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Poll: Do you plan on taking a flu shot this year?

1 points by brunorsini ↗ HN
Articles questioning the benefits float around all the time (eg, http://www.cbc.ca/news/health/flu-vaccine-paradox-adds-to-public-health-debate-1.2912790). Did anybody look into the latest research on this?

3 comments

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basseq
> "Regardless of previous vaccination history, flu shots did protect against flu infections requiring medical care. [...] Protection was greatest among those who weren’t vaccinated previously."

If I'm reading this right, a flu shot is always "good" (reduced risk of infection), but the first flu shot is the "most good".

The exception to this rule is pandemics (e.g., H1N1), where a vaccination for the seasonal flu may make people more susceptible to pandemic infection.

This is an interesting finding, but a) you get a seasonal flu shot to protect against seasonal flu, not pandemics and b) I'd bet there are other vaccination impacts out there as well.

brunorsini
I agree the article is a bit opaque. From what I've read the flu vaccine offers protection ranging between neutral to positive, with no real study ever finding the opposite. I still hear a lot of people say they are "on the fence" about this, which is why I started the poll.
basseq
So the only real reason to not get a flu shot would be if you think the decreased risk of getting the seasonal flu is outweighed by the increased risk of a) a pandemic happening and b) a potential* increased risk of getting a pandemic flu, weighted by impact of each disease.

As always, the impact of even the seasonal flu on children and the elderly can be very high, so I can't imagine that trade-off being worth it for that population.

* Increased risk was shown for H1N1, but no guarantee it would be shown for a future pandemic.