how nice of you to call me a nut. as I schlep along half crippled with flu shot caused GB and auto immune triggered demyelinating peripheral neuropathy.
You don’t sound like an ExDem at all. sounds like you are dragging big government control over here to FR.
I have had various types of flu virus from birth till age 50 in 1999 without getting these diseases....my immune system up till then took care of the viruses.
If immunocompromized child dies of flu, it does not mean that a flu shot is a solution. Healthy children are not expected to die of flu. On the contrary, they are expected to built up their immune system. Only 105 children die even though some of them were vaccinated? Do you know about serious complication of flu shot? 1 out of 100,000 vaccinated develops GB. There are 55 millions of school age children in US. If you vaccinate all of them you will have 50 + paralyzed children as a result of GB. Plus some of the vaccinated still die of flu. What is the benefit? And do not forget to add preschoolers to those 55 millions... So my conclusion is: risk outweighs benefits.
You will notice that I did not claim that you are lying about having GB. I explained as unemotionally as possible about GB; often people take my unemotional presentation as criticism, which it is not. I firmly believe that emotions should not be allowed to color information. My comment about the kooks was not aimed at you.
GB is an autoimmune disease which most often happens after certain infections. About 1 per 100,000 children under 18 develop GB per year, unrelated to vaccines. Less than 1 case per 1,000,000 vaccinated is thought to occur.
The most likely cause of this autoimmune disease (GB) is that a protein in the pathogen looks like a human nervous system protein. When your body responds to the pathogen by making antibodies, some of those antibodies then recognize these nervous system proteins as invaders. Cells containing those proteins are destroyed by the immune system. I think that how much influenza proteins resemble human nervous system proteins is dependent on the type of influenza. There are many types of influenza; new influenza viruses appear frequently.
When you receive a vaccine, you get a small dose of influenza proteins. When you get influenza, you get a large dose of those proteins. I think that a person who is unlucky enough to develop GB after a vaccination would almost certainly develop GB if they were to get sick with the same virus that is in the vaccine.
Perfectly healthy children die from influenza. They can die because influenza induces a “cytokine storm”, which is when the immune system goes into overdrive. Or they can die because influenza weakens the immune system, causing them to be susceptible to bacterial infections. Or the influenza can just kill them without those complications. People over 65 are also highly likely to die of influenza. Healthy adults below age 65 are less likely to die of influenza.
A vaccine contains a selection of proteins from the pathogen. It cannot make you sick. It teaches your body how to respond if you encounter that pathogen. There is no antigen in the vaccine that isn’t in the pathogen. However, in many cases, the pathogen can kill.