Last year, my wife and I found out she was pregnant. We were very excited about this. Unfortunately, she got the flu after a couple weeks of being pregnant. In October, my wife gave birth to a little baby girl. We’d had the anatomy scans but they missed the open hole in her back. She has Spina Bifida, a condition that’s thought to occur due to a failure of spinal formation around the 18th day of pregnancy. Normally it’s blamed on a folate deficiency, but it can also happen due to illness during pregnancy. She’s coming home tomorrow, as she’s been in the hospital all these long months. It’s been a very emotional and challenging several months.

I’m almost certain the flu vaccine would have prevented this as I had gotten the flu vaccine and she had not. Only she got sick. We’ll never know for sure what caused it, because that’s just not how this kind of thing works, but our daughter is looking at a life of having to give herself catheters and enemas and likely kidney failure in her 60s because of her condition.

If we could go back in time she’d have gotten that vaccine in a heartbeat. It just hadn’t occurred to her as a thing to do.

Edit: accidentally repeated myself

Why are you sure of this? Doesn't seem reasonable, given the expected effectiveness of the inoculation is "this will cover the majority of this class of illness in humans this year - hopefully".

Because my wife who hadn’t gotten the vaccine, got the flu. I got the vaccine and did not get the flu despite being around her through her illness. I’m not sure how I could be more clear, sorry.

> I used to get the flu shot every year, and like clockwork got the flu every year a few weeks after the shot.

Correlation is not causation. You get a flu shot because you might catch the flu (ie. flu season).

> About 5 years ago I just stopped getting the shot and... haven't had the flu since, despite spending time with people with the flu.

If you got flu a couple of years running, your immune system built up a reservoir of antibodies. It has been shown that flu "history" is persistent across years--for example, your body fights off the flus you are exposed to as a child much more effectively than something novel.

I used to get sick all the time. For the last 3 years I got a flu shot and didn't get sick even surrounded by constantly coughing co-workers. Just another anecdote to consider.

PS. The fact that you get infected just a few weeks after the shot means you're getting it too late.

"Anecdotal, but"

If I may ask, why mention it when it's localized to just yourself?

Because even though a single person in an anecdote, multiple people chiming in the same thing moves closer to actual data. Have to start somewhere.

You mean self selected sample with confirmation bias on hypothesis that vaccine somehow makes them sick?

This is not really closer...

The hypothesis is either right or wrong. The data determines that. History shows over and over that progress comes when people push back against the right established "facts".

The parent's hypothesis isn't automatically wrong just because it is an anecdote. Neither is it automatically correct. But people need to be free to say, "Hey, I did this and what happened wasn't what I expected."

Sure, people are certainly free to say "this happened to me", when the subject is aligned. However, the plural of anecdote is not data. Anecdotes may guide research into areas which may be fruitful - but they are never a substitute for proper research.

I've had a similar experience. I never get the flu shot now, and never get the flu. Make me wonder about the causality of it all.

Same thing happens to me. People look at me like I'm crazy for not getting the flu shot, but I haven't had any issues since I stopped getting it every year.