Ted Strand didn't flinch. The nurse had him roll up his left sleeve, then she swabbed his biceps with an alcohol pad and unceremoniously stuck him with the needle. In a moment, it was over and he had been inoculated against the flu.

Brave boy, that Ted.

Oh, OK, brave 72-year-old.

"Yeah, but you noticed that I was looking the other way the whole time," Strand says, laughing.

Ted and his wife, Marlene, had come to the Hagginwood Community Center in North Sacramento all the way from Wilton on the first day of flu vaccinations late last month.

"We think it's important," Marlene says. "And they work."

A day later, at another flu-shot clinic at the Sacramento City College campus cafe, the nurses in their starched white coats waited and waited for someone to wander in. Most students sat at nearby tables and purposely ignored the large "Flu Shot" banner.

"I've never had a flu shot," student Ashley Taylor says. "I heard that some people who get the shot end up getting the flu. I'm like, 'Just drink orange juice and take vitamins in the winter.' I don't want to chance it."

Each fall, without fail, medical professionals try to educate and cajole the Taylors out there to be more like the Strands and cast aside flu-shot fears.

Still a sense of urgency

This year, the push is no less fervent. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has a record 143 million doses available. The reason for the upsurge is that the CDC has expanded its recommendation for which groups should receive vaccinations.

Now, all children ages 6 months to 18 years are advised to get the shot, or the non-injected flu mist, annually. Other groups who are deemed primed for the vaccinations include adults age 50 and older, people with chronic medical conditions or living in nursing homes or other facilities, and health care workers.

In a best-case scenario, medical professionals say, they would like everyone not in the high-risk group – those allergic to eggs or latex gloves and people who've had a previous adverse reaction – to roll up their sleeves.

"I'm a strong believer," says Dr. Allan Siefkin, chief medical officer for the UC Davis Medical Center. "The vaccine has proven to be highly successful in the large studies done. If you've ever really had the flu, not just a bad cold, you'll know how serious it can be."

The CDC lists clinical flu's symptoms as including "fever, nausea, myalgia, headache, malaise, nonproductive cough, sore throat and rhinitis."

Yet there still is a faction that, for differing reasons, says flu shots are ineffective, unnecessary and, in some cases, more dangerous than the flu itself.

These range from medical professionals associated with the organization "Vaccine Liberation" who call all inoculations "toxic," to mothers of young children concerned with the long- rumored (but so far not medically proven) links between vaccines and autism, to people convinced that flu shots cause them to get the flu.

"I worry that they will do more harm than good," says Sally Albee, a Citrus Heights resident who eschews the shots. "I know 'they' say you won't get sick, but I've come across an awful lot of people over the years who fell ill very soon after getting their flu shots."

Anti-shot camp deeply rooted

Such so-called "flu fear" arguments have been around for decades. The naysayers have been bolstered by recent studies that take a critical look at the effectiveness of the vaccines.

Most recently, a Canadian study published by the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine found that, for people 65 and older, the reduction of deaths attributable to the vaccine was "very small."

Last year, researchers in Seattle and Washington, D.C., concluded in a story published in the Lancet that flu-shot benefits touted by the government are exaggerated. The CDC reports that, each year, 36,000 Americans die from flu-related illnesses and 200,000 are hospitalized.

George Washington University researcher Lone Simonsen, the study's lead author, wrote that steadily increasing vaccination rates since 1980 have not resulted in fewer elderly deaths.

Call The Bee's Sam McManis, (916) 321-1145.