I said most people; that is, most healthy adults in the low risk group.
It's unpleasant for a few days, but it is not life threatening for most people. Maybe it's less unpleasant for vegans.
Assuming it kills 35,000 people a year in the U.S., and 5-20% of the population get the flu each year (I've had it a few times; I've probably caught it more than most people, because I travel more and get exposed to strains I have no resistance to).
As a death toll, that's 0.01% of the population at worst, which is at very
most 1 in every 500 people who catch it.
More people than die will go to the hospital for it (0.06%), and in terms of medical resources, that is meaningful, but both deaths and hospitalizations are mostly in the high-risk group (which
should certainly be vaccinated, which reduces complications by something like 75%); something like 90% of the victims being the elderly, who have compromised immune systems, most of the rest being infants/very young children, and people with chronic respiratory issues.
Both those high risk individuals, and health care workers who are exposed to high risk individuals should be vaccinated, but the question is: should everybody else also be vaccinated too?
It's a cost benefit evaluation.
For most people (those not in the high risk group), is a 20% (at most) chance of a few days of discomfort worth guaranteed suffering for at least 24 hours for a chicken locked up in a battery cage to produce the egg (not even considering the shared burden for the eventual death of the chicken, and the male chicks ground up alive)?
I can say I'd rather have the flu than be locked in a battery cage for 24 hours, unable to walk or turn around.
And because I wouldn't want to bear such a torment, I wouldn't want to inflict it upon a chicken for my sake.
So, what I'm worried about is whether my not getting vaccinated could harm others.
What are the real chances of my catching the flu and then spreading it to somebody else who has serious complications or dies?
How does that weigh against the suffering of chickens in egg production for all of the shots I consume?
Anyway,
GOOD NEWS!
I just found this reading some CDC info:
http://www.cdc.gov/flu/protect/vaccine/ ... accine.htm
New vaccine made from insect cell line! (no insects are harmed as far as I can tell, it's just a cell line; I don't know what the growth medium is, but it sounds like it's constructed from scratch and not any kind of biological serum)
Just FDA approved last year, it seems it's starting to become available.
So, look for Flublok!
And thank you, fall armyworm, for your generous contribution of a viable lab grown cell line for culturing flu virus!
Please post here to let me know if you can find and get a Flublok shot; we should support this vaccine production method. I'm going to look for it, although it might not be very widely available yet.