I knew nothing about them 9 or 10 months ago. I am a voracious reader. I try to rely on medical journals and clinical trial data vs. sites with an obvious political agendas. Could they all be bogus? Sure. All any of us can do is read things and judge the sources to the best of our abilities. As I've mentioned I'm fortunate to be very close friends with a couple of people and loosely acquainted with a few more who are in the pharmaceutical industry. Have a sister who is a med mal lawyer, close friend who is a PHD pharma with NIH, another close friend who is a Wall Street analyst who specializes in pharmaceuticals. I'm not trying to impress you all with my friends' credentials' only trying to explain why I do not share the massive distrust of pharmaceutical companies and even government medical research that some of you do. Yes, you have the Faucis who are attention ****** and think it's a good idea to try and influence public policy with half truths rather than just state the clear scientific facts, but by and large my feeling is that the medical research community is composed of brilliant professionals whose mission in life is public health. Do some of them want to, God forbid, make money? Yes of course. Do they care more about making money than they do public health or, in the worst theories, injuring or killing people? Of course not. Is science perfect? No. Is it intentionally manipulated to mislead people? I don't believe so.
Flu shots are imperfect but the chances of being HARMED by them are miniscule. Didn't get one for years myself just because I didn't feel it was really necessary but hit 50, looked at the data and decided the benefits, while imperfect, outweighed the statistically insignificant risks. Of course that means I had to ignore anecdotal evidence like "I never got the flu until I got a flu shot" and look at the actual data. If I really decided I didn't want to get one I could have found dozens of anti-vax sites to provide me with anecdotal evidence that I shouldn't get one. But I wouldn't find any real clinical data to show me that the risk of getting one outweighed the risks of getting the flu.
Get the shot, don't get the shot. I don't care. It's your life. I will continue to relay what I know and have read. You can believe me or not, and believe scientific sources we have trusted for decades or not before they became so politicized. Your choice.
While I applaud you for trying to find as much credible information as you can and listening to friends/family with tremendous credentials, the most brilliant minds in the world on this particular subject seem to be learning new things every day and are fairly split on what's happening with the virus re: origin, mutations and particularly the vaccine's efficacy in even less than a year's time. What I'm saying is they don't have all the answers because this is relatively new territory for even them.
With all of your reading, you likely know about it already, but I would suggest a
non-profit, peer-reviewed academic journal such as Science Magazine (sciencemag.org) if you're looking for reliable information without a political agenda. It's the journal of the AAAS and widely considered the world's top scientific journal. The NIH and CDC are federal agencies of the U.S. Government, so I tend to have my suspicions when I hear everything is hunky dory. We can all agree to disagree there. And flu shots are an entirely different animal. Yes, medical advancement has grown leaps and bounds; but influenza has also been around and studied for millennium. It was the 1918 Pandemic that initiated the search for a flu vaccine, and that was approved in 1945, almost 3 decades later. But most importantly - to this day, it's efficacy rate is still anywhere between 40% and 60% last I checked.
I'm neither a clinician or scientist, but I worked for a Microbiologist at Caltech for years who's collaborated with David Baltimore, Professor of Biology and Virology who won the Nobel prize in 1975 (2 years before I was born) for discovering Reverse Transcription in RNA/DNA and creator of the Baltimore classification. So in other words, I have a bit of a point of reference in this discussion. Anyone who tells someone they're dumb for being leery of a new vaccine when typical vaccine approval usually takes a decade with the (typical) 4 phase trial and so many other hurdles is ignorant and arrogant IMO.
It's incredible what they (the scientific/medical community around the world) have been able to do here, but let's take a step back and remember we're all trying to understand this craziness as pretty ordinary people. One thing I did learn from some of these scientists though - never think you have all the answers; question, research and test everything - and typically expect the unexpected. And one thing that annoys the **** outta me - we have remarkable immune systems and ways of keeping ourselves as healthy as possible, and you never hear a single thing emphasizing that.
I agree, it is everybody's life and everybody's choice. Make the most informed and well-thought out decision for yourself and fellow human beings. And with that, done discussing this.
