For the non-medics....will you be getting the swine flu vaccine?

tallaght01

Yes? No? Undecided?

Why?

seamus

No. I just personally feel that I have more of a chance of feeling ill after taking the vaccine than I do of actually contracting the disease. I'm not concerned about the mortality rate of this particular strain, so I don't feel the need to vaccinate.

Bicycle

Yes.

I've already spoken to my GP about it. I have mild asthma, two of my children have asthma, one gets quite ill with it.

Yes, I am aware of all the concerns about the side effects. But who knows what can and may happen in the future. Life is a roulette wheel.

I believe that by getting the vaccine and then monitoring the family for a few weeks afterwards - notifying my GP if there are any untoward effects - that we will be better prepared to defend ourselves against the flu.

I'm not saying I'm not nervous. In an ideal world there would be no flu. I've weighed up the options, I've read widely here and in other locations. And I'm prepared to allow both my family and myself to receive it.

CathyMoran

Well I am a pregnant type 1 diabetic so as far as I am concerned the sooner they give me the vacine the better...my husband is also in an at risk group.

Turtwig

Yes,

Although, I reckon I could handle this flu any day (I've come out through alot worse recently:)), it's the thought of putting the more vulnerable others at risk that scares me. Knowing what I know now, I don't think I could do anything different with a clear conscience other than take the vaccine. I'm hoping too, that the take up of the vaccinations will be massive, something tells me though that it might not be....if my family is anything to go by.:( I've managed to convince by parents, but my brother is hardened skeptic, skeptic probably not being the right word, because all the informed skeptics I know (Including myself) have decided that they will be getting the vaccine:)

Jessibelle

Undecided. I've never had a flu vaccine or ever contracted the 'flu in any shape or form. I don't really get sick that often and very rarely get coughs or colds with that. With that said, I'm hoping to take up placements working with small kids and the elderly in a few weeks, so would it be more benifical from their point of view if I got vaccinated?

beachbabe

Yes, I am pregnant and a nurse, so that puts me in 2 high risk groups.

simu

I'm not because I'm pregnant and don't want to chance it with my unborn child. Also, I just don't think it's that great a threat - the whole thing seems to be completely overblown in the meeja. If the flu gets more dangerous and people start dropping like flies, I will change my mind tho.

flerb22

im in trinity med school, they arent offering us the vaccine. surely its a public health thing to give med students the swine flu vaccine? a fair few people in our class have already got sick.

donaghs

If I was pregnant, or knew someone who was, I'd want to do a lot more reading about it, see how much research & testing has been done on it. And how many pregnant women have already received the vaccine and given birth to healthy children. Anyone got any info on this?
In the US there's a lot of concern going back to their 1976 Swine Flu outbreak.

CathyMoran

donaghs wrote: »

If I was pregnant, or knew someone who was, I'd want to do a lot more reading about it, see how much research & testing has been done on it. And how many pregnant women have already received the vaccine and given birth to healthy children. Anyone got any info on this?
In the US there's a lot of concern going back to their 1976 Swine Flu outbreak.

I dont know about the past - at the end of the day I will trust the maternity hospital re same.

ZYX

seamus wrote: »

No. I just personally feel that I have more of a chance of feeling ill after taking the vaccine than I do of actually contracting the disease. I'm not concerned about the mortality rate of this particular strain, so I don't feel the need to vaccinate.

Fair enough to make that decision. The swine flu is mild as pandemics go. That being said, people who are healthy today, possibly even contributing to this website will be dead next year as a result of swine flu. We can expect about 1000 Irish people to die in the next year from Swine Flu. About 500 of them will be healthy. To put this into context about the same number will die from Cervical cancer in next 20 years.

metrovelvet

Im not high risk.

Im nervous about anything that is new on the market and has been rushed out in response to a new epidemic.

Swine flu wont kill me, blind me, compromise me long term so no.

littlebug

Because I'm a strong believer in the herd immunity concept in relation to other vaccinations (and tend to wax lyrical about it:rolleyes:) my tendency would be towards getting the vaccine even though I'm not and my immediate family are not in an at risk group. I know too many people who are so I don't want to put them at risk.

