Flu Immune 500

No dry statistics here. Here’s my personal experience with flu shots (after all the proof of the pudding IS in the eating).

When I was a child, like many people in America, I got all the recommended shots from my pediatrician, including annual flu shots. I was told that getting a flu shot would keep me from getting the flu. So I was rather stumped by the fact that I got the flu every single year! “What gives?” I wondered. I also got several colds each year. Well, I thought, maybe they’re more effective some years than others. But then why do I get the flu every single year without fail? Hmmmmm… Several years passed and when I was in high school, I was absent due to illness so many days that I’m surprised I wasn’t held back (30-40 days each year), some of my classmates weren’t even sure that I was still in their class at all! I told my parents, “I really don’t think these shots are working.” They agreed and I stopped getting the shots. I filled out the vaccination exemption form that the school provided. The last time I got a flu shot was in 1997, guess when was the last year I had the flu… 1997!

My dad has always been the kind of person who never misses work. He had a sprained ankle once and went to work on crutches (he cleans houses!). He’s also the kind of person who just doesn’t trust doctors in general and he almost never gets sick with anything! One year someone talked him into getting a flu shot, within about 2 days, he was stuck in bed with the worst flu he’d ever had. He missed 1 full week of work. He said, “I’m never doing that again!” That was the last time he had a flu shot. It was also the last time he had the flu! He’s been his normal strong healthy self since.

My mom seemed to be sick almost perpetually when I was growing up, just minor things, colds, flu, etc. When she stopped getting shots, she stopped getting sick. It was just that simple. My family used to be the one that missed out on a lot of fun stuff because one of us was nearly always sick. Now everyone is amazed by the fact that this family who NEVER get shots, work closely with kids, and are exposed to infections illness many times a year, virtually never get sick… while our vaccine-taking friends always get something at least once a year.

Now, the medical industry will tell you that “you can’t possibly catch the flu from a flu shot because the virus in the shot is a killed virus and so cannot infect you.” Two things, first, they thought that the polio vaccine was completely