Some Influenza Inquiries

I was sick with the H1N1 strain a few years back. (I had not been vaccinated.) It was one of only two illnesses in my lifetime where it felt like there was a possibility of dying. I could not take care of myself. I don't remember much about the first week. I was bedridden and sometimes hallucinating due to the fever. Fortunately, I'm relatively strong and healthy so I recovered.

It would literally have killed someone like my mother, who was recently hospitalized after catching a normal cold virus. She almost died from something that most of us would brush off as a case of sniffles.

I think in the late 90's is when they started pushing flu shots on adults and then onto kids.

There are thousands of strains of the flu and most people can get it, but most people fight it off like an average cold (if they are healthy). The flu vaccine only covers maybe 3 to 4 strains that they think will be bad that year.

I was born in 1970 when there were only about 5 vaccines given (usually after 6 months of age). I have been exposed to many different viruses in my life and have NEVER been been extremely ill from any of them. The only time I came close to death was when I received the MMR at 9 years old, it almost killed me.

I had it in the mid-90s and can understand how people can die from it. It's no joke. I was a healthy professional in my mid-20s and it left me unable to care for myself for two weeks. I had to move back in with my parents because walking the five feet or so from my bed to the kitchen in my little studio apt. exhausted me to the point of almost passing out. When I first got it I tried going to work, but my boss ended up taking me to the ER because I was struggling to breathe. I have been vigilant about getting flu shots ever since and make sure our entire family gets them.

Flu shots became popular in the mid 90's - my work place offered them for free.
They started doing this to cut back on people being out sick - we had a bad spell where half the building was out sick.
I've had the flu (late 1980's) - you ache, you're exhausted - it's a MAJOR effort just to get out of bed to make it to the bathroom, you have fever and chills (like sweating burning up hot then uncontrollable shivering freezing cold spells) and the weakness can stay with you for several months even after the fever is gone.

If you get secondary complications, develop pneumonia, you can land in the hospital and sometimes it happens so fast there is NOTHING medical science can do to help you.
This is why prevention is best - and some people who have compromised immune systems, who are really young and/or are really old can't afford to get it and just hope they survive.
They need the flu shots and they also need as many people as they come into contact with to also get flu shots.
Having the flu is BEYOND miserable - we all get our flu shots every year!

I was born in the early 70s and don't remember ever hearing about flu shots until I was in my late 30s. I may not have paid attention to it though because for several years I had no insurance or very minimal insurance. When they did first come out I never got one because so many people had said they got sick with flu like symptoms from the vaccine. I started getting them when I was pregnant with my first and have had one every year since. I've never had any side effects from the shot or the nasal. Now, I wouldn't skip it for me or my kids. (My husband works in the medical field and is required to get one every year.) I had influenza a couple of times before I started getting immunized. The only time I've ever been sicker was once with strep throat and once with walking pneumonia. Last year one of my coworkers had a friend whose high school aged daughter died from influenza. She had not other health concerns. She was a very healthy girl. It can be pretty bad, especially for little kids and elderly people.

3 million actually sounds like a very low number to me. I would have guessed it to be much higher. I think it matters what area you are talking about (US, worldwide?), what time frame (calendar year or "flu season"?) or what strain. For example, the reason flu shots were highly ineffective last season is that they were for a strain that didn't actually occur in high numbers - so people were inoculated and then another type of flu hit many more people. Also, tons of people get the flu and never report it to their physicians (and therefore it doesn't get registered with the Department of Public Health in their state) - these are people who just stay home and feel lousy for 3-7 days, and wait it out, knowing that it's a virus which will pass in most healthy adults and older kids.

Flu shots are much more highly recommended for people with compromised immune systems - the young, the elderly, those with respiratory issues and other conditions that makes the flu much more hazardous. I stopped getting them about 6 years ago when I had done so many other things to strengthen my immune system so that I never get sick with anything.

Also, flu shots are taken more when they are free or affordable - for many years, that wasn't the case. So people with little or no medical coverage would opt out due to the expense involved. Also, with heavy use of antibacterial soaps and hand sanitizers (even though antibacterial stuff has no role in killing viruses), a lot of superbugs have arisen, so people who get sick at all often get much sicker than before. So I think the entire dialogue has changed on this subject.

About 5 years ago the H1N1 strain resurfaced. It was the same strain as the 1918 flu pandemic that killed 50-100 million people, and infected young healthy people as opposed to just the sick, the very young and elderly like most flu strains. So to avoid another deadly pandemic the vaccine was recommended. So, yeah, back in the 80's usually only the elderly, sick and health care workers got the shot because it wasn't really a threat. I have known several people who have been hospitalized with H1N1 who were young and healthy.

