Flu vaccinations

[User24689]

Hi all
It's flu season here and a heap of people at my work have already gone down with something nasty. I've been advised by the GP that I'm supposed to have a flu vacc as I'm pregnant which makes me 'high risk' and my workplace offer them for free. I booked myself in without really thinking about it then made the mistake of mentioning it in conversation in the staff room this morning and all I've had is people unanimously telling me it is a really bad idea, they don't work, they make you sick, they don't allow you to build up any natural immunity and various other things.

I've done some googling and it hasn't really helped as there seems to be as much on one side as the other and most places suggesting its a good idea are those actually providing it.

Anyone had a flu vaccination whilst pregnant or know a reason why this might be a bad idea? Feel like a lot of what I heard this morning was anecdotal 'friend of a friend' stuff rather than based on fact.

Well there was news coverage that the latest strain of flu vaccine only provided protection for 3% of the population, so for me it wasn't worth having.

Even my midwife admitted she doesn't have the flu jab yearly either as ahe doesn't bekieve it but staff are pushed to have it.

*believe in it

It isnt as effective as its supposed to be and that has been known for some time. It was actually picked up by mainstream media not long ago too. On a personal note many peoplle I know who have had it have come down with flu. The years they dont take it is the years they dont get flu. Too much of a coincidence there. I didnt take it when pregnant either. Best thing you can do is keep your vitamin intake up and eat well. For me its was a simple case of they havent tested it on pregnant women so I want being a lab rat.

Thanks guys. I am fine with having it on the offchance it might work, as long as it won't do any harm... but it seems a lot of people think it could do harm, which is why I'm nervous!

Take it! Take it! Take it!

Flu can be very serious. It kills many healthy people every year and the risks are much higher when you are pregnant. Even if the vaccine doesn't prevent you from getting a specific strain of flu, it will attenuate the effects so you won't be as severely ill.

Please ignore the web on this issue. The amount of anti-vaccine rhetoric online is shocking, and it's killing people. people are scared of living in a complex world and seizing on issues like vaccines/chemtrails/ other types of woo give them a sense of being in control, of knowing something the 'herd' doesn't. It doesn't occur to them that vaccines are one of the greatest public health advances ever. Do you see mothers in the third world stopping their special snowflakes from getting the mmr? Nope, you do not, because these mothers see children die of these diseases. Anti vaxxers kill.

Deciding which strain of flu to put in the vaccine is a process involving both data and guesswork. It takes time to get the vaccines produced so the scientific teams involved have to make an educated guess at which specific strains will be circulating in the coming flu season. They can never be 100% sure they will get exactly the right combination. This past season they didn't get it right. That's just how it goes.

Anyway, take the flu vaccine. The cost/benefit ratio is good :)

I've had the flu vaccine for the past two years, as I am on immunosuppressants. I can honestly say it hasn't made me feel ill when I had the vaccine and I haven't caught flu. It has done me no harm whatsoever.

Just a helpful counterbalance to the negative experiences.

Also, my understanding of things not being tested on pregnant women is because no-one wants to do it after the thalidomide incidents, so any evidence tends to be based on real life occurrences. The medication I take officially says it has to be out of your system for x months before ttc, but my specialist nurse said women have taken it right the way through pregnancy and as a result, they have developed advice based on what has been observed.

I'm 33wks. I had it in the winter. Felt fine.

I work in public health and once worked in an area where we had a maternal death from flu. Midwives locally knowing that and seeing her on itu before she died helped bring it to their attention much more. Uptake in preg women in that said area has been 3rd highest in country ever since. We had to investigate who, how or when she had been.offered the jab or why she chose not to have it.

It's not recommended to pregnant women on a whim and the amount of doses given to preg women in UK / world is the real evidence of no ill effect.

This year only, the 3% effectiveness was for only ONE strain of the vaccine. The vaccine is trivalent (has three strains if flu it protects you from). Developing the vaccine (early enough to then produce the millions of doses worldwide) is like trying to solve a murder before it happens. It's really once in a blue moon the experts don't actually get the right strains in the vaccine. Plus I think it goes to show how sneaky flu is and how it adapts yr on yr! The other strains showed good protection and are the strains that appear later in flu season (I.e. Now)

Healthcare workers should have the jab to protect themselves, their families and their patients. But unfortunately these educated health professionals still believe the flu myths like everyone else.

It cannot make you ill or give you flu. If people get poorly afterwards it's probably their body.doing what it's meant to do (generating an immune response ready to protect you if you do come into.contact with the real virus) which might make you feel a touch rough. Or its coincidentally a totally different respiratory virus (rsv for example) that they think think is flu. If they were lab tested I'd bet my bottom dollar it wasn't flu!

You can't develop a natural immunity to flu as the virus adapts (antigenic drift) or completely changes (antigenic shift) each year. That's why it's called seasonal flu and you have to be vaccinated against it annually.

The biggest emergency planning risk to the UK is pandemic flu (a new strain that all the population are susceptible) hope I never see it in my lifetime (I'd be v busy at work lol) but it's not until.a situation like that the nay sayers will believe how serious this virus is.

In summary, I'd get it done!

I had it done in the winter and didn't get Ill from it, and baby seems ok.

Thank you all soo much for taking the time to reply, I'm so glad I posted. I will have the vaccination. I've done a bit more reading today and now understand that when people get flu like symptoms from the vax it isn't actually them getting flu! I've only had real flu once in my life and it was horrendous, so can only imagine how dangerous that is in pregnancy. I'll ignore the naysayers... gosh don't you just get fed up with everyone trying to terrify you all the time? if it isnt birth horror stories its something else!