Do you know what's in a flu shot?

I can't watch videos on this computer, however the components in a flu vaccine change every year. The influenza virus mutates very rapidly and rare that a vaccine is any good within a year.

The variety always makes me a little nervous. Flu shots were 'mandatory' in the military, but I managed to miss out on them for over 10 straight years. (They started putting me in charge of making sure everyone got their flu shots, which made it hard for me to sneak out of them - I kept following myself home until I finally buckled just to stop the harrassment. I thought putting me in charge of flu shots was a particularly cruel thing for our commander to do. After that I moved to a squadron where I was on mobility making vaccines impossible to dodge).

At a minimum, I prefer to wait until lots of other people have taken the vaccine, just in case people start dying (there hasn't been mass dyings in around 30 years of vaccines, but just to be safe, you know).

Of course, to be honest, needles scare the hell out of me.

 

*sighs* Not again.

Here, read this:
http://www.cdc.gov/od/science/iso/thimerosal.htm

And...

http://www.cdc.gov/nip/vacsafe/concerns/thimerosal/faqs-thimerosal.htm#12 [Broken]

And for general issues of vaccine safety:
http://www.cdc.gov/od/science/iso/

 

Heh. I wonder why people are always so quick to be scared of vaccinees. Whooping cough, flu, measels, chicken pox, and HPV have all had their share!