There's a sudden, unexplained upsurge in the number of anti-vaxxers coming in to the clinic.

[Aristus]

I'm running out of polite ways to say "My patients get their vaccines, or they get another primary care provider".



If they hate and distrust medical science so much, what motivates them to come in to the clinic in the first place?

[onecaliberal]

1. Im sorry but their children should not be allowed to put the health and lives of others at risk

[Aristus]

2. These patients are at our adult medicine clinic. It's just them.

At least they're not involving children.

But still...

Get your vaccines!

[onecaliberal]

3. Hear hear

[Phoenix61]

5. Just curious but what

vaccines do they have to have? I worked on a military base and had to comply with medical personal vaccine protocol. Seems they were always wanting to stick me with a needle.

[Aristus]

7. Influenza.

Barring an allergy, there's no excuse not to get the flu vaccine. Even if a patient never gets the flu, he/she becomes a vector for transmitting it to someone else.

Time and time again, patients have told me that they get the flu from the vaccine. I ask them what symptoms they get. When they tell me nausea and vomiting, I tell them 'that's not the flu, that's gastroenteritis.'

There's so much misinformation out there. I'm trying to correct it, one patient at a time...

[RobinA]

22. If Someone Who Never

gets the flu can still be a vector, how do we know that a vaccinated person cannot be a vector. Or do we actually know that at all? My late father, a physician, always questioned the non-vector assumption granted to the vaccinated.

[Aristus]

24. Once a person is vaccinated, their immune system develops antibodies to the virus.

Antibodies are helpful in resisting infection even if the strain vaccinated for is not the strain that the patient ends up exposed to.

The way vaccines work is: you don't get sick and then get better; you just don't get sick at all. I try to explain this to my patients who insist that every time they get vaccinated, they end up getting the flu.

It turns out what they get is usually a garden-variety infection like the common cold, and they just think it's the flu. Or often, it's something completely unrelated, like gastroenteritis. But the prevalence of the misnomer 'stomach flu' has taken its toll, and patients think a bout of nausea and vomiting is the flu, and they blame the vaccine.

The presence of antibodies helps to rid the body of the infectious virus, so that the risk of passing on to an unvaccinated person is lowered significantly.

A good way to put it is, if an obnoxious drunk (influenza virus) is in a throwdown with three tough bouncers (viral antibodies), he is really in no shape to be starting another brawl down at the other end of the bar.

[Ms. Toad]

44. If you never get the flu,

you are not a vector for transmission to others - unless it is by physically carrying virus-infected droplets from someone who is infected to someone not yet exposed. The vaccine will not prevent you from becoming a vector via that means because antibodies do not render virus outside of your body inactive. So your assertion as to becoming a vector even if you never get the flu is extremely misleading.

Not getting the flu, and therefore not becoming a vector BECAUSE you have developed antibodies is very different from asserting that someone who doesn't get the flu becomes a vector for transmission.

One of the reasons for not getting the vaccine is that, unlike other vaccinations that target the virus that causes the one one named illness (mumps, for example), influenza is actually hundreds of illnesses caused by different versions of three main viral strains that are not interchangeable, as far as antibodies go. The vaccine is only effective to the extent it causes your body to make antibodies to the strains that are circulating this year (or subsequent years, so long as the artificially induced antibodies hang around - the need for booster shots for virtually every vaccine developed makes it clear that antibodies created in response to vaccines are not equivalent in terms of long-term effectiveness to those created in response to having the illness). Those making the vaccine are notoriously poor at guessing the right strain (this year they only got 10% correct; in a good year it is typically slightly over half).

Many influenza vaccines contain adjuvants - chemicals expressly intended to heighten the immune response. (That does not happen to be the case with this year's vaccine - but more often than not it is.) For those of us with overactive immune systems, intentionally increasing the response of the immune system - especially for a 10% chance that the vaccine actually targets the influenza strain that is prevalent this year - Last year it was 39% effective.

That makes getting an influenza a less intelligent decision unless influenza poses a significantly greater risk than increasing the activity of our autoimmune disorders.

I am not anti-vaccine. Everyone in our family has been vaccinated for all of the standard childhood illnesses, and has had routine booster shots. I am in favor of evaluating the need for each new vaccine that comes along against the risks of the disease, the likely effectiveness of the vaccine, and the risks of the vaccination process (including the risk that adjuvants pose to individuals prone to autoimmune disorders).

