I've been commenting about this in other threads, thought it was time to write a diary about it.
Hello all, Rosebuddear here.
I've commented in many other diaries about why I won't take a flu shot. The Fortune 40 healthcare company I used to work for has pushed them time and time again. And it was practically heresy to REFUSE to take the company's free flu shots. Like "what are you, some kind of conspiracy theorist?" You couldn't just duck and cover and opt out - other employees would come and try to convert you, sort of like a religious conversion. "have you had your flu shot?" sort of like "have you been SAVED?"
Well no, I haven't been saved, and don't want to be, and I haven't had a f**king flu shot. The state of my soul is between my God and me, and the state of my body is between me and me. And NOT any business of Corporate Healthcare. I am by now immune to most normal strains of flu - having caught ALL of them and suffered through them in my 30s - and swine flu - eh. I'll take my chances.
I would like to say that I am not against vaccinations in general. Although I DO think that there is something to the thimerosal/autism connection with a lot of vaccinations. But overall I think they do more good than harm.
HOWEVER - flu shots - meh - most people that get the flu get immunity to most strains of flu, getting a flu shot is just redundant. However, in the case of any new swine flu shots, I would be very careful.
I was in the military in 1976 - I was part of that 1976 "experimental" forced swine flu shot initiative they forced on military personnel back then, subsequent to the 1976 swine flu scare.
I received my first forced swine flu shot in 1976 - and got VERY VERY ill. I was in a class at the time, the instructor says to me "DAMN, Rose, you're lookin pretty green - I think you better go home and rest". So I went back to the barracks, missed a couple days work, and rested.
The NEXT year, I was stationed in Germany, and this shit came up AGAIN. I begged for a waiver from it, citing my illness of the year before. My First Sergeant said to me "sorry no exceptions - it's a DOD directive". I said "ok, but I'm going to be sick - please have somebody come check on me". He said "ok"
I was living off-base at the time, I took the shot and indeed got VERY ill - so ill that my German landlady was very concerned about me and tried to call the base, but she couldn't get anybody who spoke German - I was way too ill to call myself, so was technically AWOL for a week, and nobody came out to check on me in all that time. Wow. On the other hand, nobody tried to charge me with AWOL either LOLOL.
I always kind of blew that off in later years, but have always been afraid to take a flu shot - then my fiance put me on to some of these links:
http://www.capitalcentury.com/...
http://www.time.com/...
http://www.wired.com/...
Thanks, Jerry Ford. I know you meant well, but dayum. I am damn lucky not to have developed Guillain-Barre syndrome, I think - seeing as how I took that damn experimental vaccine, not ONCE, but TWICE. Not my idea. But forced on me by a military with a long history of using the troops for guinea pigs for their pet projects.
I had to be really circumspect in refusing flu shots when I worked for the healthcare company - it's like "why won't you do something as obviously good for you as take a flu shot? well, I can go into a CT rant, or I can just kind of make excuses and beg off. Since it was a Fortune 40 corporation, and I'm not stupid, I opted for the latter.
