Forums >Health and Nutrition>Flu shot heresy

Flu shot heresy (Read 2156 times)

Scout7


    posted: 11/6/2009 at 4:54 PM
    Quote from mikeymike on 11/6/2009 at 4:52 PM:
    Since it would be wrong to just let this thread fizzle out, I'll now tell my personal flu-like-symptoms story.  My 12 year old daughter just got home from Nature's Classroom--some hippie program where the 7th graders get on busses and go out to the Berkshiers and stay in some cabin for three days and step in puddles and look at leaves and shit.  Anyway, she just got home this afternoon.  Yeah, 101.3 feever right now.  And rising.  Sa-weet.

     

    I blame Trent.

    Trent


    Good Bad & The Monkey

      posted: 11/6/2009 at 4:56 PM
      Quote from mikeymike on 11/6/2009 at 4:52 PM:
      Since it would be wrong to just let this thread fizzle out, I'll now tell my personal flu-like-symptoms story.  My 12 year old daughter just got home from Nature's Classroom--some hippie program where the 7th graders get on busses and go out to the Berkshiers and stay in some cabin for three days and step in puddles and look at leaves and shit.  Anyway, she just got home this afternoon.  Yeah, 101.3 feever right now.  And rising.  Sa-weet.

       

      I blame Meb.

      Scout7


        posted: 11/6/2009 at 4:57 PM
        Quote from Trent on 11/6/2009 at 4:56 PM:

         

        I blame Meb.

         

        Why do you hate America?

        Trent


        Good Bad & The Monkey

          posted: 11/6/2009 at 4:58 PM

          Meb's a terrorist.

           

          So too is Another One.

          Teresadfp


          One day at a time

            posted: 11/6/2009 at 5:01 PM

            Mike, our school district does the same thing with the 7th graders, at a camp up the coast.  My two boys hated it.  I'm thinking of holding my daughter out of it next year.  It's like $175 or something ridiculous.  I'll keep her home and we can look at wet leaves in our backyard.

             

            I hope your daughter improves quickly.  Yikes.

             

            another one


            The King of Beasts

              posted: 11/6/2009 at 5:18 PM
              Quote from Trent on 11/6/2009 at 4:58 PM:

              Meb's a terrorist.

               

               

              So too is Another One.

               

              what is this ?

              "As a dreamer of dreams and a travelin' man I have chalked up many a mile. Read dozens of books about heroes and crooks, And I've learned much from both of their styles." ~ Jimmy Buffett

               

              "I don't see much sense in that," said Rabbit. "No," said Pooh humbly, "there isn't. But there was going to be when I began it. It's just that something happened to it along the way."”

              Trent


              Good Bad & The Monkey

                posted: 11/6/2009 at 5:19 PM
                modified: 11/6/2009 at 5:20 PM

                You are not American. 

                 

                Ergo, you are a terrorist.

                xor


                  posted: 11/6/2009 at 5:21 PM
                  That is a very microergonomic perspective.

                   

                  zoom-zoom


                  rectumdamnnearkilledem

                    posted: 11/6/2009 at 5:22 PM
                    Quote from mikeymike on 11/6/2009 at 4:52 PM:
                    Since it would be wrong to just let this thread fizzle out, I'll now tell my personal flu-like-symptoms story.  My 12 year old daughter just got home from Nature's Classroom--some hippie program where the 7th graders get on busses and go out to the Berkshiers and stay in some cabin for three days and step in puddles and look at leaves and shit.  Anyway, she just got home this afternoon.  Yeah, 101.3 feever right now.  And rising.  Sa-weet.

                     

                    A couple of weeks ago the junior high kids at my son's school went on a similar program.  While there 6 kids got sick (I think this is out of only 30-40 kids) and went home and one of the teachers had to have someone come drive him home, as he had a fever approaching 104.  Not sure how many kids got sick after they all left camp.


