The pharmacies near me are promoting flu shots.
I've heard from more than a couple people, that they got sick with the flu immediately after a flu shot. One friend reports that his Dad got pneumonia every year, immediately after getting a pneumonia shot.
Me, I have never gotten a flu shot, and don't plan to. I've never gotten a pneumonia shot, and don't plan to.
I get mine every year. Never had a problem. I think some people are more susceptible than most.
I haven't had pneumonia since I was a kid. I've lived in Michigan for over 30 years and I don't even wear a coat unless it's real cold and I'm going to be outside for more than five minutes. If I go somewhere, it's a little chilly till the car gets warmed up but it doesn't bother me.
Yesterday it was about 15 degrees out and I went to the garage for something and a neighbor came walking by and I went out to the road and stood there talking to him for over 10 minutes. All I had on my upper body was a t-shirt and sweat shirt. I didn't even have a cap on. I did get pretty cold but could tolerate it.
I still don't like the cold weather tho. I'd spend winters in Florida if I could.
-C-
You have fallen prey to the "It's warm in Florida" myth (often promulgated by land developers and realtors).
OK, it *is* warmer than Minneapolis but is still way less than comfy. Hawaii no ka oi.
How are you fixed for small pox? Diphtheria?
You are foolish. I had the Hong Kong flu in1968. For a couple days I though I would die. Then it got so bad I thought I wanted to die. I have taken every flu shot since and had no problems. As you get older it is a good ides to take the pneumonia shots. Have lost a couple friends to pneumonia who did not take the shots. WW
If true, this sort of makes one wonder why he decided each year to have another pneumonia shot. Perhaps he liked the attention
People with chronic illness like Diabetes or others that reduce the body's immunity better damn well get a flu and pneumonia vaccination every year. I have mild type 2 diabetes controlled by diet and exercise. It was inevitable as both of my grandmothers had it and is passed genetically in our case. I get those shots every year. I also never get the flu now that I get the shots In 2009 I got a shout and yes it did produce some mild flu-like symptoms. A little achy. This is the body overreacting to the dead virus. But what could be the consequences of an older person say in their mid to late 70's with diabetes getting the flu ? Certainly much more life threatening than a reaction to dead virus. Live viral vs dead viral infection? No brainer for me. And out of
20 shots just one made me mildly achy. I'll take the chances with the shot. One thing though, these virus are created from chicken embryo. So if you are allergic to eggs/egg products you might want to discuss it first with your doctor."Stormin Mormon" wrote in news:ihk3ni$18g$ snipped-for-privacy@news.eternal-september.org:
I've gotten a flu shot for the past 3 years. I never got sick from the shot. Some do, some don't.
That's true if the vaccines are properly made and tested. In an era where even kiddy Tylenol has had massive recalls and where vaccine makers are "suit proof" I have serious reservations about the quality controls.
Interestingly enough, that's not always a given. The recent flu as well as the flu that caused the great 1918 epidemic killed more youngsters than oldsters. The reason? "Juicy" young people can apparently generate enough phlegm to drown themselves in it. Dried up older people like me and Willie Nelson (who claims to have "outlived his dick") can't produce nearly as much phlegm as so can't produce the prodigious amounts of it that clog the lungs and helps cause death.
There are other reasons why older folks sometimes fare better than whippersnappers:
I found that I stopped getting really sick when I stopped flying commercially. Overcrowded planes during holiday flights are about the best disease incubators you could design. Over-recycled and under-filtered air combined with lots of passengers who decide to "fly sick" rather than miss their flight packed tightly together is a recipe for disaster. Pilots are encouraged to save money by recycling air rather than pulling in outside, frigid air and pressurizing and heating it. The world's next great epidemic will most likely be spread by our airline system. It may be that only countries like China, willing to quarantine whole planeloads of travelers for weeks, will survive relatively unscathed.
Air quality was SO bad in some older aircraft that aircrews would often pass out:
Sitting on the tarmac, sucking in jet exhaust doesn't help, either. The FAA mandated, a while back, that the pilots HAD to have better air than they were getting or planes might start falling out of the sky. I read part of the Boeing Dreamliner's new improvements are a vastly improved air filtration system. It's about time.
-- Bobby G.
Somewhat true but most elderly who die from the flue die from complications like congestive heart failure. Especially those who already have compromised heart output. Or they die from organ shutdown. A cascading failure of heart, kidney, liver and eventually succumb to asphyxiation of the brain due to inadequate blood supply and under- oxygenated blood. Flu hits the young and elderly in most cases the hardest.
Things were better when we could smoke...more fresh air, less recycled.
You raise an interesting point. Since the number of autosopies performed each year has been dropping steadily (except for judicially ordered ones) we have less and less meaningful data about the actual causes of death.
