H1N1 vaccine debate

I sympathize with the confusion the mixed messages from medical sources will cause. As a health communicator, I have worked and/or spoken with several people with a specialty in risk communication (such as the risk of a pandemic flu) and have weighed the debate thoroughly.

On the one hand you have people who are hesitant with new drugs generally. There is good reason for this. Every drug has side effects. New drugs, including vaccines, are not well tested in my estimation before going to market. This is especially true when there is a big push to get the drug available. (This was not true in the 80s with new AIDS drugs, and the political/public backlash about that has changed the process. However, increasing pressure from pharmaceutical companies and weakening of the FDA have also changed the bench-to-trench process for new drugs.) There is also discussion among some about what we are doing as a population to our immune systems by not exercising them. No one really knows the final answer on that one yet.

On the other hand, the next great pandemic is what the risk communication people consider to be the really scary threat to worry about. Far above terrorism or food-borne illness or natural disasters, they worry about the potential of a new virus in this global community we live in. They are happy that children are being taught to wash hands religiously, as that is one of the best defenses. If we could just get people to avoid going to work/school when they are sick, they say, we’d all be in a better place to handle such a crisis.

I don’t get us vaccinated against the flu normally (shocking to many of my colleagues) and won’t get us vaccinated against this particular flu either. Generally, flu vaccines are only going to be useful against +/- 30% of this season’s flu strains. (They are necessarily based on last seasons’ strains.) Most healthy people who are well nourished are well equipped to fight off the virus. The vaccine is intended to avoid unnecessary death, and for most of us that is not the threat. Mostly the virus represents a week or so of really unpleasant days and discomfort. For most of us. Not desirable, but not deadly.

All that said, you should make the best decision for your family and feel good that it is a good decision. With so little known about the long-term effects of getting vaccinated or not, both decisions are good and defensible.