Posted on 01/18/2013 10:27:23 AM PST by opentalk
(CNN) - The flu hasn't hit Europe as hard as it has the United States, health officials say, but when and if it does, don't expect a call for vaccination of the entire population.
Only the U.S. and Canada actually encourage everyone older than 6 months to get the flu vaccine.
Apparently, not a single country in Europe asks the general population to seek that same kind of protection, according to Robb Butler, the World Health Organization technical officer in vaccine preventable diseases and immunizations in the organization's Europe office in the Netherlands.
That's because global health experts say the data aren't there yet to support this kind of blanket vaccination policy, nor is there enough money. In fact, some scientists say the enthusiasm for mass vaccination in the United States may hurt efforts to create a better vaccine.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
The gigantic pandemics don’t occur like they used to in countries that don’t vaccinate also. There’s a lot of stuff that’s changed in our world since the last big pandemic, better understanding of germ theory, higher overall cleanliness, and wider availability of indoor plumbing probably have at least as much to do with the eradication of pandemics as vaccinations. Especially when it comes to something that mutates as regularly as the flu where there’s always a good chance that the flu you were vaccinated against isn’t the one you were exposed to at work.
That’s what I do.
Been doing it for years and it works for me.
No autism was even mentioned in our media in the 70’s and teachers went for decades never hearing of such a thing-—ever. Vaccination promotion and lower and lower ages with multiple vaccinations at
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Of course there were kids with the symptoms of autusim in the sixties and before. The low functioning ones were living in local state homes and medicated. The high funtioning ones wore pocket protectors and carried briefcases.
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Due to mainstreaming the mentally handicapped population autism became known to the general population.
I have had the flu vaccine from 18 to so far 43 and have never had a really bad flu at all. I would say the vaccine works using my experience. My wife has gotten it yearly since meeting me (1993) and our 4 children get it religiously. So in a sample of 6 people from ages 43, 43, 14, 12, 10, and 4 with little to no sickness and a wide variety of ages, I would say that the flu shot not only works but is a necessary responsibility for every American to have to ensure that the flu does not spread and actually dies off.
So how come Europe is not getting any of those gigantic pandemics in spite of the low vaccination rates?
So how come Europe is not getting any of those gigantic pandemics in spite of the low vaccination rates?
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Logic...always in the way.
When in the military I had to take the mandatory flu shot. The shot made me more sick than I have ever been in my entire life! I had to get a penicillin shot to get rid fo the flu that the shot gave to me! Ask me if I am against the flu shot.
Problem with anecdotes is that they’re anecdotes. I’m also 43, have never gotten the flu shot in my entire life, and if I’ve ever gotten the flu it was so mild it was mistakable for a head cold and I was over it in 3 or 4 days. My 45 year old wife has the same story, no shots, no flu. So my anecdote with no shots and less flu than you says the shots are bad.
In the end we need to know ourselves. If your body has proven to be susceptible to the flu, get the shots, they probably won’t make things worse and might even help. If your body is able to fight it well, don’t get the shots, save it for somebody who needs it.
And we’re never killing the flu off. It mutates too fast, as long as we have to make vaccines against strains and not the whole thing it’ll stay alive because somebody will always be catching a strain other than what they were vaccinated against.
In tiny gel cap footballs. !0,00 units a day or two 5000 unit caps. Others take more or less. I take more when everyone around me is sick. No real reason or the increase but...
There’s a national park where I hike and parts of it, formerly being private property, have homestead ruins, etc. on it. Back in the woods is an old cemetery. It’s interesting but terrible to walk through it ... almost all of the deaths were in 1918 from the ‘Spanish flu’. Young, old, middle-aged ... all represented in the graveyard. It must have been really terrible back in the day when that was going on.
Vaccination isn’t perfect, but then again, neither are seat belts in cars.
Add to that influenza is *extremely* fickle, and very prone to mutate, even in the middle of an epidemic.
The Swine flu that menaced the US during president Ford *could* have been a major killer, but just before it got to the US, it mutated into a much less harmful strain.
However, just a few years ago, a fairly ordinary Swine flu in the rest of the world suddenly turned murderous in Ukraine. A lot of doctors there refused to believe it was the flu, because the lungs of many of the people who had died looked “burned black”. What they saw was an immune system overreaction called the Cytokine storm. They were not killed by the flu, but by their own immune system.
In fact, this year, as usual the vaccination was for the three *most likely* strains of flu, but the flu that hit was only a ‘cousin’ to one of those vaccine strains, so people only got “partial immunity.”
Importantly, flu is passed by coughing and sneezing most at the optimal temperature of 40F and low humidity. Raise the temperature and humidity, and flu becomes much more reliant on hand contamination.
So when out in public during cold and flu season, use hand sanitizer. It helps in a big way.
Importantly, for those who want to give their immune system a “workout”, there is a problem to your theory. That is, when you get a cold or flu, the symptoms you show are not the sickness itself, but your immune system response to it.
If you get a lot of strong symptoms, it just shows that your immune system is weak, and overreacting; it doesn’t necessarily strengthen it, just stress it. The time to strengthen your immune system is when you are *not* sick.
And there are lots of foods and herbs and “probiotic” live culture bacteria that you can eat that is known to strengthen your immune system.
But it is also important that your immune system be moderated, so it doesn’t overreact. It can be “too strong”, which can create some unpleasant problems as well.
Influenza pandemics are rare these days, but I'm sure Europe still suffers from serious bouts with the flu. Yurps don't vaccinate because the government controls healthcare. This is exactly what Obamacare will be bringing our way if given enough time.
All that doesn't take away from the fact that professional health organizations in this country recommend the flu vaccine because it's effective. European attitudes toward healthcare are nothing to tout.
a meta-study analyzing 22-23 flu studies over the last 50 years to see the efficacy of the flu vaccine found that getting the flu shot only decreased your chances of getting the flu by 4%.
IOW it’s hardly effective and hardly worth it. especially if you already take hygiene/disinecting precautions with hands, exposure, etc.
D3,Vit C, Zn, Fe,,,, I have a full collection.
I know an immune affected little boy who had the flu shot - and today he came home with the flu. :(
This years shot is supposed to give 63% immunity. Next years could be worse or better, they have to out guess the flu mutation. There has been a lot of progress in medical science in 50 years. They are now working on a vaccine that will innoculate for all types of flu which you will need to get only once in every 10 years.
havent gotten flu shots ever, and i hardly ever get the flu. maybe twice i the last 35 years.
I got a flu shot in November - lot of good it did me, been in bed three days with the flu!
I don’t believe I have ever had the flu either. My dad survived the spanish flu pandemic & never had flu all his life. At 5 years old he remembers neighbors & a 5 year old across the street dying from the flu. When he got older (80’s)he started flu shots just in case. I got my first flu shot this year. Not elderly enough to die from it but joined the herd immunity. I had no reaction to it which probaly means I wouldn’t have gotten it anyway.
When I got my first cocktail of shots for going overseas I got very sick. Which leads me to believe there was something in there that could have killed me had I not been vaccinated and contracted it.
the meta study i mentioned earlier basically ahows that herd immunity is a myth, that in fact is oe of the conclusions of the study. if the difference between those that get a shot and those that don’t catching the flu is only 4%, the whole herd immuinty concept for the flu shot is shot down in flames.
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