Victims of the Vaccine

Damn Jenner and his fresh-faced milkmaid.

Maybe I should damn the mooing cows as well to complete the curse.

But why would I mock this surprisingly ingenious Father of Immunology? With the inadvertent help of his innocent milkmaids, Edward Jenner invented vaccines to cure us all of smallpox. Barring the fools who still keep the active samples, he effectively helped eradicated a particularly virulent disease.

And started that debilitating torture device called vaccination.


Makes me wanna lie down and sleep...
Something that comes around annually for health caregivers. Remember that monstrously indestructible eternal enemy called the seasonal flu? Comes from a shockingly hardy virus that's nigh impossible to kill. Short of nuclear war possibly. And even then it would probably just happily mutate into something far deadlier. Hence the fresh need to find new biological weapons to incapacitate it yearly. Which also means different ( and variably effective ) vaccines every year.

Supposedly the diligent, dedicated frontliners are deserving of the flu shot. Lucky us.

Ouch. Seriously. Let's face it. Doctors are all just a bit terrified of the needle. Sticking them into others isn't as big a problem as everyone thinks since hey, it's not me feeling the pain. But when we're the ones getting the shots, we cry like lil babies.

Come on, whoever said that the needle doesn't sting is lying big. Prick them with a large-bore needle if you hear that. Short of being thoroughly anaesthesized, it's almost impossible not to feel the needle going in.

Not to mention the inevitable side-effects. Think baby flu. Which stinks since you're not ill enough to be medically confined to bed. Yet you feel like the walking dead.

Ack.