[Jolabent]

(2011.Nov.23 07:15 PM)cipher Wrote:  As Dusti's post mentioned, the flu vaccine is made from inactive virus strains.

It can't give you the flu. What it can give you is some of the symptoms of having the flu, and those are caused by your body's immune system responding to the vaccine.

It's the same reason I can't usually tell if it's a cold or allergies which are affecting me, since the symptoms often present the same.

Another reason people usually complain that the vaccines don't work is they pick something like three flu strains that they think are most likely to hit you, and build the vaccine for those. There are way more strains than that, so all you have to do is contract one of those strains you haven't been vaccinated for, and end up feeling like the vaccine was worthless. What you don't know is how many times you came into contact with the ones you were vaccinated for, and thus protected from.

For someone who can be debilitated from the flu, having the flu shot every year definitely helps to prevent getting sick constantly, especially when you work around the public. I would rather have some sort of "flu like symptoms" for 2 days from the shot instead of wondering all winter how many days am I going to stay healthy.