Many hospitals and states are mandating flu shots for healthcare workers. The CDC recommends that every person over the age of six months be vaccinated. Because the CDC maintains that the disease can lead to complications and death, it highly recommends that certain groups of people receive it: those with asthma, diabetes and chronic lung disease, those 65 and over, pregnant women, and household members and caregivers of people with those conditions.
Not everyone runs to get a flu shot, though. Less than half of us do. The rest of us either are afraid of needles or the ingredients in the vaccine, don’t believe that flu shots work at all, believe that they cause the flu rather than preventing it or just plain think we don’t need it. Some detractors say the system of choosing three strains means that many other flu-causing strains in circulation are often missed.
Claimants have filed suits that the vaccine gave them Guillain-Barré Syndrome, encephalopathy, ventricular fibrillation, cardiac arrest and other ills, including neurological complications such as optic neuritis and peripheral facial palsy. The CDC reported febrile seizures in children last year that occurred the day of or day after the vaccine. Some say the vaccines include mercury, Avian proteins/DNA and viruses, formaldehyde, hydrocortisone, MSG, polysorbate 80, sucrose, gelatin and latex, cells from dog kidneys and caterpillar eggs.
I have no documentation on which of these ingredients are really present in the vaccine, but some say the vaccines are purely a way for big drug companies to make money, lots of it, and they’re in partnership with the government to keep it flowing.
Also vocal against the vaccine are many healthcare workers, and some have been suspended or fired for refusing to take it. In Connecticut the number of the 29 hospitals requiring flu vaccines for workers jumped from five last year to 19 this year, and two employees of Waterbury Hospital remain on suspension. Sometimes exemptions are allowed for religious reasons or allergies (chicken embryos/eggs are used) or a compromised immune system. When those are allowed, the healthcare worker must wear a mask at work, which many are happy to do, along with other preventative measures, like frequent hand-washing.
There have been claims that adequate Vitamin D helps fend off the flu, and other general healthy-immune-system reinforcements. A friend of mine swears by the homeopathic Oscillococcum, which he says for him always kills any flu bugs within 24 hours.
