It’s funny, I am not a person who vaccinates my children without seriously thinking through every angle, reading all the studies and then choosing which ones I think will benefit them the most (which happens to be all except the chicken pox vaccine).We don’t get yearly flu shots, we are not in any high risk category so I have never felt the need to get the shot, instead, I would rather we build a natural immunity to the seasonal flus that circulate every year.
However this H1N1 flu has me a wee little bit,well,edgy. My main worry stems from the fact that the worst flus in history are the ones where healthy adults are dropping like flies (the Spanish influenza for example) and this one,at least at the start, seemed to be healthy mid twenties adults who had the highest mortality rate.
So whether or not I really get my research or facts straight before flu season hits, I will get this vaccine for the kids if its available. And as someone who works in a hospital, I should be getting it for myself as well. Maybe I am just buying into the media hype and getting myself worked up for no reason….but this flu has me more concerned than is normal for me.
This was an interesting article on why to target kids for vax’s first.
From Reuters:
LONDON (Reuters) – Targeting children for vaccination may be the best way of using limited supplies of vaccine to control the current H1N1 flu pandemic, British researchers said on Thursday. Drugmakers are racing to make a vaccine against the new flu strain but if the disease increases significantly in the northern hemisphere autumn, as many experts fear, there are unlikely to be enough shots to vaccinate entire populations. Researchers from the University of Warwick said that vaccinating children rather than adults would not only help protect a group at greatest risk of exposure to the virus, but would also offer protection to unvaccinated adults. This so-called “herd immunity” effect would mean significantly less vaccine would be needed to help control the spread of H1N1, also known as swine flu, which was first detected in Mexico in April. “Our models suggest that the larger the household — which in most cases means the more children living at home — the more likely the infection is to spread,” said researcher Matt Keeling. “This doesn’t mean that everyone in the household needs to be vaccinated but suggests that vaccination programs for children might help control a potential pandemic.” Keeling and colleague Thomas House used computer modeling to predict the spread of pandemic influenza and published their findings in the journal Epidemiology and Infection. Leading flu vaccine makers include Sanofi-Aventis, GlaxoSmithKline and Novartis. (Reporting by Ben Hirschler; Editing by Greg Mahlich