On 5/28/2010 12:13 PM, HeyBub wrote:
h wrote:

We purchased some suture kits and other medical stuff. I will, never,
ever have a "medical professional" touch me ever again. Maybe in 13
years when I hit Medicare age, but not likely. I doubt I will buy
into Medicare. It's not like they pay for everything yet it costs
over $50 a month. I've spent about $100 on healthcare in the last 4
years. Yeah, like I'll be signing up for that money sink. Not so much.

Heh!

When you were a lad, even in your twenties, maybe even last week, you went
to the doctor when you were sick.

When you reach a certain age, you go to the doctor to keep from GETTING
sick.

About five years ago, I started going to a doctor to help me manage
incipient diabetes. The first thing he did was vaccinate me against TB,
pneumonia, and tetanus. The most important vaccination, though, was for
shingles.

Actually, not likely. The only vaccination that is effective against TB is BCG,
which is rarely used anymore and certainly not in the US. Reason: It is not
100% effective, but permanently converts you into a positive tuberculin reactor,
forever destroying that test's ability to detect early TB infections (when they
have a much higher chance of being successfully treated and put into a dormant
state). You probably received a tuberculin skin test to see if you had become
infected, even though you might not be showing symptoms. The tetanus booster
was arguably the most important thing done for you at that visit. Tetanus is
still very very difficult to treat successfully, much easier to prevent with
periodic booster shots. Although very painful, and on occasion producing
permanent pain syndromes, scarring, or even blindness, shingles is rarely life
threatening. The shingles vaccine also is not 100% effective although it does
statistically reduce the risk of severe cases when they do occur. I have a
close relative who got the shingles vaccine yet came down with shingles about 18
months later.


Shingles is the reemergence of the virus that caused chicken-pox
among children. The vaccination is 85% effective in preventing the disease
and 100% effective in mitigating the disease's effect.

No medication can ever be said to 100% effective in mitigating a disease's
effect unless that disease has an absolutely 100% complication rate (e.g., skin
scars after smallpox, or fatality rate (e.g., rabies). To stipulate a 100%
mitigation rate for an agent against a disease with a variable outcome, you
would have to be able to know how severe a specific patient's course of illness
would have been had they not received the agent in question. Mitigation effects
in almost all cases can only be quantified as a statistical likelihood for a group.

None of these had anything to do with my initial visit.