Whenever I talk about
flu vaccine with people, I often hear the same
questions and comments coming up over and over again. And so I put a
short list together of really common
things that people say. And I wanted to discuss
them one by one. So let's say this
person over here to the top left, this
person, she says to me, well, you know what? I don't really see the
point of getting the vaccine because I never get sick. She says many
years have gone by, and her immune system has
just been really healthy, and she just never
seems to get sick. So she just doesn't see the
point of getting the vaccine. And in response to this, what
I usually draw an analogy to is seat belts. And I'll say, well,
many people have never been in a serious car accident,
but we know from research that seat belts are
a really good idea, and they keep you safe. And they reduce the risk of
getting a horrible injury. And so just as I would recommend
you wear the seat belt, or maybe you wear
a helmet if you're doing something
dangerous, similarly, I would recommend the flu vaccine. And usually when I explain
it this way, people get it. And they say, oh, OK, well
even though I've never gotten in a major car accident,
I do wear my seat belt. So just like that, even
though I've never gotten sick, I'm going to go ahead
and get my flu vaccine. Now, on the bottom
left, this gentleman is saying a little
bit of the opposite. He says, well, you
know, I've gotten the flu vaccine, Dr. Desai. But I still got sick. I did it last year,
maybe the year before, and I still got sick afterwards. So what was the point? Why did I even do it? And so now I don't
want to do it anymore. And I can understand his logic. That makes a degree of sense. And what I usually
tell folks that say this is-- I explain the
idea of a copycat virus, that maybe when they got
sick with what they thought was the flu or the flu
virus, that maybe it was one of these other viruses. Remember there are viruses
such as RSV, or rhinovirus, that can sometimes make you
feel like you have the flu. So maybe he had one of
those viruses instead. Another explanation
could be maybe he got sick right after
he got the vaccine. And remember, the vaccine
needs a couple of weeks. There's a two-week
delay or so before you get the full protection
from the vaccine. So maybe he was in that
two-week time span right after he got the vaccination,
and maybe he got sick then. And lastly, we have
to remember the flu vaccine has three strains in it. So maybe he had a
different strain. Maybe it was just one
or the other flu virus strains that was
out there that year. So who knows exactly
why he got sick that year that he
says he got sick. But that doesn't change the fact
that the flu vaccine is still going to reduce his chances
of getting sick in the future. Now, one thing, I'm going
to stick with this gentleman here in the bottom left. He might say, well,
a different strain? What the heck? If that's the case,
then what's the point? I often hear that. He says, what's the
point if you could have a flu illness
from some other strain? And when people
talk about this, I have to remind them
that it's not perfect. So it's not an exact science. And what you have to
remember is that it goes back to the seat belt issue. It does reduce your chances
of getting sick from the flu, but it's not going to
reduce it down to zero. Nothing in life is going to
reduce your chances to zero, and there's still a possibility
that you could get sick. And so our best
offer is that you can reduce the chance
of getting sick. Let's move on to this
gentleman in the middle then. And so he says to me,
well, you know what? I think that the flu
vaccine made me sick. So this is a little different. He's saying that the flu
vaccine itself made him sick. And this is something
a lot of people think. They think, well,
maybe I was fine, and maybe it was only after
getting the flu vaccine that I got sick. And this can be a very
frustrating thing to feel. I mean, that's horrible
that you were feeling fine, and then a vaccine came along
and made you feel awful. But a couple of facts
have to come to mind. So one fact, for example,
is that we know that the flu vaccine cannot give you flu. So we know flu vaccine
does not cause flu. That's a fact. And the reason I can
say that with certainty is that one of the two
vaccines is actually dead. Remember, there's the TIV
and then there's the LAIV. The TIV is a dead vaccine,
meaning the virus inside of it is dead. And the LAIV-- that's the other
option-- this one is alive, but it's very weak. And so usually with this one you
might get a runny nose at best. And so, if he says, I
think that I got sick from the flu
vaccine, I would say, well, I don't think that's
possible from this one, right? If you got the injected
version, then that's not possible at all. And if you got the
live version, then you may have gotten some
symptoms, but we wouldn't call that the flu. And I would also say that
if that weak vaccine made you sick, can you
only imagine how you would have felt if you had
the wild virus, the one that circulates and we're
trying to protect you from? What's much more likely
for this gentleman is that he probably got sick
from maybe this copycat virus, one of the other viruses that
are circulating, probably around the time that
he had the flu vaccine. So he mistakenly thought that
the vaccine made him sick when it was probably
just another virus. Or maybe he got sick
when he was still within two weeks of
getting the vaccine. Because, again, we said
before that it takes a couple weeks to really
get up and running. So in the top right, now we
have this guy and he says to me, well, you know what? I hate pain. And this is probably my excuse. This is the one I
used to use a lot. I hate pain. And I hate getting vaccines
because usually that means a lot of pain. So for folks like this, and
again, this was my own mindset, I say, OK, well, if pain is
what you're trying to avoid, think about the fact that flu,
getting sick with the flu, is much, much worse
than getting a sore arm. And that's the most common
side effect people talk about with that TIV vaccine,
the dead vaccine. And also, if you get the other
vaccine, the live vaccine, then I would say,
well, flu is still a lot worse than
getting a runny nose. And that's the most
common side effect that people talk about
with the live vaccine. So when you think about
the common side effects, flu is much, much
worse than the side effects you get
with the vaccines. So we come down to this
lady in the bottom right. She says to me, well,
you know what, Dr. Desai? I think you're a nice
person, but I really don't trust vaccines. I don't think that
they're safe, and I don't trust what's
inside of them. I think that there is
something dangerous about them. And specifically, I don't like,
she might even say, thimerosal. Thimerosal is something that
people talk a lot about. And it's found inside of
some of the flu vaccines. And so that's what
she's referring to. So, in response, it's tough. It's tough to talk about
issues if you're not trusted. And so the first and
easy thing to say is, well, if you really just
don't trust thimerosal, some of the flu vaccines, the
single-dose kind of vials of flu vaccines, they
don't even have thimerosal. So single-dose vials
don't have thimerosal. So that's kind of an
easy solution, right? If that's her biggest
issue or concern, then you can just say,
well, fair enough. That's an easy fix. And sometimes that works. Sometimes that's good enough
and people say oh, OK, well, if they don't have it,
then I'll go ahead and get the single-dose flu vaccine. But for others that simply
just don't trust vaccines in general, because they've
heard about thimerosal, or they've heard
about autism, things like that, there I think it's
really helpful to just discuss where these things come from. Where did this whole idea
of thimerosal or autism-- where was it born? And the truth is that there's
a complicated history to that. And there's a huge thimerosal
myth that has been born and people discuss
on the internet. And so I'll talk about
thimerosal myth and the facts behind it because
that's the only way to garner a little bit
of trust with folks, is to actually
discuss the facts. And actually separately
from this video, we have a thimerosal video that
you can watch and understand as well.