Tetanus Shot and What Else?

[Jimbotomateo]

Originally Posted by imp

I don't think you were getting cortisone for the flu.

There have been several flu epidemics here in this country, one I experienced and posted about earlier. Spanish Flu anyone? Killed lots of people and those who got it and survived were sick a long time, some with life long effects.

Flu illnesses, since they are virus' can change quickly as they go through a community. Virus' are really pretty neat to study, so many options and the virus can be incredibly adaptable.

Imp, you're probably right. The shot he gave us was some kind of steroid deal I think. Dr would always say, this is not a go back to work shot.. I would go from totally down to almost well so fast it wasn't funny. For two weeks you didn't even feel like you needed rest! . Probably scare me if I knew what was in it.. Thank goodness I never had the Spanish flu, it was a killer! The Hong Kong was so bad you had to be helped to go to the bathroom. After it was over we we almost too weak to walk. We had no appetite for weeks. Jimbo

[Worth1]

They need a heroin vaccine.
They also need to come up with an injection chigger repellent vaccine thingy.
For what ever reason I dont know, but the need one.

Worth

[Elliot]

the tetnus shot is goodfor ten years however there is a new vaccine that also covers diphtheria as well as tetnus so if you have not gotten it, go for it.

[Labradors2]

Originally Posted by Elliot

the tetnus shot is goodfor ten years however there is a new vaccine that also covers diphtheria as well as tetnus so if you have not gotten it, go for it.

Why do we need Diptheria?

Linda

[gorbelly]

Originally Posted by Jimbotomateo

In the 60s you got a cold lasted two days. In the 70s we started getting flus that lasted longer and were quite miserable. Dr would give shot, cortisone I think, that would get you going again. Then it was stuff that lasted 6 weeks or more! Now these flues are long lasting and seem to morph into several different symptoms. Almost like they were designed. In the 60s we got something they called Hong Kong flu. Lasted two weeks and the whole time you almost wished you were dead!. You don't want to hear about those symptoms!. Jimbo

Flu pandemics are on record as happening fairly regularly since sometime in the 1500s.

One thing that makes flu seem more common could be that we're just more aware of flu these days. We're always hearing about it in the news, even when it's not an especially high-mortality strain. In the past, we might have attributed flu to something else, i.e. any number of folk names for flu.

The other possibility is that, with the increase in global travel since the 70s, novel flu strains get around more. Most new strains start in China, as the conditions there (pigs and fowl ubiquitously being raised in close proximity to both humans and to one another) are perfect for creating new pandemic strains. Before the 70s, few people could afford to fly to China. These days, not only is air travel affordable to the non-wealthy, but the Chinese are now wealthy enough to travel globally in large numbers as well, and there is a lot more shipping and other goods exchange with China.

Before the modern age of air travel accessible to the masses, pandemics may have been less common and needed the help of global upheaval (wars, etc. causing mass transport of humans and conditions of crowded institutional living such as in barracks, etc.) to create the conditions for it to spread and proliferate rapidly and widely.

Originally Posted by Labradors2

Why do we need Diptheria?

Because it's a dangerous disease, particularly for children. And most of us have never had it because it's long been packaged with tetanus shots, which is still a vaccine that anti-vaccine conspiracy theorists have a hard time convincing people is evil.

The reason tetanus is probably less available as a single shot is because it's cheaper for big insurers if they come that way (big insurers meaning especially governments in countries with nationalized medicine schemes and the government in the US when it comes to Medicare, Medicaid, the VA, etc.). And that's fine by me. I don't need to be treated like a special snowflake and impose additional cost burdens on either public or private insurance schemes (because increased costs even in the private sector eventually make their way to affecting all of us as the industry reacts to increased demand for unnecessarily more expensive procedures/medications) when there's no evidence, despite rampant research and testing, that bundled vaccines are riskier to me.

Vaccines are not just about individuals. Many are about the public good, which is why I have far less patience for people who want to avoid imaginary ills for themselves at the risk of the health of the public.

Originally Posted by seaeagle

Back to the Shingles debate.The attorney that is bringing the class action lawsuit against Merck is one of the top trial lawyers in the United States according to Fortune Magazine and many others and he thinks he has a good case.

That's not really a scientific argument. That's merely an argument that the cultural climate right now is good for such a lawsuit. Juries are not scientists.

Originally Posted by seaeagle

And there is evidence that this so called Shingles Vaccine starts losing its effectiveness after 4 years.

This one time vaccine was thought to be effective for a lifetime. Now we are finding that the effectiveness starts to wane as early as 4 years

References: Jacobsen, E et al. Herpes Zoster infection. Clinician Reviews, August 2013, pp. 42-49.

Wouldn't this be an argument for boosters and earlier availability and not necessarily an argument against the vaccine itself? i.e, an argument to change policy around availability and scheduling, not evidence that the vaccine does not improve or protect people's health? "It doesn't work for as long as we thought" wouldn't logically lead to the conclusion that we should therefore not recommend it at all unless you were arguing from a presumed anti-vaccine stance.

Originally Posted by bower

I am generally pro-vaccination but don't find the flu shot a bit tempting. I've never had it, but I've watched my folks get them and then get sick anyway.

The flu vaccine requires some weeks to produce immunity. When do people usually get the flu vaccine? When the flu is already going around and is in the news, and everyone is telling them that they should go get the flu shot. Chances are high that people are already exposed and getting sick by the time they get the jab, and they get sick before the weeks required to produce immunity have passed. This is why a lot of people are convinced the flu shot gives them the flu, when really, it's flu season that gives them the flu, and they haven't gotten the shot early enough.

