Jillian Gibson hasn’t gotten a flu shot in some 25 years.
“I don’t get the flu, and I’ve been exposed over and over,” said Ms. Gibson, 75, a mostly retired office manager for a medical practice in Beverly Hills.
True, she endured one bout back in the ’80s — “I remember being dreadfully sick” — and had a head cold a few years ago. Otherwise, despite urging by virtually every public health authority that seniors (and everyone else over six months old) be vaccinated against influenza annually, “I just didn’t do it because I don’t get sick,” she said.
Ms. Gibson doesn’t mistrust vaccines in general, she added. Her three children were always up-to-date on immunizations, and she herself got flu shots decades ago when she worked with dementia patients at an adult day center.
Now she doesn’t, even though she is more vulnerable to illness after two recent heart attacks.
Read more at The New York Times.