Fundies and the Flu

[Wolfie]

lol no but Im not risking it again.

What would you be risking? If the shot didn't give you the flu, what would it do to you?

You're only risking your life when you avoid vaccination. As the doctor on the news said today risks you take when you get the flu are , "Pneumonia, hospitalization, and, hello, death."

[mockingbird]

I have only had the flu once, in elementary school I think. I don't really remember it.

I always get really sore at the injection site after getting shots, unless it is the tiny ones they use for things like insulin injections. I'm not sure why, I mean I know that is a side effect, but it seems to affect me a lot worse than anyone I know. I always get them in my leg (because it hurts worse in my arm) and there have been a few times where it was so bad it hurt to walk for a day or two after. Better than getting flu or whooping cough or measles or any of the others, though!

[Conuly]

lol no but Im not risking it again.

Risking what? You're not making any sense. If you do not think the shot made you sick, and you do not think it was ineffective, what are you risking?

[Wolfie]

I have only had the flu once, in elementary school I think. I don't really remember it.

I always get really sore at the injection site after getting shots, unless it is the tiny ones they use for things like insulin injections. I'm not sure why, I mean I know that is a side effect, but it seems to affect me a lot worse than anyone I know. I always get them in my leg (because it hurts worse in my arm) and there have been a few times where it was so bad it hurt to walk for a day or two after. Better than getting flu or whooping cough or measles or any of the others, though!

There apparently is a new form of flu shot out this year that is offered in some places. It has a needle that is even smaller than an insulin needle.

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/flu-shot-l ... d=14459743

[Avalondaughter]

Pfft, no, I'm so incredibly not healthy. I'm actually heading into the second month of some upper respiratory crud that I can't shake... but it's not the flu. I just catch everything else.

That sounds about right for me. I get torturous, never ending colds and bad bouts of bronchitis, but I have never had the flu. I remember in elementary school when cases of flu would rip through my classroom and my closest friends would be home with it, one by one, I would wait to get it and I'd stay super healthy.

[jaynie]

There apparently is a new form of flu shot out this year that is offered in some places. It has a needle that is even smaller than an insulin needle.

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/flu-shot-l ... d=14459743

I was offered a nasal spray this year. It has a live form of the virus instead of an dead one so (unlike the shot) I think there is a small risk of actually getting the flu from it, but if needles really bother you it might be worth looking into. (I couldn't have the nasal spray after all because I'm asthmatic, so I can't speak from personal experience, but the pharmacist who did my shot did say it was just as effective).

[mockingbird]

I was offered a nasal spray this year. It has a live form of the virus instead of an dead one so (unlike the shot) I think there is a small risk of actually getting the flu from it, but if needles really bother you it might be worth looking into. (I couldn't have the nasal spray after all because I'm asthmatic, so I can't speak from personal experience, but the pharmacist who did my shot did say it was just as effective).

The new needle one is cool! I wish they could do that for more shots. I am not afraid of needles, but I would definitely prefer that if I could just to avoid the pain afterwards.

I have to have the flu shot as a muscle shot, unfortunately. (Which is of course the worst kind for soreness!) I got allergy tested for it this year and my allergist's theory is that I am only allergic enough to react to it when it is injected subcutaneously (under the skin) but not given in the muscle. Apparently this is a pretty common phenomenon in his practice. I only reacted to an allergy test where they inject it under your skin like a TB test, not the normal scratch one, and I did fine with the shot when the nurse gave it to me as a muscle shot. I really wanted to be able to get the nasal spray, but I think that would pose the same risk to me as getting it injected subQ. I'm really glad I can get it at least, since my job is going to involve being around sick people every day. I don't want the flu, lol.

[Ramona]

A) The general message that I've gotten from medical professionals has been that folks who get the flu "after (they) got the shot" were people who had already been exposed to the virus. The shot takes about two weeks to become fully effective and most people are getting their shots right in the middle of flu season. It makes sense to me...

