It seems that the NHS wants to preserve me forever and, having officially become 'an old-age pensioner', I have been invited to partake of a 'pneumonia inoculation'.
I've read varying reports of the effectiveness of this particular one-off jab and I wonder if anyone on here has any knowledge or views on the subject. My doubts have been furthered by an old neighbour who is currently in hospital with pneumonia despite having had the jab some years ago.
I've read that that the inoculation covers a large number of strains of Pneumococcus and I just wonder if the organism mutates too fast for us to keep up. Maybe Lygo has a view on the matter?
Cheers
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pneumonia? the only place you will get that is in the doctors surgery or hospital.
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I've had one, and in 2010 I had pneumonia three times!
Last edited by: Slidingpillar on Wed 15 Oct 14 at 21:53
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As I understand it Pneumonia is a physical symptom. It can, and in majority of cases will be, caused by the agent against which the vaccination seeks to immunise.
But other bacteria and viruses can be responsible.
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With such a range of potential causative agents, it's not really surprising that an inoculation is not completely effective. Never mind, I'll press on regardless; I've made an appointment for the jab next week and, with any luck, it'll be the truly lovely nurse Kerrie!
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>> with any luck, it'll be the truly lovely nurse Kerrie!
Every year when the flu jab is rolled out, we just stand in a queue and go to the next available nurse or doctor in the room.
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"Every year when the flu jab is rolled out, we just stand in a queue and go to the next available nurse or doctor in the room."
Same here for flu jabs, but the letter re pneumonia jab asked me to make an appointment.
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I haven't the least intention of having any jabs for anything, regardless of the nurse administering them.
Is this being irresponsibly reckless, or just normal commonsense behaviour from someone in good health?
I'm not 85 yet, and when I am, I'll say, I didn't reach this age by having needles stuck in me.
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"I haven't the least intention of having any jabs for anything, regardless of the nurse administering them."
You'd have to made of very stern stuff, Cliff. If you saw the nurse that I'm talking about, you'd let her jab you with a garden fork!
"Is this being irresponsibly reckless, or just normal commonsense behaviour from someone in good health?"
As a biologist, I often question the long-term effects of all the medical interventions that we now take for granted. Where is it all going to end? Will we all end up like Daleks?
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Possibly not but your lifespan almost certainly owes something to the elimination of many diseases as a result of mass vaccination. Smallpox, TB, Diphtheria, polio. Measles, whooping cough, yellow fever, the list goes on. All once mass killers in the UK ann now virtually unknown here.
Vaccination is probably the greatest single most important advance in medical history.
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"Possibly not but ……………. Vaccination is probably the greatest single most important advance in medical history."
Quite!
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>> Vaccination is probably the greatest single most important advance in medical history.
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Rather than clean air and drinking water, sanitation, and decent housing?
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Undoubtedly save millions of lives but aren't really medical interventions as is vaccination.
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>> but aren't really medical interventions as is vaccination.
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I think that's a rather narrow view of what constitutes medicine. As I understand the process, vacination constitutes a small, innocuous exposure to the target disease, which stimulates the body's own immune system to react against it, setting it up for resistance to any subsequent exposure to the real thing?
So anything that stimulates or supports a body's own strength is in a wider sense a medicine, be it clean water etc, or an apple.
Actually I'm just clutching at straws - I'm scared of injections and don't mind taking the risk of not having one :)
In my extensive research into family history no one has ever died of anything except old age.
Apart that is from a ggg grandfather who died of cholera in 1849. He was a brewer, a group famously unaffected by cholera, except that he foolishly once drank a glass of water instead of his own tipple.
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>>>Vaccination is probably the greatest single most important advance in medical history.<<<
Whilst the benefit of this to the current population is in no doubt, what is the (very) long term impact? Surely Darwinism, with survival of those that have natural immunity would, (in the absence of further medical advances), result in a stronger and healthier human race?
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>> would, (in the absence of further medical advances), result in a stronger and healthier human
>> race?
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Was the human races stronger and healthier before vaccination? I think not. Vaccination only stimulates the bodies immune system so it is really a natural process.
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"Was the human races stronger and healthier before vaccination?"
Those that survived probably were - or would have been given adequate food, dental care etc.
"Vaccination only stimulates the bodies immune system so it is really a natural process."
1. 'Natural' is normally taken to mean 'without human intervention'; so, vaccination is not natural - unless you are telling me that nurse Kerrie is divine and not human ;-)
2. Once started, vaccination has to be an on-going process because of the evolution of new strains of the pathogen. It is very rare for a pathogen to be completely eradicated. I can only think of smallpox (fingers crossed).
3. Vaccination, in its present form, does not alter the genetics of the inoculated organism; hence, any immunity cannot be inherited.
When I said 'medical intervention', I was talking in a more general sense to include e.g. fertility treatment.
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"'Natural' is normally taken to mean 'without human intervention'; so, vaccination is not natural - unless you are telling me that nurse Kerrie is divine and not human ;-)"
What I meant is that it is the human immune system that prevents the disease and in that seems it is completely natural unlike say a drug that kills a particular pathogen.
Polio is now very close to being eliminated according to the WHO. Obviously once eliminated or brought down to a very low incidence a a vaccination program can be stopped as in smallpox.
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We recently had our flu jabs, they seem to work, not had flu since we started having them. My GP recons he could keep me alive indefinitely but I wouldn't enjoy it. Quality of life is all important.
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Like ON, I have had a flu jab, every year for 15 years and I have not, in that time had flu. It is perfectly possible that there is no connection but I am happy in any event. I understand that the pneumonia jab is offered at the same time, to those eligible, and is effective for 10 years. I have certainly had one somewhere in the distant past
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"My GP recons he could keep me alive indefinitely but I wouldn't enjoy it. Quality of life is all important."
When I had to see my GP 4 or 5 years ago, he was grumbling about having wasted the last 2 or 3 days giving flu jabs to old people with dementia in nursing homes.
He added "When my father was in a home suffering dementia, I told them to wheel him over by the open window - with any luck, he might develop pneumonia!"
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Hippocratic Oath applies!
Last edited by: wokingham on Thu 16 Oct 14 at 17:42
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I don't particularly mind if I don't get all that old. Doesn't seem like much fun from here. There doesn't seem to be much you can do at that stage that I enjoy doing. Can't bear sitting watching telly for any length of time for example. Can't bear sitting around much at all to be honest.
If I found myself in a care home and some cheerful person suggested a "sing song" or some other group activity I might have to summon up whatever remained of my faculties to kill them.
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Life gets tasteless dunnit?
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You slowly familiarize yourself with the inevitable end as you age. Ideally (according to a shrink whose interesting, albeit somewhat Freudian-fundamentalist, clinical writings I once translated for a sleazy crook of a London publisher) by the time it comes you are ready for it.
I don't think I ever will be though. Things still taste and feel good sometimes at least. There's life in the old dog yet... An element of old-fashioned stoicism carries many through, until they face the wall and don't care any more. Women are a bit better at this stuff than men.
But no one wants to die, no mammal or vertebrate gives up willingly. If you murder a deer or even pheasant clumsily you can see the will to live in action. Protoplasm has a blind will to live and proliferate. Makes your blood run cold.
:o}
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Pneumonia jab? - Zero
