View Poll Results: Would you get the Swine Flu Vaccination?

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    15 65.22%
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    8 34.78%
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Thread: Swine Flu Vaccine - Would you get it?

  1. #41
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    Re: Swine Flu Vaccine - Would you get it?

    I've had the jab, and felt fine. My arm was a liitle sore but thats about it.

  2. #42
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    Cool Re: Swine Flu Vaccine - Would you get it?

    Quote Originally Posted by Georgious dancer View Post
    I've had the jab, and felt fine. My arm was a liitle sore but thats about it.
    Aparrt frum loossing teh abilty two speel an punk chew eight


    Sorry, couldn't resist Tash

  3. #43
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    Re: Swine Flu Vaccine - Would you get it?

    Quote Originally Posted by StokeBloke View Post
    Demanding a double blind placebo trial of a vaccine designed to combat a current threat is just an unworkable request in my opinion. If people were dying of Swine Flu whilst this trial was taking place, what then? Let's take the three, four, five years it usually takes to test medication and release it as safe after the virus has died out - very useful. That would be a government/pharmaceutical/military conspiracy too no doubt
    I intended my conspiracy theory to be a little tongue-in-cheek. Sorry if it's detracted too much from the usefulness of this thread.

    I agree that risk must be weighed against potential benefit. Clearly, full testing may not be practical or achievable within a reasonable/useful time frame. I think it all depends how you feel about being a 'human guinea pig'. There have been some truly disastrous results in the past when drugs had unknown effects.

    Anyone remember Thalidomide? That was a drug which had not received adequate testing. The terrible effects of Thalidomide included missing/extra limbs/appendages on babies whose mothers took it during their pregnancy. The fallout from Thalidomide included a kickstart to more stringent controls on drugs testing.

    In 2006, six men volunteered to be part of a drug trial for TGN1412. It must have seemed like easy cash at the time but it turned out to be probably the biggest mistake of their lives. All six were hospitalised within minutes of taking it (fortunately the trial where they were injected was actually taking place in a hospital).

    With incidents like these in mind it's not hard to see why some people cry foul if they think a vaccine/drug has not received adequate testing. I'd guess the gold standard of testing is the double blind placebo controlled study. This vaccine doesn't have it and so some people are understandably concerned.

    It's your body and it's your choice. Choose carefully.

  4. #44
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    Re: Swine Flu Vaccine - Would you get it?

    Here’s an interesting piece of information regarding the terms with which the drug manufacturers are willing to supply flu vaccines:

    http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/reques...ity_from_prose

    It seems that all the contracts in place grant suppliers immunity from prosecution in the event that a vaccine has unpleasant side effects. Note that as these contracts were signed in 2007 it is reasonable to assume that these are general terms that apply to all flu vaccines rather than just the swine flu vaccine.

    Why couldn’t the government negotiate otherwise? The manufacturers know there is a small risk with untested drugs. When they supply an untested drug that could be taken by 10’s of millions of people even just a small percentage of claims could result in financial ruin from lawsuits.


    Your body. Your choice. You only have one body to experiment with. Choose carefully.

  5. #45
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    Re: Swine Flu Vaccine - Would you get it?

    Quote Originally Posted by StokeBloke View Post
    Aparrt frum loossing teh abilty two speel an punk chew eight


    Sorry, couldn't resist Tash
    It's a good job I like you!

  6. #46
    Registered User Baruch's Avatar
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    Re: Swine Flu Vaccine - Would you get it?

    All I can say on the matter is this. I have had swine flu. I know that for many people it's relatively mild, but I have never been so ill. The flu went in its own sweet time, but it has left me with postviral syndrome. Now I am unable to dance, work or even walk more than a short distance without feeling ill and weak. So far I've been off work for nearly ten weeks and counting.

    Unpleasant as this is, I consider myself fortunate. People have been killed by swine flu, so for me only to have postviral syndrome is definitely the lesser of two evils. However, neither option is exactly appealing, so I'd urge everyone who can to have the swine flu vaccination despite all the scaremongering. The alternative could be extremely unpleasant or even fatal.

  7. #47
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    Re: Swine Flu Vaccine - Would you get it?



    Very sorry to read this Barry.

    Wishing you a speedy recovery....

  8. #48
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    Re: Swine Flu Vaccine - Would you get it?

    Here's another very good reason to have the vaccine. Apparently there are now 5 patients in hospital here in Wales with a strain of swine flu that is resistant to Tamiflu. No doubt that strain will become much more widespread in the very near future.

