Okay, forget about anything with a tinge of collectivism to it. Let’s stipulate that no one should be obligated to get a flu shot.
Not getting a flu shot seems like a good idea, when most other people are getting a shot. You don’t run any risk from getting a shot; and your risk of getting the flu is small. Now, what happens if the proportion of the population getting a shot falls below some critical threshold (2/3 or whatever it may be)? That changes the risk-reward trade-off for immunization. A lot more people would be catching (and spreading) the flu. If you don’t get a shot, your chance of getting the flu are much greater, if fewer other people also don’t get a shot.
So, if you don’t want to take a flu shot, and you don’t want to catch the flu — the smart thing would be to try to convince everyone else to get a shot.
Click the link in 165. It would appear that the whole ‘flu vax prevents flu’ is up to debate.
There are two fundamental problems with your premise:
1. You are absolutely convinced that flu shots work - I'm not, in fact I'm not even sure they don't make things worse.
2. You also infer that my not getting the flu is because I have never been exposed to it since everyone else is getting their shots - complete and utter bullsh@t! Do you know what a million miler is? I'm a million miler on American, Delta, and US Air (and was on Eastern as well). And for most of the last 30 years I've attended 3 or more trade shows a year where I work the booth. Try three days of meeting and shaking hands with people from all over the world. I've also worked in an engineering firm where 11 of the 17 employees came down with the flu in 1999, and 9 of the 14 employees came down with the flu in 2006. And surprise, surprise, surprise, after 2006 the company stopped encouraging people to get flu shots. If I haven't been exposed to the flu at least 50-80 times in the last 30 years, THEN NO ONE HAS EVER BEEN EXPOSED TO THE FLU.
And as far as “what if everyone else stopped” my opinion would be - great. Except for drug company profits, I seriously doubt any good is coming from it.