I can sympathize so much with Luna. I haven’t had a single shot in over 15 years, and there is no way I’m going to change that. Honestly, just fuck needles, I wish we’d finally ban those torture devices.

This won’t hurt that much, AAAAAHHH!!!!stabs her in the neck at full force

@WTF_IT_HAS_BECOME  
God damn… that gives me shivers just looking at that thing… christ

 
“f*** me, princess”

God, I know this feel.
 
I spend hours playing horror games, yet the scariest part of (just to give a topical example) RE7, was wathing Ethan inject himself with steroids and/or stabilizer.
 
I swear, I’m going to die of some disease we thought had died out one day, only because I got too stressed out to go get a vaccine…

@when she felt her wings unfold  

 
I don’t know how out of date this conversation is now but I want to throw in my two cents behind this statement.
 
Presently as I recall hearing, western medicine practitioners do or should be generally cautious or regulate their prescription of and use of antibiotics and the like. But when it comes to antibiotic use on humans in the third world there’s an entirely insane notion of using them literally all the time. In countries like India pharmacies will or may hand them out without prescription on request. Simply, Indian doctors (at the least) are or were way to eager to prescribe antibiotics at unsafe degrees.
 
This makes in humans an environment that can breed these antibiotic resistant super-bugs.
 
In the west I don’t know how much Johnson Family Brand anti-bacterial wipes are at fault for it, but I haven’t ran across any literature on the matter. But when 99% of the bacterial life is being killed by the alcohol wipes I can see how that factors in. But the bigger concern here in the west is more measuring how much or little livestock should be medicated so as to not turn them into incubators for a potential super-bug threat, which is realistic since a lot of the big wholesomely serious diseases we stare down are already incubated in cattle, pigs, and chickens and just so happen to be able to make the jump to humans and survive, but still fuck us up (where it’d otherwise be an inconvenience to the cow).
 
This doesn’t mean there are overzealous abuses of medicine here in the west for one reason or another, like too much love for opiods. But that’s a whole other matter and the entire field is very very big.
 
I’m not disagreeing, if you got this far. I just thought that point could be annotated some for clarity.

It’s about to get a lot worse if Luna’s gonna be that tense.

@Background Pony #560F  
Careful, or you’ll cut yourself on that edge. insert eyeroll smiley here

@Lurks-no-More  
[My avatar is currently the hazmat-suited little pony from >>218898. Herd immunity ftw!]  
Haha, thanks! You really do forget you’re wearing it after a while.
 
I’m not an epidemiologist or a medic, but I work with them. The BP below is maybe talking about the ‘rational design’ approach (12 Jan 2017) that sounds technically awesome although maybe a bit hyped. Here’s an earlier (2013) Ed Yong piece that seems to be about something similar. I really hope that these approaches come to fruition just for the sheer convenience factor.
 
(A big threat for the current century is likely to be antibiotic-resistant bacterial superbugs, a thing that’s totally caused by overuse and misapplication of routine antibiotic medicines and antibacterial household cleaning products. But viruses like influenza are not bacteria. Antibiotics will not help you fight off a viral infection. CDC again (poster))
 
Anyway, back to searching for serious online articles with titles like “WHO Recommends 2017 Southern Hemisphere Influenza Virus Vaccines” so I can go “Shaft!” under my breath (you’re damn right.)

@when she felt her wings unfold  
Thank you for saying everything I might have wanted to say, only better.
 
Also, your avatar is hilariously appropriate. :D

The flu shot is a vaccine, it works, and it is considered safe. Its short term of effect and small effectiveness limit its cost-effectiveness, but it is still broadly recommended for certain classes of people by informed groups. I am aware of all the drawbacks, and I get mine every winter (partly because it’s free through my workplace, because this is a tradeoff at every level).
 
Current trivalent vaccines have limited but statistically significant effectiveness even for healthy adults. The WHO, CDC, and the ECDC recommend, broadly speaking, annual influenza vaccinations or revaccinations for vulnerable people and those working with them such as medical and care professionals.
 
The commonly repeated claim that flu shots “frequently make you sick” is simply false. The common reported side effects are redness and soreness around the site of injection, mild fever and aches. In double-blinded PCRTs, people did not get more fevers and aches in the vaccine group: only the effects at the site of injection were found to be statistically significant. It is reasonable to conclude that the side-effects are vastly less serious than the disease itself.
 
It is also at odds with the conclusions in a recent (2014) Cochrane Collaboration review which cast a very sceptical eye on the effectiveness of influenza vaccines. This found no association between influenza vaccination and serious adverse events.
 
Full disclosure: I’ve never got feverish symptoms. However, I get a sore arm every single time that lasts for a couple of days. Obviously I’ve read all the advice and it’s clearly a combined nocebo/placebo effect…
 
Serious allergic responses are possible (1.32 per million, the highest serious adverse side effect I can find), which is why you are always asked if you are severely allergic to egg before getting an injected flu vaccine.
 
@Background Pony #F860  

 
This is a claim so remarkable that it requires extraordinary evidence in its support. I trust that you will provide some, with particular reference to a mechanism for the suggested emergent resistance to vaccines. It is remarkable because is completely at odds with world health bodies’ current advice and information.

@Lurks-no-More  
Vaccines give long-term immunity and also work. Flu shots rarely work and when they do only for a year or less; frequently they make you sick as well, something normally rare with vaccines. The only thing we’re accomplishing with flu shots is encouraging the mutation of superflu viruses that will cause widespread death. Recent research is thankfully moving closer to a true flu vaccine, I only hope they can get it ready in time before our obsession with flu shots wipes us out.

@Background Pony #F860  
Whut? Of course they’re vaccines. They just don’t give permanent immunity, since flu mutates so often.

@Background Pony #D341  
Flu shots aren’t vaccines, they don’t count.

I’ve never gotten a flu vaccine and I have never gotten the flu.

@thps48  
you mean like eevee taking something i said about my self as a challenge to her view and decided to start this?
 
but yes, if she wants to start a fight out of nothing like this,she can do it without me, i’m done with it aswell.

“We’ve been making the needles sharper to minimize the pain.”  
“Sharper!?”

@Eeveeinheat  
Yeah, trying to bait is still technically derailing, y’know? <3<

Updated version of this?  

@thps48  
You can’t just make a claim that requires evidence to back it up and then go on to say we shouldn’t derail the thread. That’s hypocritical because it’s very, very tempting for others to provide evidence that proves you wrong.
 
However, I’m not going to make a claim at all at this point in time and say that yes, we should stop derailing this thread. The science is already on one side of the argument and against the other, so the arguments are meaningless. The only thing people need to know is that anti-vaxxers kill people and that perpetuating the pseudoscience is also killing people. This is the accepted scientific stance.

@Background Pony #C303  
Yeah, that doesn’t really work… Well, in the statistical sense… Not that I do know anyone who lives in anti-vacc communities… Also, at a certain instance, we should actually cease to Derelle the thread. ^3^

@mbeeston  
It’s called “herd immunity.” When most people are vaccinated, there isn’t a way for the pathogen to travel and get to thone who aren’t vaccinated.

I can relate to this 100%, right down to the facing armies bit.

@Eeveeinheat  
and congratulations for pointing out the obvious yet again, congrats all around!