  9. #49
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    Re: Swine Flu Vaccine - Would you get it?

    I got mine yesterday, along with the normal flu jab. Went dancing last night and couldn't get going, felt a bit lethargic. Feel fine now though, apart from a sore arm where I got the swine flu jab....would rather have the sore arm that get Swine Flu though.

  10. #50
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    Re: Swine Flu Vaccine - Would you get it?

    I always thought that the Swine Flu threat had been over stated, and I had been wondering when the dodgy dealings would start to emerge.

    It's taken less than a year for information to start surfacing:

    http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2...pharmaceutical

  11. #51
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    Re: Swine Flu Vaccine - Would you get it?

    Quote Originally Posted by Bubble View Post
    I always thought that the Swine Flu threat had been over stated
    But that story is about events that happened long before last year's Swine Flu outbreak.

    So there's nothing in that particular story to confirm your belief...
    Love dance, will travel

  12. #52
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    Re: Swine Flu Vaccine - Would you get it?

    Quote Originally Posted by DavidY View Post
    But that story is about events that happened long before last year's Swine Flu outbreak.

    So there's nothing in that particular story to confirm your belief...
    Well; that just makes it worse, because it may mean Big-Pharma have been pulling the strings for even longer. The way I see it:

    Three scientists who had all received pay/funding from Big-Pharma as far back as year 2000 wrote some guidance on flu-pandemics that was published by the World Health Organisation in 2004.

    If the 2004 scientific advice is the most recent available (nothing else is mentioned in the Guardian article)

    and, the World Health Organisation bases its guidance on the most recent advice,

    and, governments act on the advice of the World Health Organisation

    then you have the situation that three scientists who have previously received money from Big-Pharma influenced governmental purchasing decisions in a way that created £Billions of orders for Big-Pharma.

    It would appear that the work of those three scientists may well have influenced UK government policy in 2005 when they purchased Bird-Flu vaccines, and in 2009 when they purchased Swine-Flu vaccines.

    If the work of those three scientists is still raking in money for Big-Pharma years later then I'd say Big-Pharma did fantastically well out of the money they initially parted with.

    The tragedy is that an estimated £1 Billion has been spent on vaccines by UK government, for a pandemic that has yet to materialise. Meanwhile, elsewhere in the system, the National Institute for Clinical Excellence puts a price on peoples lives when they decide whether cancer treatment x, y or z is sufficiently 'cost effective' to be prescribed on the NHS. I'm not a pharmacist, but I'd guess £1 Billion buys quite a lot of cancer drugs.

    Of course, if Swine flu returns with a vengeance next autumn, and kills 50000 people, I'll have to eat my words.

  13. #53
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    Re: Swine Flu Vaccine - Would you get it?

    Quote Originally Posted by Bubble View Post
    Well; that just makes it worse, because it may mean Big-Pharma have been pulling the strings for even longer. The way I see it:

    ...

    Of course, if Swine flu returns with a vengeance next autumn, and kills 50000 people, I'll have to eat my words.
    No, no, no

    All that happened here is that three scientists, who happen to have received funding from commercial companies for "other" work i.e. not influenza (not at all unusual in research, someone has to pay them, we can't work for nothing) advised the WHO on their field of expertise. They all declared the conflict of interest, as is proper, but the WHO didn't put that bit of information on the report. There has been no suggestion that the advice given was incorrect in any way, it was a technicallity that the WHO didn't mention it on their report.

    One billion spent on influenza vaccines and treatment is far from a tragedy - it worked! Because we were able to vaccinate and treat people quickly the pandemic was far less severe than it might have been otherwise. And yes, it most definately was a pandemic
    Last edited by batnurse; 7th-June-2010 at 03:14 PM.

  14. #54
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    Re: Swine Flu Vaccine - Would you get it?

    Quote Originally Posted by batnurse View Post
    No, no, no

    All that happened here is that three scientists, who happen to have received funding from commercial companies for "other" work i.e. not influenza (not at all unusual in research, someone has to pay them, we can't work for nothing) advised the WHO on their field of expertise. They all declared the conflict of interest, as is proper, but the WHO didn't put that bit of information on the report. There has been no suggestion that the advice given was incorrect in any way, it was a technicallity that the WHO didn't mention it on their report.
    Technicalities are important when £1Billion gets spent on something that may not be required.

