Posted on 10/24/2023 8:22:24 PM PDT by nickcarraway
That was then; this is now.
I used to get the flu shot, but have refused since 2020. “They” aren’t above adding a little extra something to the vial. I don’t trust them at ALL.
If I perish, I perish, and it’ll be on my terms.
“the 10 year tetanus cycle”
My doc says it’s now every 5 years.
Your accident is highly relevant to this discussion and actually a very good point.
I got the flu shot last week. I got the flu this week.
The flu continued to claim lives in early 1920 but for some reason the totals given for the number of flu victims seem to ignore the 1920 victims. I had a second cousin (now deceased—he was born in 1900) who told me how his two sisters died of the flu a few days apart, in early 1920.
Only time I’ve ever been hospitalized for an illness was for complications from the flu.
Had gotten my shot. With plenty of time for immunity to kick it.
Got the uber nasty strain that the eggheads in their infinite wisdom didn’t include in the vaxx that year.
For the last three years I haven’t gotten a flu shot.
So far, haven’t had the flu.
I’m not getting another vaxx.
I bet you have come to appreciate the wonders of vitamins since then.
I’ve only ever gotten two flu jabs, years ago because a family member was ill. No reason to ever get one... take your vit d, zinc, magnesium and liposomal c daily and you will be fine.
My father was born in early 1921 in Norway. He was an adult in his late 40’s before he learned he had had an older sister who died a month or so before he was born at the age of around 2 from influenza. His mother never told him anything about her and she never spoke of or acknowledged her existence even to her own death.
A cousin of my father’s in Norway who was into genealogy sent my father a family tree and copies of family pictures my father had never seen before including a picture of his birth father, an aunt on his father’s side and a picture of his sister Ingrid as a baby.
My father’s father died around a month before he was born from a fall from a balcony. Some relatives said he was singing with a church choir at a hotel when the balcony collapsed, and he fell to his death. Others said he was drunk and with a rowdy party when he in a drunken stupor fell over the railing and lived for several weeks in a coma before dying a week before my father was born.
But his mother didn’t tell him anything about his real father and led him to believe that his stepfather was his birth father and that the man who he was named after was his uncle, not his father until when my dad was around 14, he learned the truth from an aunt.
My father became very bitter about the deception and at one point ran away from his home in NJ at age 15 to join the merchant marines in Florida and made as far as the Geogia/Florida line before being picked up by the police and sent home. He had a strained relationship with his mother and stepfather for many years.
I can also understand how traumatic this would have been for my grandmother who was barley 20 years old at the time. Imagine in the span of a few weeks losing both a daughter and a husband.
When my mother died in early 1996, we had her buried in her family’s burial plot outside of Harrisburg, PA but when the cemetery went to dig the grave, they unexpectedly found the small coffin of a young child.
They contacted us asking how to proceed. After asking them to research their records, the cemetery had only a record of a 1-year-old child being buried in early 1920 named Margaret but no record of her relation to my mother’s family or who her parents were or anything about her or the circumstances of her death. Only a record of her name and age.
There was no gravestone or marking for this child and no living relatives of my mother’s family had any recollection of a child by that name. My mother never mentioned a relative by that name.
My brother tried to research birth and death records and census from that period but there had been a fire in the courthouse in Harrisburg in 1930’s and most records from that time period were lost. So, we never learned who Margaret was.
Was she my mother’s older sister who died from influenza and who like my father’s sister was never spoken of? Was she the illegitimate child of either my mother’s father or his brother, both who were alcoholics, gamblers and rakes? Or was she the child of a family relative or a family friend who couldn’t afford a burial? We would never know.
After talking to the cemetery my brother and my father and I had the child’s coffin exhumed, my mother buried, and this child Margaet’s coffin then reinterned and buried on top of my mother’s.
My mother loved children and no matter who Margaret was, I would like to think my mother would be glad to share a grave with her and hold her in an everlasting loving embrace.
First, it takes about two weeks after getting the vaccine for your body to build up enough antibodies to protect against the flu. That’s why it is recommended to get it early in the Fall before influenza is widely circulating. So, it is possible to get influenza after getting a flu shot but before you’ve built up antibodies.
Next, in some years the vaccine is a better match for the dominate strains and subvariants than in others. This because the vaccine in the northern hemisphere is developed by determining the dominate strains in the southern hemisphere. But that is no guarantee. However even if not a perfect match, the influenza vaccine may still provide some protection against genetically similar strains and subvariants and reduce the severity, i.e., complications and hospitalizations among the most vulnerable.
Finally, people often confuse common colds with influenza. While some symptoms overlap, there are considerable differences.
https://www.webmd.com/cold-and-flu/flu-cold-symptoms
A common cold may make you feel miserable for a few days – sore scratchy throat, sneezing and a runny nose, low grade fever, sometimes a dull headache and mild body aches and you may even miss a day or two of work, but influenza is very different.
The last time I had influenza I had a high fever for days, bone breaking body aches (it literally felt like someone had taken a hammer to all my joints), a pounding headache, fatigue so bad I could hardly get out of bed for nearly a week and was still weak and fatigued for another, little appetite, and a deep chest rattling cough that made my ribs sore, was off from work for well over a week.
Colds come on gradually; you feel a bit of a scratch in the back of your throat, an itchiness in your nose for a day or two, then a day or two later a sore throat and runny and sneezy nose, etc., but influenza hits you like a mac truck.
The last time I had the flu in January of 2000, I woke up feeling fine but very tired as if I hadn’t slept at all but no other symptoms. So, I showered, dressed, had a cup of coffee, ate a bagel and went to work, and got there at my usual 7:00 AM.
By the time I got to work, I couldn’t get warm, felt chilled and achy. My boss came by my desk at around 8AM to say good morning and asked if I was OK. He noticed I looked a bit pale. I told him I was just cold.
Not long after my throat started becoming very sore, like I had swallowed razor blades sore, and I suddenly became nauseated (not a typical flu symptom in adults but not unheard of). I ran to the bathroom and threw up several times. A co-worker found me in the bathroom retching and told my boss and my boss sent me home.
I barely remembered the drive home as I was now feverish and out of sorts. When I got home, I got into my PJ’s and decided to lay on the living room couch with many blankets and pillows as it was closer to the kitchen so I could get ice water and actually closer to a bathroom as I was still vomiting and now had some diarrhea (again not as common in adults but not unheard of with severe influenza) and it was the only room with a TV and a phone and a bit warmer than upstairs and I didn’t feel well enough to climb up and down the steps to the bedroom.
I called my husband to let him know I was home sick and asked him to bring home some ginger ale and canned chicken soup and Tylonol on his way home.
When he got home at around 6PM, he was concerned enough to suggest I go to the ER not only because of the high fever but also because of the deep rattling cough I now had. I had gone from feeling a bit tired but OK at 6AM that morning to 6PM that same day feeling like I was dying.
I didn’t want to go the ER and wanted to tough it out. And I did. But as I said it took around 2 weeks until I was 100% better.
I called my boss the next day to let him know I wasn’t coming in and he told me that nearly half of the office was now out sick with it too. That’s not what happens with common colds.
Lastly, I would also mention that I’ve had some people tell me they came down with the “flu, “the “stomach” flu” but that is not influenza but viral gastroenteritis or even food poisoning.
https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/viral-gastroenteritis/symptoms-causes/syc-20378847
My legs still slightly buzz years after my last and FINAL flu shot.
Never again...
the vaccine business is suffering from a credibility crisis
whatever could have caused that?
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