Quote:
Originally Posted by FireFly
Just a hypothetical question for everyone. I'm all for vaccines like MMR and whatnot but I'm really struggling with the flu vaccine. I have not had a flu shot for as long as I can remember and I've also not had the flu. Especially with health analysts saying that those who received the vaccine both this year and last actually having a -15% protection for the flu this year, I'm wondering if we put the flu vaccine in the same category as the others?
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At my workplace we get free flu shots, this season has been particularly bad, we have had a lot of people missing 2-3 days and even up to a week. In our department there is about 25 people, 4 people have missed a fair bit of work and they all didn't take the free flu shot, while the rest of us did.
Also not surprisingly my department is quite old on average, 50+, those people get the flu shot like a religious practice, they are old enough to remember life before we started to take it for granted.
I ask the same thing of people who don't take the flu shot, if you drove 20 years without a seat belt, would you believe that to be sound advice to continue not using one? I mean if I looked at my driving record, I could now have been driving for about 25 years without a seat belt and have been totally fine, does not mean I shouldn't be using one.
So its a matter of risk, vs reward. Flu shot is much less effective than childhood vaccines, but its much more difficult to get it right, however for me its about being at least doing my part since so many elderly and sick are at such high risk for flu, and my part is at least making sure I'm covered since my father is in an old folks home and I don't want to be taking any chances there.