Me either for flu. Have never had one.
Effectiveness seems sort of like last year's dart board, strain-wise.
I actually don't vaccinate at all. Neither does my wife, and we don't vaccinate our child.
After looking at all the CDC statistics (risk of contracting disease, risk of contracting worst version - such as polio with permanent paralysis), then cross-referencing that information with the preventative measures, personal risk factor (i.e. our health, or our son not going to school and daycare), and then finally considering which of the "worst case" scenarios we are okay with (i.e. are we ok with tuberculosis with lock-jaw until it recedes after a typical maximum of 6 months?), I just couldn't find a reason to vaccinate any longer.
Take for example polio. For an American who doesn't travel to places where Polio is a risk, vaccinating for it these days is almost pointless.
Why?
Because first the US has been considered eradicated of the virus for 2 decades. The only known Polio instances came from friends/family of those who were vaccinated or imported from foreign travelers.
Then the odds of getting polio in the US are already very slim. Then, while most people are scared to death of being paralyzed, they don't realize that the odds of being paralyzed permanently are *extremely* slim.
It's true I didn't live back when Polio was a major epidemic. But what most people don't realize is that a lot more people had polio than we realize... because in the majority of cases, it passes through a healthy person like the flu does (as was the case for my father who had polio with no adverse affects).
So all I'm saying is that many people take a default approach of "vaccinate against everything" or "always vaccinate against bad viruses like polio" without actually understanding all of the facts.
Many people will say "But the vaccine eradicated polio! So the vaccine is great." Those people would be misinformed because we can't "prove" the vaccine did it.
What we do know is that the CDC was trying to vaccinate everybody. They only succeeded in vaccinating about 10% of the population when polio was a major epidemic. The polio rates actually did not decrease during this time.
Then they changed their strategy. Whenever they heard of a polio case, they quarantined the person and all local people who came into contact with that person for 6 weeks (which is incidentally the typical amount of time it takes for Polio to run its course in a person's system). Then they vaccinated all of those people.
After this approach, the incidences of Polio were reduced dramatically. Was it the vaccination or the quarantine?
Now that it's been gone for twenty years, many people still remember those old days and vaccinate out of fear.
That all said, if I were going to a part of the world where polio was very prevalent, I would strongly consider vaccination. So it's not that I'm "against" vaccines, but rather, I evaluate each situation and all the facts as it pertains to me.
