Influenza Vaccine and Adverse Reactions

Always the skeptic, I will often begin with a predisposed notion, question it's validity, and then research to either support or refute a theory. With vaccines, and influenza in particular, I color my views based on my experiences. In the case of the flu, my own adverse reaction to the vaccine prompted my opposing position to it's widespread application. Lately, I'm questioning that position and looking for statistical information to either support or refute my beliefs.

I'll start out by focusing on the raw numbers from a neutral source:

To determine the vaccination rate and its adverse reactions after influenza vaccination, we administered an anonymous questionnaire survey during the last three influenza seasons from 2005-2006 to 2007-2008. In total, the rate of Influenza vaccination was 82.3% in health-care personnel. Dividing the subjects into four groups by work category, the vaccine coverage rates were as follows: physicians 67.9%; nurses and nursing assistants 91.2%; technicians, pharmacists, therapists, and administrative personnel 80.2%; and other personnel not directly involved in patient care but having the potential of being exposed to infectious agents 89%. The most frequent adverse reaction after vaccination was soreness at the injection site in 33.4%, followed by skin redness in 18.1%, myalgia in 17.7%, fatigue in 17%, and febrile sensation in 15.2%. After vaccination, such adverse reactions began within 24 h in 70.6% of subjects. Eighty-nine percent of those adverse reactions persisted for 1-3 days, but 11% persisted more than 4 days. Serious adverse reactions were not noted; the reported adverse reactions were relatively minor and transient. Surprisingly, among those who were vaccinated, the physicians' participation was the lowest. We believe that influenza vaccination is safe and that physicians should be more concerned with influenza vaccination and its impact on the health-care community.

Source: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19050354

That prompts me to think about the implications of such data.

What will receiving lifelong flu shots every year do to your immune system?

With all of those vaccinations, will you be more susceptible to influenza-related complications and death?

We really don't know.

Health officials have leapt ahead with recommendations of "flu shots for all" without safety studies—so by getting a flu shot, you are effectively offering yourself up as a laboratory rat.

It isn't just an ordinary flu vaccine they are promoting this year—it's the new trivalent vaccine, which may be even more reactive than the monovalent. This vaccine is a three-in-one, containing influenza A, influenza B, and 2009 pandemic swine flu (H1N1) strains.

Administering this highly suspect formulation to 300 million people has potentially disastrous implications. Red flags were already popping up last year, and this flu season has raised many more.

More: http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2010/11/01/flu-vaccine-and-its-side-effects.aspx

Make your own conclusions from that information, just as i have.

Quote from Death by Black Hole

deGrasse Tyson:

I claim no special knowledge of when the end of science will come, or where the end might be found, or whether an end exists at all. What I do know is that our species is dumber than we normally admit to ourselves. This limit of our mental faculties, and not necessarily of science itself, ensures to me that we have only just begun to figure out the universe.

I for one hope we never reach the end of the journey of discovery.

Quote from Death by Black Hole

A famous end-of-science prediction came in 1894, during the speech given by the soon-to-be Nobel laureate Albert A. Michelson on the dedication of the Ryerson Physics Lab, at the University of Chicago:

The more important fundamental laws and facts of physical science have all been discovered, and these are now so firmly established that the possibility of their ever being supplanted in consequence of new discoveries is exceedingly remote…. Future discoveries must be looked for in the sixth place of decimals. (Barrow 1988, p. 173)

Even at any future point, such a prospect should likely never be uttered, let alone held in any positive regard. The idea that one can ever know all there is to learn about the universe and it's mysteries is not only a false notion, but it ruins the discovery process. Coming to the end of such a process of learning and presuming that there is nothing left to learn would be such disappointment, knowing there is nothing more to learn, nor further reason to explore.

PIA14873: Does 'Pacman' Have Teeth?

In visible light, the star-forming cloud catalogued as NGC 281 in the constellation of Cassiopeia appears to be chomping through the cosmos, earning it the nickname the "Pacman" nebula after the famous Pac-Man video game of the 1980s. However, the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE, observed the nebula in infrared light, revealing a different view. NGC 281 is a giant cloud of dust and gas located about 9,200 light-years away within our own Milky Way galaxy, and spans about 130 light-years in space. Inside the cloud, a new cluster of stars is forming. This young cluster, called IC 1590, appears as a group of stars near the center of the red and green cloud in the upper portion of the image. 

More: Source

2012 Was Hottest Year Ever in U.S.

The numbers are in: 2012, the year of a surreal March heat wave, a severe drought in the Corn Belt and a huge storm that caused broad devastation in the Middle Atlantic States, turns out to have been the hottest year ever recorded in the contiguous United States. 

How hot was it? The temperature differences between years are usually measured in fractions of a degree, but last year’s 55.3 degree average demolished the previous record, set in 1998, by a full degree Fahrenheit.

If that does not sound sufficiently impressive, consider that 34,008 daily high records were set at weather stations across the country, compared with only 6,664 record lows, according to a count maintained by the Weather Channel meteorologist Guy Walton, using federal temperature records.

That ratio, which was roughly in balance as recently as the 1970s, has been out of whack for decades as the country has warmed, but never by as much as it was last year.

More: 2012 Was Hottest Year Ever in U.S. - NYTimes.com

The Rise and Fall of the Canada Lynx and Snowshoe Hare

An interesting article on the rises and declines in the interconnected Canadian lynx and snowshoe hare populations:

Amid the understory of North America's boreal forests, the Canada lynx lies in wait for its favorite prey, the snowshoe hare. Positioning itself along one of the well-beaten trails connecting the hare's feeding and nesting sites, the lynx sits patiently, its mottled gray coat camouflaging it in the brush. When a hare happens by, the lynx makes its move, bounding from its cover and initiating an exhilarating chase in which the hare dashes one way, then another, frantically trying to evade its adversary. And whether for the thrill of the chase, the tantalizing taste of the hare, or a combination thereof, the lynx will wait hours on end for this moment, the opportunity to pounce on an unsuspecting snowshoe hare.

More: http://www.britannica.com/blogs/2011/06/rise-fall-canada-lynx-snowshoe-hare

I was a bit disappointed in myself for not fully learning about the link between the populations before visiting the Yukon territory...