'Tis the (flu) season

Ahh, fall.... cooler temperatures, changing leaves, and ... sneezing?

Judging from the bombardment of ads I see everywhere, it must be flu season. I wouldn't know, since the last time I think I had the flu, I was about nine years old.

Given my propensity to question authoritative figures (especially if they don't give me much of a good reason to listen), I've been on heightened alert for things like ads, billboards, and even register tape reminders about getting my flu vaccine. And I'm also paying attention to things like high drama, scare tactics and all-out pandering to the lowest common denominator to coerce, convince and cajole us into getting the shot.

These two billboards are sitting in a corn field down the road from my house. I sped by them one day, almost scaring my family as I nearly hit the brakes in disbelief.

Marketing technique #1: Using big, scary-looking font. That really gets their attention. (As a graphic designer, I'm all about the fonts.)

Technique #2: Make ambigious statements that make the average passer-by say, "Well, they say it's safe, so it must be." Never mind that there are no sources or mention of risks at all (there isn't that much room, anyway).

Technique #3, perhaps the best one of all: Use the cute, smiling kid to tout your product. Nothing says "I got vaccinated and I'm just fine!" more than the grin of a pigtailed child.

This one is bold, yet sly, at the same time. The urgency (in that big, bold font) is almost implying that health officials are lying in wait for you to pass, stopping your vehicle and asking for documentation that you have been vaccinated. Notice, though, the interesting use of a cell phone and truncated (if not totally annoying) "internet speak" that often appeals to the younger generation (those whippersnappers!) - who seemingly are more healthy than those who are most at risk for the flu, like the elderly and those with compromised immune systems.

Saying "Stop the flu before it stops you" is implying that something bad - really bad - might happen if you don't get the shot. You might be miserably ill, perhaps even miss school or work - for at least a week, maybe not even. That sounds bad. Like it might stop me. From going to work. Yeah, okay.

Target, I noticed, is offering some kind of flu shot program and is touting it left and right - I saw banner ads on their website as well as on my register receipt after making a purchase. Their marketing technique is a little more subtle, sort of giving you a gentle nudge - rather than screaming in your face like the county government does. How ironic.

"Your timing is perfect - we have flu shots! So give it a shot - come on, you know you're skeptical and riddled with fear but too afraid not to get one, so just go ahead! Dooooo it!"

This one offers you a $5 gift card if you get the shot.
Bribery works wonders. 

Now, again, if you're already ill and have a compromised immune system - like the elderly, for example - I can agree that the flu might present more serious complications for you and it's probably worth getting protected. Some say the flu vaccine can cut the risk of serious complications and death in older people up to half.

However, there is some speculation that perhaps the vaccine doesn't work as well in older people as once thought. Although it's anecdotal, I know my grandfather got the flu vaccine every year and, if I remember correctly, still got the flu. This is possible, as the vaccine admittedly does not work for everyone - it's estimated to be ineffective for about 30 percent of the population, apparently. Perhaps for my grandfather, he was one of that 30 percent. And after his last flu vaccine, my mom said, he just wasn't the same - and it was all downhill from there. He eventually died a few months later.

Could it have been from complications of the vaccine? Who knows. We probably will never know, and it seems like if it doesn't reach out and smack you over the head literally minutes from getting the vaccine, most health officials are completely unwilling to correlate the two. Perhaps because that would scare more people away from getting the shot, ya think?

This article from the Washington Post acknowledges that the government, especially, has often used fear as a heavy-handed scare tactic to "encourage" you to get vaccinated. There is probably a lot of wheeling and dealing going on behind the scenes - perhaps from the pharmaceuticals industry - to ensure that you keep buying what they're selling. If more people realized they were being used as tools perhaps they would second-guess waiting in line for two hours on a rainy afternoon to get that much-coveted flu shot.

I remember seeing a huge line of people at the mall one year, complete with security guards standing by - and wondered, "Are they buying concert tickets or something?" Then I looked at the crowd - which mostly consisted of older people in wheelchairs, and realized, They're waiting for the flu vaccine. As far as the elderly are concerned, there is some data to suggest that actually, many of them are already immune to several strains of flu - including H1N1 - because of living through past epidemics. Which means you waited in line for nothing, basically.

"Lab tests showed that some adults, particularly those older than 60, had antibodies against the new strain, but Dr. Anne Schuchat of the CDC cautioned against reading too much into the finding. 

