Resistance to flu drug widespread in US: study

[icarus]

And this would be why I don't get a flu shot:

Resistance to flu drug widespread in US: study

Viruses are highly adaptive. We've overused antibiotics. Many antibiotics are now ineffective. Now three flu drugs are ineffective: rimantadine and amantadine and Tamiflu. It's obvious to me that we've overused flu vaccines. Those should be for small children, the sick, and the elderly. Not pushed by companies that don't want to pay for sick days.

In other news: looking at a mountain of work for school.

Starting. That's the hard part. Starting.


ETA: Folks keep thinking that I'm mixing up vaccines with the drugs used to treat influenza. No. I'm not.

Doctors will still say get the flu vaccine, the same way they used to prescribe antibiotics like candy.

I was leery back in the 80s when everyone was prescribed an antibiotic for everything.

I evaded the antibiotics then. I'm not a bit surprised to find they were overused to the point of uselessness. People argued with me then, too.

Now I'm not buying it on the flu vaccines.

This is just one person's anecdotal observation, but I've noticed the flu season has been getting worse and worse. That spike began in the mid-to-late 90s when flu vaccines started being used to inoculate everyone who'd take it, and not just the vulnerable. (Actually, the spike started when flu vaccine makers began marketing to businesses that they'd have less loss of productivity if they got their employees to take it.)

Mark my words. In three to five years we'll start seeing studies that show an increase in the severity and number of flu viruses. In ten, we'll see a link between overuse of flu vaccines and the sheer variety and severity of flus.

Flu vaccines just aren't the same as your typical mumps, rubella, etc. vaccine. Viruses mutate. That constant mutation is why the flu vaccine has to be different each year, and why it only includes an immunization for the top seven or eight viruses the CDC guesses will be the "bad ones" for the season.

Comments

[teenygozer.livejournal.com]

They must have moved the article, your link doesn't get you there anymore:

http://www.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUSTRE5214YM20090302

That's the URL that worked for me. Interesting article: we've created super-bug bacteria through the over-use of antibiotics, now we seem to be creating super-viruses through the over-use of antivirals. A hospital-created super-bacteria got my father last month -- it's called C-diff and he died of septicemia, which had nothing to do with why he was in the hospital in the first place. I don't relish the idea of following in his footsteps by someday dying of a super-virus caused by over use of antivirals.

But flu vaccines =/= to antivirals. Flu vaccines introduce a tiny bit of weakened or dead flu virus into the patient's body so that their body will be able to fight off a larger exposure to the flu later on with the creation of antibodies (the patient's body fights the flu, not the vaccine itself.) For many reasons, vaccines don't always work, hence the patients who got the flu despite getting the vaccine -- but that's not because vaccines have created tougher viruses.

Hope your mountain of work soon looks like a mere molehill!

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

No, they're not. And I didn't say they were. Read my replies to the other comments.