Take Your Flu Shot

February 9, 2018

To my fellow gym rats in re influenza vaccine:

I’ve spent enough time in gyms to respect the professionals. But gyms are Petri dishes for the incubation of health myths. A particularly persistent myth among many of us is the unstated notion that the artificial nature of vaccinations somehow impairs the virginal purity of the hard-won fitness of our (natural) bodies. People defend their mythologies by post hoc invocation of “facts” that are not facts, misunderstandings of facts, or partial truths. 

Fact is the foundation of truth. Owing to the peculiar nature of my upbringing, I learned early to deal with the world as it was, not as I wished it to be. Stubborn things, facts. Without exactly realizing so, most Americans are pragmatists; realists.  Pragmatism was articulated by the American polymath, Charles Sanders Pierce (“purse”) with the aid of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. and others. It is rooted in science.  To the pragmatist, truth is defined this way, if it works it must be true. Statements of truth can be proved or disproved true by trial.  If the apple always falls down, Newton’s theory is verified and becomes fact. If the apple falls up now and then, not so.

Among the most fundamental of philosophical mistakes is to believe that “natural” (not influenced by humans) is a state of being inherently superior to “artificial” (human-influenced). Cancer is the most natural of all diseases because both cancer and evolution depend on DNA mutations. Cancer is natural and bad, like earthquakes. Curing cancer with synthetic chemicals, beams of killer rays, or cold steel blades is unnatural and good. 

As of this writing we are in the midst of an influenza epidemic. My guess is that a majority of you have not had a flu shot this season. Cling to this nonsense at your peril. Below are some actual cases.

From 1995: A gorgeous 17-year-old girl, genius smart, a college freshman. Her parents did not trust vaccines. She got the flu on a Thursday and was dead the following Tuesday.

From 2009: A 47-year-old man. No flu shot. Got the flu. After a few days he felt better and began clearing some brush from his farm.  He grew short of breath and was air evacuated. He was on a respirator for weeks.  The good news is he had a rocky course but survived. The bad news is that he suffered hypoxic brain injury. He is mentally impaired and in a wheel chair.  

From the current news: A 51-year-old adult male outdoorsman. Did not get a flu shot. Got the flu. Got pneumonia. Became septic. Lost both of his feet and nine of his ten fingers.

I can never forget what was said to me by Beck Weathers, a pathologist colleague and veteran mountaineer, who was one of the subjects of Jon Krakauer’s book “Into Thin Air” about the May 1996 Everest disaster. Beck was forced to spend the night exposed near the summit. By some miracle he made it on his own back to camp and was air evacuated. He lost his nose, ears, one hand and all of the fingers on the other hand. Beck said to me, “I was prepared to die but I was not prepared to be maimed.”

C’mon, get a flu shot. It’s not too late.

Thomas H. McConnell, MD, FCAP