I’m not trying to be a Big Pharma basher. I think they do a lot of good in the world, but every company has to make money, right?

I personally never get a flu shot. The reason the flu comes around every year and we never develop an immunity to it is because the influenza virus, which causes the flu, mutates so fast that by the time it comes around every year it is different enough from the strain the year before that our body does not recognize it and can not act fast enough to prevent infection. This is called “antigenic drift.” The mutations are small but different enough to cause illness.

Vaccine makers base their vaccines off of strains the year before and the virus that appears in China and East Europe before it makes it to the western world. So it is really hit or miss. If they guess right the vaccine works. If they guess wrong and the virus mutates enough, the vaccine is nearly worthless as our body will not recognize the new virus and can not react to it fast enough. I personally don’t think it is worth the risk. I have never had a flu vaccine and have gotten the flu a total of once. I’d say those are pretty good odds. I would much rather keep my immune system strong and if I do happen to get the flu, fight it off naturally.

One instance in which I would get a vaccine is viruses like the large pandemics of Influenza like the Spanish flu of 1918 that killed 20 to 40 million people worldwide that are cause by large mutations called “antigenic shifts.” These mutations are so drastic that it is almost completely different from the virus it came from. These new antigenic shift mutations are highly virulent and cause severe illness. The scare of the “bird flu” is due to an antigenic shift. While highly virulent in humans, it has yet to mutate to a form highly transmissible to humans. Once it does, it will spread like wild fire and cause serious illness and probably lots of deaths. If a vaccine became available at that point, the risk would definitely be worth the reward, in my opinion.