While you certainly have every right to impose this restriction on who you see in your practice, I would gladly move my business elsewhere. A doctor who thinks in black and white about a subject that includes shades of gray is not well suited to care for the health conditions that face our medically complex (and auto-immune-disease heavy) family.

[Aristus]

45. I think you may have misunderstood.

I didn't assert that someone who doesn't get the flu isn't a vector for transmission. I said someone who doesn't get the vaccine can be a vector for transmission. For the simple reasons that such a person does not possess the antibodies necessary to combat the flu virus before it can be spread through droplets, etc.

The vaccine will not prevent you from becoming a vector via that means because antibodies do not render virus outside of your body inactive.

That's a rather strange assertion. The goal with vaccination is not to render inactive virus that is not inside the body; it's to combat virus that has gotten inside the body, which it does, very well. Antibodies killing the virus once it has entered the body reduces the risk of transmitting active virus to someone else through coughing, sneezing, etc.

And your assertion regarding huge varieties of influenza making a vaccine ineffective is much more appropriate to level towards the common cold. There are recognized strains of influenza, for which virologists and immunologists make a careful yearly estimate as to which will be the prevalent strain. While this estimate is not always precise, antibodies for one strain of the flu have been demonstrated to be effective against other strains to various degrees in a plurality of cases.

Anti-vaxxer is an unpleasant term. I get that. But if one is spreading anti-vaccine sentiments in a public forum, despite rejecting the label 'anti-vaxxer', then the distinction between the two is negligible.

[avebury]

26. Whether or not your insurance covers it, people should consider

getting the shingles shot. A co-worker recently got shingles and ended up with some nerve damage. Had he realized that nerve damage was a possibility if he got shingles he said he would have paid for the shingle shot and gotten it anyway.

[Aristus]

38. Post-herpetic neuralgia is the term for that.

Anybody who would prefer that to getting vaccinated has some serious issues.

[elfin]

4. Likely in response to this Yale/Penn State study recently published

Snip....

A recent Yale study has called into question the safety of vaccines and could lend fuel to anti-vaccine advocates like Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has already written a piece covering the study on the news site EcoWatch.
The study, published last month in the journal Frontiers in Psychiatry, reports that patients diagnosed with neuropsychiatric disorders like obsessive-compulsive disorder and anorexia nervosa were more likely to have received vaccinations three months prior to their diagnoses. Though the collaboration between researchers at Pennsylvania State University and the Yale Child Study Center yielded results that seem to dispute the safety of vaccines, the authors asserted that the study needs replication on a larger scale and does not establish a causal relationship between vaccines and neuropsychiatric disorders.
“There’s a fair amount of interest in the vaccine safety question, so let’s try to be critical and do further studies that will help examine this issue in a more thorough way,” said James Leckman, professor of pediatrics and one of the study’s five authors.

https://yaledailynews.com/blog/2017/02/21/vaccines-linked-to-mental-disorders-by-yale-study/

ALL OVER the anti-vac, natural med sites, including eco watch.

It seems most of the increased incidences of problems are from flu vaccines, which still contain thimerosal, according to articles. I couldn't find if they took extensive family/genetic histories, because my hunch is if they did, they would find narratives of others in the past few generations with things like OCD.

This is indeed, fuel to this dangerous fire. Wonder if Kennedy money paid for the study.

[dlk]

6. It's Important to Remember that When It Comes to Science, Correlation is Not Causation

Attributing one thing as a cause of another is a common error and someone needs to explain this to Kennedy.

[elfin]

9. I think Yale tries to get that concept into the report, but to no avail

This is going to give pediatricians fits as well as schools. Because the antis will hang their opinions on "It is from YALE!" without understanding.

[csziggy]

49. Here is a perfect example of that!

No Wonder Fries Are So Addictive…

(My grandfather was a math teacher, and this is a story I heard about him many times. Given the end result, I believe the particular topic at hand was statistics.)

Grandfather: “Now, nobody needs to answer, and if you do, I’m not going to tell anyone. How many people here have smoked marijuana?”

(Several hands go up.)

Grandfather: “Okay. Now, keep your hand up if the first time you ever had mashed potatoes came before the first time you ever had marijuana.”

