How to go about getting flu shot?

ilikepeanutbutter · Post by **ilikepeanutbutter** » Fri Oct 09, 2015 9:59 am

I can't since I"m on immuno meds but Hubby wants to get one. I have no idea how to go about getting a flu shot for him. ??

Thanks for the help!

Kat

**Sponsor:**

FinnGuyHelsinki · Post by **FinnGuyHelsinki** » Fri Oct 09, 2015 10:18 am

See https://www.thl.fi/fi/web/rokottaminen/ ... nssarokote (in Finnish only). Influenza vaccinations are free only to certain groups (if not provided e.g. by one's employer); pregnant women, small children, elderly, health care workers, people entering military service, people in a risk group due to sickness or other health related issue,... , otherwise the vaccination can be bought from a pharmacy with a prescription. If your husband does not belong to any of the groups, I'd talk him out of it, for a normal healthy person there's no need for it.

Upphew · Post by **Upphew** » Fri Oct 09, 2015 10:19 am

ilikepeanutbutter wrote:I can't since I"m on immuno meds but Hubby wants to get one. I have no idea how to go about getting a flu shot for him. ??

Thanks for the help!

Kat

https://www.terveystalo.com/fi/Palvelut ... ssarokote/

edit. och samma på engelska on their frontpage: https://www.terveystalo.com/en/

AldenG · Post by **AldenG** » Fri Oct 09, 2015 10:42 am

Starting to get them annually was one of the best health decisions (quality of life, return on effort) my wife and I have ever made. We started just before age 30 and have never doubted since.

If you've only had some of the milder strains, you may not realize how miserably debilitating it can be for over a week if a strong strain gets you, or even a medium or mild strain catches you when you've been working long hours or for other reasons have lowered resistance.

It only takes one really bad case, or getting it at a critical time at work, to make you a believer.

As self employed, we can also look at each $25 vax as potentially saving us several thousands that year.

While the strains are not perfectly chosen every year, we haven't caught the flu for decades now.

Youth isn't necessarily a shield. Some strains are more dangerous in your 20-30's than later. One of those went around just a couple of years ago.

Sure Kat has a clear reason not to (while making it all the more important for other family members to get vaxxed), but you won't catch me discouraging regular people from protecting not only themselves but also those who work around them and the herd ad well.

ilikepeanutbutter · Post by **ilikepeanutbutter** » Fri Oct 09, 2015 10:57 am

Thanks everyone! I appreciate it!

Kat

FinnGuyHelsinki · Post by **FinnGuyHelsinki** » Fri Oct 09, 2015 11:44 am

AldenG wrote:If you've only had some of the milder strains, you may not realize how miserably debilitating it can be for over a week if a strong strain gets you, or even a medium or mild strain catches you when you've been working long hours or for other reasons have lowered resistance.

It only takes one really bad case, or getting it at a critical time at work, to make you a believer.

YMMV, I suppose, I'm sick a couple of days a year max. If there's no need to get a vaccination, people shouldn't, I'm glad that influenza ones are not paid out of taxes for everyone.

AldenG · Post by **AldenG** » Fri Oct 09, 2015 2:27 pm

Then you fit just about the exact profile (taking a guess also at your approximate youth) of the group that topped the hospitalization and death rates in the US and EU during the most recent swine flu epidemic: healthy, active, never-vaccinated under-30 adults.

The thing is that the strongest immune system puts you at the greatest risk with those strains. It's not the pathogen that kills, it's the late stage of your own immune response, when the viral load is high (due to the head start it got from non-vaccination) and your immune system overreacts into a cytokine storm. The elderly don't react so strongly and so they're more likely to survive the reaction.

That's why the medically educated people who spend their days studying these things scientifically have the opposite recommendation to yours. They're also more concerned about the herd than they are about you personally. It costs less to vaccinate a critical mass of the herd than to treat a serious epidemic, especially when you include cost to the national economy of lost productivity.

But so far your mileage has been good. Just don't touch any door handles or tram straps and don't breathe in public spaces and you may never catch a flu. You'll know it if you get it and you won't confuse it with a common cold.

FinnGuyHelsinki · Post by **FinnGuyHelsinki** » Mon Oct 12, 2015 8:21 am

Something being true on a macro level is not the same as universally applying for each individual case. Similarly as e.g. no single diet fits everyone, even if for a nation as a whole it is beneficial to make general recommendations.

