FIrst an apology to keesha - I truly didn't mean to drop a bomb and then disappear. No excuse, but I had a bit of a melt-down this week. Over now. Keesha, thank you for your personal insight, and my deepest condolences to you and your family on the loss of your Dad. I've read horrifying accounts of GB online, but never from a 'real person' - and you are a real person. My refusal to get a flu shot (any flu shot) is pretty straight forward and not particularly documented by much of anything ..... I simply do not have confidence in the powers that be these days and their 'way' of fixing things. Much of my professional career has been in private practice surgical offices, crowned with a half decade in a start-up biotech venture where I got an insider look at FDA, CDC, HMS, BIH, AMA, NEJM and a bunch of other medical alphabet-soup luminaries and what I saw left me cold. I also come from strong, peasant stock so have enjoyed a strong constitution w/no illnesses, save a head cold or two, forever. Every time I've left a job, it has been with a nice check for unused 'sick time'. Well, until I was diagnosed w/metastatic cancer a while back - figured it was my payback for so many decades of good health. I dealt with that, kicking and screaming the whole way - so far, so good, we'll see what the future brings. Seeing a so-called Newscast extending flu fear factor while collecting gazillions of dollars from pharma companies as their advertising support strikes me a being a big, really big, conflict of interest. History is peppered with epidemic/pandemic fears; some thinned 'the herd', some just sputtered out - so much hype. There has always been a hidden agenda - these days, it's all about the money. I'm not stupid, tho I cannot cite studies and statistics to confirm or debunk the purported 'experts'. I'm just a pretty ordinary person who isn't willing to line up and take the 'shot' as told, given what I've seen. And reports of certain states that are considering 'mandating - requiring' residents to take the shot mortify me. What about medical contraindications, what about religious objections? This mass immunization threat is soooo not possible or right - at least in the America where I grew up. In my case, my pathetically limited lifestyle leaves me at lower risk. I will be more diligent (hand wipes in the car console for post supermarket trips) 'doin my part. The little guys and college age folks don't usually cross my path, but if they do, I won't shun them. Sorry for such a long post - thanks for reading if you've gotten this far .... btw, I raw feed my dog - she's a svelt 10' beagle - and don't over-vaccinate her either - so there! (Fair to say that much of my vaccine info and aversion comes from my studies on canine vaccines which are closely aligned w/human vaccines). I'm just sayin' ..............

Camlan said: "This year, I think I had a brand-new student nurse giving me the shot (under supervision of a qualified nurse, of course). She was a bit nervous, but did an okay job--the shot hurt a bit more than other times, but was that her or me? And it didn't hurt that much, to be honest, although it bled a lot and I ended up with a SpongeBob SquarePants bandaid on it. Worse things have happened." Students giving their first injections tend to push the needle in rather than going in like a dart and that hurts. I taught nursing at our community college before I had my twins and we had our students practice on oranges. We did not let them practice on each other (that's what I did as a student nurse---stupid, stupid, stupid.) Sometimes, I even had to take the students hand and push the needle in. Thank heaven for people that like students. It's funny, watching the newscasters on morning TV get their flu vaccine on live TV by physicians rather than nurses and watching them squeal like babies. Not putting down physicians--my brother is family practice--but they don't give that many injections. Most injections should not hurt except for the occasional liquid that burns going in.

Hi all, It's really amazing to see how differently this is being treated in various parts of the country! I got back to my HMO (Kaiser) to get more info on this. DD was not swab tested; Kaiser is doing phone diagnosis in order to keep sick folks at home. So I can't say with 100% confidence that yes, dd has H1N1, though the doctor had no doubt. My concern was the public health aspect of it. Shouldn't they close the camp? Tell more people? Well, when I talked to Kaiser today they said that about 25-35% (!) of the children in the San Francisco Bay Area currently have swine flu, and they are just telling them to stay home. They are not testing or doing any camp closures, etc. (School has been out for ten days or so here.) This is because (according to Kaiser) the swine flu is not as dangerous as had been thought a couple of months ago. (I'm still concerned about those with immune problems. Do they know that 1/4 of the kids running around are sick??) Would they be taking this more seriously if 1/4 of adults were out sick? Also, Kaiser's policy is no Tamiflu, primarily because they suspect that if people take it now the virus will become more resistant (esp. when it comes around in the winter, which seems the primary concern.) Well, staying home when you're sick is good policy in any case, but for those parents who are working and don't have alternate child care, what appears to be (initially) a mild illness is not sufficient reason to keep their kids out of camp (esp. when the kids really want to go.) I don't want to cause hysteria or anything, I just feel people should realize that this is not a one-in-million chance thing. This flu may be milder than they thought, but my dd has never been so sick. The fever did last for four days, not dipping below 102 even with acetaminophen, and it is still over 100 and she is listless, tired and coughing constantly. BTW, in the past three days the the CDC has upped the number of cases in my county from ONE to over 1,000 - and there has been one death.