(Everyone’s hand stayed up. And that’s how my grandfather “proved” that mashed potatoes are a gateway drug.)
https://notalwaysright.com/learning/page/2/

[sarge43]

50. The actual gateway drug: Milk

Everyone drank it the first few months of their lives. QED.

My favorite: Cell phones and colony collapse disorder (CCD). Cell phone numbers increased about the same time as honey bee population decreased. Therefore, cell phones are responsible.

[csziggy]

53. Somewhere there is a web site that lets people create correlations

Sure, they are bogus correlation, but they are possible to associate.


This is why the average person does not trust science - they do not understand causation and how to verify or disprove correlations.

[Aristus]

10. The more fervently anti-vaxxers embrace this kind of thing,

the quicker I am to distrust it. As posted above, correlation does not equal causation.

[raging moderate]

52. Obsessive-compulsive disorder and Anorexia nervosa do not suddenly pop up.

People diagnosed with these disorders almost certainly have been afflicted with the problems for much longer than three months. And such problems predate all vaccinations. It is ludicrous to try to pin them on vaccinations.

[cyclonefence]

8. Are these children being home-schooled?

[Aristus]

11. They're not children. They are adult patients.

I don't exhibit any patience at all with anti-vaxxer parents. I just kick them out of the clinic.

[sharp_stick]

12. Our pediatrician

won't take new patients if the parents refuse to vaccinate. The entire practice has this set up as policy.

[Aristus]

13. Good for him/her.

No point in pandering to these dangerous idiots.

[tonyt53]

14. In '63, I was in 4th grade. My dad developed a serious lung issue. Doctors thought it might be TB.

A week after school was out for the summer, my entire family was placed in a hospital under quarantine. Mom, Dad, four girls, and three boys. We were there for 30 days. We were all negative for TB, but Dad had some illness that they had no name for at the time. None of the rest of us had it. We had all had our shots and we all had all of our "sugar cubes" for polio. Both were a massive national campaign to eradicate diseases. NOBODY complained, as people back then understood the realities of what happens when those diseases were left to infect anybody and everybody.

Now we are at a time when the anti-vaxers are screaming and people are listening because they are screaming. It is time for the rest of the sane public to speak up even louder. It is time for the TV cameras and news agencies to turn away from the anti-vaxers. Some of them have children that are autistic, but that nasty 'ol science has shown that vaccinations have nothing to do with it. It comes from the parents of the children. A lot easier to blame the shots instead of genetics. Hell. I have two sisters with Hashimoto's (thyroid), a niece, as well as myself and a sister with MS. Both are autoimmune issues in our genes, and we recognize that. But anti-vaxers? No way in hell.

Time for the anti-vaxers to spend a month in quarantine, or maybe a year. Ignorance and denial of proven science and research by anti-vaxers has no seat at the table and no sympathy from me. Yep, time for quarantine.

[Aristus]

15. +1000.

Thanks!

[Siwsan]

16. Maybe it's not medical science they distrust.

I've had a serious problem trusting doctors, ever since I was lied to about why I was being admitted to the hospital when I was 19. The doctor said it was to check for a possible fungus infection in my lung. Then I saw my paperwork which stated they were actually suspecting it was cancer. Needless to say, I was doped up for the rest of my visit. And, it was neither.

As a result of that, and several other experiences, I have a significant case of 'white coat' hypertension. My BP is within normal range until I get near a doctor. While I was in the service, I was put on medication that caused me to completely lose my appetite and a significant amount of weight, and the medication did nothing to change the pattern of my readings. By the time I left the Navy, I was pinning my uniform waist band to keep things from falling off.

When he was 70, my dad was diagnosed with and treated for MS, when he actually had a brain tumor. The MS treatment hastened his death.

My grandmother's doctor put her on HRT when she was in her 70's, to prevent her forming a 'widow's hump'. She died of uterine cancer.

My when my aunt had cancer, her boss, who was a man of great influence, and her doctor decided she didn't need to know - not sure what they told her, but when she developed cancer again, (uterine cancer, after being prescribed HRT) her sister said 'if you beat it once, you can beat it again. she was shocked, since she had been told the first surgery was for a benign tumor. The uterine cancer killed her. Needless to say that now, the women in my family do not take HRT.

