The Flu vacc isn’t all that useful for most anyway. IIRC the effectiveness works out to somewhere around 20%. My personal experience is that I have gotten “sick” every single time I’ve bothered to get the Flu shot, and when I haven’t bothered, have had approximately a 1 in 20 rate of actually getting the flu.
The “sickness” from the flu shot is almost certainly my body launching into the immune response to getting hit with three or four different flu viruses (attenuated or dead, it still looks the same to the body), but it puts me down for a couple of days nevertheless. The actual flu, on the few occasions that I’ve contracted it, puts me down for 5-7 days. So for now, to me, the trade off of not getting the flu shot is worth it.
And now that the pharma companies are talking about revamping the flu shot to use the new mRNA technology, I’m even less inclined to have any interest in it. And on top of that, they want to turn the flu shot into a combo shot together with the “covid vaxx” injection. I have no confidence that clinics will disclose that they’re giving the combo shot rather than a flu-only shot, so I’ll be even less likely to consider getting the shot.
My real concern now is that my kiddo’s school says the flu shot is required, and I really don’t feel comfortable taking that risk. I haven’t gotten pushback from the school yet, but I know it’s coming and I’m undecided as to how I will handle it.
This may be a “hard swallow” for you—but you may want to research whether home schooling is feasible in your situation.
The online tools these days are outstanding.
Many families work through their churches to make sure socialization is happening—and help each other through the process.
Change is hard—no doubt—but doing the early research does not force you to make any quick decision.
My wife was a nurse and department head at multilevel care facilities that lost dozens of patients and residents during bad flu seasons.
Flu shots are a waste of time for most younger people. But they have been valuable to the elderly and people with compromised immune systems in the past. I certainly have no desire to get one currently, and I have seven grandchildren with a great grandchild on the way so I am not a spring chicken.