11-22-2018, 08:11 AM
quote:
Originally posted by Rob Tucker
Never having the flu is great. Congratulations. However, it does not mean you will never get and let me suggest, it is a miserable couple weeks if you do. So the advantage is still to getting the immunization shot. It is free.
I got the flu back-to-back in 1996 and 1997. One of those years nearly killed me, gave me pneumonia, and I was very sick for months. I was in my mid/late 20's and the poster child of health when the infection hit. My lungs never completely recovered so I bear the burden of that 1990's flu even today.
I haven't missed a flu shot since, and I've also never been sick since.
Do a little online research, people who survive the flu are at greater risk for heart attacks and a wide variety of other permanent illnesses.
Much easier to avoid it in the first place with a free or extremely low-cost shot. AND I get to ask my annual comical "Will this give me autism" question of the Long's pharmacists every year.
The "best thing" about the flu is that as far as communicable diseases go, most people who are exposed to it don't actually get it. Unfortunately that leads them into a false security that they've had it when they actually had something much more minor, or that they have an "immunity" that doesn't really exist. When most people get "actual" influenza they know it, because they feel like they are going to die.