Swine Flu Immunisation

Freefaller said:
Why get out of bed everyday? Why get in a car (which puts people in a risky situation.)? Why jump out of planes? Why white water raft? Why do anything?

I don't worry about such things, if I had an underlying health condition and needed the vaccine to help support me I'd take it, but there is very little point - if I get ill I get ill, big deal. If I trip over and cut my leg open, it bleeds - I'm not going to wear shin pads and knee protectors every day to stop myself from injuring myself.
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Your notion of calling it "artificial" is what I don't really understand, as though there is some macho value is suffering the illness, I'm not saying you should rush out and get it now, hell I'm not mostly because I don't want to inconvenience myself by taking time out of my day for something that does not yet appear to be a serious issue. I would however get the vaccine if a pandemic kicked off.
As I said it's the "artificial" bit I don't really understand, the vaccine isn't like using a catapult to show a shot, it's like working out and training so you can naturally throw a shot further, it help improve what you already have.
 
Hatter The Mad said:
Why wouldn't you give them the combined vaccine?

In fact, why give them M, M and R at all:

Let's face it - if your kids are weak then they'll suffer, vaccine or not, right?
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Absolutely. It's the way your hands are dealt.


As for the individual, well that's what they do in France and I've never needed a booster since, I didn't need my BCG at 13, so I'm convinced whatever they did in France was of good quality - hence why if ever I were to have kids and still living in the UK, I'd get them seen to in France. Don't get me wrong the NHS is great and all, but I like to go with what I know. :)
 
bam0 said:
Your notion of calling it "artificial" is what I don't really understand, as though there is some macho value is suffering the illness, I'm not saying you should rush out and get it now, hell I'm not mostly because I don't want to inconvenience myself by taking time out of my day for something that does not yet appear to be a serious issue. I would however get the vaccine if a pandemic kicked off.
As I said it's the "artificial" bit I don't really understand, the vaccine isn't like using a catapult to show a shot, it's like working out and training so you can naturally throw a shot further, it help improve what you already have.
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It's not to do with a macho value about getting ill, I don't want to get ill as I've seen people with colds and viruses and the flu in the past and it looks thoroughly unpleasant, and if anything apart from painful (potentially) it looks as boring as hell.

Artifical is maybe the wrong word, I just think that our bodies in general are adept enough to cope with illness - I'm quite possibly wrong, though I do have a passing interest in the body and how our body works (owing to my interest in the gym and nutrition) and I just don't understand (so call it ignorance if you want to be rude to me - but I've said it so you don't have to) the reasoning why a healthy male at his prime needs it.

Don't get me wrong if I developed a horrid cancer and a pill/injection or whatever miraculous cure they were able to develop would cure me of the disease I'd take it. However for flu I just don't understand the fuss or the issue. Why inject myself with lots of chemicals I don't need? <- that's a genuine question.
 
I've read a few posts and people are saying you could get the flu by having the vaccine.

As far as I'm aware flu jabs don't use a live strain to combat the virus so there is no way to get the flu from the jab itself. Just be an unlucky sod to get it after having the jab. This is my understanding at least.
 
LeJosh said:
I've read a few posts and people are saying you could get the flu by having the vaccine.

As far as I'm aware flu jabs don't use a live strain to combat the virus so there is no way to get the flu from the jab itself. Just be an unlucky sod to get it after having the jab. This is my understanding at least.
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No you can't get it from the vaccine however if you had it before the vaccine will knock your immune system for a little bit so it may become noticeable/affect you more, and so people instantly say the vaccine gave it them.
 
Hatter The Mad said:
Right, so you won't be getting your kids vaccinated?
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I couldn't possibly comment as I don't have kids. I would guess as a parent my position would change - but I'd still research it from my friends/doctors and so on before even contemplating it.

I've had a personal family tradegy many years ago and that's probably skewed my ideas of innoculations etc...

I'm not saying you're wrong or I'm right by the way. Besides by the time I have kids if ever I were to have them we'd know full well the results and longer term implications of MMR, or Swine Flu jabs etc... There may be nothing! I'm just stating that as of this moment in time that I'm not interested in getting the vaccination as I see no need for it. :)
 
Freefaller said:
I just think that our bodies in general are adept enough to cope with illness - I'm quite possibly wrong, though I do have a passing interest in the body and how our body works (owing to my interest in the gym and nutrition) and I just don't understand (so call it ignorance if you want to be rude to me - but I've said it so you don't have to) the reasoning why a healthy male at his prime needs it.
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Our bodies aren't adept enough to cope with illness. TB, measles, cancer, malaria, AIDs, something as simple as acute diarrhoea (yes, even in this country), infection of the labyrinth (in the ear), arthritis, osteoporosis...
 
drunkenmaster said:
Thats a theory, nothing more, theres entirely no proof of that and logically speaking it makes entirely no sense.