Also, as previously discussed, the flu shot doesn't perfectly predict which strains will go around in a given year.

[slugworth]

Some say it was the 1918 one that actually ended WWI
Horses got hit with one in 1870-72

[throwaway]

Shingles sucks, but the severity is dictated by where it pops up. For me, torso pain was pretty mild compared to other chronic conditions. But if you get it on your face, your eyes can be infected and you can suffer permanent vision loss. I will go for that vaccine when I come of age

Also a note about the flu. Some strains seem to trigger a deadly cytokine storm in young people with healthy immune systems - so your own immune system kills you as opposed to the infection itself.

[brownrexx]

gorbelly makes a lot of really excellent points and I am in total agreement. I would say that most if not all of us were not even alive when the majority of the really bad diseases were killing people by the millions.

We have grown up in a time when vaccines have kept these diseases at bay in our general population so we have not seen the large scale suffering that was so common in the time before vaccines.

I really wish that the chicken pox vaccine was available when I was young so that I would not have to worry about Shingles now (yes I had the shot).

I had an anti vaccine friend who TRIED to get his kids exposed to chicken pox so that they would have proof that they had the disease and would not have to have the chicken pox vaccine before going to school. He is an educated man but is convinced that there is a link between vaccines and autism. Poor kids. I don't know if they got the chicken pox or not as I lost contact with him.

[slugworth]

I had chicken pox when I was 6 months old,you can actually die from it.
I had the shingles vaccine a few months ago.

[dmforcier]

The shingles virus can also go to the brain, which happened to a neighbor of mine. Was one of the things that killed him. Mid-60s, about 10 years ago.

Another neighbor caught the flu and was dead within 48 hours. She was about 40 and healthy. 15 years ago.

Both had full access to the health care system, and used it.

Don't neglect your vaccines.

[brownrexx]

I copied this from the CDC website. Like I said, most of us were born after 1920 so we were not around to see people dying of diphtheria. This may be why some people think that they don't need the vaccine.

"Diphtheria once was a major cause of illness and death among children. The United States recorded 206,000 cases of diphtheria in 1921 and 15,520 deaths. Before there was treatment for diphtheria, up to half of the people who got the disease died from it.
Starting in the 1920s, diphtheria rates dropped quickly in the United States and other countries with the widespread use of vaccines. In the past decade, there were less than five cases of diphtheria in the United States reported to CDC. However, the disease continues to cause illness globally. In 2014, 7,321 cases of diphtheria were reported to the World Health Organization, but there are likely many more cases."

[Labradors2]

That's great isn't it. 5 cases in a DECADE in the US and now there is treatment for it. So they decide that people who require boosters for Tetanus may as well get diptheria in their vaccination while they are at it, just because some pharmaceutical company feels like adding it so that they can charge more.

Hands up all those who work for Big Pharma.

Linda

[seaeagle]

Originally Posted by seaeagle


Back to the Shingles debate.The attorney that is bringing the class action lawsuit against Merck is one of the top trial lawyers in the United States according to Fortune Magazine and many others and he thinks he has a good case.

Response Posted by gorbelly

That's not really a scientific argument. That's merely an argument that the cultural climate right now is good for such a lawsuit. Juries are not scientists.

Not sure what your point is unless you are attacking the entire judicial system and the way it works. Are you saying that fair and impartial jury of 12 competent men and women carefully screened and approved by both sides from a larger pool cannot make an intelligent decision?

No one is saying that Shingles is nothing to worry about or that you can't die from it. You can die from almost anything. Shingles can be terrible and yes you can die.

The point is that the Shingles vaccine was advertised as lifetime immunity and it is far from it. Four years. The CDC says 5, but 5 years ago you were good for life. How many here who have had the Shingles Vaccine thought they had lifetime immunity? The answer is probably everyone. If you got the vaccine 5 years ago you are now unprotected and Merck continues to rake in almost a billion dollars a year.

And there is some conjecture that this vaccine may attack your central nervous system in some people without showing any signs of shingles. So someone who gets sick like that without showing signs of Shingles may not realize what was happening and what was making them sick.That is what the lawsuit is all about.

Most of the bad things that large corporations hide from us are initially exposed in the courtroom.The system works.Sitting on the juries in these landmark cases were 12 competent men and women who were not scientists.

[throwaway]

Originally Posted by seaeagle

Not sure what your point is unless you are attacking the entire judicial system and the way it works. Are you saying that fair and impartial jury of 12 competent men and women carefully screened and approved by both sides from a larger pool cannot make an intelligent decision?

Our justice system strikes me as being the least bad out of a bunch of crummy options. Juries are absolutely prone to bias and there is certainly an argument that laypeople make poor/arbitrary decisions on topics they are ill-equipped to understand.

[BigVanVader]

I gotta say some of the vaccination protocols don't make any sense. I certainly think you do need many of them and in most cases there is nothing to worry about, but some are questionable and I feel as a parent I should be able to decide if and when I have my child vaccinated. Forced anything is simply wrong. All people should have the right to make their own informed decisions without ridicule. My daughter can't even go to school or daycare now without all her vaccinations. The last round caused some pretty severe side effects and she kept crossing her eyes afterwards which scares the blank out of me.