Something like the death from influenza could end up being listed in any number of the categories you've described (and does). Determining the true source of mortality is becoming harder and harder because autopsies are performed on just about 10% of the people who die (and a large number of those are judicial autopsies, where criminality may be an issue). The stats on causes of death are important because they tend to direct where we spend our research dollars. The stats I quoted in the original post indicate the death rates and how the deaths of previously healthy individuals stand out when compared to the young and elderly, *even* considering the latter's tendency towards death from pre-existing conditions.
To illustrate how "soft" flu death stats are:
"Over a period of 30 years, between 1976 and 2006, estimates of flu-associated deaths range from a low of about 3,000 to a high of about
49,000 people."That's a pretty damn wide range.
The medical researchers I know say that our information about causes of death is extremely unreliable and getting worse every year. As you might imagine, when given the choice between reporting a cause of death that leaves them open to possible malpractice charges and one that does not, doctors almost always check the "I had nothing to do with it" block. As computer scientists say, Garbage In, Garbage Out.
All that aside, flu statistics show that some variations of the disease, like the one that caused the 1918 epidemic, kill the young and previously healthy at a greater rate than the elderly precisely because their immune systems ARE in excellent shape. Half the 1918 deaths were in the 20-40 year old, previously health group. When those young and healthy immune systems are "overdriven" they can produce the cytokine storms that kill young people by literally drowning them in their own phlegm. Our current vaccines, Tamiflu and Relenza, offer no protection against these lethals "storms:"
Interestingly enough some of the data that lead to the understanding of cytokine storms came from autopsies of people who had died in the 1918 epidemic: (who says the dead can't speak?)
Those studies showed that although the cause of death was technically bacterial pneumonia (germs normally found throat and nose colonizing the lungs), it was the flu that began the downward spiral and caused the pneumonia.
-- Bobby G.
Liar
Jesus would get a flu shot. He would say the small risk of personal discomfort from a flu shot outweighs the larger risk of giving others your illness if you get the flu.
Just don't do what I did. Many years agoI was taking a night class, and in the dead of winter in the Chicago area, got in my car dressed for inside the buildings I was going to be in. I didn't bring a jacket, and the trip involved an area that was somewhat rural. That is where the car decided to crap out. And I had no cell phone because no one did at the time.
I hiked to the nearest gas station, dressed for weather 50 degrees warmer than it was. And I ran into the slesman who sold the car to me. He asked how I liked the car, and did not like my response, since I told him I was getting a lot of exercise owning it.
With all due respect, sir, that makes you a freeloader. I'm sure that's not your intent, but it's the result.
Vaccinations protect in two ways: by reducing the individual's risk of contracting the disease, and by reducing the rate of spread.
For vaccinations like tetanus, where the source of the infection is always the non-human environment, only the individual protection matters. If you have health insurance, you still freeload when you refuse the vaccine because others will share the cost of your treatment should you contract tetanus. (In most cases only your family will share the cost of your funeral.)
But for vaccinations against illnesses like flu, the population protection (reducing rate of spread) is at least as important as the individual protection. Reduce the spread rate below the tipping point, and the epidemic retracts rather than spreading. That's why vaccinating half or two-thirds of the population against flu reduces the rate of death and hospitalization by far more than half or two-thirds. Thus if you are in the non-vaccinated group, you are still protected by those who accepted the vaccination.
Pneumonia is an intermediate case, since it's more endemic than epidemic. The vaccine protects at both levels. It's important to remember, too, that the so-called pneumonia vaccine is actually a cocktail of vaccines against about 25 pathogens, many of which attack much more than just the lungs, providing a lot of protection for one shot.
One of my great-grandfathers died in the 1918 flu epidemic. My mom died of pneumonia (Streptococcus pneumoniae specifically, which attacks all the organs, not just the lungs). I would have died at age
18 or before if not for medical miracles. I intend to continue using what the medical world offers to protect my quality of life. I intend to continue doing it intelligently, not blindly -- blind acceptance is not much better than blind rejection; both are silly.The human mind is capable of detecting many patterns, including many which are difficult to detect statistically or otherwise. This is our great strength and our great weakness. We can draw important conclusions from thin threads -- but often our conclusions are wrong.
Edward
"Robert Green" wrote
(Responding to my own post to point out there's a documentary how just how bad things are regarding the state of the nation's coroners. Tonight PBS will be broadcasting Post Mortem, a film that illuminates the egregious lapses in the American system of death investigation. It highlights the widespread incompetence of poorly trained coroners and the failure of local governments to pay sufficient attention to the need for sound forensic pathology - "It's not the way they portray it on CSI!" - and it shows how poorly spent our health care dollars are - we claim to know what the biggest medical "killers" are, but there's really very little accurate information to back up any of the claims made by various advocacy groups.)
-- Bobby G.
Yes, that was a shocker. Lowell Bergman is one of TV's greatest assets. The **** he and his team have turned up during the years of their investigative reports would fill a canyon. For those who aren't (yet) fans of "FRONTLINE", get thee to PBS and view their archived programs.
