Since dancers don’t get paid if the don’t work they have to be more practical. The seasonal flu will knock you out for a week at least, probably more. I suppose your attitude toward the flu shot depends greatly on depends on how much you think you are at risk to get the flu. Most of my co-workers have a relatively limited exposure to people. Except for the ones with kids and those who travel they only see basic set of people.
The dancers work environment seems tailor made for transmitting the flu. A dancer has to meet and greet anybody who walks in of the street. She may have drinks with customer. For both sales and practical reasons she need to get close to the customer, much closer than a normal social situation. If she’s trying to sell a lap dance she’ll probably press up against the customer. Even if she’s isn’t trying to sell a dance, she’ll probably get close just because that’s the only way you can be heard when the music is loud. Dancers get handed dollar bills that have been drooled on, breathed on, and stuck in some unpleasant places. Short of vaccination, the most effective way avoid the flu is to avoid exposure. If you are a dancer you have to put yourself in harms way to make money.
The fact that travelers often visit strip clubs make things worse. Traveling is also a terrific way to catch something. You get to spend time crammed into confined spaces with people who were just recently crammed in to confined space with another set of people. At least when you travel you can take some precautions. I’m hardly a neat freak but I carry hand sanitizer with me now when I travel.
Dancers don’t get sick time or workman’s compensation either. If they don’t show up, they don’t get paid period. Getting put flat on your back with the flu will definitely make a dent in a budget. A flip side to this is getting a dancer’s regulars sick will also cost her money. If a customer gets sick with the flu he’s not going to come in either. While the H1N1 seems to affect younger people worse than older, in general the older you are the less effective your immune system is, and the longer it takes to recover. Vaccination protects her customers.
I’m not sure where all the fear about vaccines comes from. I suppose it ultimately is a result people make of risk versus reward for any medical decision. You are getting a steel tube stuck through skin, and something you may or may not need injected in to you. I don’t like shots, never will. I think the perceived risk from the infectious disease has decreased dramatically. There is a H1N1 pandemic going on as I write this blog post. Except for the media reports I wouldn’t have any idea.
My idea of a pandemic is something out of horror movie. People dying in the streets, cars abandoned on the freeway. As far as I can tell this isn’t happening. Dying of a disease just really isn’t a threat I think about on a daily basis. I remember when I was young I had to go to see the doctor to get my vaccinations updated so I could go to school. We moved around a lot when I was young and I had slipped through the cracks for keeping up with my shots. The last thing I wanted to do on a nice summer day was go get a shot, especially if the only reason I needed it was so I could go to school. That was stupidity squared. On top of that doctors used inoculation guns at the time. These things hurt like hell. The used air pressure to force a stream of fluid through the skin, no needles.
When my mother told me to go get in the car, I objected of course, and kept objecting despite the threats from my mother. My grandmother, who was visiting us at the time, got up, grabbed my ear and physically dragged me to the car and threw me in.
Much to the endless delight of my brothers I had just gotten by ass kicked by my grandmother. My grandmother was born in 1897. She had lived through the Spanish flu, Polio, and other disease outbreaks that resulted in very real suffering. To her vaccines were one of the great things in the world. I was going to get a shot, even if it meant pulling one of my ears off. Death or permanent disfigurement from disease was a very real thing to her. When I was in grade school it was fairly common thing to see somebody who has lost the use of an arm or walked with a limp from Polio. I cannot honestly remember the last time I saw somebody like that since graduating from high school.
I asked a friend of mine, who a vascular surgeon, what the difference is between was the H1N1 and the seasonal flu. He said the only difference is the “deactivated” virus that’s in it. Everything else is the same. Vaccines work by introducing a dead virus into the body. The immune system will create memory cells for the virus. Since its “deactivated” (ie dead) it doesn’t do anything like try to reproduce. Death tends to suppress the sex drive. Next time your immune system sees the virus, like when somebody sneezes on you at the airport, your immune system can react immediately and fight it off. When they created the seasonal vaccine they didn’t think the H1N1 was going to break out. The H1N1 is just another influenza virus.
I’ve gotten the seasonal vaccine, and will get the H1N1 when the lines die down. I’ve gotten the seasonal flu once. It pretty much kicked my ass for one week, and it was another couple weeks before I felt normal. Even though the zombie apocalypse hasn’t occurred from H1N1 there are people dying from it.