Another aunt was so overmedicated that she went into a state of pharmaceutically induced delirium. The problem was with too much blood pressure medication. While in the hospital, they were giving her potassium supplements. When they discharged her from the hospital, they assured us they had decreased her medications. When the actual paperwork came through, it indicated that they had INCREASED it!! My Aunt was 98 years old, and about 9 months into recovering from a broken hip. We made the decision it was time to just keep her comfortable. Less than 48 hours after they deemed her healthy enough to be discharged from the hospital, she was dead.

So, sometimes that distrust is based on something more significant than 'Woo'.

[Aristus]

17. There certainly are a lot of mistakes in the medical profession.

Just like in any profession. But this is not an area in which we are wrong. Vaccines are proven to reduce mortality from infectious disease.

[Siwsan]

23. I agree about vaccinations

I had quite a few while in the Military, that's for sure, and they did me no harm.

I don't know what immunizations I had as a child, other than small pox and polio, because I did get the measles, chicken pox and mumps. I remember that I never felt particularly ill - just itchy. And I've never had the flu so I don't get flu shots. Truth be told, I rarely even ever get colds, anymore. I give credit to my high intake of garlic. It keeps either the germs or the infected people at bay.

I suspect when my strong immune system finally goes, it will take me with it.

[Aristus]

25. Glad to hear about your excellent immune system.

What I would recommend is getting your flu vaccine so that you don't end up becoming a vector for transmitting the virus to someone else. (See my related posts about this very thing elsewhere in this thread.)

[steve2470]

19. There's good docs and bad docs, as in every profession

I firmly believe most docs are good. Sorry to hear of bad experiences!

[Siwsan]

28. It is very hard to move past those experiences

And the specter of 'for-profit' medicine has only deepened my distrust. I strongly suspect that was the leading cause of what happened to my Aunt. Granted, she was 98, but at that age, the amount of medication she was prescribed was irresponsible.

She was at an assisted living/skilled nursing facility and I was paying several hundred dollars A MONTH for just the OTC medications. I wasn't allowed to buy them, myself. They had to order them through a vendor, at an extreme mark up.

[CanSocDem]

18. I guess they think 'since Trump', anything is...

....possible. Or, 'since Trump', one better learn to do things oneself. Either way, as a great believer in the fundamental strength of the human spirit, any attempt to re-engage humans with their personal vitality and social conscience is a good thing.

If, you as a "primary care provider", see health care in America as "vaccination" or access to 'medical insurance', then you are part of the problem. Victimology is big business in the American medical industry. If you're not happy with your medical treatment , there is a busload of lawyers ready to sue players in the industry.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the goal public health and social justice?

Whose side are you on?


.

[Aristus]

20. I'm not sure I followed all of that.

Fist of all, I'm not a "primary care provider", I'm a primary care provider (no quotes).

And as a PA who is trying to ensure that my patients get the best medical care, I'm not sure how I could be the problem. As I stated above, it's misinformation, deliberate or otherwise, that is the problem. If it's simple patient ignorance, I can cure that; patient education is my favorite part of the job.

Anyway, not really sure where you were going with that post...

[Aristus]

34. No. After nearly eight years in practice, I'm pretty sure about my job.

'Patient education' simply means giving my patients the kind of medical knowledge that can help them remain compliant with their treatment plans. It also consists of correcting misinformation that can be deleterious to their continued good health ("Gatorade is good for you, right? I drink lots of it!" for example).

The most important medical information is the kind that results in effective prevention of disease. This, ideally, would decrease the number of patient visits, and the number of daily clinical encounters. I'm actually happy to see fewer patients. Not more of them. I keep pretty busy, and the fewer patients I have on the schedule, the more time I can spend with the ones I have. Which results in improved clinical outcomes in nearly every case.

I sense that you have had some incompetent, ineffective, apathetic, or poorly-trained medical providers in the past. So your concerns in that case are certainly valid. But they don't really apply to me.

[steve2470]

21. Sigh

I am not even.....

ARISTUS IS ONE OF THE GOOD Guys!

CANNOT SAY THIS STRONGLY ENOUGH!

Good day.

[blue cat]

27. Our clinic adopted the policy

That they cannot accept anti-vaxxers in order to protect their other patients, like ones that have a lowered immune system. They are given a chance to catch up or they are released from practice.

[Aristus]

30. Excellent policy.

I'm hoping that sooner or later, anti-vaxxers will realize that, if everywhere they go, there's a problem, then they're the problem.

Probably not, though. The more evidence you show to the deluded, the more they double-down on their delusion.

