Oink oink

As a mum of two kids under the age of three, I am SO confused about this H1N1 stuff. Do I get the shot for them or not?! There is so much conflicting information out there and senseless amounts of "on one hand/on the other hand" banter.

Now, seeing as I work with the media on an ongoing basis, I am always a bit skeptical as to the truthfulness of what they write (let's get real people: most media stories are pitched by people like me, after all). Regardless, there's an interesting piece in Maclean's that can be found here: http://www2.macleans.ca/2009/10/19/swine-flu-fiasco/2/.

Regardless, if vaccines aren't 100% safe, why risk them, you (I) ask?

Apparently, approved vaccines -- including the H1N1 vaccine -- are calculated to be much, much less risky than the diseases they prevent. For example, out of every million people who get a flu shot, one or two will get a serious neurological reaction called Guillain-Barre syndrome (GBS).

But flu itself causes serious problems, including GBS, in far more than two in a million cases. And since a large proportion of the population will get swine flu, the vaccine risk is far smaller than the disease risk.

According to some interesting info from webMD, in clinical trials, 10,000 to 15,000 children and adults have received various manufacturers' brands of the H1N1 vaccine. Nothing serious happened to any of them.

My concern lies with the fact that clinical trials cannot detect something bad that happens to one or two out of every 100,000 people vaccinated. Right?

I guess all I can do is read, read, read. What do you think?