Serious ? for Doc: How important is the flu vaccine for a relatively healthy 51YO? I've never had one.
Easy question.
Getting a bad case of the flu is a possibility every year. NOT just when you hear about one that might be nasty. Flu kills folks every year and makes some of them miserable enough that death looks like a better option.
Annual flu vax will show your immune system 3/4 varieties of flu, so, even if you get the flu chances are good that it will be milder. While a newly shifted from animals flu might be really capable of visiting death on a lot of people all the years of flu vax will have exposed your immune system to a lot of variations and that can be thought of like banking immunity like lots of pennies from lots of different countries.
You immune competence does function on the "use it or lose it" principle and competence does diminish over time. But... you neglect to put the pennies in the bank you don't have and competence to lose, plus the similarities/repeats year to year do not reinforce the prior exposure (vaccination) so the competence diminishes.
