Any other locations providing free Flu vaccination?
I know for one OurMedicalHome (while stocks last)
https://www.ourmedicalhome.com.au/blog/how-to-protect-from-f…
But I'm wondering is there any place closer than to me around SE burbs.
Free FLU Vaccines / Shots?
capslock janitor on 05/06/2020 - 14:14
Last edited 05/06/2020 - 15:35
Last edited 05/06/2020 - 15:35
Comments
I just called to confirm, OMH are indeed giving free vax to everyone with a Medicare card, regardless :)
If you are prescribed any asthma medication it is also free as you fall into high risk group.
OMH are shooting everybody for Free as long as have Medicare, while their 'free' stock lasts.
They had a batch at the beginning, and texted some relatives they have them available again now.That's why I'd like to know surely some more clinics may be doing this?
Are you sure it's free for everyone?
It does say in their own website that it's free for 65+ childreen between 6 months and 5 years.At Our Medical Home flu vaccines are now available for patients while stocks last. Please check with our medical centre on availability of the free government vaccines for 65+ and children aged 6 months to 5 years.
How do they get money if giving free vaccine to everyone. maybe expired batch?
They charge Medicare for a consultation.
In previous years I got mine for free. 30yo.
This year, I had to pay $10 or $15 for it.
Lucky I got it done as soon as it was released (April), as they got sold out pretty quickly.
Not sure what the current availability is like.
consultation is always free if they bulk bill as all other GP that bulk bill.
$10-15 is about the right price of flu shot.I suppose the Doctor is subsidising the cost of the vaccine in order to get the bulk billing.
All I know is that I got it for free in previous years.
We'll see for sure tonight - the lady on phone said Yes, just bring your Card and walk-in.
Our usual General Practice wants to charge $15-25 a pop like everywhere else it seems is the standard
he shot us with some bubblies left in the syringe tho funny feeling.
It's a real proper network I highly doubt they are using expired doses
Are you sure it's free for everyone?
Yup just did me and 2 younger relatives. Had to fill in the usual 'new patient' paperwork at the clinic.
Got back now.How do they get money if giving free vaccine to everyone. maybe expired batch?
Missed this first time, Just saw it now.. didn't ask then
oh great, we have anti-vaxxer here
what toxins? that video doesn't mention anything toxins
all they are saying is that the effectiveness of the vaccine is not as high as people thinkAluminum is toxic?
sure.
make sure you don't eat spinach and potatoes.Aluminum toxicity occurs when a person ingests or breathes high levels of aluminum into the body.
Yep, pretty dodgy for sure.
A 2018 systematic review of the scientific literature on the use of flu shots in healthy children published in the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews found with high certainty that vaccination reduces the risk of influenza illness such that five children are required to be vaccinated in order to prevent one case of the flu.
However, for children under six years of age, the vaccine “does not provide significant protection against influenza”. For children aged two years or younger, “there is very limited evidence to determine their effects compared with placebo.” For children under age two, “there is no evidence of effect”.
Furthermore, researchers found “no convincing evidence that vaccines can reduce mortality, hospital admissions, serious complications, or community transmission of influenza.”
Concerningly, data on adverse events “were not well described in the available studies”, and for children under two years of age, there were “very few randomized controlled trials”. Researchers were “surprised to find only one safety study of inactivated vaccine in children under 2 years, carried out nearly 30 years ago”. The lack of safety data for flu shots in younger children “is particularly surprising given that the inactive vaccine is now recommended for healthy children six months and older”.
There is also uncertainty about the effects of repeated annual vaccination across different flu seasons, and most studies were not well designed or conducted; the general methodological quality of included studies was judged to be “poor”.[2]
A prior Cochrane review, published in 2012, had reached similar conclusions. Researchers had similarly expressed alarm about the lack of studies demonstrating safety in children under two years of age, remarking that, “If immunization in children is to be recommended as a public health policy, large-scale studies assessing important outcomes, and directly comparing vaccine types are urgently required.”[3]
As their updated 2018 review indicates, such “urgently required” safety studies were not forthcoming.
