My take on Influenza and the Vaccine

I’m taking a break from my self-imposed Blog Silence to broach a subject that is slowly making me crazy: The influenza epidemic and the absolutely stupid conspiracy theories behind it.

I swear to god, if I hear another discussion about autism, microchips and/or programmed genocide, I’m going to blow a gasket.

This post Is inspired by an email I wrote to a friend of mine where I shared my views on what I considered ‘the truth’ in this whole thing.

Being a microbiologist by training and having worked as an inspector in the Pharma industry for a few years, I think I have an informed opinion on such things. I won’t be so bold as to say that I hold the ‘truth” but I know enough to motivate my decision to get vaccinated along with my whole family.

The Influenza Virus

The thing about the H1N1 flu virus pandemic this year is that it could become similar to what happened around 1918, after WWI (Spanish Flu) where the flu spread explosively over the whole planet and killed millions of people.

Influenza is a common virus propagated through human fluids that goes around every year.  We catch it more than once in our lives (like the common cold ) because the viruses mutate year in, year out.  Usually, once we get an infectious disease, our immune system beats it and keeps chunks of the pathogens (the viruses and bacterias making us sick) around to check them against future infections.  If we get infected again, the body matches the old bits with the new ones and launches a massive counter-offensive that completely kills the infection in a few hours (instead of days/weeks).

Now Influenza is a very, very clever virus.  It changes it’s surface bits about once a year, the bits our bodies keep around to prevent re-infection.   It does that by touching different viruses in infected cells and trading some of it’s DNA (the blueprints for all the virus bits) with the other viruses.

This often leads to an ‘upgrade’ of the Virus that makes the human body unable to recognize it, leading to the full blown, 7 day illness instead of the 24 hour fever/runny nose you often get without realizing what’s wrong.

Another thing about influenza is that, unlike the common cold, it does kill people every year. Several hundred thousands people (from all over the planet) die of the flu every year.  However, victims are often young children, sick people and the elderly, especially in developing countries.

That’s why I don’t get a flu shot every year, I’m neither of those so the risk isn’t worth getting the shot.  I’m a strong believer of the power of the Human Immune system, it’s a beautiful piece of machinery so I don’t get vaccines if I don’t feel a threat (My kids weren’t vaccinated for Chicken Pox for example).  However, my son and wife are prone to pulmonary complications from influenza so they get the shot every year.

But here’s the twist Influenza also exists in animals.  Thankfully you can’t catch pig flu, or bird flu because the viruses can’t find the proper machinery in our cells to replicate.   What does happen however, is that influenza viruses from animals can co-mingle with human influenza and exchange their ‘bits’, sometimes more than ‘bits’.

In the last year, a new mutation of Swine influenza rose, bearing lots of new “upgrades” that no human immune system has dealt with in 80 years (meaning we had no immunity).  And that upgrade came with a ‘potential lethality’ feature.

And what happened was that the normal H1N1 virus got in contact with the Swine virus and took some features and that created a new brand of flu: Influenza A(H1N1).

A new brand of flu that can and will kill people outside of the categories I said above.  The reports I’ve read about mention healthy teenagers and adults.

In the post WWI pandemic, millions of people died.  Probably mostly because bad hygiene and post war conditions made them more fragile.

But A(H1N1) is a new virus we have no immunity against, a virus that will likely kill people that are otherwise healthy and it is present in the population, mixed with the seasonal version of the virus.

We may not catch it, and if we do, we likely won’t die from it. But there is an extra risk that the virus will have a lethality that seasonal flu doesn’t.

At least that’s what I was thought in school and what I researched to build my opinion on Vaccination.

The Influenza Vaccine

I’m not very versed in vaccine manufacturing, my class notes on them are long forgotten but here’s a quick bit from Wikipedia:

Influenza vaccines can be produced in several ways; the most common method is to grow the virus in fertilized hen eggs. After purification, the virus is inactivated (for example, by treatment with detergent) to produce an inactivated-virus vaccine.

So in essence, the vaccine is filled with the many virus bits that our bodies look for in an infection.  When the body meets those bits it reacts like it was being attacked by the flu (hence possible pain and fever after the shot).  Once the body calms down, it keeps the bits around for the next contact with the virus.  When the live virus finally invades your body, it finds itself thoroughly screwed as it meets a full blown immune reaction that kills it before it can establish a proper beach head.

It’s true that vaccines have variable degrees of effectiveness, but all of them are better than ‘no protection’ in my opinion.

I really don’t think the vaccine is being distributed worldwide to save money on absenteeism or to make the pharmas rich.   I think countries fears the possible death toll and (especially) they fear being blamed for it.

So that’s why I’m getting the vaccine and why my family will too.

I usually don’t, but this year, I do.

In fact, being a ‘health care worker’ I’m going to get it right after posting this

If you have questions, feel free to ask me.  I’m  not a physician or an epidemiologist, but I may know more than that freak on TV talking about Aliens and Conspiracies.

I’ll be back to RPGs soon.

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