I'm rather pro-vaccine, but I don't get the "flu shot". The effectiveness hasn't impressed me whatsoever (over say, tetanus shots, or better, smallpox vaccines), and if and when I do get the flu, its usually mild enough I can take a day or two off work and feel better.
Back in college, we did a LOT of study, a few weeks on influenza, how the virus works, and how the vaccine is created/guessed up. There is a rhyme and reason to how they determine which strains, but it only takes one critter infected with two different strains to create a whole new strain....something that happens ALL the time. Influenza isn't a stable virus at all.
It is a dead virus vaccine (the shot), but one could get "sick" - your body could be somewhat over-reactive and launch a full blown immune response, complete with fever, aches and yucky feeling, just because it's gone into super attack mode. Many of the symptoms we get when sick aren't the actual virus, but our system fighting it.
Or, you could be running a low immune response, but have picked up gawd knows what in the waiting room, grocery store or wherever, that day you went and got the shot. You also could have received the shot, which caused your immune system to concentrate on creating antibodies to the virus, and caused it neglect or not have enough strength to fight off something else that can get you sick.
I figure if they find a way to prove that the flu shot can eliminate or drastically reduce influenza, I'll get it, but its a heck of a lottery.
This might be more than needed, but I think it's cool
Influenza virus does not have DNA, it has something similar called RNA.
Humans have 46 "genes" of DNA, influenza has 8 RNA strands.
Of those 8 RNA genes, two of them code for part they get the "H" and the "N" from.
There are 13 "types" of "H" and 9 types of "N" - you can have any combination of those (one to one), and simply there are 153 combinations
This is where your H1N1, or H2N1 come from....whatever those genes say to make, the kind of H or the kind of N.
RNA is not stable, and it mutates easy. So, with a few shifts, your H1N1 can turn into and H2N1....then to an H2N2, so on.
OR - you can have a big change....if I contract an H1N1 flu, and at the same time, I get an H2N2, I could spread H1N1, H1N2, H2N1, or H2N2, depending on which is the most viable/strongest.
Then you can throw differnet species in - different types of the H's and N's infect different species - birds, pigs, horses, etc. The H1N1 that infects them is different than the H1N1 on a genetic level than affects humans, but it can and will swap gene parts out and create a new H1N1 that can affect both humans and animals, OR, neither. Sometimes nature fails
With the whole "Swine Flu" epidemic last year, that particular H1N1 drove most of the rest of the H1N1 extinct - it was stronger/more viable, and once infected, the host would resist the more common H1N1 strains.
Sorry, I just think this stuff is way cool.
In the end, I think it's again, a lottery, but then, some folks win and quite a few folks at least get a bit of help.