A 2018 Cochrane systematic review on the use of flu shots in the elderly found that available data indicate that thirty people would need to be vaccinated in order to prevent one case of influenza, but this evidence “is limited by biases in the design or conduct of the studies.”
Furthermore, “The available evidence relating to complications is of poor quality, insufficient, or old and provides no clear guidance for public health regarding the safety, efficacy, or effectiveness of influenza vaccines for people aged 65 years or older.”[11]
Another systematic review published in Lancet Infectious Diseases in 2012 similarly found that “Evidence for protection in adults aged 65 years or older is lacking.”[12]
In an article summarizing the findings of their three 2018 systematic reviews, Cochrane researchers noted that “There is little evidence on prevention of complications, transmission, or time off work.”
Also, while the CDC claims that tens of thousands of flu deaths occur each year based on mathematical models, the average number of deaths attributed to influenza on death certificates is little more than 1,000 yearly. Therefore, “the actual threat is unknown (but likely to be small) and so is the estimation of the impact of vaccination.”[13]
While Cochrane reviews found insufficient evidence that influenza vaccines prevent transmission, a 2018 study in the journal PNAS found that infected people who had received a flu shot shed over six times as much aerosolized virus in their breath as infected individuals who did not get the vaccine.[14] This is significant because airborne aerosol transmission may be an underrecognized but important mode of transmission for influenza viruses.[15]
More at the link, but don't let science and facts (or lack thereof ) get in the way of what the media and politicians tell you.
We normally haven't the need for vaccination in recent years.
Just with all that's happening, this would be the time to do it I reckon - as to reduce risk of getting sick with both. Or not mistaken for a flu.
Do some further research, there are some good studies that show that having the flu shot leaves you susceptible to non-flu respiratory bugs (like covid 19 for e.g.) If you can't find them I'll try and dig them up in the morning.
didn't -ve you. Happy to give a read if you can link.
Would be worth to post it here, and not under a negatively voted comment.
@AncientWisdom: Here's a couple (hopefully I can find the ones I was trying to remember. :) )
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3404712/
Increased Risk of Noninfluenza Respiratory Virus Infections Associated With Receipt of Inactivated Influenza Vaccine
We randomized 115 children to trivalent inactivated influenza vaccine (TIV) or placebo. Over the following 9 months, TIV recipients had an increased risk of virologically-confirmed non-influenza infections (relative risk: 4.40; 95% confidence interval: 1.31-14.8). Being protected against influenza, TIV recipients may lack temporary non-specific immunity that protected against other respiratory viruses. In the prepandemic period of our study, we did not observe a statistically significant reduction in confirmed seasonal influenza virus infections in the TIV recipients. We identified a statistically significant increased risk of noninfluenza respiratory virus infection among TIV recipients (Table 3), including significant increases in the risk of rhinovirus and coxsackie/echovirus infection, which were most frequently detected in March 2009, immediately after the peak in seasonal influenza activity in February 2009 (Figure 1).
https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2013/08/swine-st…
During the 2009 H1N1 pandemic, Canadian researchers identified a greater risk of infection in those who had been vaccinated against seasonal flu, a puzzling finding that researchers are still unraveling, including a group yesterday that revealed more about a mechanism for the process through experiments on pigs.
The heightened risk identified during the 2009 pandemic threatened to disrupt vaccination efforts in Canada, and the findings raised tough issues for policymakers, especially when studies in the United States and other countries contradicted the Canadian findings. However, in 2010 a large study by a Canadian team put an exclamation point on the earlier findings, reporting that the risk of needing treatment for pandemic flu was 1.4 to 2.4 times greater in those who had been vaccinated against seasonal flu in the previous year.
A little bit off-topic but worth a read.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/flu-shots-may-not…
Despite government recommendations, there is little evidence that flu vaccines help individuals older than 65 or younger than two. So how much does the vaccine truly help older people? In January 2012, Michael Osterholm, an epidemiologist at the University of Minnesota’s Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy, and his colleagues published a meta-analysis in The Lancet Infectious Diseases that analyzed the results of all randomized controlled clinical trials conducted between 1967 and 2011 on the effects of flu shots. It found that there have been no clinical trials evaluating the effects of the traditional flu vaccine in the elderly. The only vaccine shown to protect against infection or death in older adults, it said, is the live-attenuated vaccine—an inhalable vaccine that contains a live, modified version of the virus—which is not approved in the U.S. for adults over age 50.