                    My son's best friend was out of school for 2 days with a weekend in-between.  It appears that my son's freakishly strong immune system (this is the kid who has never had an ear infection or been on antibiotics in almost 9 years of life--I think I know where MY immune system went, little thieving punk) helped him dodge that bullet.  Or maybe these kids are actually washing their hands and not sneezing/coughing on each other, for a change.  I know his teacher has been pushing the hand-sanitizer really strongly since the first day of school.


                    Hope your DD's fever doesn't spike too much higher--and that the rest of you don't all catch it (or at least not all at once).  Heather73's hubby and 2 of her 3 kids had it, but she and her eldest son never got sick.  So maybe the rest of you will get lucky.

                    Getting the wind knocked out of you is the only way to

                    remind your lungs how much they like the taste of air.    

                         ~ Sarah Kay

                    Trent


                    Good Bad & The Monkey

                      posted: 11/6/2009 at 5:22 PM
                      Another one probably also rides horses.
                      labrat


                        posted: 11/6/2009 at 5:44 PM
                        Quote from Trent on 11/6/2009 at 5:22 PM:
                        Another one probably also rides horses.

                        The sister and I grew up with multiple horses - we were constantly playing in horse shit and we were sick like once a year.  So, if it was horse flu instead of swine flu, we'd totally be immune.

                        xor


                          posted: 11/6/2009 at 5:55 PM
                          Quote from labrat on 11/6/2009 at 5:44 PM:

                          The sister and I grew up with multiple horses

                           

                          This explains a lot.

                           

                          labrat


                            posted: 11/6/2009 at 5:57 PM
                            Quote from xor on 11/6/2009 at 5:55 PM:

                             

                            This explains a lot.

                             

                            ok - like 3. And an old goat named Carl.

                            another one


                            The King of Beasts

                              posted: 11/6/2009 at 8:00 PM
                              Quote from Trent on 11/6/2009 at 5:22 PM:
                              Another one probably also rides horses.

                               

                              i have never been on a horse, i had a chance once, but the people said "you are too heavy, the horse cannot hold you."

                               

                               

                              "As a dreamer of dreams and a travelin' man I have chalked up many a mile. Read dozens of books about heroes and crooks, And I've learned much from both of their styles." ~ Jimmy Buffett

                               

                              "I don't see much sense in that," said Rabbit. "No," said Pooh humbly, "there isn't. But there was going to be when I began it. It's just that something happened to it along the way."”

                              Trent


                              Good Bad & The Monkey

                                posted: 11/10/2009 at 10:42 AM
                                New York Times, November 10, 2009

                                Fearing a Flu Vaccine, and Wanting More of It

                                By PERRI KLASS, M.D.

                                When I tell nonmedical friends that our clinic is vaccinating children against the H1N1 flu virus, here is what they say.

                                With about half, it is something like: “Oh, my God, our doctor doesn’t have it! Can you get me a dose?” And with the other half, it is something like, “Oh, my God, that brand-new vaccine — do you really think it’s safe?”

                                There is a peculiar duality in the collective cultural mind just now, a kind of pandemic doublethink. Other doctors I know are all eagerly having their own children immunized. Many are answering frantic calls from people desperate for the vaccine. But at the same time, we are all coming up against parents who are determined to refuse that same vaccine.

                                Wondering what history might have to say about this incongruous state of affairs, I called David M. Oshinsky, a professor of history at the University of Texas who wrote the Pulitzer Prize-winning “Polio: An American Story” (Oxford, 2005). Dr. Oshinsky compared the current vaccination campaign with two previous situations.

                                In 1947, a man newly arrived in New York City from Mexico died of smallpox. The authorities “lined up the entire city” and vaccinated everyone, even those who had already been vaccinated, Dr. Oshinsky said. “The entire city was revaccinated,” he added, “and there was no real resistance. People had a sense of risk versus reward and listened to public health officials.”

                                Then there were the polio vaccine trials of 1954, in which parents volunteered more than a million children to receive either an experimental vaccine or a placebo. And while they trusted the medical profession much more than parents do now, there was another factor, Dr. Oshinsky said: “They also had lived through virulent epidemics. That to me is probably the biggest issue of all. You’re dealing with parents who’ve never seen a smallpox epidemic, a polio epidemic.”

