[Swoop]

Originally Posted by golfing eagles

No, actually you have to be an idiot to believe that, follow that advice, or even post it in the first place.

Let's examine a few vaccines:

First of all, the only type of vaccine that you can get any form of the disease from are live attenuated vaccines. Most flu shots are inactive vaccines, ie: the worst you can get is a sore arm.
One of the first vaccines was developed by Edward Jenner in 1796 for smallpox---a disease that killed unknown millions with a 30% mortality rate and is NOW EXTINCT since 1975 due to vaccinations. By the way, the current smallpox vaccine is based on a related virus and you CANNOT get smallpox from it.
How many millions were killed by polio? The vaccine can give a form of polio to 2 in 1 million recipients, and that included household contacts of the vaccinated person.
Measles vaccine has an equally low incidence of causing the disease
Diphtheria, Pertussis and Rubella are inactive vaccines, tetanus is a toxoid.
Most of these vaccines are 85-95% effective
So, for every bad side effect of these vaccines, thousands of cases and deaths are prevented
Influenza kills about 44,000 Americans/year on average, that number would be less than 1/2 if everyone got their flu shot.

So PLEASE, ignore that idiotic post and get your vaccinations as recommended by THE EXPERTS AT THE CDC, and not some conspiracy theory nut job.

How do you figure that the number of flu deaths would reduce by 50% if everyone got the flu shot? First, the people currently getting flu shots are already typically the most vulnerable. Giving flu shots to young healthy people would have a minimal effect on the mortality rate. So since the flu shot is about 50% effective and a large number of at risk people already get it, how would inoculating everyone further reduce the number by an additional 50%?Lastly the flu shot for any given season is based on the best guess as to what strains will be most prevalent. When they guess wrong the numbers climb significantly.