Ironically, as the wave of swine flu mania begins to subside, millions of H1N1 vaccines slowly ebb their way into medical facilities across the globe. As of Monday, everyone from the age of 2 to 24 is eligible to receive a free dose, and more are on the way.
Admittedly there has been much speculation about the safety of the vaccine, put on the FDA's fast track to approval. Critics of the program, including Congressman Ron Paul, harken back to a swine flu scare and subsequent mass vaccination program of 1976 now known to have caused hundreds of cases of Guillain-Barre syndrome.
Unlike the 1976 swine flu, the 2009 version is reported to have killed 4,500 worldwide, with over 600 deaths in the United States. But H1N1’s numbers are still nowhere near the estimated 36,000 yearly U.S. deaths from seasonal flu.
The most recent reports show H1N1 to be, by and large, mild to moderate in the illness it produces, ultimately going away on its own, and it seems Americans are nearly split down the middle when it comes to rolling up their sleeve for a free poke.
According to an August 29 Gallup Poll, 55 percent of adults plan to get the shot (or mist), versus 42 percent who say they will not partake of the vaccine.
Despite the mildness of the disease, medical officials from the FDA, CDC and WHO (World Health Organization) continue to err on the side of caution in their warnings for the remainder of the flu season.
"We've got many, many months ahead of us where we don't know what will happen, and we need to take the best steps we can to protect ourselves," Dr. Tom Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention told the Associated Press last week. "Our biggest concern is that the virus could change, mutate to become more deadly."
With the rush of conflicting information coming at us, we understand the difficulty of deciding whether or not to take the vaccine, and we believe medical decisions are personal matters where each individual must decide what they feel is right for themselves and their family.
Vaccines, however, are no substitutes for keeping your body, your temple, strong and fortified, an encouragement to contagions like the H1N1 influenza and others to take a hike.
Contrary to the CDC’s approach to the issue, "The first and most important step to preventing the flu is getting vaccinated,” we believe the body's immune system is always the first and most important line of defense. Keep yourself healthy first. Then, if you want to, get the shot.
This rehashes the great debate from the 19th century over the Germ Theory of Disease. That theory, credited to Louis Pasteur and now a cornerstone of modern medicine, proposes germs are the cause of disease.
Claude Bernard, a physiologist and outspoken critic of Pasteur’s work, argued, "The terrain is everything, the germ is nothing."
To paraphrase another of Pasteur’s critics, Rudolph Virchow, father of modern pathology, germs seek their natural habitat (diseased tissue) rather than being the cause of diseased tissue. In other words, Virchow clarified, mosquitoes seek out stagnant water, they don’t make the water stagnant.
We don’t argue the H1N1 vaccine won't prevent you from sickening with that strain of influenza. But there are no guarantees the shot will save you altogther from a hard week of sweaty sheets and chicken soup. So keep your body in good fighting condition. Even if you take both flu shots, doctors admit, you may catch some other flu strain or any of the multitude of other nasties floating around.
Interestingly, Pasteur’s last words were, according to his biographer, “Bernard was right. The germ is nothing; the soil is everything.”
So get the shot if you believe it will help, but don’t neglect your body in the meantime.
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