I never get the flu vaccine, for myself, or my children, and my husband doesn't either. We are NOT, however, anti-vax; and all of my children's required vaccinations were done on time and are up-to-date.
Sometimes I think it may be better for us to actually contract the disease and have life long immunity to that particular strain, rather than a shot that wears off every year. It's how our bodies are designed. We don't do the flu shot here, and haven't had the flu (confirmed anyway). I don't think everybody needs it every year. I think that recommendation is driven by money.
I quote this first because I think this is very important. To most people with a healthy immune system, having the flu is no big deal. You get it, you rest and take care of yourself, you see a docter if you need to, and then you have
immunity to that strain. You get immunity because you had a LIVE virus. If you keep getting a flu shot each year you keep getting a DEAD virus so you may not get the flu THAT year but you never develop immunity either. My family, and those around me, are healthy, we have very low risk factors, and if we are going to get sick, I'd rather see us get immunity out of the deal.
I figure if we are healthy enough to avoid catching these things when they are going around, we are healthy enough to deal with an infection if we ever do get one. Not all "avoidance" is luck - often our body does come into contact with a germ but the germ doesn't get the better of us, usually because the immune system takes care of it right away. I have occasionally felt as though I could be starting to come down with something, but I fight it off before it can take hold, and it goes away without my ever knowing what it was. We don't use hand sanitizer and we don't handwash frequently - we really don't take many precautions against germs (mostly we keep things sanitary in the kitchen and bathroom). At WDW, for example, the kids touched everything, we did no cleaning of our condo, half the time we even forgot to wash hands before eating something (horrors) ..... and 2 of them were thumb-suckers when tired (imagine those thumbs after a day in the parks ...... shudder) ! Hey, maybe our constant exposure to all sorts of germs has made us stronger!
If any of us had health issues that would make the flu very dangerous, then we'd do what we needed to to protect ourselves, but we don't need to right now IMO.
Again, its all about your immune system. My family has very healthy immune systems, we are very rarely sick, only the odd-occasional seasonal virus or 24-hour stomach bug (the kids just went back to school - eek!). Like the quoted poster, we focus on keep our environment clean, but we NEVER over sanitize. On vacation, we touch everything, walk on the hotel floors barefoot, sleep with the comforters on the beds, and use the remotes (Egads!!
). At home the kids are encouraged to grub in the dirt and play with the fish and frogs and bugs at the ponds, and play with the cat and the dog outside, and they probably eat dirt LOL. We use NO hand sanitizer, but only just plain soap and water to wash up. No one has any allergies or asthma, and no one gets sick very often. Then again, we also live in a very rural area, with minimal pollution, and clean water and air. Not all can be so lucky. If someone in our home had health issues, I would probably reconsider the issue of flu vaccines.
