I’ve (and I admit I read about pandemic stuff rather obsessively on other forum/s) that regular flu vaccines are not that effective, often off target since the viruses change so quickly.
But I am sure your allergist is wrong about the over 50 not getting it. This swine flu is novel and has not been in humans before. Some of the genetics are smiliar to the 1918 flu but most of use weren’t around then, and any antibodies would only be in people who actually had the flu then.
I’ve most likely had swine flu twice so far. People can catch it twice and also after the vax. And now the virus has changed a lot since the vax was made, picked up some new genetic stuff.
There is a new article out about reserach by Kawaoka who is a foremost flu researcher, it’s on FR yesterday. He and his colleagues found that H5N1 can indeed “mix” with other flus that are circulating and create a really bad one. People thought it couldn’t happen for various reasons but it can so that’s another potential. Not to get fixated on, but as a possiblity.
Unfortunately in Indonesia they are putting severe H5N1 and severe swine H1N1 patients in the same hospitals, same wards!
Crazy!
People can get two kinds of flu at once, that’s when the mishcief starts.
There was a swine flu that went around in 1976.
This isn’t the first swine flu to go around.
His grounds for saying that I didn’t NEED to get it was that people my age have had some form of swine flu two or three times already and already have some immunity, my guess is as much as the swine flu vaccine is likely to impart.
He also tells me that any flu vaccine will help impart some partial immunity to any other vaccine simply because viruses share many similar features. He made it clear that it is not full immunity, but could help lessen the severity of what you do come down with.
FWIW, he is a big advocate for flu vaccines, just not ones that he thinks aren’t really necessary. He would recommend, however, that younger people who haven’t had some other form of swine flu get it, and if I had insisted, likely he would have given it to me.