Fuck a flu shot.  I'm not getting it.

Fine if you're a petite lady like my Mom; whom every winter used to come down with the deathly flu of suffering eww.  But I'm pretty strong.  I see no point in exposing myself to this sorcerous substance, "popularized flu vaccine," considering the risks involved and any potential benefit.

I refer to vaccine as sorcerous.  Well it kinda is.  Sorcery is making a deal to draw upon something, a power, that you don't fully understand.  Unless you are a high-level operative and know machine language and how operating systems work, unless you built your computer with your own two hands and are an electrical engineer, you have at best a sorcerous understanding of the thing you're reading these words on.  And if it ever breaks down in a way you don't comprehend, you will need to consult a sorceror; and that's the trade-off for the convenience and capability.

If you want the unnaturally good protection for yourself that a vaccine creates, you will have to accept a very tiny risk of dropping dead at the flu clinic, or some such.  These minute risks, like the risk inherent in anaesthesia, are common in medicine and are almost invariably worth taking for the sake of curing something serious!

I understand the basic principle of stimulating an immune response, leading to heightened protection.  I understand the principle of adjuvants, or chemicals variously intended to modulate or strengthen a dose...

But I don't understand how my health care professional does his sourcing.  I don't understand the companies involved.  And I don't understand production.

One thing I do understand is that these are big, expensive global companies.  And the hallmark of a big, global company is that it contracts parts of the job out.  Based on cost.  Because efficiency in costing leads to shareholder profit, which is the heartbeat and bowels of a functioning enterprise.

If you are a big company contracting out all over the world, that doesn't make me rush to a judgement of ill will so much as it makes me think that best intentions combined with human fallibility combined with an extremely complicated product that must be precisely produced and monitored for safety, imply too much risk for a benefit which is trivial to me!