[fnid]

This is some interesting analysis, but it only considers the negative effects of not getting the flu and neglects the negative effects of getting it.

Consider this poor woman who got dystonia after receiving a flu vaccine: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cEN5KGwNGeo

She was a cheerleader and how she can't walk.

The nerd logic also neglects the probability that the flu vaccine will actually help. In the lab, 50-80% of the vaccinated resisted the exact same strain, however in the wild, only 10% did not get the flu and the number of hospitalizations was not affected at all.

To do a proper analysis, one must use proper probabilities and statistics and consider the probabilities of outcome with the benefit/harm that could be caused by that outcome.

[gloob]

Sometimes I get the feeling that if I got a needle and was hit by a car two weeks later, I could convince people it was a side-effect.

I had my ribcage sawn open by the medical system so they could cut out a piece of my heart and replace it with a chunk of a pig's. I'm still around and doing just dandy. My suspicion is that the people who can do that sort of thing probably have a better notion of what this vaccine will do than I do.

Not that any of this invalidates any of your arguments, of course; I'm just talking.

Edit: Perhaps another way of looking at it would be: I don't really want a doctor who has never written a line of code in his life to tell me how to write a program. I suspect that modern medicine is not quackery and does involve actual expertise, and (equally significantly) that the medical system has a greater amount of medical expertise than I do.