I had a miserable day last week when I went to work sick. I woke up with a mild cough and thought it was just from coal dust. But by 9:00 I was feeling all kinds of rotten. I even thought about going home but I was just running shovel 6 which doesn't require much more than not falling asleep. Plus it was the last day before days off so I toughed it out. Then I wound up staying in Hinton an extra night and sleeping for 13 hours.
Anyways, I was sick for a few days. Now they say that 99.9% of the people who are getting sick right now are getting H1N1. So the odds are I had it. Therefore I don't need to get the vaccine. The tricky part comes in figuring out what to do with the youngling. I strongly believe the seriousness of the Swine Flu is being exaggerated by the media (quite unusual for them, since they certainly didn't get carried away over the Y2K bug or Michael Jackson's death or little boys and their balloons).
I also am a little leery of believing all the things you here about vaccines. I've noticed that the same people talking about autism and adjuvants tend to be the same people that, when you follow their agendas back, are anti-evolution and anti-science. NOT the people I want informing me about decisions I make regarding my daughter's health. On the other hand, the people saying we should all go get the vaccine early and often aren't exactly agenda-free themselves. Just how much money are the pharmaceutical companies making on the vaccine, anyways? You know those guys would never bias data to cover up side-effects.
So. What to do. Maybe my daughter will get H1N1 and need to be hopsitalized. But maybe she's already fought it off and won, assuming she was exposed to it through me. Maybe if we get the vaccine her immune system will react and she will have to be hospitalized. All these maybes. Might as well roll the dice.
Here's something that's not a maybe or a myth, though- the vaccine contains thimerosol which is a mercury compound. This is used as a preservative to prevent micro-organisms from growing in the vaccine (presumably it works because it is poisonous to microbes). Thimerosol has been discontinued in the US in children's vaccines except in multi-dose flu vaccines such as the H1N1 and the seasonal flu shot. Do I really want to give my 9-month-old daughter a shot of mercury, regardless of how little there might be per dose? It's free!
Ummm . . .