This is to try to counter all the extreme hate filled language towards people who may not want to get immunized. Apparetnly we are socially irresponsible, ct nuts whose minds are filled with anti-scientific quakery.
So let me list the reasons why I am not getting the vaccination.
- Viruses mutate like crazy. Even the standard flu which we have been vaccinating for for years mutates regularly and the CDC ha to guess each year which one to vaccinate for. With Swine Flu being a whole new strain which is probably mutating even faster than the standard flu I am not sure how effective the vaccination would be. Neither is the CDC:
From the CDC:
2009 H1N1 infl uenza vaccine Vaccines are available to protect against 2009 H1N1 influenza. • These vaccines are made just like seasonal flu vaccines.
• They are expected to be as safe and effective as seasonal flu vaccines.
• They will not prevent "influenza-like" illnesses caused by other viruses
Link
Expected means they do not know.
The government BEGAN testing this vaccine in AUGUST OF THIS YEAR!! So we have a whole 2.5 months of data. Link
"For a lot of reasons this is not a typical vaccine trial," says Stephens, whose center is one of the locations of the clinical trials. "Because of the urgency for getting this vaccine approved for public use, we need to hurry ... we're looking mostly for safety data."
So researchers may not have data on how well the vaccine causes the body to create antibodies for several weeks. But because the vaccine is formulated and manufactured just like the seasonal flu vaccine, they're hoping for and betting on positive results, says Stephens. And, because the vaccine only uses part of the virus — a protein extracted from the virus grown in eggs — people can't get the disease from the vaccine.
Let me repeat that "HOPEING FOR AND BETTING ON POSITIVE RESULTS". Wow, talk about real scientific facts there.
From wiki: with regards to the standard flu:
Clinical trials of vaccines
Studies in the real world are uniquely difficult. The vaccine may not be matched to the virus in circulation; virus prevalence varies widely between years, and influenza is often confused with other influenza-like illnesses.[34]
Nevertheless, multiple clinical trials of both live and inactivated influenza vaccines have been performed and their results pooled and analyzed in several recent meta-analyses. Studies on live vaccines have very limited data, but these preparations may be more effective than inactivated vaccines.[33] The meta-analyses examined the efficacy and effectiveness of inactivated vaccines in adults,[35] children,[36] and the elderly.[37][38] In adults, vaccines show high efficacy against the targeted strains, but low effectiveness overall, so the benefits of vaccination are small, with a one-quarter reduction in risk of contracting influenza but no significant effect on the rate of hospitalization.[35] However, the risk of serious complications from influenza is small in adults, so unless the effect from vaccination is large it might not have been detected. In children, vaccines again showed high efficacy, but low effectiveness in preventing "flu-like illness", in children under two the data are extremely limited, but vaccination appeared to confer no measurable benefit.[36] In the elderly, vaccination does not reduce the frequency of influenza, but seems to reduce pneumonia, hospital admission and deaths from influenza or pneumonia.[37][38] However, the measured effectiveness of the vaccine in the elderly varies depending on whether the population studied is in residential care homes, or in the community, with the vaccine appearing more effective in an institution. This apparent effect is unlikely to be real and may be due to selection bias affecting the analysis of the data, or differences in diagnosis and surveillance.
Overall, the benefit of influenza vaccination is clear in the elderly and vaccination of children may be beneficial. Vaccination of adults is not predicted to produce significant improvements in public health. The apparent contradiction between vaccines with high efficacy, but low effectiveness, may reflect the difficulty in diagnosing influenza under clinical conditions and the large number of strains circulating in the population.[34] In contrast, during an influenza pandemic, where a single strain of virus is responsible for illnesses, an effective vaccine could produce a large decrease in the number of cases and be highly effective in controlling an epidemic.[39] However, such a vaccine would have to be produced and distributed rapidly to have maximum effect.[40]
[edit] Effectiveness of vaccine
Link
THe studies show they decreased absenteesim but also state it did not reduce illness. So the regular flu vaccine, the one we have perfected over years of use is not proven to decrease your chance of getting it, just decreases the chance that you will have a serious bout of the flu. A good thing I agree. However, we know nothing really about the new flu vaccine. Does it really work?
They are manufacturing it the same way as the old vaccine but as we keep reading over and over this flu is new and unique, the lung scarring for example. If this is the case, I would rather not introduce a vaccine into my system that may not even work in the first place. What would be the point?
One of my other reasons for not wanting to take this vaccine is this, yes I distrust Big Pharma. People here keep bringing up the older vaccines as proof that we can trust these people when it comes to vaccines.
