My spouse and the office workers have had the flu. I know quite well that nausea and vomiting are uncommon symptoms of influenza, even though many people mistakenly label a stomach disorder (viral, bacterial, food poisoning, etc.) the flu. You should not assume that I am mistaking a stomach bug for the flu, especially since I expressly identified the primary symptoms they were experiencing - which did not include nausea and vomiting.
Please read more carefully. I did not ever, nor would I ever - except in very unusual circumstances, suggest that anyone got the flu from the flu shot. (That is impossible, aside from extremely uncommon circumstances in which a person with a compromised immune system is vaccinated wtih live attenuated influenza virus. The vaccination most people receive contains inactiviated virus, and the vast majority of people are not immunocompromised to the level that would make even an LAIV vaccine risky.)
In fact my initial post in this thread uses CDC statistics to demonstrate the issue the OP raised, and the reason that my coworkers and spouse get the flu about half the time despite having been vaccinated:
We're just not that good about predicting what strain of the flu will be coming around in a given season. If the immunization targets the wrong strains, it provides little to no protection. People who aren't protected - and who are exposed - have a good chance of coming down with the flu. Hence my coworkers and spouse are coming down with influenza not because they received a vaccination, but in spite of it - because over the past 4 seasons, the vaccination only 47% of the influenza A predictions were on target, and only 52% of the influenza B predictions were on target. That's a coin toss, and hte average is higher than normal because in one of the 4 years they actually managed to accurately predict the strains - but in two years they were 10% and 13% accurate - they missed nearly 90% of the viruses.
I have no intention of getting the vaccine at this stage of my life, with my current health status. Period.
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