My kids are 27, 25, 16, and 14 and at no time in their childhood were they offered the flu shot. The younger two were offered them at their last checkup.

i don't honestly remember when they started recommending them for kids. i only got it one year, and never for the boys. they may get them now. my dh gets one most years.

i had the full-blown flu a few years ago. i thought i was gonna die. it was vile. i've had it a few times in my life, maybe 4 or 5 total over my half a century. never a picnic.

i still don't get the vaccine. i think some vaccines are vital, many are great, but that the rush to get vaccinated for everything that comes down the pike is troubling. some of them are poorly researched moneymakers. i know we're all guinea pigs to some extent, but i get to pick just how much of a guinea pig i (and my kids) want to be.

while the flu vaccines are generally safe, they're also a crapshoot. the flu is very adaptable and is constantly morphing, and there's no way for the vaccines to anticipate or keep up with which strain is going to be problematic in any given year. and since no vaccine is totally safe, i choose to get those that have a real practical benefit as well as only those with a long proven track record of safety.

my dh got the flu despite having the vaccine one year. it was ghastly. i didn't have the vaccine the year i got it badly, so our household is a wash. my dh continues to get vaccinated, i continue not to, we eat well and work out and try to keep our immune systems robust, and seem to have about the same chance of getting sick.
khairete
S.

i have never had a flu shot. and i can't remember the last time i had a serious bout with the flu. but i am anticipating getting it this year my son is in school so we are exposed to many more illnesses. i think this will be my year! fingers crossed i don't get it though.
and my kids pedo offered it but i only had to decline once for my son and she remembered when my daughter was old enough to get it and said that it was avalable if i want it, but didn't really offer it or ask. love her for that!

My parents got us flu shots every year when I was a kid. Every year, I got sick, missing a week or so of school. My mom would always tell me how much worse it would have been if I hadn't had the shot. I continued taking them for a while after I was an adult, following Mom's logic.
My kid is now 25 and has never had a flu shot in her life. She has had the flu twice.
I stopped taking the shots over a decade ago, and get sick less now than when I took them.

I have worked in various medical related places, and the places I've worked have pushed them really hard since I started in this field in the mid 90s.

I doubt you've avoided it, to be honest. But often people can't tell the difference between a really bad cold and the flu.

ETA: I'm not trying to minimize people who have had very bad cases of the flu. I had a friend last year who ended up on a ventilator because of the flu - she is in early adulthood and very healthy so she recovered, but it was scary. Her husband caught it from her, and for him it was a minor illness. You just can't predict, and that's why there is so much controversy about the flu/flu vaccines, IMO. Because many people will say "I had the flu and it wasn't so bad, just like a bad cold." and others will say "I almost died from the flu, and I was perfectly healthy before I caught it." And it's true in both cases.

I was born in '78 and got flu shots regularly as a kid.
The numbers seem low to me, and probably are, since many people get influenza and don't get treated for it. That's one reason why it spreads so fast. That bad respiratory cold you just couldn't shake and that had you run dow, coughing, feverish, was probably the flu. It doesn't always present with a high fever. It doesn't always require hospitalization. It doesn't always knock you on your butt, bedbound for a week or more.
My two oldest and I all got influenza B 3 years ago when I was pregnant with my 3rd. They got their flu shots late and came down with the flu about a week later. Luckily, we caught it early and all 3 of us got on Tamiflu, so we were only sick for 6 days. Only.

I was born in 83 and don't recall getting flu shots growing up. My older two children got the flu shot when they were 2.5 and 9 months, and they were both horrible sick until the winter broke after that - pneumonia for the baby and the 2.5 year old had two seizures, febrile, but seizures all the same. We will NEVER get the flu shot again.

We do our best to keep our hands clean, not share food/drinks, etc...we all take multivitamins and are active enough. Nothing will stop us from getting the flu though if that's what it is, but we won't be getting the shot. We will go to the doctor with signs/symptoms and go from there. The risk doesn't go away completely by getting the shot, but we saw the negative impacts of getting it, so we won't do it again.

I'm 56 and have never had a flu shot and never had the flu.

I had the flu in my early 20s and that was the only time. This was the mid 90s and it seems like the flu shots were becoming standard around that time. The flu was horrible. I seriously thought I might be dying after I saw an angel at the end of my bed in a feverish hallucination. I won't even talk about the 6 weeks of lung misery that followed. I have gotten my shot every year since.