To take or not? Haven't got one yet. DH has diabetes? Thanks

Half the people i know who get flu shots complain of being sick the next day. I just cannot grasp why people get them.

Well, I had both the flu and the H1N1 shot today. I have never had the shot before. I also have diabetes, and asthma. I got sick last winter and it stuck with me for months. I am hoping that this helps. I have 3 kids, out of 5, that have already had their shot, and they never got sick whatsoever. i have heard of some people who seem to get sick afterwards, not sure.

For about the past 15 or more years, I've had a flu shot every year. I've never gotten even a little bit sick from one.

Thanks still thinking.

Got both shots this year, seasonal flu and H1N1 (swine). I felt fine. Some fraction of folks do feel draggy the next day. Vaccines rely on activating an immune response.

The target groups for flu vaccines are basically people in one of two categories:

1. they're at risk for serious illness or death because of their age or immune status, or
2. they're part of a group that transmits the disease easily to others, or transmits it to vulnerable groups like unwell people.

Beyond that, vaccinating healthy people is gravy; if you keep people from getting the flu, you save them and the country money and time lost, and you prevent a possible additional burden on the health system.

I know there are kids getting paralized for life because of vaccines although it's a minor percentage.

The thing is though, we don't even know if the shots actually work or not because they don't do double-blind clinical trials on them.Read this

It angers me because there is a possible risk, although very small, to getting flu shots and I'd at least like to know if they actually work before taking that risk. And I'd also like to know if my Vitamin D3 status really is protecting me from the flu.

Man, they could spend some money on some basic research and possibly prevent this flu nonsense from happening every year.

I agree Nancy. Although I would add vit A to the list, I am in basic agreement that you can cut your infection rate down really low with proper nutrition. Totally incredible that no one does a double blind study on it. It would be incredibly cheap to do it.

You know I used to get 3-4 colds per year lasting over a week with very annoying symptoms. Now I never get them. My flus are rare too and are very mild and short lasting. I attribute it to the fat soluble vitamins, abundant in LC eating (and I supplement them). You could say I've cut my own suffering down by 90 percent. Sooo... why no studies? It's a no brainer!

I've never had a flu shot - and never had the flu either, until this summer. I'm assuming that the flu I had was the new H1N1 since it was such an unusual time of year for flu, and the new swine flu is/was the only thing circulating.

Meanwhile, I don't think there's much chance of me even being able to get an H1N1 vaccine anyway, so any decision about it is kind of irrelevant. There are two single-day clinics set up for the entire county, and those are for priority groups. This is between now and January. Maybe they've added more clinics, I don't know - I'll have to go check. But so far, there doesn't seem to be any chance of non-priority groups getting this vaccine in time to do any good.

However - I have some family members who just got their H1N1 vaccine and their seasonal flu shots (Canada) and they are just fine. They've been getting an annual flu shot for years now, and never had a problem. No flu either

I think it takes about ten days for the vaccine to reach full effect, so yeah - it's possible that someone gets sick before the vaccine takes effect. It's *not* the vaccine, it's that they were coming down with something already.

These two family members of mine (one has diabetes) are at risk for an increased chance of severe complications from flu, any kind of flu. So yeah - they get their shots. They also got a pneumonia shot as well.

A vaccine afaik is a watered down version of the virus, so getting sick from would be not that unusual.

I am going to wait and see how many people get sick and die due to the vaccine before I even think about getting it. I don't trust doctors and I trust Big Pharma even less. Big business at work and they've got everyone suckered in. The fact that Big Pharma can't be sued if you or your loved ones die from the shot tells you something

Hot topic these days!

I have not and will never get the flu shot.

We did have the H1N1 in the house in July. We survived, even with asthmatics in the house.

You're so right Leeza, a hot topic indeed.

As a parent you really have to go with the knowledge of your child's environment and health disposition. I'd so prefer NOT to, but with the alarming rate of absenteeism in dd's HS due to influenza like symptoms and her typical lackadaisy attitude *I see her constantly touching her face, putting pens in her mouth as she concentrates, etc..!*
ACK!

My dd is classified as a high level asthmatic. Her 'triggers' are virus/infection. A bad cold can put her in ICU for substantial periods.
We simply feel we HAVE to inoculate her as well as ourselves at this time; even given the risks.

It will be the second time in my life I've received a 'flu-shot'. This year the whole fam is going for both H1N1 as well as the seasonal strain of influenza.

Yeah, I read the Atlantic article when it came out. As I'm sure you're aware, it's not quite as simple as "does the vaccine work, or doesn't it?" because the outcomes depend on who gets vaccinated. With something like a flu vaccine, where degree of immunity appears to depend on one's ability to muster an immune response to the shot, maybe there's little point to vaccinating the elderly and sick but a lot of point to vaccinating healthy young people. (I'm not suggesting that this is actually what we should do.)

The Japanese used to mass-vaccinate schoolchildren until about 20 years ago and there's some evidence that they were preventing ~40,000-50,000 excess deaths in the general population per year by doing so. If schoolchildren are efficient disease vectors, then an adequate herd immunity ought to protect vulnerable persons like the sick and elderly.

Anyway, I agree that it's a tough question to address. I got my H1N1 shot because I work in a high-density environment with a lot of young people, and I'm young enough myself that I'm on the border of the targeted groups.

As far as nutritional status and infection — medical research over the last few thousand years has followed this trajectory of

• How can we keep the sick from dying?
• How can we shorten the course of sickness?
• How can we prevent sickness in cases where we think we see a direct, obvious link between doing/not doing X and getting sick?
• How can we prevent sickness in cases where we're not so sure about the direct links?

When time and money are scarce, immediate concerns usually trump future concerns so the top of the list usually trumps the bottom. Sometimes answers from the top of the list trickle down to affect the other questions when we get lucky. And of course these days the whole track is affected by "How can someone profit from treating a sickness?" Not to mention that preventive nutrition in controlled studies and epidemiology are both really damned hard to do properly, as Gary Taubes has pointed out. Confounding factors, compliance issues, population composition issues...