Since getting the shot, 17 Wildcats have caught mild cases of the flu. Two have confirmed cases of H1N1, and the other 15 suspected. All the sick players are quarantined, and several games have been cancelled.
The Globe and Mail, Nov 4, 2009
So how effective IS the H1N1 Swine Flu vaccine? Seventeen athletic teenagers whose health would be monitored closely by their hockey team contract H1N1 immediately after receiving the vaccine? Did the vaccine actually cause them to contract H1N1?
Hopefully cases where healthy individuals contract H1N1 immediately after receiving the vaccine will be investigated to see if the vaccine itself is causing them to contract the H1N1 Swine flu.
autism
The pharmacy clerk (the one that takes your $ for your drugs) isn't getting it either. General consensus with them is how long before people realize they can still catch the flu and colds even with the shot and they start screaming.
ReplyDeleteOT. Community Living post I promised to get back to you on it.
I'm not going to give you my CL info b/c I live small town, small CL but I will tell you the rest of the email. Our CL does not pay membership (as far as she - my FSW - knows and she's been there 25yrs+) to CACL or OACL (ontario). They are a paying member of OASIS (http://www.oasisonline.ca/) It is not mandatory to belong to OACL as a local agency. She believes the agency board and management had philosophical differences.
Which explains why ours are "family first" and I am sorry yours is not.
It says in the article that the Wildcats received the vaccine last week. The vaccine takes 10 days to two weeks to take effect. People usually develop symptoms of H1N1 24-48 hours after exposure, but the incubation period can last up to a week. Therefore, it's possible (and probable) that the hockey players were exposed, and came down with the virus before the vaccine had taken effect. Please try to keep the fear-mongering to a minimum. There is enough misinformation on the internet without adding to it, and while you are entitled to your opinions, please make sure that they are at least somewhat informed.
ReplyDeleteAnonymous
ReplyDeletePlease read carefully before lashing out. You clearly did not understand my comment.
I did not engage in fear mongering and the only opinion I expressed was the hope that situations where persons, in this case, 17 athletic young people, develop H1N1 after receiving the shot, that their be further investigation to see if the vaccine caused or triggered the onset of the H1N1.
It is you who blithely dismisses these events with nothing to substantiate your opinion that the shots had nothing to do with the subsequent development of the H1N1 flu. And that you did hiding under the cloak of anonymity.
Something else others are not taking into consideration: The vaccine makes one even more vulnerable to the disease for up to two weeks. A health care worker with mild athsma did get the shot and two days later, she developped H1N1 and died. I can't help but wonder if she hadn't have had the vaccine, she might still be alive. Of course, the media isn't going to provide enough attention about the shot causing harm now are they??
ReplyDeleteAgainst my own will and better judgement, I almost got vaccinated (I work for health and social services for the gov't of Quebec). I ended up with such a panic attack when I got to the vaccination table, the nurse decided it was best to not vaccinate me and I am relieved. I'm only worried that I will get fired from my job because of what happened last nite.
I did it anonymously because I don't have a google account, OpenID, or other. I am hardly the first to do so, and will not be the last. And your post, particularly this comment- "Did the vaccine actually CAUSE them to contract H1N1? " (your emphasis) was sensationalistic, and fear-mongering, in my opinion, and displayed a lack of understanding of how the immune system functions, and lack of desire to present balanced information (such as the time it takes to induce immunity). In my opinion. I have noted that whenever anyone disagrees with your post, you accuse them of not reading it carefully enough. Perhaps you should take more care with how you present your views.
ReplyDeleteAnonymous
ReplyDelete1. You could have typed your name at the end of either of your comments but you chose not to do so.
2. I tell people they have not read my comment quickly WHEN a commenter misrepresents what I have said. But thank you for being a loyal reader of my blog.
3. You cited from my comment:
"Did the vaccine actually CAUSE them to contract H1N1?"
If you noticed the question mark then you should know that I asked a question. I did not make an assertion.
4. Given the number, 17, out of 20-25 players on a hockey team, who contracted the H1N1 shortly after having the shot it is not sensationalist to ask if there was a causal connection ... it is very reasonable.
5. You make assertions about my lacking understanding of how the immune systems work etc. but you did not back it up with anything substantive.
Thanks for visiting. If you do so in future I hope you provide something substantive and less condescending. You will be much more persuasive if you do.
You say that it was a question, and not an assertation, but it was an alarmist question, which did not take into account certain facts. For example, you did not note in your original post that vaccination does not result in instant protection against the virus, and in fact that there is a period of time, known as a lag phase (which in the case of the vaccine is approximately 10 days)after initial exposure to an antigen in which the immune system ramps up its response to the presented antigen. This is because the adaptive immune system (which includes B and T lympocytes) are not the first immune cells recruited to the site of inflammation or injury, and it takes time for them to arrive, to process the antigen, and for various cytokine pathways to be initiated to provoke the appropriate response. For vaccination purposes, this means that during this period of time, people are still vunerable to infection. They may, however, have a less severe case of the disease. As well, given the fact that hockey players are in extremely close contact with each other, it's not surprising that so many of them got sick. If, however, everyone that was vaccinated with a particular batch of the vaccine got sick, then obviously something would be wrong, and that batch would be pulled. If you would like further clarification of how the body mounts a response to an antigen, I suggest you read Janeway's Immunobiology. A new addition was just released.