The bottom line on these post mortem/coroner horrors is that the perps are not regulated nationally. One jurisdiction could have the means and the ethics do to a good job. The next country over, they might have no resources and/or no ethics. The crooked, cheating, corrupt, wicked, lazy, ignorant, ignorant "coroners" and "post mortem specialists (running out of adjectives) who LIED on camera during Lowell Bergman's interviews gives you a window on what might happen to YOUR loved onesin case their mandated post mortem was conducted by one of the MD crooks and signed off on by one of the unqualified coroners.. That one of the most unqualified post mortem MDs continued to zig-zag around the country, getting new jobs, even with a LOUD SCREAMING record of malfeasance, misfeasance, nonfeasance, and all the other "feasances" attests to the venality of the jurisdictions that hired him even knowing his record. Of course, like other inequities in our society, class, education and means help a suspicious survivor investigate a dubious case. Why shouldn't everyone have access to justice? (Yes, I know..."
If even dog-catchers are regulated, why not coroners (if they are even necessary) and post-mortem MDs?
Wonder how many people will take action, like contacting their elected representatives to demand a change in the laws and writing letters to their local newspaper?
Yes, that was a shocker. Lowell Bergman is one of TV's greatest assets. The **** he and his team have turned up during the years of their investigative reports would fill a canyon. For those who aren't (yet) fans of "FRONTLINE", get thee to PBS and view their archived programs.
The bottom line on these post mortem/coroner horrors is that the perps are not regulated nationally. One jurisdiction could have the means and the ethics do to a good job. The next country over, they might have no resources and/or no ethics. The crooked, cheating, corrupt, wicked, lazy, ignorant, ignorant "coroners" and "post mortem specialists (running out of adjectives) who LIED on camera during Lowell Bergman's interviews gives you a window on what might happen to YOUR loved onesin case their mandated post mortem was conducted by one of the MD crooks and signed off on by one of the unqualified coroners.. That one of the most unqualified post mortem MDs continued to zig-zag around the country, getting new jobs, even with a LOUD SCREAMING record of malfeasance, misfeasance, nonfeasance, and all the other "feasances" attests to the venality of the jurisdictions that hired him even knowing his record. Of course, like other inequities in our society, class, education and means help a suspicious survivor investigate a dubious case. Why shouldn't everyone have access to justice? (Yes, I know..."
If even dog-catchers are regulated, why not coroners (if they are even necessary) and post-mortem MDs?
Wonder how many people will take action, like contacting their elected representatives to demand a change in the laws and writing letters to their local newspaper? ===================================================
It was pretty sickening to realize how many people must be getting away with murder because the coroners in so many places are professional disasters. I fear that nothing will happen as a result of the report simply because this crisis has been in progress for quite some time. It's about as shameful as the number of judges in the US who are not lawyers and whose knowledge of the law roughly parallels the "legal experts" that are here in AHR. (-:
My wife worked for several years trying to educate local judges about the various protections supposedly enjoyed by military personnel on active duty in a war zone. I hope Frontline turns their cameras on the banks that got incredible breaks from Uncle Sam only to turn around and screw soldiers on active duty to the way.
It was not just alarming, but obscene, to see judges make rulings completely unaware of the Relief Act or the new provisions added to it in recent years. I can only imagine what it's like to be in Kandahar provence, getting shot at all day, and getting a call from your wife that she's been foreclosed on and evicted.
What really sickened me was that Deutsche Bank, one of the European banks that was showered with US money from the AIG bailout, grabbed some poor soldier's house (completely illegally) and sold it out from under him even though they were fully aware it was protected under the Relief Act.
Hopefully a new and smarter judge will allow for punitive damages against Deutsche Bank because it's pretty clear they *knew* they were breaking the law. They just didn't think a soldier had any real chance of winning against them and their army of lacky lawyers. That's why "punnies" were invented - to punish bad actors who believed that their size allows them to act with impunity. Fortunately a number of lawyers have begun to work on the case pro bono and so Deutsche Bank's hopes of burying the soldier under a pile of motions are likely to be crushed.
Another sickening case involves an HOA in Texas that seized a soldier's home worth 300K and sold it (to someone in on the scam) for $3500 over a late $800 HOA dues payment:
Clauer et al v. Heritage Lakes Homeowners Association, Inc. et al Plaintiffs: Michael Clauer and Maflorence Clauer Defendants: Heritage Lakes Homeowners Association, Inc., Mark C. DiSanti, Steeplechase Productions, LLC and Jad I. Aboul-Jibin
Case Number: 4:2009cv00560 Filed: November 16, 2009
Court: Texas Eastern District Court Office: Sherman Office [ Court Info ] County: Denton Presiding Judge: Judge Michael H. Schneider Referring Judge: Magistrate Judge Amos L. Mazzant
Nature of Suit: Real Property - Foreclosure Cause: 28:1441 Notice of Removal Jurisdiction: Federal Question Jury Demanded By: Plaintiff dockets.justia.com
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-- Bobby G.
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