H1N1 is dominating the headlines and airwaves. We’re told half of people surveyed won’t be getting vaccinated against it, their fear of the vaccine itself outweighing any concerns about swine flu.

Where would Canadians be today if the majority had taken the same attitude with other vaccination programs over the decades?

The answer: We’d be a country where just about everyone knew someone who’d been crippled by polio or killed by smallpox. We’d all recognize the unmistakeable sound of someone suffering from whooping cough.

Do we really want to personally know someone who was killed by H1N1?

Yes, it might not kill as many people as the regular seasonal flu, cancer or heart disease.

But it does appear to have a knack for leaving dead those people—young kids, teenagers and young adults—who otherwise have every reason to be alive. People with no underlying health conditions are dying, often before their loved ones even realize what’s happening.

Surely that’s a real threat. And thanks to modern science, it can be solved with a real vaccine.

Those on the other side of the fence will warn of theoretical dangers, anecdotal evidence, often via the Internet, of someone somewhere who received some immunization and ended up somehow worse off than they were before.

So the choice appears to be this: a remote, but real, possibility of death from H1N1 without the vaccine, or the unproven, undocumented, rare chance of getting some other nasty disease with the vaccine.

We’re all being asked to be responsible citizens and to get the shot for the greater good of the general public, to prevent H1N1 from spreading.

Forget that. Do it for selfish reasons.

Get vaccinated so you don’t have to spend days in bed feeling like you’ve been run over by a truck. Take the needle so you don’t leave your children without a father or mother. Ensure your kids get the shot so you don’t lose a child tragically to something that could have been preventable.

Just do it.