Posted on 10/26/2004 7:31:49 AM PDT by Pfesser
DENVER — Public health officials say Americans should roll up their sleeves for a dose of reality: For most of us, getting a flu shot is not a life-or-death matter.
The flu vaccine will not necessarily prevent you from experiencing the flu's miserable symptoms, like fever, hacking cough, runny nose and "hit-by-a-truck" body aches. Studies have shown that the shot generally works about 52 percent of the time.
If you are elderly or chronically ill, the vaccine can help jump-start your body's weakened defenses and perhaps prevent the worst from happening if you do catch the virus.
But the millions of people who are younger and healthier do not really need it — especially during a vaccine shortage, public health officials say.
"Right now the entire country runs on fear and we don't need to live like that," said Catharine A. Kopac, a Georgetown University gerontology nurse. "We somehow think we should be disease-free all the time. If you're leading a healthy life and you get sick with the flu, you're probably going to get through it."
For years, most people ignored the government's vaccination campaign, in part because of persistent myths that the shot hurts (not much; the needle is small) and it makes you sick (no, the conventional vaccine is made from dead virus).
As recently as last year, 4 million doses of vaccine went unused, even though an alarming early strain of influenza emerged and gained attention because several children died from it, particularly in Colorado.
Two-thirds of Americans age 65 and older were vaccinated in 2002. But only 28 percent of people with chronic illness and 30 percent of children 6 months to 23 months old got their shots. Health care workers were not much better at 38 percent.
Nevertheless, the sudden vaccine shortage this fall is igniting a "scarcity mentality" similar to runs on banks during stock market crashes and convenience stores when hurricanes brew offshore.
Millions who never bothered to get vaccinated before suddenly are hounding their doctors, workplace nurses and supermarket clinics. Americans are crossing borders and proffering their exposed arms; in Seattle, people are paying $105 to ride a high-speed ferry for a shot at the dock in Victoria, British Columbia.
What is behind this feverish behavior? Researchers say it is not so much the flu itself as a more generalized sense of feeling unprotected.
"Not being able to get the shot takes away your control over your health," said David Ropeik, director of risk communication at the Harvard School of Public. "That sense of being out of control is scary."
Many providers are rationing precious vials for their neediest patients. For the rest of us, their advice is more motherly: wash your hands frequently, and if you do get sick, stay home and drink hot soup.
In the United States, the flu's average annual death toll is as high as 51,000. Rarely do the victims die from the virus itself. Rather, it weakens their immune systems so that a bacterial infection — often pneumonia — delivers the fatal blow. Others have pre-existing conditions like heart disease. Hospitalizations have almost quadrupled over the past two decades, to 200,000 annually.
Only two pharmaceutical companies make flu vaccine for the U.S. market. The vaccine shortage erupted Oct. 5 when regulators shut Chiron Corp.'s labs in Liverpool, England, cutting the expected U.S. supply by 48 million doses, or nearly half.
"This is our biggest nightmare come true," said Noreen Nicol, chief clinical officer at the National Jewish Medical and Research Center in Denver, which received only about half of the 2,000 doses of flu vaccine it ordered.
Still, infectious-disease experts say flu should no longer be a catastrophic illness among otherwise healthy people, at least not in the way it was in 1918 when it killed 40 million people worldwide.
For one thing, there are still about 61 million vials of vaccine in the U.S. pipeline. That is roughly equal to the nation's entire supply in 2000. With proper distribution, that is enough to protect the 42.8 million Americans who really need anti-viral protection, said University of Rochester infectious disease specialist John Treanor.
Also, this year's dominant strain appears to be similar to last year's. More than one-third of Americans were either vaccinated or exposed to it naturally, and some doctors believe there ought to be at least some carry-over immunity.
And unlike 1918, now there are at least four antiviral medications that can relieve the flu's worst effects if taken within 48 hours of the onset of symptoms.
