Why I Don't Get Flu Shots

Alternatively titled, I'm a negative critical whiny sonofabitch.

Now before I get into this, let me just say, I am probably the most easygoing, cheerful guy I know. I don't worry about most things. But a few things just tend to bug me. Here's what they are, in no particular order!

I do not get flu shots. I have several reasons. Pretty much the same reasons i don't vote, meaning, both activities are completely pointless. The voting I am not going to go into because I've mentioned it before, but this is cold and flu season, so let me explain.

(1) "flu shots don't give you the flu." this is what they tell you. Supposedly, the virii in a flu shot are either killed by chemical or radiation means before they are injected into you, allowing your body to assimilate the virus without actually being infected with the flu. This is utter crap. I personally cannot verify whether the viruses contained in your average flu shot are alive or dead, mainly because my eyes aren't good enough to see if the little sub-microscopic buggers are breathing or not at the time of injection. I will say this. I've had two flu shots in my lifetime. I came down with two of the worst cases of flu I've ever had... the day after getting the shots. So it was either the actual flu, or flu-like symptoms, but there was no way for me to tell the difference. I'll talk about flu-like symptoms in a moment.

(2) "Flu shots may offer some protection for this year's flu." This is a direct quote from a web page explaining flu shots. I don't know if you know how they make flu shots, but let me sum up. They take the strains of flu that were most prominent for the previous year, replicate huge doses of the virus that caused each of them, then kill them (supposedly) and inject you with them. Now, since flu viruses mutate on a yearly basis, and there is no way to determine how they are going to mutate from one year to the next, there is no way they can give you ANY protection from THIS year's flu. Mainly because, it takes about 6 months to work up batches of flu shots. By the time they have shots for this year's strain, it's already summer and flu season is long over. Look it up on the internet if you don't believe me. It's fact. Basically, the shots can offer some protection IF you haven't already gotten last year's flu.

Let me explain this in simple terms. Say you are a bouncer at an exclusive dance club. There's a clean-shaven guy in a yellow raincoat flashing the ladies in the women's restroom. So you eject the guy from your club. This is the equivalent of getting the flu, and then getting over it. If, say, two weeks later (or even a year, your body remembers these things), a clean shaven man in a yellow raincoat tries to get into the club, you are going to tell him to take a hike right away. And if he keeps trying, you are going to keep telling him to buzz off. Now, the flu shot is the equivalent of the club manager coming to you with a picture of a clean-shaven man in a yellow raincoat and saying "don't let this guy in here." To which, you of course reply "Of course not, I threw this guy out two weeks ago and haven't let him in since." Now here's the problem, if the guy dons a fake beard and wears a blue raincoat, you let him in... because that's the new disguise for the flu this year. So the moral of the story? Don't let any viruses in wearing a fake beard and blue raincoat. Sneaky master of disguise bastards.

Flu shots generally contain 3 different strains of the flu virus, the 3 strains that were most common last year. This year's flu shots also contain the swine flu strain that killed so many people in south america last year, and your doctor won't tell you that unless you ask. So two things are going to happen when you get injected with a flu shot. Either your white blood cells (your body's bouncers) are going to go HOLY SHIT MASSIVE INVASION OF CLEAN SHAVEN GUYS WITH YELLOW RAINCOATS! and pitch a fit (giving you flu-like symptoms, which are your body's natural reactions to nullify the effects of any viral invaders, dead or not), OR, your white blood cells are going to go "oh, that clean shaven guy with a yellow raincoat again? pfft, he's no trouble, he's not getting in here." and nothing happens.

That's right, I just said, if your body has NO reaction to the flu shot, it means you already had all of last year's flu and just paid $20 for nothing. If you body does have a reaction, congratulations! You just spent $20 to protect yourself in case you somehow find the 14 people on planet earth who haven't already been exposed to last year's virus, and they get it, and somehow manage to pass it on to you. In that rare case, the shot may help you fight off the flu easier. However, for your body to actually process that viral protection into all of it's white blood cells... it triggers the flu-like symptoms. Since each flu shot has the 3 most prominent strains from last year, even if those strains were not prominent in your area, you are almost guaranteed to get the flu from it. And like I said, if you don't, you've already had it and didn't have to worry in the first place.

Now moving on to my whiny bitch status, I noticed after watching Stephen king's "bag of bones" last night on Tv that I am unusually hard in my reviews for PC games, and rather easy on my movie reviews. I thought Bag of bones was about normal for a stephen king movie. Lots of build up, horrible ending. Think storm of the century, carrie, the shining, well, you get the idea. A stephen king movie without a horrible ending just wouldn't be a stephen king movie! And it's not really that the ending was horrible, but, come on... the guy seems to have no problem whatsoever resisting the "curse" despite everyone else being affected, and he stops the curse by fighting of a tree and dissolving some bones. ooo. Thrilling stuf zzzzzzzzz...

So why am I so easy on movies? Well, about 5 years back, the last blockbuster store in my area closed. I used to rent movies there, old-timey horror flicks from the 70's and 80's, and it cost me about 3 bucks per movie. If I spent an hour and a half watching it, and it sucked, then i was out 3 bucks. if I spent an hour and a half watching it, and it was great, then it was about a dollar's worth every half hour. Shit it costs me, er, some people i mean, not me... just what I've heard, some people will spend 3 dollars a minute on a sex line. But that's not bad for an hour and a half of entertainment, good OR bad. Movies are cheap, and you never expect them to last longer than 2 hours.

Games, on the other hand, are not cheap. Skyrim just cost me $60. Sure, it turned out to be a great game by most accounts, and perhaps I was exceptionally hard on it's drawbacks in my review of it, but it still plays quite well for all the minor faults. But even the crappiest of games might cost you $50. So if you spend $50 on a game and end up playing it for an hour, when you expected to play it for weeks, then obviously there are going to be some bad feelings on your part, and you are out tons more money.

Now let's think about this. Games have gotten to be huge productions nowadays, basically costing about the same to make (and the same time frame) as movies. So if a game and a movie both cost a million dollars (just pulled that number out of my ass) to make, and say, a million people see the movie over the course of it's time at the theaters, and each spend 10 dollars on it, then the movie made nine million dollars in profit. Following me so far? Now moviegoers can spend 10 dollars on a movie because LOTS of people see movies, but not so many play games. So game companies have to charge more to get the same amount back... or at least, they used to. Nowadays, a LOT more people play games, but I see game prices just going up and up... take skyrim. First PC game I ever spent $60 on. Usually anything over $50 is a collector's boxed set or something. With action figures. lol So bethesda is probably making BAJILLIONS of dollars right now, at $60 a pop, with skyrim selling like it is.

Which makes game reviews so critical, especially the metascores or customer reviews. You don't want to spend $60 on a crappy game that you only play for 5 minutes because it blows chunks. And yet, gaming review magazines only pay for positive reviews, or I should say, the magazines won't get advance copies of games if they have a reputation for giving bad reviews. which hurts the gaming mag, because then they can't review their games in a timely manner, and someone else beats them to the punch.. usually with great reviews that they sell in exchange for advance copies of games.

I'll give you a perfect example of this. For this christmas I was looking at games I might want to get. According to the metascore website, 22 critics reviewed Modern Warfare 3 and gave it an average score of 80. That's not too bad for a game. And yet, 4200+ average gamers give the game an average score of 2 out of 10, or 20 when compared to the 80. That's 20 out of 100. I couldn't even pass college with that. If that doesn't illustrate some serious payout going on for the gaming mags to get some positive reviews, I'm not really sure what does.

That's all for now, Happy Holidays if I don't get a chance to post before xmas!