The chances of things evolving to do anything are fairly small, the chances of something evolving to be more deadly is a very specific change and a massively longer shot.

A more communicable disease will most likely spread to more people, meaning more being produced in each person, but quite possibly a smaller chance of evolving into something worse.
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Woah, woah, woah, I completely missed this the first time around. just, what?! ... what?!

Absolute rubbish! The strain that is the fastest at replicating (in terms of the length of time from infecting an individual until viruses can leave that individual) will give the greatest virulence and will always be selected for. This is so fundamental to influenza evolution I'm absolutely astounded that you are trying to counter this, to the point where I'm now struggling to take your posts seriously.

Because of the speed of this flu, it will essentially burn itself out much quicker, in months rather than years and years, which probably gives it less chance to mutate into something worse.
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Again, speed of transmission in flu directly correlates with virulence and the stress on the human body (yes, I completely understand there are other attributes that contribute to transmission, but this is one of them which is important). A virus doesn't care if it burns itself out, it will be selected to be as harmful as possible to the extend where it can be transmitted. This is why myxomatosis strains are always extremely virulent. In other words, the most virulent virus is always selected for providing that the virulence is not so extreme that it prevents transmission.

Evolution is a chance for something to grow/reproduce slightly differently. Theres just as much chance the next strain will be less communicable, and less deadly as there is for it to become more deadly
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Oh my god. I cannot believe the authority in which you said that, absolute rubbish! I can only conclude you have little understanding of influenza evolution - you would get a bit fat fail in an exam writing what you just did. The virus which is the fastest at replication and preparation for transmission is always selected for thus virulence and stress on the human body will increase - I cannot believe you are suggesting that a virus would be selected to be less virulent!

NOTE - I'm not saying we will see a repeat of 1918, I completely agree that the death rate will be relatively low and that there is the chance that people do have pre-existing immunity to H1N1, but I cannot agree with your stance on the selection for severity.
 
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Hatter The Mad said:
I've already said - for herd immunity. That is why you, healthy male, need the vaccine too (same with MMR - the only way we can prevent outbreaks is to reach the optimal herd immunity ratio. Even 1% below this (as we saw 16 years ago), and things fall apart.
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The argument of herd immunity should be a side benefit. Vaccination should have tangible benefits for the recipient that outweigh the potential risks. If you are vaccinating people to protect society as a whole then it needs to be done to protect against extraordinary events. Measles, for example, whilst a very nasty and dangerous disease (more so than the risk of the MMR vaccine) is not really in this category.

If you do not follow this simple weighting of priorities then you start to move to the level where the rights of society are placed higher than the rights of the individual. Now for better or worse this has been something that has not been encouraged or given clearance in the main since the 1940's and fallout from the events there. There would be the thought that once the individuals rights were compromised in favour of the population at large then this would be a bad road to go down again. For example, exclusion of patient groups as being deemed not worthy of treatment or overly expensive. Now in many ways we do this all the time and you could very well argue this is wrong or right but the fact remain that the medical and nursing practices in Germany in the late 1930's and 1940's have very real consequences in how ethical thinking is controlled even all this time later. And therefore you got strong reactions against the treating of individuals medically where they themselves are not the prime benefactor - this is a key component in getting research accepted.
 
maustin said:
The argument of herd immunity should be a side benefit. Vaccination should have tangible benefits for the recipient that outweigh the potential risks. If you are vaccinating people to protect society as a whole then it needs to be done to protect against extraordinary events. Measles, for example, whilst a very nasty and dangerous disease (more so than the risk of the MMR vaccine) is not really in this category.
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The tangible benefit is that you don't get swine flu, and do not risk complications in having swine flu.
 
Hatter The Mad said:
Let's face it - if your kids are weak then they'll suffer, vaccine or not, right?
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The purpose of vaccinations is partly to protect individuals but mainly to protect the populous as a whole.

We use something called herd immunity, such that if someone does contract the disease in question, it can't spread. If a large enough proportion of the population are immunised, then a disease can't spread very far because most people it hits are immune. The proportion that need to be immunised varies with disease, but it's usually about 80% I think.

So the point of immunisation is not to protect individuals per se, but to protect a population of individuals.
 
vonhelmet said:
The purpose of vaccinations is partly to protect individuals but mainly to protect the populous as a whole.

We use something called herd immunity, such that if someone does contract the disease in question, it can't spread. If a large enough proportion of the population are immunised, then a disease can't spread very far because most people it hits are immune. The proportion that need to be immunised varies with disease, but it's usually about 80% I think.

So the point of immunisation is not to protect individuals per se, but to protect a population of individuals.
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I know, read the thread and you'll see my position is exactly the same as yours :rolleyes:
 
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