Ok folks, let's take a step back in time shall we? When the measles, polio, chicken pox etc vaccinations were developed there was NO BIG PHARMA!! Health care was not an industry but a higher calling. The people who went into acutal medicine for the most part did it because they cared about people. Now it seems a lot of them are in it for the money, note the growing lack of general practitioners vs specialists. Back the we did not have drug reps knocking on the Drs and the governments door, bribing them to push their wares. We did not have drug companies put out drugs like Chantix. It may help you quit smoking but it may make you commit suicide as well. Hey you can't smoke if you are dead right?
Chantix and suicide
More reports of erratic behavior and suicide have been associated with the use of Chantix, a drug that was designed to help people stop smoking and was approved by the Food and Drug Administration just under two years ago. In November 2007, the FDA issued a statement that they are reviewing the possible Chantix suicide side effects and that there have been over 100 reports received of suicidal thoughts and severe behavioral changes within just a few weeks of taking the drug.
Since its approval by the FDA, over 4 million Americans have received a prescription for the drug Chantix. Smoking is the leading preventable cause of disease and premature death in the United States and accounts for more than 400,000 deaths every year and, as many US Recall News visitors report, Chantix has helped many of these people quit smoking after years or decades of nicotine addiction.
Because of these reports, personal injury and dangerous drug attorneys are evaluating the potential of Chantix lawsuits on behalf of people who have committed suicide or suffered severe injury as a result of the drug’s adverse side effects.
Chantix (generic varenicline tartrate) was approved by the FDA in May 2006 as part of a review that drastically shortened the time required for the drug maker to begin selling the medication
Some more information on Chantix:
What Pfizer also keeps hidden is the fact that we have no credible study data showing that Chantix is safe and effective for smokers having any significant medical condition, including alcohol abuse, as Pfizer intentionally excluded them from its five initial studies. Profits have again been elevated above the time and expense needed to produce quality risk assessment data. Excluded groups truly are human Guinea pigs, rolling risk dice and now being experimented upon, most without any warning whatsoever.
This fact was first brought on November 20, 2007, when U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced that it "has received reports of suicidal thoughts and aggressive and erratic behavior in patients who have taken Chantix" and was conducting an investigation. What the FDA didn't disclose, but was documented by a November 29, 2007 news story, was that the FDA was aware that Chantix had been implicated in at least 55 suicides. By January 18, 2008, concerns over agitation, depression and suicide had grown so great that Pfizer announced that labeling had been changed to warn users.
Link
Chantix is just one of the many drugs rushed through testing and into production every year that we later find out kill or somehow seriously maim a good number of people who take them.
So back to the swine flu vaccination.
So we have had the vaccine for a whole two months, there have been no ACTUAL trials to see if actually reduces your chance of getting the swine flu, nor are the any trials of any possible long term side affects. Let's look at Gardasil another vacccine that was rushed to production:
Link
A government report released Tuesday raises new questions about the safety of the cervical cancer vaccine Gardasil. The vaccine has been linked to 32 unconfirmed deaths and shows higher incidences of fainting and blood clots than other vaccines. But while some physicians expressed concern over the findings, other doctors viewed the report as reassuring, showing that the vaccine was not associated with any more unusual and serious side effects as other vaccines
Gee death and blood clots sound pretty damn serious don't you think? So we have Drs. saying it is ok to die from a vaccine that may or may not prevent HPV.
