[douglas393]

You know the one about the three blind men in a room with an elephant?

One guy feels the trunk and says its a snake; one guy feels the leg and says its a tree trunk, one guy feels the tail and says its a lion....

I am sure we are both right.

But mark my words BIG MONEY is like a virus that cannot be inoculated against. Big pharma tarnishes you all.

Let me ask you a question. Why did FDA not catch Vioxx before it killed 50,000 people? Yet it spends, pushes and markets billions to promote a industry of vaccination when only a few hundred people a year die of flu?

Doesn't that seem like their sensitivities are a bit off? What happened when less than a dozen people died of e coli from eating raw hamburger meat within a few weeks, a few years back? They really get out and move when they want to, when it is not going up against big pharma.

you just told me how the bightest and smartest go to medical school but they missed that class of connecting the dots? I was just a business major.

The push for vaccinations all manner of vaccinations has nothing to do with financially promoting and supporting and maintaining a bio/chemical warfare capability? Sometimes to understand something you have to look at the motivations involved. This is not only my opinion but that of Robert F. Kennedy after his research into the vaccine industry in 2005.

No one knows how many people died from vioxx. Its sisters still remain on the market and they are not really any different drugs. NSAID's in general have similar problems. How many people a year die from tylenol, or aspirin, or plavix, or pick any drug, or activity for that matter. How many people were helped by Vioxx, or does that not matter to you. As for vaccinations, how many lives are saved by vaccinations and how much money is saved by not having to treat those who do not get the flu, or does that not matter either. The bottom line is for every medication or activity for that matter there are risks and benefits. Sometimes the risks outweight the benefits and thus the activity or medications is probably not a good thing to take or do. Sometimes the opposite is true and the decision is the opposite as well. For the time being we still have some freedom in this country to make choices for ourselves. You may choose not to have a vaccination, that is still your right, but the availability of the vaccination is not part of some big conspiracy but is only an offering to help prevent something form happening. Maybe the motivation of offering the vaccine is not entirely altruistic but America is still a capitalistic society, and that making a profit even a small profit seems to be okay in everything but medicine. Do not get me wrong, I think some of the profits that big pharma and some hospital chains make is obscene, but so are the salaries of our actors, musicians, athletes, etc. But it seems only doctors are routinely criticized for making money.

 

[John Baker]

My near death experience with the flu, that turned into pneumonia around ten years ago was probably the worse sickness I have ever experienced. I do not care if Obama and anyone else I dislike become multi millionaires from the flu vaccine, or if the Pope himself says the vaccine is the work of the Devil, I never want to go through that ever again. I really did wish I would just die in order to get it over with.

I get a flu shot every year.

-John

 

[cessna182b]

I don't know how old you are but when I was much younger, the flu shots actually gave me the flu. I think in those days the shot was a live, but weakened version of the flu. I avoided them myself until about ten years ago when the flu almost killed me, and my doctor convinced me that todays flu shots do not give you the flu. I have not caught it since.

This year, however, has got me a little concerned.

-John

I've always been suspicious of "Flu Shots" since the Swine Flu debacle in the '70s. Coincidentally, there appeared an article in the news today about a girl in Sweden who suffered dire consequences from a Swine Flu shot. Here is a link:http://health.yahoo.net/news/s/nm/insight-evidence-grows-for-narcolepsy-link-to-gsk-swine-flu-shot

Be that as it may, I finally relented and got the shot this year on my Doctor's advice. Nothing happened. From the tales others have told I doubt that I have ever had the "Flu". At least I have never been down to the degree some describe. Am I lucky or careful? Dunno - but I have always washed my hands frequently.

Dave

 

[steingar]

My near death experience with the flu, that turned into pneumonia around ten years ago was probably the worse sickness I have ever experienced. I do not care if Obama and anyone else I dislike become multi millionaires from the flu vaccine, or if the Pope himself says the vaccine is the work of the Devil, I never want to go through that ever again. I really did wish I would just die in order to get it over with.

I get a flu shot every year.

-John

Sounds like you really did contract influenza. The problem is that most folks who think they've had the flu didn't.

 

[cherokeeflyboy]

My near death experience with the flu, that turned into pneumonia around ten years ago was probably the worse sickness I have ever experienced. I do not care if Obama and anyone else I dislike become multi millionaires from the flu vaccine, or if the Pope himself says the vaccine is the work of the Devil, I never want to go through that ever again. I really did wish I would just die in order to get it over with.

I get a flu shot every year.

-John

Ditto....cept it was more like 5 years ago..

 

[Jaybird180]

My wife and I had a discussion a few years ago about 'informed consent' in the medical profession (I had some questions). She researched the topic to satisfy my questions on some of the why's of what she was trained to do. Her conclusion was that it was just enough to protect her legally, but not really enough for the patient to make an intelligent choice. She also believed (and I hope I'm not putting words in her mouth, but I think this is accurate from what I took from the conversation) that the spiel she was legally required to give skewed the number of acceptances in favor of people taking whatever shot or medication the protocol said for her to prescribe.