[Paul R.]

Oh, I've been whacked by an allergic reaction to a "med"... an "inactive" ingredient in an Ester C tablet I took some years back thinking it would help me fight off a cold I was beginning to come down with. But I was no "pill popper" even then, as my outlook regarding medications in general is not that different from yours. Still, though, in the case of the flu vaccine, your calculation of risk / benefit ratio "escapes" me. Let's say the risk of a side effect of the flu vaccine, of the severity of a moderate headache, is 7%. The risk of getting a significant case of the flu in an average year appears to be, as best I can tell from some reading, roughly 10%, however, that # includes the approx. 46% or so of the population that gets vaccinated. This bumps the non-vaccinated population up to around 15% chance of getting the flu in an average year. So... we have 15% vs. 7%, or roughly a 2:1 ratio in favor of getting vaccinated.

However, that takes no account of the relative severity of the illnesses, nor the fact that a side effect is extremely unlikely to be communicable, whereas flu is highly communicable. Even if you don't have significant symptoms (ie., it's not a significant case for you), there is a 20-30% chance of passing influenza on. This is all hard to put a "solid" number on, but, a good case of the flu is surely 5x worse than a typical vaccine side effect, more like 10x IMO, and add on a couple points for communicability... I'll be conservative and say "7x",total.

Toss that in (multiply initial risk by severity + communicability) on both sides of the equation, and now you have a 14:1 ratio in favor of vaccination.

[yadent]

Your numbers ‘add up’ IF the vaccine proves to be 100% effective against any particular year’s guessed at strain. Considering the average effectiveness of the ‘guess’ over time has been about 40-50%, the ‘numbers’ will be different based on actual effectiveness. Again, FOR ME, the risk/benefit ratio must attain a certain consistent threshold before I subject my body to ANY pharmaceutical insult. In the past I advised my patients accordingly depending on their unique health circumstances, always attempting to maintain the philosophy of DO NO HARM. If any year’s ‘guess’ was/is highly effective, GREAT! However if the ‘guess’ is a ‘miss’, why would I knowingly subject my patients to essentially a pharmaceutical placebo? Problem is the hit/miss results are sometimes not known until after the ‘season’........hence my advise was just that, advise not definitive preventative treatment conclusions.