B) Most of the fundie families with which I was friends didn't get any vaccines if they could avoid them - but they pretty much all ate very healthfully. I was the one who was/is the lousy cook :p (and we do all vaccinations on schedule, including the flu shot)

[Sola]

I'll have a bash at this one.

First off, Fundies tend not to vaccinate. Some do, but many don't. Then they are isolated, they home school and home church so they aren't mixing with the general population as often. They rarely go to the see the doctor either and all these places; schools, church, work, the doctor's, are all one big giant petri dish of germs.

But at Christmas they suddenly get all social. They have family visiting and go visiting themselves. They Christmas shop too, and suddenly they are exposed to the germ ridden world. It's a bit like when your child first goes to school; those first couple of years are one bug after another as your child gets exposed to what every other child has. But once they get to around 8 or 9, they have built up immunity and had most of the bugs that go around each year.

This doesn't happen with fundies. They don't get the chance to build up immunity, so when they get exposed to bugs, they don't fight it off. Plus these things often hit adults harder than they do kids. So Christmas arrived and along with the relatives and Christmas shopping, they brought home flu, novovirus and a whole host of other things. It hits them hard and blasts through the entire household.

[DarkAnts]

A) The general message that I've gotten from medical professionals has been that folks who get the flu "after (they) got the shot" were people who had already been exposed to the virus. The shot takes about two weeks to become fully effective and most people are getting their shots right in the middle of flu season. It makes sense to me...

B) Most of the fundie families with which I was friends didn't get any vaccines if they could avoid them - but they pretty much all ate very healthfully. I was the one who was/is the lousy cook :p (and we do all vaccinations on schedule, including the flu shot)

This is a good point. I got my shot on the first of October but many of my coworkers are getting them now. Many people are getting them now because the news is reporting about the flu outbreaks. This means that they will still be susceptible to the flu for two weeks. They may already be exposed to it.

[Lola]

I haven't had the flu since 2006 and I don't get the flu shot.

[kb2]

I get the flu shot every year because I have a close family member for whom the flu could be deadly, and I want to do what I can to avoid spreading it to them. I never want to worry that I'm bringing home pre-symptomatic flu germs home for Thanksgiving.

This year I caught not one, but TWO awful colds. One occurred months before the flu was detected in my area, so it was almost certainly not the flu, but I had terrible fever and malaise that resulted in a nap on the landing of my stairwell because I made it up the stairs and didn't have the energy to make it to a piece of furniture. The second never made me feel quite as terrible as the first except I developed bronchitis, so I had a cough that lingered for a month. I would say that they weren't as severe as the flu because they were very short-lived (or would have been without bronchitis, they were each only about two days of acute nose-running), but I complained as much as possible.

When my niecephews were born, my mom caught every single child-cold they did, and spent about two years having a feverish illness every month. Everyone else in the family caught maybe one out of every five, and even my niecephews didn't catch as many colds from each other. Meanwhile, my husband and I have never given each other a cold (we've only been hanging out with each other for seven years, so there's that). Somehow, we either don't expose the other person to enough germs despite living in close proximity, or we catch a cold the other one is already immune to. The immune system is weird. So is the spread of diseases like the cold and flu viruses. In fact, it's all so weird that it annoys me when people try to take an event that is interesting to model on a population level and try to attribute a pattern to their own life. Many people have gone the past ten years without catching the flu. Many people have caught the flu all the past ten years. Many people have caught the flu some of the past ten years, but not all of them. None of these situations are in any way uncommon or special or can give us, on an n=1 level, any real information about what the "right" or "wrong" thing to do to avoid getting the flu is. Pretty much everyone's track record with the flu is tediously unspecial and shared by hundreds of thousands of people with various life choices, some of those people did whatever it is that you did to avoid getting the flu and some if them didn't. Not being around sick people and getting the flu shot statistically improve your chances of not getting the flu, but it's not a superpower if you don't do those things and don't get the flu, it's just life. In life, a child can sneeze directly into your mouth and you won't get sick, but you can end up sleeping on your stairwell in July without having a single known sick contact. I think--especially with people's tendency to call any bad cold the flu--it's hard to tell if fundies get the flu more often, but even if they did this year it's such a random disease it wouldn't really tell us much about their lifestyle.