Karhunkoski · Post by **Karhunkoski** » Mon Oct 12, 2015 6:17 pm

I subsribe to the "best for the herd" principle and also think Kat's husband is just the sort of person who should have it.

However I do have issue with making the decision based on "advice from doctors". Why?

1. Doctors are very exposed to "training" from medical companies. They don't give this training for free. Some influence is passed on and the medical companies make money from doctors acting on this.

2. A lot of doctors don't take the shot. Google for your own stats, but I remember someone saying that only around half of UK doctors took the shot. They can't all be "too lazy" or "forgetful". There was a reason for some of those decisions...

Karhunkoski · Post by **Karhunkoski** » Mon Oct 12, 2015 6:27 pm

Finally, was it the YLE article where someone was quoted as saying "one in a million" had a nasty reaction. Chances of winning the lottery and more than that, but many of us still buy a ticket

Flossy1978 · Post by **Flossy1978** » Mon Oct 12, 2015 8:23 pm

I got the vaccine one year in Finland and had the flu all freaking winter. One episode after another. I hadn't had anything like it before, or since. And so never got the shot again. I then went back to my normal status quo of barely ever getting. It's not that good for everyone.

ajdias · Post by **ajdias** » Mon Oct 12, 2015 11:06 pm

Karhunkoski wrote:2. A lot of doctors don't take the shot. Google for your own stats, but I remember someone saying that only around half of UK doctors took the shot. They can't all be "too lazy" or "forgetful". There was a reason for some of those decisions...

80% taking the shot is pretty good for me.
Setting the record straight: Top 5 misconceptions about the flu shot -Yle

(The number is from Turku, and the respondent is the chief physician in the area.)

Karhunkoski · Post by **Karhunkoski** » Tue Oct 13, 2015 6:35 am

ajdias wrote:80% taking the shot is pretty good for me.
Setting the record straight: Top 5 misconceptions about the flu shot -Yle

No offence intended to you

But I find it difficult to accept anything written by YLE as being "accurate". Their history of misprints, mistakes and blatant distortion of the facts, means they cannot be trusted IMO.

Karhunkoski · Post by **Karhunkoski** » Tue Oct 13, 2015 6:36 am

http://www.potilaanlaakarilehti.fi/uuti ... s-unohtuu/

AldenG · Post by **AldenG** » Tue Oct 13, 2015 11:50 am

Karhunkoski, in general I'm sympathetic (while unsure which exact lines of yours to quote) to your unfortunately somewhat founded suspicions about the integrity and validity of many recommendations about medications and protocols for their use.

The 1980's and Reaganism ushered in an era of unprecedented brazenness in the adulteration and manipulation (mostly but not entirely by non MDs in the pharma industry) of the research data on which recommendations about new medications are based, plus the use of incentives to influence and corrupt physician beliefs and behaviors. I know both from insiders and from gradually emerging public/legal knowledge that there is every reason to be concerned with issues like custody and integrity of research data and its presentation. People like to talk about evidence-based medicine but it's still very authority-based as well. And the dogs barking the loudest about evidence-based are conveniently those who generate, massage, withhold, and selectively publish the evidence. How enlightened they must be to insist on an evidence basis...

MDs can be remarkably naive about how the industry works, from the new-idea end all the way through to quality control (nearly 100% self-policed) on the manufacturing line. If it has become this way in Europe, I'll readily cop that it's due (in large part) to more American cultural imperialism. We've always been the promised land for cheaters, but for a while there starting with Franklin Roosevelt, our government and institutions were on the mend. Then came Reagan and the taking hostage of the regulators by the regulated.

So we probably agree about a lot there.

But with a few possible exceptions, vaccination for the big potential killers (and flu is one) are almost beyond that stage. They're too cheap, too low-profit (even loss-generating) and too old to be targets for misinformation. Sadly we came very close to eradicating a few conditions like rubella and tuberculosis but then got lazy and stingy. TB is back to stay now, there will be no eradicating it with current drugs. Childhood killers and maimers are resurging. And there WILL be another 1918-style flu-death pandemic sooner or later if herd resistance continues to fall due to too many conscientious objectors. Natural selection will eventually correct that cultural problem, but the cost of doing it that way will be horrifying. A pandemic like that kills much faster and more thoroughly than a war.

Then again, a drastic population reduction might prove to be the salvation of the species.

</sermon>

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