                                Few doctors now practicing have ever seen a single case of smallpox, much less an epidemic (thanks to vaccination). But when pediatricians look at today’s strain of H1N1, we tend to be good and scared.

                                Serious cases of this flu are relatively rare but far from unheard of; more than 100 children have died of H1N1. The deaths seem to occur disproportionately in children and pregnant women.

                                So we give the H1N1 vaccine to children whose parents are almost tearfully afraid of the virus, and we try to win over those parents who are just as tearfully afraid of the vaccine. To them, we explain over and over that in fact this is not a brand-new vaccine — it is made with the same techniques as the seasonal influenza vaccine. Yes, it has been tested. Yes, it’s safe. Yes, it’s effective.

                                “When I gave a discussion to a group of parents at my daughter’s day care,” said my friend Dr. Mitchell H. Katz, the San Francisco public health director, “I counseled parents who were worried about the risks of vaccination to give their children — if healthy — the nasal vaccine, because what don’t our children put up their noses?

                                “Given the variety of viruses that our children are exposed to through their noses, it’s very hard to imagine how the vaccination could be that different. I think a lot of people were comforted by that.”

                                Such is the ambivalence out there that some parents who were once scared of getting the vaccine are now scared of not getting it. “I’m still seeing both ends of this dichotomy,” said Dr. John Snyder, a pediatrician at St. Vincent’s Hospital in Manhattan, adding, “It’s a really interesting moment. I can’t recall anything like this before.”

                                A few weeks ago, I gave a talk in the pediatrics department at Vanderbilt University. Tennessee was hit hard by H1N1 in September and October, before vaccine was available.

                                “I’ve seen some pretty healthy kids that got sick really quick with no underlying identified diagnoses,” said Dr. Gregory Plemmons, an assistant professor of pediatrics at the Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt. He spoke of children who needed lots of oxygen, who developed fluid collections in their chests and who stayed in the hospital for days and days.

                                There had been some tragic and terrifying deaths; I read the news articles about a kindergartner — healthy boy, no asthma, no heart disease — who died at Vanderbilt in early September, and the subsequent meetings held at his school with crowds of worried parents, about the sanitizing of the school and the wiping down of the district’s 600 school buses.

                                There was no H1N1 vaccine available in early September, but Dr. Plemmons said his clinic had recently received a limited supply. “I think there’s some parents that are clamoring for it, some that are fearful that the vaccine is just as dangerous as the actual disease,” he said.

                                Dr. Paul A. Offit, chief of infectious diseases at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, has written extensively about vaccines and the antivaccine movement. The H1N1 vaccine has 60 years of experience and technology behind it, he said; it’s safe, it’s clearly effective — and yet many people still have difficulty “figuring out where the real risks lie.”

                                Dr. Offit wondered if people were more comfortable with sins of omission than of commission. Rather than inject a foreign substance into your body, he went on, “you’ll take your chances with a natural virus infection, which may or may not kill you.”

                                We are not seeing an epidemic of devastating disease, at least not now. But we are seeing a lot of infections with a virus against which children have no immunity, and which has already caused more deaths in children under 5 than we would see in years of regular seasonal flu.

                                The divided public mood about H1N1 — fear of vaccine and fear that there won’t be enough of it — reminds Dr. Offit of a joke Woody Allen tells in “Annie Hall.” One woman complains that the food at a Catskills resort is terrible, and her friend agrees: “And such small portions!”

                                So yes, I’m scared. I worry about H1N1 when a young child with cough and fever shows up; I worry about not being able to pick out that healthy child who may go on to get very sick, very fast. That is your basic pediatric nightmare: How do we judge which children are likely to get better and which few may get much sicker, and even die? That is why I find myself trying to offer parents exactly what I want for my own children: vaccine, protection, immunity.

                                In the clinic, we advise parents to have their children immunized, especially those with asthma or other chronic problems. “People all over the city are begging for this vaccine,” I heard another doctor tell a mother. “We’re incredibly lucky that we have it.”

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