One from the British Medical Journal https://www.bmj.com/content/360/bmj.k15/rr
OFFICIAL DOUBLETALK HIDES SERIOUS PROBLEMS WITH FLU SHOT SAFETY AND EFFECTIVENESS
After weeks of brooding about the Donahue article linking flu shots to miscarriages (Vaccine 2017;35:5314) it was with a sense of relief that I read Rob Wipond’s narrative of media attempts to sweep a serious vaccine safety issue under the rug….He points out the hypocrisy (his words were “double standard”) of authorities who dismissed the Donahue paper because it was an “observational study.” Year after year they have quoted observational studies to announce, “…80% vaccine effectiveness…60% effectiveness…40% effectiveness…” They do not mention that these studies make no effort to look for adverse vaccine effects (e.g. narcolepsy, seizures, high fever, oculorespiratory syndrome). They do not mention “negative vaccine effectiveness”, the increase in risk of illness from influenza and non-influenza viruses associated with (or caused by) the vaccines. (Cowling, Clin Inf Dis 2012;54:1778) They do not mention that a vaccine “effective” in one season may increase influenza risk in a subsequent season. (Read about “antibody-dependent enhancement” to understand one explanatory mechanism). They do not mention that the observational studies they refer to are likely to exaggerate vaccine effectiveness in the first place because of the “healthy user effect” well known to epidemiologists.
I like this guy too but some people wont. He does use a lot of CDC and other official numbers FWIW https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HplGfFlf-fE
https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2017/02/studies-…
A Canadian study released this week added to the evidence that getting a flu shot 2 years in a row may sometimes result in lower protection against flu the second year, while another new Canadian study estimated that this year's flu vaccine is 42% effective against the dominant flu strain in circulation.
The first study examined flu vaccine effectiveness (VE) over three recent flu seasons in Canada, yielding new evidence that prior-season flu vaccination may interfere with current season VE—if the flu strains used in the two vaccines are the same or very similar but differ from the current epidemic strain. The report was published yesterday in the Journal of Infectious Diseases (JID).
In the second study, involving the same group as the first and published in Eurosurveillance, the researchers estimated this year's flu VE against H3N2 viruses, the dominant strain this season. They said the modest 42% effectiveness they found is consistent with previous reports of VE against H3N2, which generally is associated with worse flu seasons and lower vaccine protection than are the other two common flu varieties, H1N1 and influenza B.
The two reports were prepared by members of the Canadian Sentinel Practitioner Surveillance Network (SPSN), with Danuta Skowronski, MD, of the British Columbia Centre for Disease Control as lead author.
http://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/jou…
In April 2010, a study was published in the journal PLoS Medicine reporting the “unexpected” finding from four epidemiologic studies in Canada that receipt of the influenza vaccine for the 2008 – 2009 season, while apparently effective in reducing the risk of illness due to the seasonal flu, was associated with an increased risk of illness due to the pandemic influenza A(H1N1) “swine flu” virus during the spring and summer of 2009.
While cautioning that their result could be due to some unidentified confounding factor or selection bias, they suggested that, if real, this finding could be due to the difference in the way the vaccine affects the immune system compared with natural infection.
Under this hypothesis, repeated vaccination “effectively blocks the more robust, complex, and cross-protective immunity afforded by prior infection.”
When unvaccinated people are infected with the seasonal influenza virus, they have an opportunity to develop a robust cell-mediated immunity that not only protects against that strain of the virus, but is also cross-protective against other strains.
People who’ve annually received the influenza vaccine, on the other hand, “may have lost multiple opportunities for infection-induced cross-immunity.”
This is because the vaccine is designed to stimulate a strong antibody response, or humoral immunity, but does not confer the same kind of robust cell-mediated immunity as natural infection.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3209321/
Another study published in 2011 in the Journal of Virology confirmed that annual influenza vaccination indeed hampers the development of a robust cell-mediated immunity.