[Brainstormy]

29. It isn't the SAFETY, it's the EFFICACY

Flu vaccines are a shot in the dark. This year's flu may not be last year's flu.


https://www.cbsnews.com/news/this-years-flu-vaccine-may-only-be-10-effective-experts-warn/

and for older people, the efficacy rates are terrible!

https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/georgia/articles/2017-06-21/flu-vaccine-ineffective-for-people-65-and-older-last-winter



But the cost of the flu shot, whoever pays it, is 100% effective for Big Pharma.

Everyone who doesn't get a flu shot is not an ANTI-VAXER, either.

[Aristus]

31. Actually, the flu vaccine can protect against the flu even if it's not the strain researchers

were predicting.

An off-strain vaccine can offer up to 60-70% assurance of protection, which is a betting-percentage.

And Big Pharma doesn't make their money from vaccines. They're actually a money-loser. They produce them because they are required to by the CDC, and they'll take a tax deduction in return.

[Brainstormy]

35. seriously?

You believe Big Pharma loses money on flu vaccines? On anything? Ever? OK. You're entitled to your opinion.

I do, however, sincerely wish you would research the efficacy rates for the flu vaccines. The CDC has a chart. I'm not looking at it but I don't recall the efficacy rate to have hit as high as 60% in ten years. There are numerous other studies out there. Many! Also, please research the efficacy rate on older people as a separate issue. I an NOT an anti-vaxer, but there's a a great deal of misunderstanding about flu vaccines. And I would very much like to see some back-up date on your 60-70% protection. I have never read anything anywhere close to that.

Thanks.

[Aristus]

37. The viral effectiveness of the vaccine against H1N1 is in the neightborhood of 57-65%.

Not the 60-70% I posted prior to consulting the CSC in order to refresh my memory.

But I suspect that's not your real objection.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

48. I have been getting flu shots every year since they were available.

In 1968 I got the Hong Kong flu (H3N2) and I've never been so sick, before or since. I was a healthy college student then and it still knocked me on my ass; now that I'm old it probably would do me in. If I can reduce the odds of getting that sick, even by a little, I'd stand in line outside Walgreens in subzero cold even if it was like waiting all night for the new iPhone or Harry Potter book.

[Tobin S.]

40. From the CDC's site

"CDC conducts studies each year to determine how well the influenza (flu) vaccine protects against flu illness. While vaccine effectiveness can vary, recent studies show that flu vaccination reduces the risk of flu illness by between 40% and 60% among the overall population during seasons when most circulating flu viruses are well-matched to the flu vaccine. In general, current flu vaccines tend to work better against influenza B and influenza A(H1N1) viruses and offer lower protection against influenza A(H3N2) viruses. See “Does flu vaccine effectiveness vary by type or subtype?” and “Why is flu vaccine typically less effective against influenza A H3N2 viruses?” for more information."

and

"What are the benefits of flu vaccination?

While how well the flu vaccine works can vary, there are many reasons to get a flu vaccine each year.

Flu vaccination can keep you from getting sick with flu.

Flu vaccination can reduce the risk of flu-associated hospitalization, including among children and older adults.

Vaccine effectiveness for the prevention of flu-associated hospitalizations was similar to vaccine effectiveness against flu illness resulting in doctor’s visits in a comparative study published in 2016.

Flu vaccination is an important preventive tool for people with chronic health conditions.

Flu vaccination has been associated with lower rates of some cardiac (heart) events among people with heart disease, especially among those who experienced a cardiac event in the past year.

Flu vaccination also has been associated with reduced hospitalizations among people with diabetes (79%) and chronic lung disease (52%).

Vaccination helps protect women during and after pregnancy. Getting vaccinated can also protect a baby after birth from flu. (Mom passes antibodies onto the developing baby during her pregnancy.)

A study that looked at flu vaccine effectiveness in pregnant women found that vaccination reduced the risk of flu-associated acute respiratory infection by about one half.

There are studies that show that flu vaccine in a pregnant woman can reduce the risk of flu illness in her baby by up to half. This protective benefit was observed for several months after birth.

And a 2017 study was the first of its kind to show that flu vaccination can significantly reduce a child’s risk of dying from influenza.

Flu vaccination also may make your illness milder if you do get sick. (For example a 2017 study showed that flu vaccination reduced deaths, intensive care unit (ICU) admissions, ICU length of stay, and overall duration of hospitalization among hospitalized flu patients.)

