I am not at all comfortable with this whole H!N! vaccine thing (For one thing, I listen to John and Adam a lot  ).  At the very least, the powers that be are fudging the data and at the worst, well who really knows. 

http://www.dvorak.org/blog/2009/10/26/cdc-guesstimated-h1n1-cases-data-now-looks-bogus/

Unfortunately, my wife was required to take the H1N1 vaccine for her job which does not make me feel comfortable in the least.  She doesn't think it is a problem and in general is much more trusting of flu vaccinations and the expert opinions of medical professionals than I am.

Are there anyone other Dvorak readers out there who have taken the H1N1 vaccine yet? 

I haven't even been able to get my hands on a regular flu shot yet. I'm supposed to get one from my office on 11/11. I hope to get the H1N1 (not H bang N bang) vaccine as soon as possible. The choice, IMHO, is between trusting best available science and flat out uneducated fear. At least that's how I see it. I don't expect to die of flu, but am at slightly higher risk due to diabetes. Further, flu wreaks havoc with my blood sugar. So, yes, I plan to get the vaccine ASAP.

Remember, this isn't just the drug companies selling it. Here's the CDC opinion, which should be relevant since the CDC adamantly opposes use of antibacterial soaps and other products, despite all the advertising that makes them seem good for your health, even in U.S. hospitals where people should listen to science rather than corporations with profit motive. (Ooops ... I just remembered, hospitals are corporations with profit motive in this country. Damn!!)

My daughter has received it because she works in the health clinic. Personally I'm not worried all that much about the flu or the vaccine. It's your typical flu vaccine, very similar to the flu shot millions get every year. Side effects (as with any vaccine) can be mild flu like symptoms since it's triggering your bodies immunity system - basically doing a dry run of killing H1N1 in case you happen to run into it for real.

As for that CBS story. Oi vay! Epidemiology is horrendously difficult and the CDC had to make a decision based on anecdotal evidence so they erred on the side of caution. It's a risk judgement. You either be cautious and nothing happens or you be conservative and the disease mutates and goes crazy. They were cautious because of H1N1's characteristics. The outcome of being conservative and nothing happening is the decision you never hear about in the news since it's boring.

What's most interesting about this is that everyone is asking if this is a media created problem. I think it's an internet created problem and the media is just following. It's going to take a few of these internet storms before people wake up and figure out what's going on.

BTW, I finally got my H1N1 about a week and a half ago. I've had no ill effects from it. So now I've got both the seasonal and the H1N1 and am as protected as I can be, though nothing is perfect.

I loved how my nurse practitioner said I might have the H1N1 virus but when I called BS she agreed that my fever didn't last long enough etc... but I have been bumming health wise for a while and my fever was the final straw. The best thing is that I couldn't find a thermometer due to everyone buying them out even if they didn't need to monitor themselves. I am not really against the vaccine but I think that in most cases the doctors are not sure themselves what is going on inside us.

Actually, knowledge of whether you have H1N1 or some other virus has little to do with whether to get the vaccine. The time for the vaccine is before there is anything interesting going on inside you.

As for your nurse practitioner, she should have told you that she can't tell without testing. Further, there is no reason to test since the results would not affect treatment. Unless H1N1 mutates slightly, as it did in 1919 or so when it killed a couple of hundred thousand people, it is not symptomatically different than seasonal flu and is actually a tad less likely to kill.

What bugs me (punintentional) is how often the medical profession will perform some test or battery of tests to find out what you have when the results will not change treatment at all. It's all well and good to know what you're treating. Treating viruses, for example, is very different than treating bacterial illnesses. The latter may be treated with antibiotics where the former never are. However, knowing the difference between seasonal flu and H1N1 is meaningless unless one is trying to track disease vectors, in which case, it's still meaningless for that patient.

The reason for the unnecessary tests, regardless of whether any doctor will admit it, even to him/herself, is to make money. Our system of fee for service is what's sick.