[fundiefan]

I'm 45 and have not, as far as I know, ever had the flu. I got the flu shot twice in my early twenties and had horrible, awful reactions to it so I have not gotten it since. I know the risk I take, but being as sick as I was from the shot is just too much of a deterrent to me.

I don't know why I have not gotten the flu, but I don't get colds either. Maybe a bit of a cold once in a while, but I don't honestly remember the last time I had one that caused anything other than a bit of discomfort.

It's actually kind of weird, but I don't complain.

I fundies just complain more, then make it more of a miracle that their god got them through it. The average person is sick, deals with it and moves on. Fundies claim special healing by their god and need to be martyrs to their baseball team - er, families - because 'oh look at how special I am, I am sick but I took care of all 50 of my kids when they were sick at the same time'. They get to tell the world how they still managed to keep the house running and the prayers going up and the floors scrubbed.

[JMarie]

Y'all are just sadly misinformed.

Do you not know that bone broth and essential oils are *totally* better than those horrible toxic shots?

:lol:

We haven't had the flu ever in this household, regardless of shot status, though I try to get us all vaxed on time every year. When my sister was a kid, she had the flu and then got pneumonia as a complication and it was very scary. It seems to be particularly bad this year, so I am glad for our vaxes.

Like with anything else, fundies vary. Essential oils are the big health thing right now. I know a lot of people, from fundie to anti-fundie who are terrified of vaccinations and totally believe that half an onion left to sit in a room will suck that flu virus right out of the air and save you from getting sick.

Or they use goot:

http://potterswheelschool.blogspot.com/ ... tment.html

[starfish]

I think Sola's got a point about the timing of their flu/bad cold epidemic. They get all social at Christmas and emerge from their self-imposed

isolation on the compound. The world = germs, so voila! the flu/bad cold shows up.

I have heard that the flu mist actually works better than the shot. This came from my pediatrician. I wish more vaccines were

in a "mist" form.

Whether I'm sick or healthy, my world goes 'round. My obligations don't come to a screeching halt for 6 weeks if I'm feeling under the weather.

The flu shot is just not a luxury for me. It just seems to be that way for many fundies.

[Miggy]

B) Most of the fundie families with which I was friends didn't get any vaccines if they could avoid them - but they pretty much all ate very healthfully. I was the one who was/is the lousy cook :p (and we do all vaccinations on schedule, including the flu shot)

Just to clarify: All the fundy families I know believe they eat a very healthy diet but there is a huge difference between eating healthy food and having a healthy diet. (My first uni degree was a science degree that included two years of nutrition so I like to think I know a little about food.) For example; fruit and vegetables are really cheap if you buy in bulk at the markets. SIL goes to the markets right on closing time when farmers are dropping prices to try and get rid of the last of their stock. She buys huge crates of fruit for only a couple of dollars each. They also eat bread because that can be bought day-old from the bakery very cheapily. They see their diet as very healthy because they eat bread + fruit + vegetables + small amount of milk and cereal. I look at this diet and wonder where the protein is coming from - almost no meat, no eggs, almost no dairy, no nuts. The eldest children are starting to develop medical problems related to malnutrition and their parents can't understand why, because SIL is a great cook and they have only ever fed them "healthy" food.

Other fundies may be entirely different. This pattern of eating is just what I have seen across several Sisters-in-law, Cousins-in-law and friends families.

[NeonJungle]

Last year was the first year I didn't get one. But my mother is an MD and urges all of her kids and in-law kids every year to get one...she used to be in ER and would see folks come in with horrible cases. So I learned "err on the side of caution" with the flu vaccine.

