Flu Primer

Con-flu-sion

There is a lot of confusion about Flu in general.

Some of that confusion has been caused by the media giving us misleading information.

For example, we have been told that 36,000 people die from flu each year. That sounds scary except if you go to the CDC website page on the Flu, you learn that is an estimated figure. The page is called "Estimating flu deaths"! They admit they don't know how many people (if any) die from the flu each year so what they do is take a percentage of those who have died from pneumonia and assume that they died from the flu!

In 1976, the news warned us of a "swine flu" pandemic and vaccine was encouraged. Only some folks got sicker from the vaccine with a neurological disorder (called "French polio") than they would have gotten from the flu. French polio can cause permanent paralysis and more.

In 2009, we were told the Swine flu was back. The media and the World Health Organization (the WHO) warned us for several months that a new and potentially dangerous flu which had killed many people in Mexico was headed our way and they very much advocated that we needed to get vaccine and even wear face masks and not shake hands in church and more.

It was front page news every week and scared many people.

But as in 1976, many who got the new vaccine found that they got more sick from the vaccine than those who did not take the vaccine.

In July 2010, the World Health Organization (the WHO) announced that the pandemic they scared us all about, never happened. And this Swine Flu turned out to be an extremely mild flu which only lasted a couple of days.

Their announcement that the "pandemic" never happened, wasn't a front page item in the media and it wasn't repeated. Were they hoping that people would forget that the WHO scared us for months - for nothing?

The next year we were told that it's the bird flu which was going to hit us (that's the flu that was so not contagious a few years ago that even many bird handlers did not get sick!

Every year we have a flu scare and vaccine is advocated but more and more people are avoiding the vaccine. For example, one survey found that 75% of medical providers do not get the flu vaccine!

Places like Walgreen's have many signs saying they have flu vaccine. You can even get a gift certificate to make a present of flu vaccine for someone else!

The vaccine, they tell us, will protect us from not only the regular flu but the H1N1 (swine flu).

The reason they have H1N1 viruses in the vaccine this year is because they made it back when they thought the swine flu was going to be a danger.

Flu Vaccine

The vaccine is like any other medication - it has side effects.

Here are some of the side effects you can get:

You can get the flu from the vaccine.
It has a preservative called Thimerasol in it which is like mercury and may be poisonous and a neurotoxin even in small amounts
It has another chemical in it to make your immune system be able to deal with the injection of a million viruses - this is called an adjuvant and some studies suggest this chemical might cause your immune system to attack your own cells i.e. auto immune disorder.
The vaccine only protects against about 6 out of the 20 or more flu viruses going around, and the flu that everyone gets might not be covered in the flu vaccine
Some studies suggest that those who get the flu vaccine every year have more of a risk of getting Alzheimers Disease.

One scare tactic the media uses is to remind us of 1917 when flu killed a million people.

Here are some things to remember about the differences between 1917 and now..

They didn't have refrigerators in 1917 so lots of times, people ate food with a lot of bacteria in it (ice boxes don't keep food very cold)
They didn't have flush toilets so sanitation wasn't the same as now.
Many homes did not have running water so people did not bath that often.
They didn't have antibiotics to treat complications of the flu like pneumonia.
They really do not know how many died of the flu - that's just an estimate.
People worked 12 hour days, 6 days a week so they didn't get much fresh air and often went to work, ill because they did not get paid for days off.

Bottom line, it's not the same at all!

You might want to visit the National Vaccination Information Center to get more information so you can make the choice which will work the best for you.