"We don't know yet what that will mean in terms of actual immunity or clinical protection," she said on a conference call with reporters.

Which means, don't get too excited - just keep getting that flu shot. If we had a crystal ball (or lots of money to do additional tests) perhaps we'd find that more people wouldn't get H1N1 in the first place. Unfortunately the cost of blood draws might equal the cost of the flu shot. 

Common myths about the flu pervade, according to this article. Health officials say "It's impossible to get the flu once you've been vaccinated," (because the shot doesn't contain the live virus), but actually it is - because either you're part of the percentage in whom it was ineffective or because the particular strain you got is not even included in the vaccine. So you got the shot and go the flu.

The article also says that side effects of the flu shot are a "myth." I don't really consider listing soreness at the injection site and a case of the sniffles to be adequate counsel on the true side effects, which are no doubt uncommon but still exist. Several sites say that Novartis, the makers of Fluvirin, admit in their package insert that possible side effects can include paralysis and Guillain Barre Syndrome, which can cause paralysis and even death. However, the one package insert that I found lists it as a possible side effect, but only in connection to the 1976 swine flu outbreak, in which an elevated number of cases were reported after people received the vaccine. In other words, it sounds like they use that case as a scapegoat and want to distance themselves as much as possible from the possibility, perhaps in hopes that you'll say, "Oh, that happened 35 years ago - I don't need to worry about that."

The article, titled "Flu: You're not immune," ponders whether getting the flu can improve your immunity. 

“The natural immunity you build is usually more durable than the immunity you acquire from an injection,” acknowledges Dr. Raymond Strikas, associate director for an immunization program at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “However, why run the, albeit small, risk of a serious illness when it is much safer to get the vaccination?”

The language many flu vaccine advocates use sounds serious, their tone warning - as if you are completely incapable of making the decision on your own free will. "Getting the flu is not a good idea," says one American Medical Association specialist. Of course you'd say that; you work for the American Medical Association. "The primary reason is that the influenza virus undergoes antigenic variation, so on a yearly basis the strain undergoes change." That's a fancy way of saying, according to the article, "Getting this year's flu doesn't necessarily prevent you from getting next year's flu."

(It also means getting this year's vaccine doesn't protect you from this year's flu, either, if you get infected with a strain that isn't included in the shot. You kind of glossed over that part.)

Reading between the lines here, I'd say even the CDC guy reluctantly admits the risks of "serious illness" are rare. Glossing over the reality of it, he basically eases into the guilt trip and encourages you to get the shot, even though it might not make a difference either way. 

The Cochrane Review did their own study, which basically found:

Influenza vaccines have a modest effect in reducing influenza symptoms and working days lost. There is no evidence that they affect complications, such as pneumonia, or transmission.

Rather surprisingly, they also acknowledged that nearly half of the trials were "funded by vaccine companies" and "company-sponsored influenza vaccine trials tend to produce results favorable to their products..."

The review showed that reliable evidence on influenza vaccines is thin but there is evidence of widespread manipulation of conclusions and spurious notoriety of the studies.

Something to think about before you get your next flu shot.

Rethinking childhood vaccines

If we all sat back and thought about what we're knowingly exposed to every day, combined with what we don't know that we're exposed to, it would probably make us never want to leave our houses again, instead happy to sit at home and bathe ourselves in a bleach solution. There are so many unknowns in life - things we are afraid of that never materialize, things we should be afraid of but aren't - that it's crazy to fathom it all.

While I do vaccinate my children, I am increasingly wary and weary of the mass hysteria surrounding vaccinations. Admittedly it can happen on both sides: the non-vaccinating crowd offers up just as many horror stories as the vaccinating crowd does. I don't agree with assumptions that 'no vaccine ever saved anyone,' nor can I stand the "If there's a vaccine or a pill out there to cure my XYZ, I'm going to take it!" I guess I stand firmly, skeptically, in the middle.

When my daughter was just eight weeks old, my old pediatrician practically begged with me - downright pleading - to at least consider the hepatitis B vaccine (which I had declined at the hospital). Knowing that I didn't meet any risk factors (and had already been vaccinated as a healthcare worker), I wanted to say no, because at the time my daughter was already in the throes of a nasty milk protein allergy that I wanted to get to the bottom of first. But my ped practically wouldn't let me leave the office. 

I declined the rotovirus, and she said, "Well, at least get the hepatitis B." It was almost like she was saying, "Just get one shot. Any shot. As long as you get something." 