[OneQuill]

I've had the flu a few times in my life. Once, I remember as a kid swine flu was going around and a lot of people were dying from it. I was so scared! But I just had a regular flu. Anway, due to some health issues, I now get a flu shot every year. I've never had the achey, not feeling good afterwards. I have nurses in the family and had been told to take aspirin (real aspirin, not ibuprofen or acetominophin, aspirin) immediately afterwards to avoid that. It's always worked for me.

[Black Aliss]

I've had the flu a few times in my life. Once, I remember as a kid swine flu was going around and a lot of people were dying from it.

Actually that time (if you were a kid in 1976) it was the vaccine that was killing people, not the flu. And now it appears that having had swine flu gives people some sort of super-immunity to a wider variety of flu viruses, and for a longer period of time than the immunity you get from having other types of influenza.

[desertvixen]

I have heard that the flu mist actually works better than the shot. This came from my pediatrician. I wish more vaccines were

in a "mist" form.

The mist is awesome. I've had it every year since 2007 (I was still a nursing mother in flu season 2006, and I think that was the first year the Army offered it where I was) and it's so nice. No needle or any of that.

The only drawback is that it seems like the whole "feel like crap from my flu shot" sensation gets accelerated to something like 5-6 hours, but it also only lasts for about a day with me. I only wish they would start giving us the flu mist on Friday, so I could be miserable at home rather than at work.

[OneQuill]

Actually that time (if you were a kid in 1976) it was the vaccine that was killing people, not the flu. And now it appears that having had swine flu gives people some sort of super-immunity to a wider variety of flu viruses, and for a longer period of time than the immunity you get from having other types of influenza.

Sorry Molly Trolley if I don't have these quotes right, I'm fairly new to posting here and still learning.

It was before 1976. I want to say it had to be about 1968 as I remember being about 10. (now you all know how old I am).

It may have been the first time swine flu hit the U.S. but being a kid at the time, I really don't know. It was definitely the swine flu causing all those deaths, and not the vaccine. I also remember, thanx to my big sis of being afraid I'd turn into a pig! Soooooo mean! :o

[NeonJungle]

Yes, it was the flu, not the vaccine; Hong Kong flu in the 60 and swine flu in the 70s.

http://www.flu.gov/pandemic/history/index.html#

[OneQuill]

Yes, it was the flu, not the vaccine; Hong Kong flu in the 60 and swine flu in the 70s.

http://www.flu.gov/pandemic/history/index.html#

Thanx for the clarification, it was Hong Kong flu then, and not swine flu. I was never very good with dates/history.--But then big sis was wrong too---I wouldn't have turned into a pig! :dance:

[NeonJungle]

Too funny!

[Black Aliss]

The episode began in February 1976, when an Army recruit at Ft. Dix, N.J., fell ill and died from a swine flu virus thought to be similar to the 1918 strain. Several other soldiers at the base also became ill. Shortly thereafter, Wenzel and his colleagues reported two cases of the flu strain in Virginia.

"That raised the concern that the original cluster at Ft. Dix had spread beyond New Jersey," said Wenzel, former president of the International Society for Infectious Diseases.

At the CDC, Sencer solicited the opinions of infectious disease specialists nationwide and, in March, called on President Ford and Congress to begin a mass inoculation.

The $137-million program began in early October, but within days reports emerged that the vaccine appeared to increase the risk for Guillain-Barre syndrome, a rare neurological condition that causes temporary paralysis but can be fatal.

Waiting in long lines at schools and clinics, more than 40 million Americans -- almost 25% of the population -- received the swine flu vaccine before the program was halted in December after 10 weeks.

More than 500 people are thought to have developed Guillain-Barre syndrome after receiving the vaccine; 25 died. No one completely understands the causes of Guillain-Barre, but the condition can develop after a bout with infection or following surgery or vaccination. The federal government paid millions in damages to people or their families.

However, the pandemic, which some experts estimated at the time could infect 50 million to 60 million Americans, never unfolded. Only about 200 cases of swine flu and one death were ultimately reported in the U.S., the CDC said.

source: http://articles.latimes.com/2009/apr/27 ... ory27?pg=1