(Leave your answer in the comments section for this unofficial elephant survey).

For me, this is easy.

It’s not “no,” it’s  heeeeeel, no.

Take that needle away from me, Miss Nurse. I’ll just have some water, hold the water.

There’s plenty of alarming (alarmist?) mainstream news about the flu epidemic.

Apparently, we’re all gonna die, and flu shots are the only thing between us and certain death. Save your country, only 15 to 30 bucks. Well, I’m not so sure, and I’m in good company on this.

In a recent piece called, revealingly, “The Shocking Lack of Evidence Supporting Flu Vaccines,” writer Sayer Ji posits:

“As it presently stands, it is not sound medical science, but primarily economic and political motivation which generates the immense pressure behind mass participation in the annual ritual of flu vaccination.”

If you’re looking for a reason to run and get your shot, it’s not there.

If CNN is right, and I trust them like a used car salesman with schmutz on his chin, a flu shot gives you just over 60 percent chance of not getting the flu. Given those odds, count me out.

So what would a boddhisattva do? Take on the little suffering, that others might be spared suffering. Unless he thought the needle was filled with bullshit.

There are shady goings on, conjectures of deaths attributed to the flu shot, some of them kind of heartbreaking.

My chiropractor, Dr Michael, shot me this:

The vaccine generally works better “in young, healthy people than it does in older persons,” Schaffner told CNN Newsroom.

Uhh, that’s actually “youth and health” working you idiot, not the vaccine.

I don’t think he’s gonna get one.

Advocates of the shot are getting creepy, now asking that it be made mandatory.

(Well, mandatory for health care workers, but it seems more alarming to leave that little detail out. Can all-out mandatory be far behind?)

That hyperlink above is to an NPR piece on this group—not fringe lunatic, but scarier.

The National Business Group on Health (NBGH), creepier than your old aunt Agnes, the one with the hair growing out of that mole on her cheek, is basically a public relations firm for big pharma, dressed in a cute skirt.

From the NPR piece:

“The NBGH is a nonprofit representing more than 300 large employers, including 68 of the Fortune 100. Its statement urged hospitals to ‘require annual flu vaccination of all employees as a condition of employment unless employees can demonstrate medical contraindications (with physician documentation) or religious objections.'”

For me, when I’m being strapped to a gurney screaming—and needled away “for my own good”—well, it just stops being fun.

That isn’t whats happening here, not yet, but what do you think? Is it okay to mandate a shot that has such poor numbers?  Forgetting that, tell me this:

Have you had your flu shot? Why?

Like elephant health & wellness on facebook.

Ed: Lynn Hasselberger