Getting the shot?
I'm not. In 1976, in AIT, they made us get that year's shot. As it happens, that was a swine variant that year. I have never had the flu in my life. Or, if I have, I couldn't tell it was flu as opposed to a nasty cold. The shot, on the other hand, made me sicker than a dog. I have never gotten one since. Even in my remaining three active-duty flu seasons, I refused to get it. This was in the face of being told that if I did get the flu, and missed duty, I'd get an Article 15. I told my superiors that, as far as I was concerned, the Article 15 would be nowhere near as nasty as what the shot did to me.
Now, courtesy of mrmeval , comes an article in the November Atlantic Monthly: Does the Vaccine Matter? Here's the juiciest bit, snipped up some. See the article for context.
"[...] in 2004, [Dr. Lisa] Jackson and three colleagues set out to determine whether the mortality difference between the vaccinated and the unvaccinated might be caused by a phenomenon known as the “healthy user effect.” They hypothesized that on average, people who get vaccinated are simply healthier than those who don’t, and thus less liable to die over the short term. People who don’t get vaccinated may be bedridden or otherwise too sick to go get a shot. They may also be more likely to succumb to flu or any other illness, because they are generally older and sicker. To test their thesis, Jackson and her colleagues combed through eight years of medical data on more than 72,000 people 65 and older. They looked at who got flu shots and who didn’t. Then they examined which group’s members were more likely to die of any cause when it was not flu season.
Jackson’s findings showed that outside of flu season, the baseline risk of death among people who did not get vaccinated was approximately 60 percent higher than among those who did, lending support to the hypothesis that on average, healthy people chose to get the vaccine, while the “frail elderly” didn’t or couldn’t. In fact, the healthy-user effect explained the entire benefit that other researchers were attributing to flu vaccine, suggesting that the vaccine itself might not reduce mortality at all. [...]”
It's good stuff. Go read it. I'll just stick to washing my hands, and treating my sniffles with Thai food, acetaminophen, cold remedies, and fluids.
Now, courtesy of mrmeval , comes an article in the November Atlantic Monthly: Does the Vaccine Matter? Here's the juiciest bit, snipped up some. See the article for context.
"[...] in 2004, [Dr. Lisa] Jackson and three colleagues set out to determine whether the mortality difference between the vaccinated and the unvaccinated might be caused by a phenomenon known as the “healthy user effect.” They hypothesized that on average, people who get vaccinated are simply healthier than those who don’t, and thus less liable to die over the short term. People who don’t get vaccinated may be bedridden or otherwise too sick to go get a shot. They may also be more likely to succumb to flu or any other illness, because they are generally older and sicker. To test their thesis, Jackson and her colleagues combed through eight years of medical data on more than 72,000 people 65 and older. They looked at who got flu shots and who didn’t. Then they examined which group’s members were more likely to die of any cause when it was not flu season.
Jackson’s findings showed that outside of flu season, the baseline risk of death among people who did not get vaccinated was approximately 60 percent higher than among those who did, lending support to the hypothesis that on average, healthy people chose to get the vaccine, while the “frail elderly” didn’t or couldn’t. In fact, the healthy-user effect explained the entire benefit that other researchers were attributing to flu vaccine, suggesting that the vaccine itself might not reduce mortality at all. [...]”
It's good stuff. Go read it. I'll just stick to washing my hands, and treating my sniffles with Thai food, acetaminophen, cold remedies, and fluids.