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Measles, mumps, and rubella vaccines are really good protection, good enough that they break the chain of transmission resulting in herd immunity (which means even the people for which the vaccine failed probably won't get the disease). Diphtheria vaccine is that good too.
Flu vaccine is a joke. The vaccine gives you flu symptoms, and you often get the flu anyway.
This was my experience, so even before 2020 I avoided the flu shots whenever I could. It probably wasn't true, but I have a mental association of getting the flu every year I got a flu shot (and never when I didn't).
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The flu vaccine certainly doesn't work as well as some of the other vaccines, but it is very clearly a vaccine, I don't know what the other poster is on about on that front.
The flu vaccine is one of the odder and more complicated vaccines we have - we have to guess for the yearly formulation some years we guess better than others (based off of the expectation of what this years flu will look like). It also is not good at preventing you from getting an infection, what it is good at is preventing you from dying. People will often say "oh I have the flu" no, usually they have the common cold - the flu is ass.
As for if it makes sense? Young unvaccinated people die from the flu every year, not a lot of them but they do. Vaccinated people have a much better time - all cause mortality reduction in 65+ is 20%. If you are the kind of person who doesn't wear a seat belt maybe skip the vaccine, but if you wear a seat belt then this is up there with the most impactful things you can do to prevent random risk of death.
The COVID vaccine gave me flu symptoms, flu vaccine never did - which is the case for most people. If you do that's certainly a better reason to skip it, but when my non medical (male) friends ask me about it I ask them if they are a pussy.
You can go to bed a few hours earlier in order to prevent death in you and your family/friends.
The flu vaccine is crap and the assumptions made to get it to show a mortality reduction at all are questionable. If you're the kind of person who doesn't wear a seat belt, you probably won't get the vaccine either, and your traffic death will be part of the "all cause mortality" that vaccinated-seat-belt wearers are compared against.
The COVID vaccine gave me a week of symptoms, each time. Then I got COVID, which gave me two weeks of symptoms. I should have skipped that one too.
I don't get the COVID boosters in spite of nagging because I get side effects that match my experience of most respiratory illnesses. I make this decision knowing that it may cost me something but with my comorbidities are where they are at it makes sense for now.
At the same time I get the flu shot every year because I'm not a pussy, the flu vaccine has been around for a very very long time and we have a pretty good understanding of the risks and benefits, the flu has also been around for a long time and has at times killed large amounts of the population. It is not a joke.
Look, this "pussy" shit may work with your buddies but it's not going to work on the Internet. It doesn't make one more of a man to get a vaccine that doesn't work and even makes you mildly sick.
I think accepting a small amount of discomfort for a benefit to myself and importantly to my friends and family including my elderly parents is the very definition of manly behavior.
Avoiding discomfort because it's distressing is well, as I said. Avoiding doing something because you are annoyed someone wants you to do it is also unmanly.
Some of the benefits of the flu shot (all from the pretty hostile Trump CDC):
"For example, CDC estimates that during 2024–2025, flu vaccination prevented 180,000 flu-related hospitalizations in the United States."
"A 2018 study showed that from 2012 to 2015, flu vaccination among adults reduced the risk of being admitted to an intensive care unit (ICU) with flu by 82%."
"A 2021 narrative review noted that among adults hospitalized with flu, patients vaccinated against flu had a 26% lower risk of ICU admission and a 31% lower risk of death from flu compared with those who were unvaccinated."
It goes on.
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