ReplyDeleteJenn
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteJenn
ReplyDeleteI said it was a question because it WAS a question. There is nothing sensational about asking questions. I do so in Court as a lawyer.
I have questioned expert medical witnesses many times in court and administrative tribunal proceedings. It is not necessary to become a Doctor to ask questions of a doctor. You simply ask them to explain their opinion using their own logic, explaining it in ordinary language, and, if necessary, comparing it to the logic and findings of other experts.
In a Canadian Labour Board proceeding in which I represented the employer, a back expert, an author on back injuries in sports like rowing, testified for the other side that carriers delivering parcels in an ordinary passenger van were at risk of immediate injury from bending to pick up bags of parcels as opposed to a larger cube-step van which allowed room to lift with the legs.
He reached a conclusion based on a computer program he developed and into which he inserted the data.
When I read his report I noted that the demonstration the union had provided for his data gathering included 75 lb bag weights. In fact the workers were not required, by virtue of their collective agreement, to lift over 35 pounds. He was the expert but his expert analysis was based on a faulty assumption of fact.
The other explanations you provide are reasonable and not difficult to understand. Your comments do not though, as I read them, rule out the possibility that the vaccines themselves caused the H1N1 flu in the hockey players in this case. There has been no investigation conducted to my knowledge to determine whether it was close proximity, as opposed to the vaccine itself, which caused 17 health young men to get sick with Swine Flu so quickly after getting their vaccines.
There is a danger, in my view, in assuming that vaccines are always safe and never investigating situations which might indicate a contrary conclusion.
I do thank you for your comments.
NOTE: THIS COMMENT WAS RE-POSTED TO CORRECT A TYPO
It is unlikely that anyone could be infected via the vaccine because the H1N1 vaccine is an inactivated, split virion vaccine. This means that the vaccine if killed first by inactivating it, and then again by treating it with detergents to disrupt the membrane and enrich the membrane expressed proteins (which are what trigger the immune response). This makes it much safer than an live-attenuated vaccine (which could possibly revert to an infectious state) or to a whole virion vaccine (which could, if the inactivation step didn't work, potentially still be infective). Also, I think that if the team caught H1N1 from the vaccine, many more people in Moncton would be sick, because many others would have received the same batch of the vaccine.
ReplyDeleteSorry, that was me, if my name wasn't added.
ReplyDeleteJenn
Anonymous, not true. A vaccinated health care worker on south shore of Montreal caught H1N1 two days after shot and died. Honestly, she would probably still be alive had she not gotten it.
ReplyDeleteMy research shows that the first 2 weeks following vaccination, one is most vulnerable.
Re: CK
ReplyDeleteExactly what form does your "Research" into post-vaccine vulnerability entail?
http://www.cbc.ca/health/story/2009/11/06/h1n1-media.html
ReplyDeleteThe Cdn medical officer of Health says the H1N1 scare is caused by the MEDIA and the individual Health Units.... Really... would never have guessed.
Also, the assumption is that upwards of 300 people will die by the end of the season with H1N1 YET 10 times that many will die of the REGULAR flu.
DUH!!!!
Jenn,
ReplyDeleteIt seems like you are doing the exact opposite of Autism Reality NB in blind trust of the vaccine. You are making claims about the saftey of this vaccine without knowing how true those statements are. Don't spread your unresearched views if you don't know for a fact that a person can't get H1N1 from a vaccine. Just becasue the vaccine is made from an inactivated virus doesn't mean you can't get the illness from the vaccine. Wake up and don't trust what your government or doctors tell you. If 17 kids got sick, it should be looked into as a link from the vaccine. Do you honestly think anyone is looking into the safety of that batch? Call some of the families and find out. I bet nobody has even interviewed them to research the link. Autism Reality NB is raising and perfectly normal and common sense question. Too bad nobody with authority will even look into it.
Yeah I had heard of the Moncton Wildcats catching the H1N1 flu virus. From what I've read too is that they already had the H1N1 before they got the shot. Take up to 10 days to kick in.
ReplyDeleteI know my daughter received her H1N1 flu shot on Oct. 31st Halloween day and she was fine getting it no symptoms or effects of the shot. I know at first I was very hesitant in getting the shot for our whiole family but after that 13 year old boy died in Ontario we started to change our mind. There just wasn't enough testing done.
Also concerning that 13 year old boy who died in Ontario there are reports stating that he died of meningitis and not H1N1.
There were so many bad things to say about the H1N1 vaccine but what is the right thing to do. We went ahead with it for our daughter and she took it well but I do think more testing should have been done and I feel it was rushed. We all know that when you rush at something people are bound to make mistakes, we're only human.
Nice blog! Keep up the great work!
Sincerely,
Moncton Blogger
it was tested (the vaccine). In Europe, they have been using an H5N1 vaccine, produced the EXACT same as this current H1N1 vaccine, same mercury, same everything except they swapped viruses.
ReplyDeleteI am a health care professional. You can not contract H1N1 from the vaccine. The vaccine is a dead vaccine. The purpose of the dead vaccine is for your body'S natural immune response to recognize the virus and produce antibodies based on a "lock and key" mechanism (antigen/antibody). It is absurd to think that anyone can contract H1N1 from a dead vaccine. One hockey player was probably infected and because of close proximity to team members the virus spread rapidly. Hence the need to innoculate as many people as possible to reduce transmission. As more people choose to become innocualted transmiision rates will start to fall (as we are seeing now, with fewer people being admitted in ER).
ReplyDelete