I received a Flu shot in boot camp in 1959 and it made me sick. I never got another Flu shoot until about 15 years ago after I had the Flu two years in a row. It was really nasty and it put me flat on my back for over a week each time. I started getting Flu shots again and have not had the Flu since. At 80 years old I figured it would be the end of the trail for me if I were to get the Covid so I was happy to get the vaccine shots.
According the Mrs Marvel, (SWMBO) back in the the early days most vaccines were based on the actual virus
isolated and grown on some sort of mystical media like eggs ( thus the question : are you allergic to eggs?) .
The cultured virii was then somehow killed, partially or mostly killed, or neutered somehow which could lead
to some pretty severe reactions
as tho it were an actual case but which produced strong immunity to
that strain .
the professional science writers put it this way:
snip---------------------
The isolation of influenza virus 80 years ago in 1933 very quickly led to the development of the first generation of live-attenuated vaccines. The first inactivated influenza vaccine was monovalent (influenza A). In 1942, a bivalent vaccine was produced after the discovery of influenza B.
The first influenza vaccine was approved for military use in the United States in 1945 and civilian use in 1946. This whole-virus, inactivated influenza A and B vaccine had been tested in military recruits and college students before approval. Thomas Francis Jr., MD, and Jonas Salk, MD, who would become closely associated with the poliovirus vaccine, were key investigators on much of the influenza vaccine research. Influenza vaccine development was a high priority for the U.S. military after the deaths of approximately 1 in every 67 soldiers from influenza during the 1918-1919 pandemic.
endsnip-----------------
My first flu vaccine was one of those mass nationwide events after the "Swine Flu" outbreak of 1976 and I did
react to it, and it was not pleasant.
snip-------------
In January 1976, several soldiers at Fort Dix complained of a respiratory illness diagnosed as influenza. While the majority of samples were of the more common A Victoria flu strain, two were not. The atypical samples were sent to the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, Georgia, which found evidence of swine influenza A related to the 1918 flu pandemic, which killed 50 to 100 million people worldwide.
endsnip----------
After identifying "Swine Flu" in the mix, a vaccine was manufactured and nationwide effort was made to forstall another 1918 Flu Pandemic. A lot of us got flu-like reactions and bed-ridden for a few days, but it did keep a nationwide pandemic from occurring.
Because of that reaction I skipped getting any flu shots until I actually got real H1N1 one year and was laid flat
for 10 days, and literally slept on the floor in front of the porcelain god for about 3 of them, unable to move any further.
After that I got the shots every year no matter what.
as always, YMMV
yhs
prof marvel