Science

HEY DINGUS, GET YOUR FLU SHOT

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Transcript:

Flu season is here, and so I wanted to make a quick video encouraging you to get a flu shot! Let’s go over a few of the most common objections:

But I never get the flu

FUCK YOU, I never smash my car into walls but I still have airbags, don’t I? I never set myself on fire but I still have a fire extinguisher under my sink. Also, you might have not had the flu but been an asymptomatic carrier — that means that you don’t get sick, but you still walk around infecting everybody around you, you fucking asshole. You might not be sick, and then you go to see your cousin’s new baby, and baby’s can’t be vaccinated, so the baby gets the flu, and then the baby dies. You think I’m fucking joking? 179 kids died last season. 179 that didn’t have to die if the people around them were all vaccinated.

I got the flu once and it wasn’t so bad

First of all, a “cold” isn’t a “flu.” If you got the flu and it wasn’t so bad, you actually had a cold. The flu is bad. You will explode fluids out of every orifice for many days. Everything hurts. Your hair hurts. You will be fucking miserable, for up to TWO WEEKS OF YOUR LIFE.

But I DID get the flu and I didn’t die

Congratulations on not dying from the flu! Guess who DID die from the flu just last season, just in the United States? 56,000. It’s the 8th leading cause of death. You’re more likely to die of the flu than to die in a car accident, and dying in a car accident is what they compare everything to!

Anyway, I don’t really care if you die or not. You’re just some jerk who has the ability to get a flu shot but refuses. I care about your grandparents, who have a bad immune system and are more likely to die. I care about little kids with asthma, who are more likely to get attacks, and die. I care about babies who are too young to have been immunized yet, and might die.

But the flu vaccine might make me get sick

NO! This is a stupid, stupid myth invented by stupid humans who don’t understand correlation and causation. Someone got the flu vaccine one day and then got a cold the next day and decided they must be related, and it’s not because they touched about 3,000 filthy doorknobs during cold season in the previous week leading up to their symptoms appearing.

Some vaccines don’t contain influenza at all. The ones that do contain an inactivated virus that is literally impossible for it to make you ill. You won’t get the flu from a flu vaccine.

But I know someone who got the flu vaccine and then still got the flu

First of all, most of the time that this happens, the person actually got a cold, not the flu. But it can happen, because there are many different kinds of influenza and the vaccine doesn’t always protect against all of them. However, the vaccine is likely to make the flu less painful for you if you do end up getting it. That’s one of its selling points!! It’s like saying, oh, I got in a car accident and my seatbelt didn’t prevent me from breaking my arm. Yeah, it didn’t, but it sure did stop your head from popping off and isn’t that nice?

And here’s the other thing: if everyone gets the flu shot, you won’t end up getting the flu at all anyway because of herd immunity. Herd immunity is the idea that if 90% of people are immunized, the virus doesn’t have enough hosts to jump to, and it ends up dying out. That’s right! Getting a flu shot can help make influenza extinct. Fuck influenza. Let’s kill it.

But vaccines cause autism

VACCINES DON’T CAUSE AUTISM. Vaccines cause adulthood.

They’re free if you have insurance, but even if you don’t you can get one for like $20 at your local pharmacy and it takes less than ten minutes. Do it, and do it now because it takes two weeks to build up in your body, and shit is gonna start going down in the next two months.

Don’t kill a baby. Get your fucking flu shot.

Rebecca Watson

Rebecca is a writer, speaker, YouTube personality, and unrepentant science nerd. In addition to founding and continuing to run Skepchick, she hosts Quiz-o-Tron, a monthly science-themed quiz show and podcast that pits comedians against nerds. There is an asteroid named in her honor. Twitter @rebeccawatson Mastodon mstdn.social/@rebeccawatson Instagram @actuallyrebeccawatson TikTok @actuallyrebeccawatson YouTube @rebeccawatson BlueSky @rebeccawatson.bsky.social

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