I found out yesterday that our pediatrician had H1N1 vaccine available, and took my 15 year old son in to receive it. It was the nasal spray vaccine (Flumist). No side effects thus far. I'd already gotten him the seasonal flu vaccine and my two older kids had their seasonal flu shots before they left for college. I will encourage them to get the H1N1 vaccine as soon as their colleges have it available. I know a lot of people have concerns about the vaccine, and just wanted to share my reasons for having my kids vaccinated:
I also recommend this article from the New York Times that seemed to address some of the concerns I've heard about the vaccine:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/10/health/10primer.html
Myth 1: This flu is no worse than seasonal flu -- that kills 36,000/year -- and this flu has killed far fewer. The concerns are overblown.
Reality: Although most people who develop this flu do fine, the difference is in who it is affecting and who are developing serious complications/deaths. Most of those who die from seasonal flu are the elderly -- think 80 or 90 year olds in nursing homes who develop flu/pneumonia and die. While this is sad, it is not so tragic as the significantly younger people who become very ill and even die from H1N1 flu. Because this is a novel flu, most younger people have no antibodies to it (those of us born before 1957 seem to have some immunity). We have already had almost as many deaths in children from H1N1 flu this year (with the "traditional flu season just beginning) as we've had the entire flu season during the previous several years. 20-30% of the pediatric deaths were in kids without underlying medical conditions.
In addition pregnant women and those with significant obesity (which is pretty common these days) appear to be at even greater risk. Other common conditions, including asthma and diabetes, also increase risk. If you add these up, there are an awful lot of people in the US who could be considered to have "underlying medical conditions."
Myth 2: The flu vaccine was rushed to market and is untested.
Reality: This vaccine is manufactured the same way as seasonal flu vaccines -- just using a different strain of the virus. Indeed, it is my understanding that they do not do specific clinical trials on the new flu strains each year, since the manufacturing process is the same (see the NY Times link, above). The reasons for testing this novel strain was to determine appropriate dosing. While it is true that rare side effects wouldn't show up during the testing phase, there is no reason to believe that there will be any more or different adverse effects than are seen with the seasonal flu vaccine.
Myth 3: The vaccine has toxic adjuvants that will cause autoimmune disease
Reality: In the US, none of the vaccines are using adjuvants (which boost the immunologic response to the vaccine). Although thimerosal (a preservative) is in the multidose vials, the nasal spray version does not contain thimerosal, and there will also be single dose vials available of the shot version that don't contain thimerosal as well.
Anyway, just wanted to share my thinking on this -- I'll let you know if my son develops any problems from the vaccine (keeping in mind we are dealing with an n of 1)
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