The Dystonia Flu-Shot Case

Today, we live in a connected virtual community, and YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, and blogs, in addition to traditional media, are the medium through which community panic and delusions spread.

At this time there are two slow panics spreading through the community – fear of the H1N1 “swine” flu pandemic, and fear of the vaccine to prevent H1N1 flu. Regarding the pandemic itself – this is a real threat, it is just not known at this time how severe it will turn out to be. So far it is looking like another seasonal flu in severity, but with some different features, such as a greater tendency to severely affect otherwise healthy individuals.

The panic over the vaccine, however, is entirely manufactured, primarily by dedicated conspiracy theorists and anti-vaccinationists, and then aided by irresponsible media. There have been two stories in particular about alleged severe reactions following vaccines recently, one dealing with the HPV vaccine and the recent cased of what is being called dystonia following the seasonal flu vaccine. The young girl who died within hours of getting the HPV vaccine was found to have a heart defect, and her death had nothing to do with the vaccine, so that story was rather short-lived.