So, a friend on facebook posted this, and it pisses me off enough that I really need to vent:
I’ve held my tongue about a lot of the anti-flu-vaccine talk that’s been flying around because while I think it is pretty baseless, ehh, it’s the flu, who cares–as long as you’re pretty healthy going into it, you’re going to endure a week of feeling like crap, and maybe if you’re unlucky, a nice bout of pneumonia.
(Hopefully not a multi-drug resistant strain, in which case you might be screwed, since it’s always been true that it’s usually follow-on infections that kill you, rather than the flu itself)
Anyway, I, myself, am very inconsistent about getting vaccinated–sometimes I do, sometimes I don’t–so I’m not going to whine at people to go do it.
However, I draw the line at anyone who believes all vaccinations are bad–as the person who captioned this video does, and as many, many people going on about not getting the H1N1 vaccination give the impression of believing–is at best, spectacularly ignorant.
At worst, they’re a *Dangerous Fucking Idiot*.
Don’t believe me? Two words: “smallpox”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smallpox, “polio”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polio.
Go research *those*, and understand that vaccines are too important a tool for their application to be governed by knee-jerk reactions either for or against, and if you’re helping to create an environment where people are fearful of vaccines, one day it is going to backfire when something much worse than mere flu comes along.
I feel like I am living in the 18th century when it comes to this shit. I have no love of Big Pharma, but fucking-A, people, sowing fear, uncertainty and doubt like this is neither helpful nor productive.
