Public Service Announcement- H1N!

Yeah I left that exclamation mark in there on purpose...

It's a large hullaballoo for what may very well be less serious than the common cold, but I'm here to address the government nay-sayers who are a little too in-touch with their paranoid side--this one kills young people, so I wouldn't mess around with it.

I have talked about the vaccine with a nurse I work with, and I am intimately involved in discussions surrounding the vaccine, results, tests, releases et al. There are always risks involved in every vaccine, no matter how benign, but in the whole, the positives outweigh the risks in almost every case.

What people really can't bank when they say they aren't getting the vaccine because;

a. untested, which isn't true--they have been running tests in AUS as well as Europe as soon as it became clear GlaxoSmithKline was going to have to release something soon.

b. Heard bad things about it. There are always going to be 'iffy' things about vaccines-they are not perfect. They can cause allergic reactions, or the incredibly rare Guilliam-Barre syndrome--but again, these things have to be monitored in a clinical setting, and Gulliam-Barre is so rare and difficult to predict, any kind of flu vaccine could trigger it

c. Teh internets told them otherwizse. Never a good idea, particularly when it comes in the form of a fwd by friends/family. I just read one telling me how plain ol' warm saltwater was as effective as Tamiflu when injected up one's nostrils. REALLY? Go to a real site (and the govt nay-sayers, calm down. If anything went wrong with this, they would have to pull absolutely everything out.) There is no screwing around with the entire Cdn. population.

I have read on teh internets about how asparagus will cure cancer, and the million and one uses for hydrogen peroxide. Not true. Everytime someone wants to spout out about how 'they read on the internet' about a certain item, I want to ask if they were at the deputy minister's teleconference, and did they have a discussion item on it? Because I did!

Basically, the nurse boiled it down for me. Vaccine--risks involved, but minimal compared with an illness that can and will kill young people. Sore arm vs. month in hospital? Should be an easy one, and please don't leave your responsibility to get vaccinated by the wayside, saying 'others will get vaccinated and halt the spread.' Sadly, this is how some diseases make a comeback in the population, and you know how rubella, measels, mumps were stopped? Because everyone got the jab. End of story.