bah, my mum has never beleived in flu shots/vaccines and ive had people that have gotten swine flu. its only really a danger to babies, obese people and the elderly from what i can tell from the deaths i see on the news. i think its just been ridiculously hyped up in the media. everyone working at the royal melbourne hospital has told me that if cases get bad that they have the facilities to treat it.

also, i think theres a problem with society taking pill after pill and shot after shot. theres treatment for everything and i think the body needs to get better on its own terms. you think about any tablet and its basically keeping the immune system weak by protecting it or it just postpones an illness.

im only a young one but were the generations before us as sick as we are today?

[The Dev]

If I didn't have a child I wouldn't have gotten it, but you know, if he gets sick, so will I, you know?

Anyways, not trying to make a stink out of it.

I don't see it as a question of fear, more about trust. Your gut instinct or the messages being fed into your head. I don't particularly trust pharmacuetical companies, for my own reasons.

[The Dev]

It's also faith I think.

I have to tour, and will be travelling, meeting lots of folks, shaking lots of hands.


I need to have faith in my fellow man. However Naive that may seem. Pharm companies and all.

I trusted my gut instinct for me and my family and we got the shots.

Feel fine, release the nanobots!

[EphelDuath666]

valid point ^^

I think I'll wait a bit and will just see how things develop with the swine flu itself and the vaccine. I'm not averse at all to getting a shot but but will just wait and see how things are developing. At the same time my sis will have a baby girl soon (about 2 weeks from now, weeeeee) and I do want to see that lil girl a lot and it would suck if I caught the swine flu, not knowing that I did and then endanger the baby. Dunno...that is stuff that makes one think.

[The Dev]

Yeah it certainly does. I know there's lots of bad folks in the world, but I also know there's more great ones.

As part of my music, I need to believe in the good ones. In part, I had the shot as a leap of faith for my connection to other humans. Been a misanthrope for way too long.

On a side note, no one has any illness or pain...the only thing is, I got the kid to pull my finger and I cut a devastating fart that made him cry for 10 minutes.

what was for lunch dev?

It's scary to get a new vaccine that could possibly harm you when you don't know much at all or nothing about what's going on with medical science today. Total reliance on other humans is nerve racking... Especially they're all out to get you

[The Dev]

I'm not out to get you

[Octillus]

I'm not out to get you

Unless you are!

"Haha, surprise!"

There were concerns about this year's hajj in Mecca; with the possibility of significant numbers of transmissions due to the masses of humanity in close proximity. So far, 5 have died - all of whom had contributing healh issues...which isn't bad out of 2.3 million. Hopefully it won't provide a mass vector for the disease. I guess time will tell.

And Devin, you need to be less concerned with swine flu jabs, and more concerned with high colonics.
Poor Reyner.

Shot or no shot you still want to take some vitamin d. They say that's the best thing for you. There's a reason why the flu season peaks in the colder months. The less sunlight you get the less vitamin d you get as well. Scientists and crazies both agree on vitamin d.

My wife got the shot. She's 5 months pregnant.

Weighed up the pro's and con's. High chance of premature labour and complications if my wife gets swine flu. At 5 months, a baby can't survive a birth so we went for it.

A sore arm for a couple of days but apart from that all is well.

Anyway I would personally say no to the shot. Flat out it isn't going to work. Viruses like the flu mutate so fast that the strain you're likely to get isn't covered by the shot.

"During the 20th century, it is estimated that smallpox was responsible for 300–500 million deaths.[7][8][9] In the early 1950s an estimated 50 million cases of smallpox occurred in the world each year.[10] As recently as 1967, the World Health Organization (WHO) estimated that 15 million people contracted the disease and that two million died in that year.[10] After successful vaccination campaigns throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, the WHO certified the eradication of smallpox in December 1979.[10] To this day, smallpox is the only human infectious disease to have been completely eradicated.[11]"

"The polio vaccines developed by Jonas Salk in 1952 and Albert Sabin in 1962 are credited with reducing the global number of polio cases per year from many hundreds of thousands to around a thousand.[7] Enhanced vaccination efforts led by the World Health Organization, UNICEF and Rotary International could result in global eradication of the disease.[8]"

Not to speak about _really_ nasty influenza (Hispanic, anyone) pandemics being things of the past. Yeah, fight the establishment, vaccinations historically proved to be totally useless.

I know some people are earning sick amount of money on that right now, but seriously - that's mighty annoying that some people apparently would like to eradicate the achievements like these above on basis of fuck knows what. I know science has dirty hands, but it's still more credible than a bunch of keyboard warriors spreading the conspiracy bollocks.

[Keeker]

Anyway I would personally say no to the shot. Flat out it isn't going to work. Viruses like the flu mutate so fast that the strain you're likely to get isn't covered by the shot.

"During the 20th century, it is estimated that smallpox was responsible for 300–500 million deaths.[7][8][9] In the early 1950s an estimated 50 million cases of smallpox occurred in the world each year.[10] As recently as 1967, the World Health Organization (WHO) estimated that 15 million people contracted the disease and that two million died in that year.[10] After successful vaccination campaigns throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, the WHO certified the eradication of smallpox in December 1979.[10] To this day, smallpox is the only human infectious disease to have been completely eradicated.[11]"

"The polio vaccines developed by Jonas Salk in 1952 and Albert Sabin in 1962 are credited with reducing the global number of polio cases per year from many hundreds of thousands to around a thousand.[7] Enhanced vaccination efforts led by the World Health Organization, UNICEF and Rotary International could result in global eradication of the disease.[8]"

Not to speak about _really_ nasty influenza (Hispanic, anyone) pandemics being things of the past. Yeah, fight the establishment, vaccinations historically proved to be totally useless.

I know some people are earning sick amount of money on that right now, but seriously - that's mighty annoying that some people apparently would like to eradicate the achievements like these above on basis of fuck knows what. I know science has dirty hands, but it's still more credible than a bunch of keyboard warriors spreading the conspiracy bollocks.

You beat me to it BrunoN. People forget how shitty life was in the past before antibiotics and vaccines. I remember as a small child seeing elderly people who walked with the aid of sticks or leg braces on badly deformed legs as a result of having had polio in their childhood. Also my granny's sister and some of her uncles died in one of the pandemics of the early twentieth century.

Now I get a bit angry when I hear a few people proudly proclaim that they won't get their children vaccinated against the likes of rubella. So then their child contracts that, they unwittingly infect some pregnant woman who then gives birth to a handicapped baby. It's needless.

As far as I remember from school science a vaccine is, usually, just a little bit of the dead virus being introduced to the body so your immune system learns about it in a safe way. That doesn't sound like a conspiracy to me, it sounds like common sense. Sure it is packaged in some preservatives and whatnot but considering the chemical soup we surround ourselves with daily in plastics, fire retardants, perfumes and food colourings/flavourings it doesn't seem much of a risk in the grand scheme of things now does it.