IF BUSH WINS YOU WILL NOT HAVE A FLU SHOT AND YOU'LL DIE!!
Even if you don't die... YOU'LL BE DRAFTED AND DIE ANYWAY!!!
Even if you're too old to be drafted... YOU'LL HAVE YOUR SS ELIMINATED AND DIE ANYWAY!!!
Even if you're too young to be drafted... REPUBLICANS EAT BABIES AND THEY'LL EAT YOU TOO!!!
I never had a flew shot in my life. Had the flew, though. Worked straight thru it (Home office, so did not spread it).
Get the flu shot, get the flu, pass it on to someone else.
Never had one, don't want one now.
The only flu shots I have ever had were mandatory while in the Navy, so I've had 4. I'm 36 and never had the flu.
I was one of the few at the office who didn't get the flu shot last year. Last December all most everyone in my department got hit with the flu pretty hard. I never got it.
agree. I take as few shots / medicine as possible.
Glass of red wine every night and I usually stay pretty darn healthy.
People need to give their bodies a chance to work naturally.
I've been looking for a story like this since this fiasco began. Nobody I know gets or cares about flu shots.
All of these stories about flu shots should have had 2 facts. 1. Hardly anyone gets them. 2. The government caused the shortage through misguided leftist policies.
If they had just reported these 2 facts I wouldn't care what else they tried to stick in.
My daughter used to get them in her early teens because of her asthma. They always made her sicker than anything she got normally so she stopped getting them. She's actually been healthier, but I think that's coincidence. But fortunately, she is no longer sick after getting them!
I used to NEVER get a shot - or the flu, either. Last year was the first year I got the shot and I got a flu TWICE last winter. Waste of a needle.
I've never had a flu shot either and don't plan to get one either.
The Flu Shot never became a must have until stocks ran low in an election year. Hell, half the time you read in the paper that this years flu shot won't help becuase the strain of flu out wasn't in the vaccine. A typical fake issue ginned up by dishonest 'Rats and a complicit MSM. I don't think most people are taking it seriously.
My mother-in -law always got one until she died at 86. She never got the flu before she started getting the shots but after the getting a flu shot she'd always be sicker than a dog for a week or so.
True, it's a dead virus, and you won't get an infection of flu virus from it. But the body thinks it has flu virus in it (which it does, they're just dead, which is how it works to build immunity) and will respond with its defense system. The uncomfortable symptoms of the flu are caused by those defensive reactions; elevated temp, mucous production which causes coughing and hacking which makes the throat sore, aching joints and muscles from increased temp. and increased interstitial fluids (lymph). The virus itself, if alive, would cause little or no noticable physical symptoms. (Until it killed you if you had no defense reactions and no immune system.) The symptoms from a flu shot won't last as long or be as bad as a real flu infection, because there's no reproduction going on, but you may still feel sick.
I had the flu earlier this year. Its the common cold with teeth. Kept me in bed for three solid days and I was groggy for a good month afterwards.
No one else in the family (8 people) caught it because I was careful.
In the long run it was inconvenient, nothing more. OTOH, I'm in good shape. I can see where it would be fatal for those with health problems.
I had the flu when I was younger and that was quite a long time ago
But, even tho I'm in the older age group, I'm not getting the shot. I refuse to stand in line for anything.
"Not being able to get the shot takes away your control over your health," said David Ropeik, director of risk communication at the Harvard School of Public. "That sense of being out of control is scary."
That comment pi**es me off. I AM taking control! I don't kiss Grandkids with colds, I am gargling with listerine, I use that Purell alcohol stuff after handling money, door-knobs, and such. I wipe things that I touch - when I can. I have read up on the different alternative stuff I can supplement my vitamins with. (?dangling preposition?) If I get sick, out comes the extra C and echinacea and chicken soup. I wear garlic around my neck (well actually, I don't, but I chew it!)
So-- I don't need the gov't to help me. I'm taking control!
Did they say anythng about how the flu is hitting people?
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