

How A Nerd Decides To Get The H1N1 Vaccine - DuncanKinney
http://www.unlimitedmagazine.com/blog/?p=1360#comments

======
dunstad
I'd much prefer percentages to the flat number of deaths in the article; it's
much less misleading.

Assume your chance to contract swine flu is in the upper bound stated in the
article, 35%. Multiply that by the pneumonia chance of one in a thousand, .1%.
Finally, multiply again by chance of death from pneumonia (20%) and you get a
minuscule .007% chance of swine flu death, or seven people out of a hundred
thousand.

That's how a nerd decides _not_ to get the swine flu vaccine.

~~~
mechanical_fish
Let's review your calculation here:

Odds of getting the flu, feeling like absolute crap for a week, losing a week
of work, being shunned by everyone I know for two or three weeks because I'm a
carrier of the swine flu, but accidentally giving some of my acquaintances the
flu anyway, thus prolonging the epidemic: 35%.

Okay, stop. I'm going to the pharmacy for my vaccine right now. [1]

My only fear is that I'm already too late. I'm not feeling so well today.

\---

[1] Not that I think it's in stock yet, or anything. But maybe I'll call them.

~~~
NikkiA
_Odds of getting the flu, feeling like absolute crap for a week_

The few people I know that have had H1N1 reported that they actually felt like
crap for more like a month, The initial 'flu symptoms' passed after a week,
but they were left feeling weak and 'drained' for another 3-4 weeks beyond
that.

Personally, I'm tempted to get the shot, and I've never bothered with flu
shots in the past out of fear of the side effects (I have a barely functioning
immune system).

~~~
ikitat
_I have a barely functioning immune system_

That is why you should ask your doctor if you should get the vaccine.
Immunosuppressed are on the high risk list and are encouraged to get the
vaccine.

------
burke
Well, last time I had an immunization, I went into a coma, so it's a pretty
easy choice for me. Otherwise though, I'd have though it'd be a no brainer.

~~~
jcl
Presumably a true nerd would discount personal experience as anecdotal and get
the shot anyway. ;)

------
Zak
The article is entirely free of side-effect data. Reducing my H1N1 infection
probability from 25% to 2.5% might be worth a poke in the arm, but more severe
side effects have been reported. If I had to guess, I'd say the benefits
outweigh the costs, but without data for both, that's nothing more than a
guess.

~~~
jcl
There is also research that suggests that getting a regular flu shot may
increase the chance of getting H1N1, so it's possible that the interaction
between the various flus and vaccines is more complicated than we thought.

[http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/technology/science/study...](http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/technology/science/study-
prompts-provinces-to-rethink-flu-p%3E%20lan/article1303330/)

~~~
anguslong
Mayhaps or not... via twitter @aetiology (epidemiologist) -- seasonal + H1N1
vaccine: good or bad? New study contradicts unpublished Canadian data:
<http://bit.ly/6FP2g> (sounds like both are preliminary)...

------
fnid
This is some interesting analysis, but it only considers the negative effects
of not getting the flu and neglects the negative effects of _getting_ it.

Consider this poor woman who got dystonia after receiving a flu vaccine:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cEN5KGwNGeo>

She was a cheerleader and how she can't walk.

The nerd logic also neglects the probability that the flu vaccine will
actually help. In the lab, 50-80% of the vaccinated resisted the exact same
strain, however in the wild, only 10% did not get the flu and the number of
hospitalizations was not affected at all.

To do a proper analysis, one must use proper probabilities and statistics and
consider the probabilities of outcome with the benefit/harm that could be
caused by that outcome.

~~~
gloob
Sometimes I get the feeling that if I got a needle and was hit by a car two
weeks later, I could convince people it was a side-effect.

I had my ribcage sawn open by the medical system so they could cut out a piece
of my heart and replace it with a chunk of a pig's. I'm still around and doing
just dandy. My suspicion is that the people who can do that sort of thing
probably have a better notion of what this vaccine will do than I do.

Not that any of this invalidates any of your arguments, of course; I'm just
talking.

Edit: Perhaps another way of looking at it would be: I don't really want a
doctor who has never written a line of code in his life to tell me how to
write a program. I suspect that modern medicine is not quackery and does
involve actual expertise, and (equally significantly) that the medical system
has a greater amount of medical expertise than I do.

------
quellhorst
I'm not scared of H1N1, I'll take a chance of the flu over the shot. Since I
work mostly from home the odds of contracting the flu are lower for me anyway.

------
tybris
This nerd will simply wait for his (non-US) government to take that decision
for him. I don't have any insight into the current state or effects.

~~~
tomjen2
That might work for your, but I have the interesting problem of not being in
the risk group in my country but for some reason being in the risk group in
the US. So which government should you trust?

------
DuncanKinney
I haven't seen any side effect data aside from the oft-quoted 1 in a million
instance of GBS and occasional anaphalactic reactions.

~~~
ikitat
Is that statistic based solely on the 1976 vaccine? If so, I'm not sure it's
relevant today.

