Monday, November 02, 2009
H1N1, Seriously
So okay, I made a joke about the swine flu last time, but that was before I went to a party where a pregnant lady said she didn't want the vaccination because it was all "new technology." My my, this flu, which is benign for almost everyone else, has a good record of killing small children and pregnant women. Like my joke said, it skips people over 50, not out of any respect for the elderly, but because we've all had it years ago. It was nastier last time. I remember thinking that it was no wonder it had killed all those people in 1918. But, it's just as deadly to people like my friend at the party as it ever was to the people ravaged by war and poor nutrition and other things ninety years ago. So, just in the hope that somebody will see sense and get that vaccination who otherwise wouldn't have done so, I offer this bit of truth and wisdom. And for once I'm not kidding.
In truth there is no new technology in a flu shot. The technology was first used in the Sabin oral polio vaccine in the 1950s. It works for polio virus, and it works for any other virus. For those who say, well, what about AIDS?, I'll tell you that the trouble with the AIDS virus is that it mutates so fast that it isn't possible to make a vaccine that will work on it's new form. It actually mutates not by chance, as do most living things, but by design. As design, you've got to admire it. As a potential victim, you've got to wish it gone. But, other than AIDS, the technique used in preparing the H1N1 vaccine is totally proven technology, and it works.
Every year the seasonal flu (you remember that, right, because if you don't you will in a month or two) is a new strain or two or three, and vaccines must be prepared from scratch to prevent infection. Usually older people are more vulnerable, because there are more strains of flu than a person is likely ever to be exposed to in one lifetime, so each year brings brand-new fun, so to speak. The same technique that prepares the seasonal flu vaccine every year is used to prepare the H1N1 vaccine.
And what is that? Well, I'll tell you. First, you find someone who has the virus so that you can collect a sample. Then you inject that sample into a chicken egg that you keep nice and warm so that the virus will grow and thrive on the egg until what you have is essentially an eggshell full of virus. Then you split the contents of that egg up among a whole bunch of eggs and repeat the process. And you do that again and again until you have run the virus through twenty-one separate eggs. That takes weeks, if not months, to accomplish, which is why sometimes there isn't enough vaccine to go around. However, unless you are allergic to eggs, the vaccination will not harm you in any way. The virus, although still alive, loses its ability to make a human sick while it grows on all those eggs. That makes it a perfect way to protect yourself against the disease, because your immune system doesn't know it's harmless, and not only kills the injected virus, but any other little virus particles of that type that you come in contact with, ever.
That's how vaccinations work! No big, strange procedures. No esoteric formulae. No secrets. And nothing at all cutting edge or new. As I said, unless you're allergic to eggs, getting the vaccine injected is about the same thing as getting saline solution injected, except that the vaccine protects you against whatever virus it contains.
A bit more truth: if you get sick shortly after taking a vaccination, you were about to get sick anyway. No vaccine ever makes somebody sick. And the risks of vaccine, while present, are mostly far exceeded by the risks of not getting the vaccine. In the case of H1N1 and a pregnant woman, I'd say about a million times higher risk comes from skipping the vaccine than from getting it. Maybe more.
So, for Pete's sake, folks, please don't be such an idiot as to mistrust science in the case of H1N1 vaccine. If you're otherwise healthy, well it's just the flu. But if you're pregnant, or have small children in the house, ask yourself how badly you want a child, or yourself, to die from the flu? At all? I thought not.
S.
Labels: Info, Social Commentary
