Thursday, October 22, 2009

To Take or not to Take the Swine Flu Shot

I saw some interesting videos about the swine flu. One from the seventies is especially worth checking out: :
> http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x9mh9f_swine-flu-1976-propaganda_webcam I did the math on it: 46 million people were inoculated against the flu and there were 4000 lawsuits by people who contracted Guillain-Barre Syndrome, which means about one in eleven thousand suffered enough to file a lawsuit. The question that's not answered is how many lives might have been saved among those who would have gotten the flu if they had not been given the shots. As always, it's a crap shoot. I once got very sick from a smallpox vaccination, but thank God I'm still around to tell about it.

A little info from the front lines. My daughter who is an attending physician working full-time in a Portland hospital told us she got a swine flue shot a few days ago. The shot takes about three weeks to become effective. According to her a lot more cases are beginning to show up day by day, and you can do a google on "frequency of swine flu cases" to see what the bigger picture is. Two women across the street from us came back early from a road-trip in their RV because one of them had contracted the swine flu. (She's recovering slowly.)

Of course, it always pays to be suspicious as long as somebody somewhere is out to make a buck, and there is money to be made in vaccine sales.

So what's the answer? The better informed you are from as many sources as possible and the more willing you are to do a little detective work, the better the odds you will make the right decision. It goes without saying that staying in good spirits is always conducive to your health. If things are getting you down, get in touch with a life coach.