Swine Flu Again.

The first time I heard about Swine Flu was in late 1976 when word came down to my company that we were all going to get the Vaccine. Since I was close to getting out of the military I asked if I had to get it also. It was required, and no one could leave Europe without receiving it. They had a temp shot clinic set up over our mess hall, as my platoon went on its 4 day break we went to get the shots. So as the line led outside the room you could not see what was going on till you were in it. Inside the room on the wall near the where the doctors, and nurses were, there was three GI's with respirators on. They explained that if we had adverse reactions to the shots that's what they were for. As you can imagine if we had three, and they were all in use, it did not seem to bode well for us there. We handed our shot cards to the nurse to record it, and then received the three shot complex. Two needle shots, and one with a air gun. I mean you could feel this stuff going in you, and I was twenty, and in perfect shape. After the shot we had to stand behind the where the respirators were in case of reaction. I had no reaction so it was from there to the mess hall for evening chow.

So the chat during meal was about the shots, and someone from another platoon said when they had it they got really sick. Well, we ate big of course, but by about a half hour after the shots we were all feeling like we were getting sick. One guy split to stay at his girlfriends apartment, and me, and our other roommate were left in our three man room. Being break we opened some double bock beer, and put on some jams. By the first beer we drank we both went to our bunks to lay down, as we were having some high fevers, and chills. What a group of shots they were, as I never felt so sick in my life. The first 24 hours I barely remember as it was sleep, wake up, and vomit, and back to sleep. The hallway to the bath/shower rooms were filled with vomit, as was the bathroom itself. The second 24 hours were better, as we were devoid of anything in our stomachs, but the heaving was worse as nothing came up when we did. Also we were walking somewhat to the bathroom instead of crawling to it by then. The severe weakness was over, but every joint ached when used. The next 24 hour period was filled with big chunks of sleep, with getting up to urinate, and to fill up our canteens with water.

The last 24 hour period from getting the shots, and before we began our 3 days of details around the barracks before our regular tour of duty resumed, we rejoined the living by going to the mess hall for some chow after 3 days of not eating. We were told by our top kick that our detail period was going to be cleaning up the barracks from our sickness. What a horror show the place was, as everything that can come out of the human body was there on the floors. We thought at the time, because of talk about going to Korea if things broke down there, and the North crossed into the south, that that was what the Vaccine was for, as none of us had heard of this Swine Flu before these shots. That was the First, and the Last time I ever got a Flu Shot. In later years I found out that the only people to die of Swine Flu then were the people that got the vaccine. At twenty it rocked my boat, and with no drugs to take, only water, it was a bad time. The people that died from it were the old, and the young that could not handle the shock to their systems the Vaccine gave them.

This new current strain seems to be some sort of unnatural combinate mixture of a variety of Flu types. I put up some RSS feeds from this site legitgov.org that detail what is going in the Flu news.