The authors pointed out that, while seasonal influenza vaccines were designed to confer humoral immunity against influenza A(H3N2), A(H1N1), and B viruses, they “inefficiently induce protective immunity to other influenza A virus subtypes” such as avian influenza A(H5N1), the “bird flu”.
As they explained, seasonal influenza vaccination “prevented the development of influenza A virus-specific CD8+ T cell immunity otherwise induced by infection.” These immune cells, unlike the antibodies stimulated by the vaccine, would provide protection against not only the infecting strain of influenza, but also other subtypes.
Annual vaccination for influenza, the authors concluded, “may render young children who have not previously been infected with an influenza virus more susceptible to infection with a pandemic influenza virus of a novel subtype.”
https://academic.oup.com/cid/article/54/12/1778/455098
Putting these findings to the test, another team of researchers conducted a randomized, placebo-controlled trial. Published in March 2012 in Clinical Infectious Diseases, they found that in the nine months following vaccination, “recipients had an increased risk of virologically-confirmed non-influenza infections”. (All emphasis added.)
The study found no significant difference between vaccinated versus unvaccinated children in terms of risk of acute respiratory illness or febrile acute respiratory illness.
Furthermore, despite the vaccine’s observed effectiveness in producing high antibody levels in vaccinated children, there was “no statistically significant difference in the risk of confirmed seasonal influenza infection”. (Emphasis added.)
(Recall that the FDA uses antibody production as a surrogate marker for vaccine “efficacy”, eliminating the requirement for the manufacturers to produce studies showing that their products actually work to produce the desired outcome.)
On the other hand, vaccinated children had a statistically significant increased risk of infection with non-influenza viruses, including rhinoviruses (i.e., the common cold), coxsackie viruses, and echoviruses.
In conclusion, even if the antibody levels seen in the vaccinated children did protect against the influenza virus, which they found no evidence for, the supposed benefit “was offset by an increased risk of other respiratory virus infection”.[59]
https://academic.oup.com/cid/article/59/10/1375/2895694
While most studies have looked at only one or two flu seasons and failed to consider the long-term effects of repeated annual vaccination, a CDC-funded study published in September 2014 in Clinical Infectious Diseases did consider that question by looking at five years of vaccination data.
What the CDC researchers found was that the more that people had been vaccinated in prior years, the less effective the vaccine had been at preventing the most recent season’s dominant H3N2 virus.
As they put it, “vaccine-induced protection was greatest for individuals not vaccinated during the prior 5 years.”
Well that's a start, a bit long but it should make a start for anyone whose interested in looking into things further for themselves. Expect to find studies that may provide other results, that's just a symptom of the current crises of science and people will have to decide for themselves what's best for them. I'm also noticing that it's harder to find relevant articles than it used to be, the censors have been busy the last couple of years and even duckduckgo seems a bit 'funny' lately. Personally I have never had a flu shot and have not had the flu for about 20 years. The only other respiratory bug we've had lately was about 12 months ago which we (ironically enough) picked up on a plane at Wuhan.
Some workplaces are handing out vouchers for free vaccination. Mine did. I also volunteer with young adults with special needs and was offered a free voucher by that organisation.
Edit: It's called the corporate voucher program.
Yep saw that when checking CW vax price.
Register for the 2021 corporate flu immunisation program
Due to unprecedented demand, we are no longer offering corporate voucher codes for the 2020 flu immunisation program.
Please read this comment by @EightImmortals before deciding to vaccinate against flu.
TL;DR (2 important ones IMO)
- Flu vaccination may increase risk of contracting coronavirus.- there is little evidence that flu vaccines help individuals older than 65 or younger than two.
Please do not downvote without taking the time to read the research links posted. Please comment if you do downvote to explain why.
Hi, anyone have the link that was unpublished recently?
The free government vaccines are only for those aged 65+ and for children aged 6 months to 5 years. Those that qualify can get them from their GP, or I think that all of the chemists offering vaccinations can also provide if specifically arranged beforehand.