Getting vaccinated yourself also protects people around you, including those who are more vulnerable to serious flu illness, like babies and young children, older people, and people with certain chronic health conditions."

https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/qa/vaccineeffect.htm



Personally, I get a flu vaccination every year and I've never had the flu in my life. Some of it is due to luck, but it looks like a good part of it is due to being vaccinated every year.

As for whether Big Pharma makes money on flu vaccines, they do make money on them, but it is a very small part of their overall net profit, and there are far more profitable drugs that they could be putting those resources toward if they were simply money making machines.



"But let’s put this in context of the worldwide sales of all pharmaceutical products in 2013–nearly US$1 trillion. In other words, various flu vaccines make up less than 0.3% of worldwide sales of Big Pharma, so from a strategic point of view, it’s not that interesting. Just for context, cholesterol lowering drugs, like statins, sold more than $33 billion two years ago. If I were a Big Pharma executive, I’d be telling my R&D and Marketing divisions to invest in new statins, because the potential return on investment could be 10X higher.

Leaving the meta level review of flu vaccine sales, let’s examine those sales in context of the individual Big 3 companies in this particular vaccine sector:

Sanofi Pasteur (division of Sanofi). Total sales $41.6 billion. Flu vaccine sales $1.3 billion. In other words, flu vaccine makes up around 3% of their sales

Glaxo SmithKline. Total sales $32.3 billion. Flu vaccine sales $420 million, or 1.3% of their total sales.

Novartis. Total sales $57.9 billion. Flu vaccine sales $215 million, or 0.4% of their sales.

Note: the remaining $1.1 billion in flu vaccine sales is spread over 15 other manufacturers, none of whom have a major market share."

https://www.skepticalraptor.com/skepticalraptorblog.php/flu-vaccine-myth-big-pharma-profits/


So you could argue that Big Pharma loses money on these vaccines simply by not putting those resources toward more profitable R&D. But they do turn a profit on vaccines.

[malthaussen]

55. His opinion is supported by practice and knowledge...

... not all opinions are created equal.

-- Mal

[RobinA]

39. Watch Out!

I got a comment deleted for suggesting nicely that someone research flu shot efficacy. And I made no comment at all about said efficacy. “Not mainstream” or some equally weird reason.

[gopiscrap]

33. it's the dumbing down of the nation by

30 years of Fox and the repukes, sadly it's working all half the people in this country want are bread and circuses

[alarimer]

36. Show them stories about dead babies, who died from preventable illnesses

That they were too young to be vaccinated for.

Anti-vaxxers essentially killed those babies.

But the dumb-asses think only of themselves and not their impact (potentially fatal) on others. I would say fuck anti-vaxxers but itmight be a bad idea to get too close.

[TexasBushwhacker]

41. Yup. The only thing vaccines cause is

Adulthood

[alarimer]

43. We wiped out many childhood killers

I think the flu vaccine is a good idea, but it is not really in the same category since we will always have influenza. It still saves numerous lives, young and old.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

46. Was that really necessary?

Yes, Jenny McCarthy is a crackpot, but her cheesecake photos have nothing to do with that, and posting a photo like this to discredit her is sexist.

[marble falls]

47. I appolgize for those of us that have such a love/hate attitude about women. I am embarrassed...

but at least the jury system here works well.

[secondwind]

51. This worries me tremendously. I have a niece in Miami with two beautiful daughters, ages 2and 5.

They are not vaccinated. She refuses. All her friends are the same.

[yardwork]

54. The school system won't allow them to enroll until they're vaccinated.

[TuxedoKat]

56. Well

you will be happy to know I got my first Flu shot this year. I don't know that I ever had the flu except maybe as a child, so didn't think it was that necessary. I asked a pharmacist about them last year and he said some alarming things about the flu which I didn't know, and at about the same time I read about a healthy 20 year old who died from it. So we all got them this year except my oldest daughter -- need her to go get one asap.

[Aristus]

57. I'm glad you got your vaccine.

Vaccines prevent so many deaths from influenza that we tend to forget that the flu is even deadly.

In 1918, the Spanish Flu (which actually started in Kansas; man, we blame Hispanics for everything...) infected around 500 million people. And anywhere from 50-100 million people died as a result.

I don't know how we forget such things. But no longer dying from once-deadly diseases can do that to people's memories...