#1. LIVE VIRUSES
A lot of effort has been put into dispelling the "myth" that you can get the flu from the flu vaccine. Little wonder such a myth exists though, when the listed side effects for the vaccine are exactly those listed for flu: runny or stuffed nose, headaches and muscle aches, sore throat, loss of appetite, chills and fever. It's not influenza, we're told, it just feels like it.
But the flu vaccine does contain live flu viruses. According to an electronic Medicines Compendium printout , each vial of Fluenza Tetra vaccine mist contains 107 -- that's 10 million -- of each of four strains of reassorted live attenuated and "genetically modified organisms"—for each nostril. That's 80 million viruses (give or take) per dose, designed to replicate inside a child's nasal passages.
These engineered viruses include H1N1 (swine flu), and three other strains that are based on what scientists admit to being best guesses for the most likely influenza viruses in circulation this year.
Live viruses up our nasal passages are dangerous because they can lead to encephalitis or swelling of the brain which, while rare, can also kill and disable people, just like the rare worst case flu. They can also cross the blood brain barrier and lead to long term brain inflammation.
True, we are exposed to airborne viruses and bacteria all the time and our immune systems generally conquer them, but this man-made solution is far more concentrated than anything we would expect to find naturally. To put it in perspective, in one 2011 study, Virginia Tech scientists sampled the air in doctors' offices, nurseries and airplanes and found an average 16,000 viruses suspended in each cubic meter of air -- enough virus, they concluded, to infect a person within an hour. But with the flu mist vaccine we'd be instantly bathing a child's nasal passages in thousands times this concentration. Couldn't it overwhelm some children's immune systems? And can't the children spread these viruses?
It turns out that most people do shed live flu vaccine viruses up to 11 days post nasal vaccination. And the younger they are, the more they spread it. At least one documented case of transmission was observed in a clinical trial in which an unvaccinated daycare worker was infected with a virus from a vaccinated child.
We know viruses mutate, just like bacteria that develop antibiotic resistance, so why are public health officials so confident these viruses will never revert to the wild-type infectious virus or perhaps to something more virulent?
And why has the public health campaign got such mixed messages? Flu deaths are very rare among healthy children (less than two in a million healthy children died during the 2009 swine flu "pandemic " according to a Lancet study) so the UK's National Health Services (NHS) Choices has pitched the vaccine as an agent to protect the elderly and sick. It even says it could prevent 2,000 deaths this way. But at the same time government pamphlets like this one warn that "children who have been vaccinated should avoid close contact with people with severely weakened immune systems for around two weeks after being vaccinated" and vaccine experts have warned that children "may have to stay away from elderly relatives for a few days after vaccination."
Take away point: To avoid illness, avoid weird viruses.
Originally Posted by jmdrake
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