Reply #122: not bullcrap

[canucksawbones]

herd immunity is a well established fact, and people do die of measles and chicken pox, it is rare, but happens (1 in 10000 kids who contract chicken pox dies with chicken pox meningitis, 1 in 2000 will suffer deafness) Measles can cause death and sterility and blindness, haemophilus influenzae can kill, cause permanent deafness. People laugh off the so-called childhood diseases, but the can cause serious harm, the fact that we don't see those effects much is because of....wait for it..... Immunizations. Ask your grandparents about the effects of polio 80 years ago. Ever seen a child with diptheria? it ain't pretty. Have you actually seen a child with pertussis, it can be lethal, it requires ICU treatment in many cases.

You can blame flu vaccines for your URTIs, but that only goes to show you are an ignorant ass. Flu vaccines are formulated for the type A flus that are coming your way, not the type B strains that cause lesser flu symptoms. two weeks is nothing, a type A flu will put you down for 6 weeks, I've had one, put me in ICU on a ventilator, I was expected to die. Won't ever miss my flu vaccine again. Tell me did you have a runny nose with your cold...then it was probably a cold, not a flu. The fact that you got a couple of colds, maybe a minor flu with a post-infectious bronchospasm (that usually last a couple of weeks) is by no means an indicator that some weird mutation happened, it's just an anecdote that a guy who was lucky a didn't get any colds before got a cold. BTW influenza viruses mutate far faster than any affect the flu vax could provide, they are mutating no faster than pre vaccine days. In fact those that do get vaccinated regularly and then miss a year or two usually are more immune than those that haven't received vaccines in the past. That's because some of the antigens are similar amongst different strains of the virus. So the more flu vaccines people receive and the more people that receive them strengthens general immunity to all flus.

Oh by the way, viruses are the fastest mutating things on earth, it's why we don't yet have a useful HIV vaccine, it mutates faster than we can produce a vaccine.

And as far as strains of viruses, are you so thick as not to realize viruses can have literally thousands of strains running around at a time. At any given time there are multiple strains running around, most are fairly harmless type B-strains, only a few are the very bad type A strains. Trust me if you ever get a type A flu, you'll know it because you will want to die.

GK