    Quote Originally Posted by batnurse View Post
    One billion spent on influenza vaccines and treatment is far from a tragedy - it worked! Because we were able to vaccinate and treat people quickly the pandemic was far less severe than it might have been otherwise. And yes, it most definately was a pandemic
    How does anyone know that the pandemic was 'far less severe' due to the vaccine? Unless the population was split down the middle and only half were vaccinated, or some other kind of statistically valid study was performed, I don't think it's possible to say one way or the other. Has any data been published to confirm that the purchase and use of vaccinations was a success in the UK?

    Poland makes an interesting comparison, as they were about the only country that refused to buy the Swine-Flu vaccine (on the grounds that it had not been properly tested). In a nation of 38 million, totally un-vaccinated people, Poland have reported 181 deaths up to May 2010. Here in the UK, where some have been vaccinated and some not, we have had 474 deaths in a population of 60 million, in the same period of time. Of course, there are differences between the UK and Poland, such as density of population and movement of infected people; however, the numbers are still somewhat surprising.

  15. #55
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    Re: Swine Flu Vaccine - Would you get it?

    Quote Originally Posted by Bubble View Post
    How does anyone know that the pandemic was 'far less severe' due to the vaccine? Unless the population was split down the middle and only half were vaccinated, or some other kind of statistically valid study was performed, I don't think it's possible to say one way or the other.
    Clinical trials and studies are "statistically valid" studies. You don't need to test a whole population, you need to test a representative sample so that we can extrapolate, with a measurable confidence limit, to the whole population. Statisticians tell us how big that sample must be and the required sample size varies based on many factors. You also need to balance the sample size with the cost of the study so there is a pressure to keep the sample as low as statistically necessary. Also, placebo controlled studies are ethically difficult to justify as you must leave a group of patients untreated: this group obviously needs to be as small as possible. I have known a few long-term studies where the study has been halted because the evidence gathered so far makes it unethical to continue to leave the placebo group untreated.

    Once the studies have been conducted and analysed we end up with data which guides our actions with the whole population.

    There is a finite amount of cash in the NHS. It's not a direct choice such as, for example, deciding between vaccinating 5,000 people against swine flu at £2 a jab and treating one cancer patient for a week with a drug costing £10,000 for 7 days. However, the models used by NICE are there to give the greatest benefit to the population. NICE will review the evidence as a whole and come to a conclusion using economic models which take into account the likely patient benefits as found in clinical studies. They make difficult decisions which are life-affecting for many people. And they base those decisions on hard evidence.

  16. #56
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    Re: Swine Flu Vaccine - Would you get it?

    Quote Originally Posted by Bubble View Post
    Technicalities are important when £1Billion gets spent on something that may not be required.



    How does anyone know that the pandemic was 'far less severe' due to the vaccine? Unless the population was split down the middle and only half were vaccinated, or some other kind of statistically valid study was performed, I don't think it's possible to say one way or the other. Has any data been published to confirm that the purchase and use of vaccinations was a success in the UK?

    Poland makes an interesting comparison, as they were about the only country that refused to buy the Swine-Flu vaccine (on the grounds that it had not been properly tested). In a nation of 38 million, totally un-vaccinated people, Poland have reported 181 deaths up to May 2010. Here in the UK, where some have been vaccinated and some not, we have had 474 deaths in a population of 60 million, in the same period of time. Of course, there are differences between the UK and Poland, such as density of population and movement of infected people; however, the numbers are still somewhat surprising.
    Yeah - this was another Big Pharma stitch up................

    Poland was rightly more sceptical.

  17. #57
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    Re: Swine Flu Vaccine - Would you get it?

    Quote Originally Posted by JiveLad View Post
    Yeah - this was another Big Pharma stitch up................

    Poland was rightly more sceptical.
    I wonder what else we can learn from Poland?

  18. #58
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    Re: Swine Flu Vaccine - Would you get it?

    Quote Originally Posted by Andy McGregor View Post
    I wonder what else we can learn from Poland?
    Well one thing we should not learn from Poland (when I worked at 'Big Pharma' in Warsaw for a year) is NOT to incentivise doctors to prescribe your products by offering round the world air tickets.....

    (And other "brown envelope" practises as they were referred to).

  19. #59
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    Re: Swine Flu Vaccine - Would you get it?

    Quote Originally Posted by JiveLad View Post
    Well one thing we should not learn from Poland (when I worked at 'Big Pharma' in Warsaw for a year) is NOT to incentivise doctors to prescribe your products by offering round the world air tickets.....

    (And other "brown envelope" practises as they were referred to).
    Having worked in "Big Pharma" since '81 I can say that I've never even seen a brown envelope. Perhaps they were all sent to Poland.

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