Don't skip the flu shot this (or any) year, folks.
However, I am concerned about the needle-haystack phenomenon with ebola.
Can you link me to a reasonable, digestible abstract about the real pros-and-cons of flu shot?
edit: Jeez, downvotes? Did I say something wrong? I'm not trying to troll, just answering the question.
You may be infecting elderly and babies but are unaffected, as others have said a flu shot isn't so much about protecting you it's about people around you. My 70 year-old dad has IPF his lungs are shot and if he catches the flu he's as good as dead.
It's frustrating the ambivalence or apathy or just outright paranoia is so prevalent these days. At my workplace out of 400 people one year only 3 people got a flu shot; myself and two others. The majority are 20-somethings and others who don't get the concept of a vaccines.
I feel like saying "We don't care about just you we care about everyone!" but it's not a very good catch phrase.
The CDC has changed stances to recommend everyone (over 6 months) get a flu shot every season.
The CDC has a good rundown: http://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/qa/flushot.htm
Regardless, a person with nothing to fear from the flu getting the shot anyhow and having a fever for a few hours sounds like a cakewalk compared to what happens if they don't and infect me, even through my vaccination: I am very asthmatic and the flu for me can easily turn into months of bronchitis, or -- even worse -- pneumonia and hospital trips.
People like me rely on herd immunity to supplement our own vaccinations. Please get vaccinated.
The two key points:
1. "The most frequent reactions reported after vaccination in children and adults are pain and other injection-site reactions. Up to 64% of people vaccinated with IIV experience pain at the injection site, which usually resolves in <2 days without treatment."
2. "Fever, malaise, myalgia, and other systemic symptoms that can occur after vaccination with IIV most often affect persons who have had no previous exposure to the influenza virus antigens in the vaccine (e.g., young children). In adults the rate of having these events is similar after IIV and after a placebo injection."
So other than your arm aching for <2 days where injected, the 'symptoms' are no more common than a placebo injection.
As other comments have said, the main reason for healthy young people to take flu shots is to limit spread of the disease to people who will die from the flu or who cannot take flu shots. But you may very well get direct benefit for yourself, and the risk is very small.
In addition, consider some of the potential social effects of flu season. You're on a crowded international flight and a handful of people are clearly ill. What are the odds someone on that plane freaks out about Ebola?
Do those shots really do anything much?
edit: the last time I had a serious viral sickness it was a combination viral and bacterial angina (mononucleosis combined with a normal angina) and that was about 8 years ago.
edit: I hadn't realised sharing experience was such a downvotable offence... note I observed this over 3 years. Obviously the flu jab targets specific strains of flu, if the jab you get doesn't target the strains that happen to come round that winter then it's not going to help at all. I've no idea how well they can predict which strains will be in circulation but in my experience, not very well.
Get your flu shot.
There's generally only one or two flus in a season. Flu is often confused with colds and gastroenteritis by lay people - most of the time when someone says they got a "stomach flu" it's nothing of the sort.
This is why "sharing experience" is bullshit, especially when there's an entire global network of health organizations providing actual, data-driven analysis that shows your professed experiences to not be an accurate representation.
And I don't seem to get sick even when I make out with people suffering from a cold (like my girlfriend). Maybe I just have an abnormally strong immune system?
And while you could make a point of herd immunity, flu shots aren't very popular where I'm from. I only know of one person who's ever gotten one. The others either aren't getting them or our conversations don't steer in that direction.
[1] a bit of sniffles, some coughing, no fever or headaches
Does that not suffice? Can I still transfer the flu even if the virus isn't affecting me in even the slightest possible way?
Meanwhile, what are the risks of getting a flu shot? Effectively zero.
Just get it, please.
To be perfectly honest, it's not about risk. It's about the nuisance of yet another errand to run. Unfortunately that small-ish barrier is often enough to prevent me from doing things that don't feel absolutely essential.
Hell, I wonder where I would even go to get a flu shot ... my general physician? I don't even know where their offices are ...
Heck, my GP told me to go to one to get my Tetanus etc. booster (it's a lot easier for them to keep it in stock).
If you regularly make out with said girlfriend, I'd be fairly confident that either of you would have a difficult time making the other ill.