Read this Before you get a fle shot

clipped from www.health.com Read this BEFORE you get a flu shot The vaccine may not be as good—or as safe—as you think. How effective is the shot? The flu shot is only as good as the educated guesses of a group of vaccine researchers across the globe. Every February, they try to predict which flu viruses will work their evil during the next fall and winter. Their three top choices are put into the vaccine. The CDC claims that vaccine will be 70 to 90 percent effective against just those strains of flu. “We hope that these smart scientists who get together with the vaccine producers make the right call,” says immunologist Randy Horwitz, MD, medical director of the University of Arizona’s School for Integrative Medicine. But sometimes they don’t, partly because the virus mutates from year to year. In 2003–2004, the CDC admitted that it completely missed the virulent Fujian flu strain that hit hard that winter.