As of February 2009[update], 40 million doses of Gardasil had been distributed worldwide.[27] According to the Centers for Disease Control, the vaccine was tested in thousands of females (ages 9 to 26).[28] The Food and Drug Administration and Centers for Disease Control say that the vaccine has only minor side effects, such as soreness around the injection area. The FDA and CDC consider the vaccine to be safe. It does not contain mercury, thiomersal or live virus or dead virus, only virus-like particles, which cannot reproduce in the human body.[29]
The most recent update on adverse events was published by JAMA and looked at data from the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), covering 12,424 reported adverse events after about 23 million doses of vaccine between June 2006 and December 2008.[33] Most adverse effects were minor and not greater than background rates compared with other vaccines, the exception being higher rates for syncope and venous thromboembolic events.[33] Venous thromboembolic events were noted in 56 reports at a rate of 0.2 cases per 100,000 doses distributed and included 19 cases of pulmonary embolism, 4 of which were fatal.[33] Overall, 772 events (6.2% of the total) were described as serious and included 32 deaths (0.1 per 100,000 doses).[33]
Other adverse events include local site reactions ( 7.5 cases per 100,000 doses distributed), headaches (4.1 cases per 100,000 doses distributed), hypersensitivity reactions (3.1 cases per 100,000 doses distributed), and urticaria (hives) (2.6 cases per 100,000 doses distributed).[33]
The FDA and CDC monitor events to see if there are patterns, or more serious events than would be expected from chance alone.[35] The majority (68%) of side effects data were reported by the manufacturer, but in about 90% of the manufacturer reported events, no follow-up information was given that would be useful to investigate the event further.[33] In February 2009, the Health Ministry of Spain suspended use of one batch of Gardasil after health authorities in the Valencia region reported that two girls had become ill after receiving the injection. Merck has stated that there was no evidence Gardasil was responsible for the two illnesses.[27]
Link
As far as the effectiveness:
What's intriguing to me is how much is still unknown about Gardasil. A Merck study published last year shows that a woman's antibody response to the vaccine—which determines its effectiveness—depends in part on whether she has been previously exposed to HPV through sexual contact. In the study, 16-to-26-year-olds who, before they got Gardasil, tested positive for HPV antibodies (an indication that they'd been infected) had a stronger vaccine-induced antibody response to three of the four HPV strains Gardasil protects against compared with those who initially tested negative for HPV.
"It would not be surprising to see better protection against cervical cell abnormalities in those who had previous exposure to HPV before being vaccinated," Harper says, "compared to those who were virgins when they received Gardasil." More information about this will be known in May with the publication of a study using the HPV vaccine Cervarix, which is routinely used in Great Britain but not yet available in the United States.
There's a strong caveat here, though. While most HPV infections clear the body on their own without causing any harm, women who get vaccinated after they engage in intercourse leave open the possibility that they could be infected, during that initial sexual activity, with a cancer-causing HPV strain that their immune system can't fend off.
Link
By the way Gardisal just got approved for use in males too. I wonder how well they tested the reactions on the males since all the trials were on females. Seeing as how Merck had that horrible year in 08 with a lot of patents expiring and lawsuits I am sure there was NO connection between that and how hard they pushed Gardisal and now the male version. Yeah right.
So just who IS making the swine flu vaccine? All the drug companies were racing to try to get something out ASAP. I am sure they all cared about the health of humaniy right?
Link
Pharmaceutical companies are racing to develop a vaccine against swine flu ahead of a possible spread of the virus in the northern hemisphere autumn and winter.
Officials are worried vaccine supplies will prove tight and sales are expected to provide a windfall for the global drugs industry.
and the winner is: Glaxo Smith Kline currently seems to be the one that is making their committments and making lots of money.
They would be the company that brough us Paxil. The anti-depressant that ended up causing birth defects: Link
STATUS OF PAXIL LAWSUITS: About 600 Paxil lawsuits have been filed as a result of birth defects caused by Paxil, alleging that the manufacturer hid test data and failed to warn about the risk.
MANUFACTURER: GlaxoSmithKline, PLC
>>HAVE A POTENTIAL PAXIL LAWSUIT REVIEWED BY A LAWYER<<</p>
OVERVIEW: Paxil (paroxetine) is an antidepressant that belongs to a group of drugs known as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs). It was approved by the FDA in 1992 has become one of the most commonly prescribed drugs in the United States, with sales of just under $1 billion in 2008.
PAXIL BIRTH DEFECT SIDE EFFECTS: The use of Paxil by pregnant women has been associated with an increased risk of heart birth defects, which have frequently manifested persistent pulmonary hypertension in newborns (PPHN). This is a serious condition that can cause an infant to become hypoxic due to an abnormal blood flow to the heart and lungs.
PPHN can require corrective heart surgery in children just a few months old. Both the condition itself and complications from heart surgery on newborns can sometimes result in death.
On December 8, 2005, the FDA issued an alert warning users and health care professionals that studies showed Paxil could increase the risk of heart defects in newborns when taken by the mother during the first three months of pregnancy. The FDA also required Glaxo to update Paxil label warnings to include the birth defect side effects.
Yup I trust these people to know what the HELL they are doing. They probably did know about the side effects, or maybe didn't care enough to see if their magic pill caused babies to need surgeries and possibly kill them.
So to sum up,
I am not getting vaccinated by the companies that continue to produce crap drugs that kill you. Nor will I trust a government that constantly gives into drug companies (Psst Obama giving into Big Pharma to not negotiate drug prices so they wouldn't slam the health care bill) and weakening the regulatory agencies that are supposed to protect us.
Chaos