I do have to admit to having niggly doubts when people working in the medical field express their doubts and say they won't be having it... and that includes family of a seriously immuno-suppressed person who would be very very high risk. Worrying

tallaght01

littlebug wrote: »

I do have to admit to having niggly doubts when people working in the medical field express their doubts and say they won't be having it... and that includes family of a seriously immuno-suppressed person who would be very very high risk. Worrying

I would say that anyone on the medical community express doubts about it have no real idea about the vaccine, rather than knowing something that worries them.

There's no evidence or suggestion of any danger.

I guess the irish medics haven;t seen swine flu in all it's glory like we have in Oz. We've just had our winter, so we saw people dying, and loads of people in ICU for on average 2 weeks at a time. We saw ICUs being so full that routine operations had to be cancelled, and people were being flown to other cities for ICU care.

And all that in a health system which I presume has more ICU beds per head of population than Ireland.

whatawaster

metrovelvet wrote: »

Im not high risk.

Im nervous about anything that is new on the market and has been rushed out in response to a new epidemic.

Swine flu wont kill me, blind me, compromise me long term so no.

You're not high risk - but i bet some people you care about are

It won't kill you - probably

ZYX

metrovelvet wrote: »

Im not high risk.
.

Swine flu wont kill me, blind me, compromise me long term so no.

About half of expected deaths will be in those not in high risk groups. UK estimates put mortality rate at 0.1% or 1 in a thousand. This will be higher in those under 35 years old.

Out of interest why do you think swine flu won't kill you?

drkpower

ZYX wrote: »

Fair enough to make that decision. The swine flu is mild as pandemics go. That being said, people who are healthy today, possibly even contributing to this website will be dead next year as a result of swine flu. We can expect about 1000 Irish people to die in the next year from Swine Flu. About 500 of them will be healthy. To put this into context about the same number will die from Cervical cancer in next 20 years.

Arent you basing that on a roughly 0.1% mortality rate based on 1,000,000 people being infected?

But isnt that estimate a little out of date? Wasnt that the estimate from some months ago and hasnt the expected significant increase in infection rates not materialised? And was the initial estimation of 1000000 cases based on a vaccine coming on stream mid-epidemic?

metrovelvet

ZYX wrote: »

About half of expected deaths will be in those not in high risk groups. UK estimates put mortality rate at 0.1% or 1 in a thousand. This will be higher in those under 35 years old.

Out of interest why do you think swine flu won't kill you?

Well, I should have modified that. I wont kill you in more likely odds than regular flu will and I wont get the regular flu shot either.

nesf

I don't know, I'll leave it to my GP to make that call rather than myself. My medical history is a bit complicated.

ZYX

drkpower wrote: »

Arent you basing that on a roughly 0.1% mortality rate based on 1,000,000 people being infected?

But isnt that estimate a little out of date? Wasnt that the estimate from some months ago and hasnt the expected significant increase in infection rates not materialised? And was the initial estimation of 1000000 cases based on a vaccine coming on stream mid-epidemic?

I am basing it on UK figures. They revised down their figures from 0.35% to 0.1% about 4 weeks ago. I don't think it has been reduced since. Based on this and 30% of population getting infected we should have about 1250 deaths.

As far as I am aware research/guesswork about the vaccine says that we need to vaccinate 70% of population to reduce effects of swine flu to that of seasonal flu. I think in Ireland we are unlikely to reach 70% but as the most vulnerable are vaccinated first then the overall number of deaths will reduce. It really depends on how good the vaccine is and how good the uptake is.

ZYX

metrovelvet wrote: »

Well, I should have modified that. I wont kill you in more likely odds than regular flu will and I wont get the regular flu shot either.

The point is that you are much more likely to get swine flu than regular flu. Also it will probably kill more "healthy" people than regular flu. So far 1 in 4 UK deaths were in healthy people. There is no reason for you to get regular flu vaccine. There is a reason to get swine flu vaccine.

seamus

Actually, just to switch it around a little bit, I'd like to ask the medical professionals (OK, mostly tallaght) to outline whether they think the vaccine would be beneficial for me:

I'm low-risk: Late 20's, perfect health, haven't contracted any 'flu as far as I can can recall, and haven't even had a cold for two years. I don't come into contact with children or ill people, though two of my sisters-in-law are mid-pregnancy. If I feel ill, I generally stay at home until it passes.

So aside from reducing my chances of contracting swine flu (which I'm not massively concerned about contracting), what reasons are there for me to get the vaccination?

tallaght01

It's always very hard to tell who will benefit and who won't. Vaccination isn't designed with individuals in mind. They're designed to protect populations.