People don't know that there are many different types of flu-shot made by different companies, and some are safe, some aren't. I got the FLUVIRIN brand, but YOU MAY GET SOME OTHER BRAND MADE BY A DIFFERENT COMPANY. DIDN'T KNOW THAT UNTIL I REPORT MY ADVERSE REACTION TO VAERS, AND HAD TO CHOOSE A LONG LIST OF FLU-SHOTS, WITH DIFFERENT NAMES & DIFFERENT COMPANIES. I got most of the side-effects listed on Sam's club pharmacy receipt: burning numbness, very bad dizziness, very bad headache, muscle pain, upset stomach, throwing up, loose stools. Reading through all the threads in Houzz, I found one 58 year old previously active & healthy Dad died of flu-shot, lots of people complain of catching a cold right after the flu shot ... so bad that they never get a flu shot again. Just avoiding sugar is cheaper than getting a flu-shot, since sugar is known to suppress the immune system. "In the book "Get The Sugar Out" by Ann Louise Gittleman M.S. C.N.S says, "No matter what form it takes, sugar paralyzes the immune system in a variety of ways: Sugar has been proven to destroy the germ-killing ability of white blood cells for up to five hours after ingestion. People don't realize that Google News, which constantly remind people to get flu-shot, is funded by vaccine maker, same with CDC, and same with doctors (wine & dined by pharma companies). Excerpt on flu-shot from below link: http://www.ithinkwecouldbefriends.com/2013/11/01/little-known-facts-flu-shot/ "Plus ALL vaccines depress your immune system functioning for up to several weeks, which means you are FAR more susceptible to flu varieties for which you have not been vaccinated. So you might be looking at bronchitis, upper respiratory infection or a stomach bug…which you might NOT have contracted if you DIDN’Tget a flu shot." Plus vaccinations inject proteins directly into your bloodstream and this is not good ... shooting full-blown proteins into your blood vessels with a vaccine (and bypassing the GI tract) puts your immune system on high alert and can eventually elicit inappropriate immune responses. That’s why many people find themselves developing asthma or allergies when they never had a problem with them in the past!" *** From Straw: My doc-sister also warned me of suppressed immune system. My doc-sister who got flu-shot yearly is the only one in the family with asthma. I developed an allergic reaction to peanuts after my flu-shot a decade ago, along with 1 week of dizziness. Same with my kid when she was given flu-shot when she was between 1 and 2 year-old, she developed 2 colds within a month of each other, plus vertigo. We have to rock her to sleep, the minute we put her down (change in position cause vertigo), she would screamed in pain. She could no longer do roll-over after the flu-shot, and dropped out of gymnastic the 1st day. She also developed a peanut-butter allergy. Both I and my husband got the same flu-shot, but he's OK, while I came down with suppressed immune system, and caught 2 flu in a row, making it month-long suffering. Also he's 6 feet, while I'm only 4'10", perhaps the dose was too strong for my size. So my 2 flu-in-a row is A DIRECT CONSEQUENCE OF FLU-SHOT, my M.D. sister already warned me about flu-shot suppress immune system, but she believed in the LIE posted by CDC website and recommended me to get the shot. I haven't seen the doc in 9 years (we have good insurance), since I'm healthy & active. I'm seeing the doc this Wednesday. Never been that sick in my life, thanks to that shot on Dec. 19. http://www.intoxicatedonlife.com/2014/10/15/truth-about-flu-vaccine/ In Are US Flu Death Figures More Public Relations than Science?, an aptly named article in the British Journal of Medicine, the author reports: “[According to CDC statistics], ‘influenza and pneumonia’ took 62,034 lives in 2001—61,777 of which were attributable to pneumonia and 257 to flu, and in only 18 cases was the flu virus positively identified.”1 Do you see what the CDC did? They combined both Influenza and Pneumonia deaths so as to inflate the numbers and make it look like more of a problem than it was. They estimated what the flu related deaths are and did not report on the actual number, which was 18. Fact #2: The statistics that the CDC throws around regarding death from influenza are grossly exaggerated. Furthermore, much of the research out there has been funded by the vaccine makers. Not only this, but the Journal of Virology found the immune systems of children who have been vaccinated against seasonal flu strains are weakened, making them more susceptible to becoming infected with flu strains not included in the vaccine. T cells are essential for immunity. This study found that the T cell response was absent in the vaccinated children. Fact #5: The flu shot may help you avoid some strains of the flu virus, but it will also likely decrease your ability to fight off other strains of the flu virus. They reported an 8.5% flu risk for those who had been vaccinated and an 8.9% risk for those who have been unvaccinated along with other infections. Vaccine inserts, they range from mild to severe. Some of the fairly common side effects include: pain (64%), fever (29%), fatigue (20%), headaches (26%), nausea/vomiting (12%), runny nose/nasal congestion, (58%), decreased appetite, (21%). Fact #8: Millions more people are getting the flu vaccine, but there is no evidence that there has been a decrease in flu related mortality. In fact, it appears the more people get the vaccine, the higher the death rates become in the elderly. http://www.intoxicatedonlife.com/2014/10/15/truth-about-flu-vaccine/