My left arm is sore, I’m feeling a little flushed, and yet there’s no pornography to be seen anywhere. Must be flu vaccine season.
Normally I schedule my annual flu shot at my doctor’s office, but this year I was told that demand for the seasonal vaccine was so high that they were completely out of doses, forcing me to attend a flu shot clinic at the local CostCo. Which was a strange experience, since I’ve had friends telling me for years that if I didn’t change my lifestyle, one day I’d find myself taking the spike in a dingy warehouse. Somehow I don’t think they were picturing a syringe full of flu juice, but it was still spooky enough that maybe I want to cut back on the booze a little bit. Or not. Yeah, not. Either way, I digress.
What gets me this year is how the demand for the seasonal flu vaccine is up when everyone knows that the real risk out there is the H1N1 flu, otherwise known as the “swine flu”, also known as “the Porky Plague”, and referred to by me as “Revenge For Cavalierly Sprinkling Bits of My Flesh On A Fucking Salad So You Can Lie To Yourself That You’re Eating Healthy You Fat Bastard”.
My initial guess was that most people getting the seasonal shot for the first time think that it’s actually the Swine Flu vaccine, meaning those people will die in a puddle of snot and raise the collective IQ a point or two. But it turns out that it might just be a bunch of nervous people who want to feel like they’re doing something to keep themselves healthy, because you can’t even get the Swine Flu vaccine yet.
I asked my doctor about it when I called to schedule my normal shot, and he said that he’s not even expecting to hear how much of the Swine Flu Goo he’s going to get until next week, and even then I might not be able to get one because giving it to children is the first priority in an effort to build up a “herd immunity” to the bug. Which my doctor, who has treated me since I was fifteen and therefore knows how to communicate with me in terms I can easily understand, explained thusly:
“Imagine, Rob, that I shot at you across a crowded room with a high-powered rifle. God knows I imagine it all the time. If nobody in the room was wearing a bulletproof vest, not only would I kill you, but everyone standing between us. However, if we made a bunch of those people immune to bullets with vests, it vastly reduces the odds that you’ll be hit, even if you don’t have one.”
“Ah! I understand herd immunity now! Thanks, Doctor!”
“Whatever. With the crap you’ve been dumping in your body for the past twenty years, I’m not convinced even a bullet would kill you. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have patients who at least act like they give a damn whether they live or die.” *Click*
So I can’t get the Swine Flu shot yet, but they’ll shoot up the kids, which will cut the virus off at the most likely vector of transmission. Yup, once all the kids are vaccinated, there’s nothing to worry ab-
Wait – what’s that moaning, bleating sound? Sounds like sheep… or a pack of mindless zombies… Oh, no. Not you again. I thought I killed you morons last year!
Jackie Shea of Newtown, Conn., the mother of a 5-year-old boy named Emmett, says the vaccine is too new and too untested.
“I will not be first in line in October to get him vaccinated,” she said in an interview last month. “We’re talking about putting an unknown into him. I can’t do that.”
All right, parents: listen up. We’re going to have a conversation… meaning that I am going to call you morons and tell you to shut the hell up. Considering your opinions on a simple vaccine, that’s the kind of conversation you fucking halfwits are used to. We’re gonna go point by point here, okay?
Point 1: Fuck you.
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