This summer my daughter sat on the exam table at the peds office, the poop nearly scared out of her because she had to have the dreaded "shot!" She was missing four shots, one of which was my eternally non-favorite: the chicken pox vaccine.

The book (published,
ironically, around the same
time the vaccine came out)
says chicken pox is a
"normal childhood illness."
I'm surprised the CDC
hasn't lobbied hard to
take it off the shelves. 

My daughter, being almost five, was - according to my research - the prime age for when chicken pox usually happens. I asked, almost facetiously, "Don't you think that if she was going to get it, she would have had it by now?"

"Oh nooooo," The Pretend Doctor stated, rather dramatically. "Because then if they get them as adults they're much worse and they can end up in the hospital." (insert horrified expression here)

I wanted to blurt out hysterically, "Are you kidding me? That's your idea of informed consent?" I thought back to the information I'd looked up on chicken pox and the shingles, and also to those people who I had actually known in my life that had shingles: all three of them. One was going through the obvious stress of the death of her son, and even in her pain (both physical and emotional), seemed to be pulling it together. The other guy is just a stress ball as it is, and I think the third person likes to really play up how miserable she is/was/will be whenever something wrong is going on.

None of these people, in my estimation, ever had to go to the hospital. And I'm pretty sure none of them are dead.

While it's true that chicken pox can be quite ugly if you get it as an adult, I question how the chicken pox vaccination is going to remedy that. I don't know if anyone can conclusively say how long the shot's immunity is supposed to last, and even when given a booster shot, that pretty much means they'll be fully exposed to potential illness around the time they reach adulthood. But...what? That means they'll stand to get it when it's more prone to cause complications, right? How can that be?

But wait - you can get another booster shot as an older teen or adult. Or you can just get the wild virus as any kid prior to 1995 would have done and be done with it, resulting in (for most) lifelong immunity.

Aside from the short-term costs of missed work days (assuming there are some), the cost of acquiring lifelong immunity the good old fashioned way (assuming you were a normally healthy kid) is pretty inexpensive. The cost of the vaccine (anywhere from $80 to $120, depending on where you live, multiplied by the number of boosters you receive) is not.

And like other vaccines, even if you get the shots, you might still get the chicken pox. These children in Michigan experienced an outbreak despite the vaccine, which has many wondering if it's a new mutated strain taking hold.

There are also some who believe the chicken pox vaccine is creating significantly more cases of shingles in adults, because their natural exposure to the wild virus is severely curtailed - whereas before it was actually an immunity booster.

My problem with the chicken pox vaccine started, however, when my oldest was around a year old. I had never done much research on it, but at the time, it didn't make much sense to vaccinate a child for what was perceived as a "normal childhood illness." As I raised questions, the nurse - holding my son's arm, needle poised - basically said, "Too late now," and proceeded to inject him. (I think this was after a brief "He won't be able to go to school if he doesn't get this," spiel.) Looking back on it now, why the hell would anyone proceed if it's obvious the parent is not completely on board with the idea? Put down your needle and say, "I think you should talk to the doctor about this and we'll vaccinate him when you've made your final decision." Not say, "Too bad for you. We're doing it anyway. Just get the damned shot."

That's the idea about some vaccinations that doesn't sit well with me. Unfortunately, when people start to ask questions others in the "Let's Vaccinate Everyone!" camp cry foul and start pouring on the sob stories, making you feel like a (stupid) bad parent that doesn't know anything, whose opinion can be swayed with the blowing of the wind. Well, I have news for you - vaccinating your kid for everything, all the time, might not be such a hot idea, either.

It struck me not long ago that the primary motivation behind the chicken pox vaccine was not so much to save the 100 or so kids who die yearly from chicken pox complications - it was to prevent lost sick time because fewer households include a stay-at-home parent. You can't prevent every illness, and will sacrifice lost work time for a variety of reasons throughout their childhood. The face of parenthood has changed in the last 30 years or so, with more kids in daycare, fewer stay-at-home parents and lower breastfeeding rates, which means vaccine manufacturers stand to gain a lot of money off of people who want their children to get sick as few times as possible, so as to prevent any disruptions in routine. I guess I can agree with that, but to a point.

