Misconceptions
Flu: The flu vaccine can give you the flu.
Injected flu vaccines only contain dead virus, and a dead virus is, well, dead: it can’t infect you. There is one type of live virus flu vaccine, the nasal vaccine, FluMist. But in this case, the virus is specially engineered to remove the parts of the virus that make people sick.
Despite the scientific impossibility of getting the flu from the flu vaccines, this widespread flu myth won’t cease. Experts suspect two reasons for its persistence:
Antibiotics: Deemed the “miracle drug” in the 1940s, antibiotics are the cure-all of virtually any infectious disease.
Antibiotics only work on infections by bacteria, not viruses. Some fungi and parasites may be susceptible to certain antibiotics.
Antibiotics: Antibiotics can be taken as preventative measures against some infections.
There is more harm than help in taking antibiotics when you aren’t sick. By using antibiotics when they aren’t needed, there is an increased risk of wiping out your body’s natural flora and making it prone to infection by pathogenic bacteria.
Vaccine: Vaccine-preventable diseases have been virtually eliminated from North America, so there is no need to be vaccinated.
It's true that vaccination has enabled us to reduce most vaccine-preventable diseases to very low levels in North America. However, some of them are still quite prevalent—even epidemic—in other parts of the world. Travelers can unknowingly bring these diseases into North America, and without protection by vaccinations these diseases could quickly spread throughout the population. At the same time, the relatively few cases we currently have in North America could very quickly become tens or hundreds of thousands of cases without the protection we get from vaccines.
Transmitted Diseases: All sexually transmitted diseases are curable.
Sexually transmitted diseases caused by bacteria can be treated with antibiotics; diseases caused by viral infections are incurable. Drugs are available to control viral infection, but they will always remain in the body. Viral sexually transmitted diseases include AIDS/HIV, HPV (human papilloma virus), and herpes.
Injected flu vaccines only contain dead virus, and a dead virus is, well, dead: it can’t infect you. There is one type of live virus flu vaccine, the nasal vaccine, FluMist. But in this case, the virus is specially engineered to remove the parts of the virus that make people sick.
Despite the scientific impossibility of getting the flu from the flu vaccines, this widespread flu myth won’t cease. Experts suspect two reasons for its persistence:
- People mistake the side effects of the vaccine for flu. While side effects to the vaccine these days tend to be a sore arm, in the past, side effects often felt like mild symptoms of the flu.
- Flu season coincides with a time of year when bugs causing colds and other respiratory illnesses are in the air. Many people get the vaccine and then, within a few days, get sick with an unrelated cold virus.
Antibiotics: Deemed the “miracle drug” in the 1940s, antibiotics are the cure-all of virtually any infectious disease.
Antibiotics only work on infections by bacteria, not viruses. Some fungi and parasites may be susceptible to certain antibiotics.
Antibiotics: Antibiotics can be taken as preventative measures against some infections.
There is more harm than help in taking antibiotics when you aren’t sick. By using antibiotics when they aren’t needed, there is an increased risk of wiping out your body’s natural flora and making it prone to infection by pathogenic bacteria.
Vaccine: Vaccine-preventable diseases have been virtually eliminated from North America, so there is no need to be vaccinated.
It's true that vaccination has enabled us to reduce most vaccine-preventable diseases to very low levels in North America. However, some of them are still quite prevalent—even epidemic—in other parts of the world. Travelers can unknowingly bring these diseases into North America, and without protection by vaccinations these diseases could quickly spread throughout the population. At the same time, the relatively few cases we currently have in North America could very quickly become tens or hundreds of thousands of cases without the protection we get from vaccines.
Transmitted Diseases: All sexually transmitted diseases are curable.
Sexually transmitted diseases caused by bacteria can be treated with antibiotics; diseases caused by viral infections are incurable. Drugs are available to control viral infection, but they will always remain in the body. Viral sexually transmitted diseases include AIDS/HIV, HPV (human papilloma virus), and herpes.