This should not be necessary if a vaccine is available. This flu going around this year is bad. My wife caught it at the Shoprite. I caught it from her not 2 days later. My sister in law, who is an RN, and was around us frequently, did not catch it because she was vaccinated. We weren’t wearing masks.
flu vaccine is about 40-60% effective.
We were going to get the flu vax. Trust me, I would have loved just 20% effective. I got sick On a Sunday. I had to use 5 sick days and an extra on Monday the following week. That was brutal. But my sister in law and her daughter, both vaxed, didn’t get sick, and they were around us a lot.
If only the FDA had a meeting to decide on which strain to target.
50% effective is the same as nothing.
I have had the flu only three times (that I know of) since I was a child, the first time in 1963 or 64 when I was in high school, the second in 1979 and the last time in about 1998. Until this century, I never got vaccinated and even now only do so randomly (the Safeway pharmacy gives a 10% off coupon in groceries so I am easily talked into it by my wife.) Perhaps I have benefited from herd immunity from others being vaccine vigilant, but most friends and acquaintances that I have talked to on this topic seem to be as lackadaisical as I am about getting the annual shot.
I am not remotely anti-vaccine. I religiously get my Tdap boosters and sought out pneumonia and shingles vaccination. But the benefit of the annual flu vaccine seems overrated. And mounting evidence suggests that the Covid vaccine may have serious side effects (particularly related to heart problems) that caused me to refuse ongoing boosters for what has proved to be a minor illness in otherwise healthy people.
I have a friend like you - literally never gets sick. Like 2 colds that he can remember.
He did get covid early on and he was pissed!
I never got the flu vax for years. Got the flu about every other year. started getting it regularly about 15 years ago and I think I’ve have the flu once or twice.
I’m about the same as you with the flu shots. I can count the times I’ve had flu shot on one hand. I can’t remember the last time I caught the flu. But 6 sick days later and I am rethinking my position. Between the flu, snow days, and one on Super Bowl Monday, I have 4 sick days left out of 15. We’re still in February!!
All I got was the single J&J shot for Covid. Nothing after that.
A lot has to do with your exposure. I worked for Verizon (then Bell Atlantic) for 9 years in an office. I got sick with some kind of cold once or twice a year. As soon as I went to tolls, it abruptly stopped. I got sick maybe twice in the next 17 years.
As soon as I transferred to road maintenance, I was getting sick again because management wouldn’t give sick people their own truck. I went back to tolls in 2019, and this is the first time I’ve been sick.
No it’s not. Cut those numbers in half.
And define your term.
Some people rolled their eyeballs when I told them I thought the vaccine might be the cause of my heart issues. (My doctors now agrees with me.)
While it took almost two years, my symptoms have apparently resolved.
2 Likes
