BartSimpson BartSimpson:
I did not take the H1N1 shot. Frankly, all the hype had me wondering WTF was really going on and there was NF way I was going to take that shot.
Well there were certain groups who needed it more (those with preexisting respiratory conditions, those with small children in the household) than others (those without previous, and people over 50 - a reversal of the usual reccomendations). A lot of people in the latter category lined up and got it, making it worse for those who did need it.
But then there were a lot of hyped up reasons not to take the shot coming out of the anti-vax community, mostly around the thimerosal and its mercury content, and a highly dubious claim linking this to autism. But as far as mercury goes, there's 8 times as much mercury in an average can of tuna as there is in a dose of the flu vaccine, and the methyl mercury in tuna stays in your body 7 times longer then the ethyl mercury in the thiomersal. So one can of tuna is basically 56 times as potent a source of mercury as one dose of the flu vaccine. And there's no substantiated link between this mercury and autism.
But that didn't stop these anti-vax fearmongers from putting on "seminars" peddling their stupid, and the press was typically non-commital on whether or not their view was crap or not.
You might argue that there was a bit of fearmongering on the side of the vaccination campaign, but at least that was erring on the side of caution. Anti-vax were telling people to err on the side of ignorance, and that's just reckless and irresponsible.