Swine flu advice

A very large expenditure of dollars is taking place to fund a media campaign to scare the bejeebers out of everyone over the Swine Flu, also affectionately referred to as H1N1... would have liked it to be R2D2 but I wasn't consulted. Of course, since the advent of sewers and clean water supplies the only new thing public health officials have to handle infectious disease is the basic tenet: "Run, don't walk, to get your shots before the beastie viruses kill you." Now, they have spent lots to convince that there is a new murdering virus out there and that your ONLY defense against this menace is to get your vaccine. The public has been pushed to stampede panic and there is an almost daily media watch to announce the precise moment the vaccine is available and to whom it is to flow to first.

My opinion is that it's a whole lot of useless panic and fear about an illness that health officials themselves rate as having mild-moderate symptoms. The major share of deaths from the Swine Flu have been those with immune compromises/limitations or other major chronic illness. This HARDLY warrants a vaccine! But, because this is America, and we HAVE the technology, we can build it, and public health can't think of ANYTHING but more shots -- we get more shots. Worse yet, this vaccine has been super rushed through the process with extremely little testing. There are bound to be side effects from virtually any engineered or chemically altered substance shot into the body. Do we know what these side effects will be, or how severe? No, because there's been no tests done, BUT -- we have a way to find out! Start immunizing the weak, young, and frail first. If the vaccine doesn't kill them, then we should be good to go.

But then, do we know if it really works? Is there any way to know that it was the shot or someone's efficient immune system that kept them from getting the flu? Not really. But i suspect this much: all these foreign antigens (the particles in vaccines that they say is what makes immunity happen) seems with only common sense to suggest there must be some pretty significant impacts on the immune system. Public health would have us believe that only GOOD things happen to the immune system. Massive numbers of people with stories of negative results get no air time since it undermines the myopic public health goal of a shot in every person's arm. So what do you think? It's a health care decision that is yours to make.

My belief is that any optimally operating immune system will handle just about any problem that gets thrown its way, including Swine flu. We may be sick, perhaps awfully sick but with the right bodily "terrain" we will successfully throw off anything that makes us sick; and, our immune systems will NATURALLY be the stronger for it. So, I'm skipping my shots thank you, and working really diligently, as every flu/cold season, to make my body's terrain as inhospitable to germs as I can.