But the first knee-jerk reaction is to lay blame on the parents, as this mother did, because her leukemia-stricken son couldn't attend daycare since at least one child was unvaccinated. This is basically failing to admit that no vaccination is 100 percent effective, and really - when you're dealing with the unique and individual immune system it's kind of a crap shoot. The mother has no idea why that child isn't vaccinated, or what he's not vaccinated for - could he have an allergy to something in the vaccine? Did he have a previous bad reaction? And really, considering her son's potentially dire condition, why is she putting him in a daycare situation anyway?

The bottom line is that we are vaccinating children for something that is merely an 'inconvenience' to parents. At what point do you draw the line? We now have an entire generation of parents who think chicken pox is some horrible 'disease.' Seriously?!

When we look at the reported number of deaths from chickenpox, there is probably a lot more going on behind the scenes than people will admit. Can there be complications? Apparently so - but what they aren't telling us is why. Are these children immunosuppressed? Do they have other underlying illnesses?

As far as the effectiveness of vaccines, that's another one that's up for debate. It's not known, for instance, how long immunity from a polio vaccine lasts, yet people say that if we don't vaccinate, "millions of children" will be subjected to potential antigens within a year. Yet, if you read a little on smallpox from the CDC, we stopped vaccinating for it in the late 1970s because it had effectively been eradicated. But wait. I thought polio had been eradicated from the US as well. So why are we still vaccinating for that, but aren't for smallpox?

Interestingly enough, I recently read that then Vice President Dick Cheney wanted to start vaccinating for smallpox again because he was worried that bioterrorists would get their hands on it and turn the virus loose on the population. President Bush said no, because he was worried that people would die from just being vaccinated. (Approximately 1-2 % of people die from the vaccine.) Finally, someone who is willing to admit that vaccines can carry some risks, potentially death. And yet, when sporadic cases of Guillain-Barre syndrome show up in the population after flu vaccines are administered, as they have been doing since probably the 1970s, the industry is unwilling to admit there is a link and basically shrugs it off.

A few years ago there was hushed talk about a pertussis outbreak going around. Stupidly, I didn't think much to ask about it because "hey, my kids have been vaccinated for that!" One of my husband's students - who was previously unvaccinated - ended up getting it and the campus was in an uproar. The nurse went off about how his wacko parents were against vaccinations and were giving him daily "vitamin injections" or something or other, and at first I was upset, too. Until I realized that even if he had initially been vaccinated, it wouldn't have mattered, because it likely would have worn off on him by that time. As a result, that kid now has, researchers believe, lifelong immunity - instead of potential gaps in his immunity from the vaccine.

One of the biggest things that make me question vaccines are the outrageous marketing campaigns waged on us by healthcare professionals and the pharmaceutical industry. Overly dramatic ads run constantly; even Jennifer Lopez is in on the act. (I picture someone off-camera saying, "Now use your saddest, most dramatic face!") With that kind of melodrama it has to make you wonder about their motives, most of which include a lot of dollar signs - you can't help but notice the great financial rewards drug manufacturers stand to gain from developing these vaccines.

A nauseating billboard down the street from my house 

When it comes to informed consent about what we're giving our children, it needs to be more than just "Vaccines are safe! Vaccines are necessary!" Understanding how diseases work and why is tricky enough, and it doesn't help when your doctor doesn't even fully understand the implications of having such a vaccinated population - and how there can be drawbacks to seeing otherwise normal illness as a serious event. Our philosophy on illness has changed so radically as to seek to prevent nearly every little sneeze or sniffle with a pill or injection, which can have many negative repercussions, including the idea that "Because I agree to accept the potential risks of doing this, you need to do the same."

It seems like when there are perfectly good low-cost, natural remedies available, they are passed over in favor of vaccinating or taking more pills. In combatting the seasonal flu, covering your coughs and sneezes, as well as washing your hands, is often one of the best, easiest and cheapest ways to avoid getting sick; you can't deny that. Eating healthy, taking vitamins and getting enough sleep are also important to staying healthy, but our Pill Generation increasingly ignores these guidelines in favor of some injection or other to prevent this and that. In a probably not-so-new twist, drug companies are turning to legislators (Gardasil mandates) to essentially force, or at the very least coerce, you to use their product - especially in the face of  declining profits - instead of promoting ways to lower your risk factors.  (Like washing your hands and covering your cough will work for flu, there are perfectly plausible ways to lower your risk of getting HPV - that not too many people want to talk about).

As they say, "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure."

Dramatic ad encouraging parents and children to be vaccinated for whooping cough