Flu vaccine

[annie123]

Been pressured into having a flu injection as I am a Reg Nurse .

Have been advised best not to have as have Graves’ disease and specialist told me with impaired immunity best not to introduce flu vaccine as it may have the opposite effect .

Anyone out there had the flu vaccine?

[greygoose]

healthunlocked.com/thyroidu...

This is the latest on-going discussion on the subject.

[SeasideSusie Remembering]

Annie

An interesting thread from yesterday

healthunlocked.com/thyroidu...

And another one today

healthunlocked.com/thyroidu...

Lots more recent threads about flu vaccine, some very strongly for and some very strongly against. I'm in the against camp even though I am in two of the at risk groups.

Who is pressuring you and why go against your specialist's advice?

[bantam12]

I always have one, doesn't cause me any problems.

[Emyloulou]

Nurse or not I told me manager I’m not having it and they had to accept that. I’m not prepared to risk my health for the sake of patients.

That might sound selfish but tough x

[Angel_of_the_North]

It can't work as it should, so it's really pointless getting it. See healthunlocked.com/thyroidu...

and Dr. Peter Doshi, writing in the online BMJ (British Medical Journal), states that every year, hundreds of thousands of respiratory samples are taken from flu patients in the US and tested in labs. But only a small percentage of these samples show the presence of a flu virus. I doubt the Uk is any different.

So, most people "diagnosed" by doctors with flu have no flu virus in their bodies -

So they don't have flu.

Therefore, even if you assume the flu vaccine is useful and safe, it couldn't possibly prevent all those "flu cases" that aren't flu.

Here's the exact quote from Peter Doshi's BMJ review, "Influenza: marketing vaccines by marketing disease" (BMJ 2013; 346:f3037):

"...even the ideal influenza vaccine, matched perfectly to circulating strains of wild influenza and capable of stopping all influenza viruses, can only deal with a small part of the 'flu' problem because most 'flu' appears to have nothing to do with influenza. Every year, hundreds of thousands of respiratory specimens are tested across the US. Of those tested, on average 16% are found to be influenza positive.

"...It's no wonder so many people feel that 'flu shots' don't work: for most flus, they can't."

Because most diagnosed cases of flu aren't flu.