With respect, you have completely misunderstood what I said about the use of the nasal vaccine in pregnant women. My comments related only to the attenuated virus which constitutes the nasal vaccine, not to the injected vaccine which I am well aware is given to pregnant women and indeed, is positively recommended for pregnant women.

As has previously been said, it is those with compromised immune systems or underlying medical conditions who benefit most from flu vaccination. They have the greatest risk of death and severe complications from flu which is not a trivial illness, especially in someone with an underlying medical condition or weakened immunity. Its worth remembering the various pandemic flu episodes that have killed millions across the globe if ever a reminder were needed that it isn't trivial.

As antibiotic resistance becomes an increasing problem, it will become more difficult to treat the secondary complications of flu and it may, again, become a much bigger killer in future. Globally, we have currently got no solutions for antibiotic resistance - the world is sleepwalking into an era where simple bacterial infections will again kill people like they did before the discovery of penicillin. It takes on average a minimum of 15 years to get a new drug or compound to market and the number of new compounds licensed annually by the FDA and the European equivalent is tiny - in the teens. Most of those licenses are not for truly novel compounds - they are just improved versions of drugs that already exist.

People can slam big pharmaceutical companies and maintain all kinds of unfounded conspiracy theories but at the end of the day, it's those pharma companies we all have to rely on to come up with the new generation of drugs to replace antibiotics. It's also those same pharma companies which have made the drugs that most of us rely on for whatever bit of minimal symptom relief we can get from medication. I for one, am happy to accept all of the failings of the clinical trial system because even the marginal benefit I get from my prescription medications far outweighs the risks or concerns I have about the interests of individual companies or the imperfect system.

No medic or scientist will ever suggest that a vaccine is fail-safe or fully effective and the flu vaccine is always limited in terms of the number and type of flu strains that it will protect against in any given year. It is just another risk management strategy that people can choose to adopt or reject. Personally, I will be going to get mine done shortly, as always. I will have it done by normal injection even though I have an extremely robust and healthy immune system and CRPS symptoms that affect all of my body. There is as good as zero risk and everything to gain.