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

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

I do think that the likely more rapid mutation -- whether driven by widespread vaccines or caused by a really useful pig-poultry-human incubation cycle -- might lead to more people being affected, because the strains will be DIFFERENT enough from previous years' versions to hit more people and hit them harder

Yes. And --

-- crap, I have to go to class.

But yes, rapid mutation is a problem. And a greater variety of viruses will hit naturally more people, too.

100% vaccination is the strategy that will work. But we can't do that, the flu vaccine manufacturers aren't able to, and so the result of half-assed immunization is this increasing mutation and wider spread of the flu.

[rikibeth.livejournal.com]

Hope class goes well, and I'm still not 100% sold on widespread-but-not-total immunization being the key factor in increased pace of mutation, rather than something else, but... you are making MUCH more sense than I thought you were in your initial post. If in ten years we hear it's the fault of the vaccination strategy, I'll admit you were right and I was wrong.

[keenoled.livejournal.com]

My dad is working on a new kind of vaccination; nasal. So far, in mice, it seems to be working. Cross vaccination and immunity in babies born to vaccinated moms side effect. :)
http://www.eurocine.se