So, we know at the moment every person with swine flu infects about 1.4 other people.

So you use the formula 1-(1/1.4) to work out what % of people you'd want to vaccinate to get some degree of "herd immunity", which means the virus' spread through the population will be curtailed. So, in this case, the equation gives us a figure of about 30%.

So, we need 30% of the population to take the rather unselfish action of getting vaccinated, when it may not directly benefit them. That's a big ask, and will require over a million people to get vaccinated. Most of those million people would have not run into problems with the virus. But, unfortunately, human nature is such that people think about the benefits in terms of what the vaccine can do for THEM.

I think it's unlikely 30% of the population will get vaccinated. So, a lot of people are still very likely to get infected.
Swine flu is a bad ass virus when it goes bad.

Roughly 1 in 1000 people who get it die from it. 1 in 200 get hospitalised, and roughly 30% of those end up on life support in ICU. That has huge knock-on effects...as operations get cancelled all over the shop, because most people who have any kind of big surgery need to go to intensive care afterwards to recover.

There's also the issue that this virus affects some of our most vulnerable populations...namely kids, pregnant women and those with physical disabilities. We are judged, as a society, on how we treat our most vulnerable. Swine flu will show how we operate as a society, rather than as individuals.

So, who knows what risk we have. About 30% of people who die of this bug will be healthy people. Most of them will be below 50 years of age. But I could die of swine flu when I go home to visit Dublin at xmas, or I might not even get a runny nose.
If you needed a figure, look at the worst case scenario...1 million infected. So, we'll all have roughly a 1 in 4 chance of catching it.

donaghs

News coverage of the vaccine seems quite confusing. In the link below from May 09 it says researchers were "developing vaccine prototypes for European manufacturers."
http://www.breakingnews.ie/ireland/hse-in-talks-with-swine-flu-vaccine-provider-410038.html
And in this bbc article from September 09, the first UK gov approval for one of the vaccines.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8274374.stm
I'm not scaremongering, just curious. How long have the vaccines now in use been trialed on people?

tallaght01

The vaccine itself and all it's components have been around for a long time.

Every year the strain of the flu changes, and they adapt the vaccine to incorporate the newest strains. That's why the yearly flu vaccine usually protects people against about 3 strains of flu.

If swine flu had happened earlier, it would have just been put into the normal flu vaccine that comes out every year. But it came out to late.

So, they just adapted the vaccine, as they do every year, to incorporate swine flu.

Almost all vaccine reactions happen within 10 days of injection. We now have almost 3 months of good safety data. So, I'm pretty happy with that.

IvyTheTerrible

I'm not getting the flu vaccine (swine flu or "normal").

I'm young, healthy with no underlying health conditions, and I don't come into contact with risk groups. I do occassionally see my OH's grandparents but they have stopped the French greeting of kissing on the cheeks and I won't go near them if I have any symptoms.

I had the flu once before in my life, and while not pleasant, I wouldn't be particularly worried about it.

Although reading the above about herd immunity, I'm starting to feel guilty that I'm not getting the vaccine.

whatawaster

IvyTheTerrible wrote: »

Although reading the above about herd immunity, I'm starting to feel guilty that I'm not getting the vaccine.

Then why not get it? It won't do you any harm

nesf

IvyTheTerrible wrote: »

Although reading the above about herd immunity, I'm starting to feel guilty that I'm not getting the vaccine.

The biggest misconception about vaccines is that we get them for our own benefit. Really we get them for everyone else's benefit as well as our own. I'll probably get it for this reason unless there's a medical reason why I should not.

AARRRGH

Definitely not, just like I wouldn't get a vaccine for SARS, avian flu or CJD. Or whatever next years new disease is.

Dr Galen

i'll be getting it when it comes along.

I just can't see any reason for not getting it tbh. I get a headache I take some painkillers, I feel heartburn coming along, I take some gaviscon etc, soooooo there is something there that can stop me getting a pretty yucky form of flu, seems like a no brainer.

If you had of asked me 4 months ago, then I'd have been more unsure, but I looked into it, checked the research as best I could, the safety stats appear to stack up favourably, so why not?

Like has been mentioned before, vaccinations are as much, if not more, about creating herd immunity. If enough people, DON'T get the vaccine we leave ourselves open to swine flu becoming something much more than it really is, and allowing it to drag on for quite a lot longer than is necessary too.