Let me start by asking which you’d prefer:

1. A 10% raise?
2. A 3% raise?

If you’re like almost everyone, the answer is hands down #1. But let me re-phrase the question a bit. Which would you prefer?

1. A 10% raise in 1980?
2. A 3% raise in 2009?

Is your answer still the same? I bet you think it’s a trick question because I added a year to the options. You’re right, it IS a trick question! The years 1980 and 2009 are special. Can you guess why? 1980 is very well known for having a very high inflation rate whereas 2009 is known for being a deflationary year (a year where the inflation rate is negative). In 1980 the inflation rate was 13.5% whereas in 2009 it was -0.4%. Having brought this new information to light, is your answer still the same?

In other words, which do you prefer:

1. 10% raise at 13.5% inflation in 1980 = a real -3.5% raise in terms of purchasing power
2. 3% raise at -0.4% inflation in 2009 = a real 3.4% raise!

Looking at the numbers adjusted for inflation, option #2 is now by far the best economical choice, beating option #1 by almost 7%!! Option #1 is actually a pay cut!

Now here’s the kicker, although most people realize option #2 is the best economically, the majority of us FEEL that the person in option #1 is HAPPIER with their raise than the person in option #2. Notice here I said feel happier, NOT that they were financially ahead! Although we’re able to differentiate between the two, most people still believe they would feel happier with option #1!!

What’s more, this same research paper (Money Illusion) also discovered that people believe the person in option #2 was more likely to leave their job. Basically, as William Poundstone summarized in his book Priceless, the overall theme of the paper is:

“$$$ = happiness = actual dollars NOT ADJUSTED FOR INFLATION”.

So how do you get a pay cut and be happy about it? Get a raise, but have that raise be less than the rate of inflation.

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We all know the real estate market is in a mess right now, and most of it is really our fault. Too many people took on mortgages they never should have. But it’s not just the borrowers that are guilty, the lenders need to take their share of the blame. Obviously everyone should know when they’re over-extending ourselves, but in obvious situations many lenders still encouraged people to get mortgages. They often helped them get financing through more creative ways, such as loan/mortgage applications that didn’t require any proof of employment, interest only payments, 105% financing, and so on. I won’t even mention mortgages that required high and consistent capital appreciation just to be sustainable.

As part of this mess, many different sales techniques were used. A very common technique was focusing on how much mortgage you CAN afford per month (not how much you SHOULD afford per month). What this means is that instead of looking at the total purchase price, you focus on the monthly payments. By doing this, especially when interest rates are incredibly low, you end up buying properties that in any normal time is well above what you can afford. Which also means that when interest rates go back up, which they will, you’re in a lot of trouble!

Again, the benefit of this selling technique is that you can take the focus away from the real price and look at what you can spend each month. This gives the seller a lot of leeway in the price (not to mention it helps increase commissions).  As an example, adding $2000-$5000 on a $500,000 mortgage amortized over 30 years (at our current historically low interest rates) barely changes the monthly total ($9/month and $22/month respectively)! Even adding $20,000 isn’t that big a deal. At 3.5%, $20,000 barely adds $90/month more. $90/month more on a $2500/month mortgage is not a big difference.

But, getting back to the reason for this post, is that lenders have now come up with a new method of rationalizing why you should purchase overpriced properties, or at least a method that I haven’t personally seen yet. Here’s the exert from Tales From the Real Estate Wars:

“Now’s the time to move up to a larger house and eradicate any loss on your present house!  How, you say?  Come a little closer and I’ll explain:  If you bought a house for $350,000 and it is now worth only $280,000 (20% less), you have only “lost” $70,000 if you sit still and do nothing.  But if you buy that really big house in the nicer community that used to be worth $550,000 and is now also 20% lower, the moment you close on that house at $440,000, you’ve gained $40,000 ($110,000-70,000).  And hey, that’s before you get the $6,500 tax credit! Plus, have you seen how low the interest rates are?”

It’s really perverse logic, but at the same time I can see how people can fall prey to it. They’re focusing on people’s loss aversion fears which is a very strong emotion!

Do you see the flaw in the logic?

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The other day on my way home I came across this sign for a new gym. Only 500 memberships are available! It must be an exclusive gym right? Only 500 memberships? How many gyms do you know that limit their memberships? I better go get mine now while I still can!

Or should I? How many memberships is 500 for a gym? Is it a lot? Is it very few? Who knows, and to be honest, it doesn’t really matter. The key metric to how busy a gym is going to be is how many active members they have. If it’s not already common knowledge, the reason most gyms sell yearly memberships is that a large number of people won’t keep going past a few weeks to a few months. Even with the best of intentions. This is why they oversell memberships, and why gyms are generally more packed around News Years. How many memberships do you think are unfilled New Year’s Resolutions?

This however is the first time I’ve seen a gym display an actual real limit to the number of memberships they will offer. At all other gyms I’ve seen they’ll just take your money and enroll you no matter how many members they already have. I don’t ever remember seeing a gym limit their membership. But is 500 a high or low number? If they’ve never had more than 300 memberships, then 500 is more than they’ve ever had so it could almost be considered an unlimited number of memberships. But our perceptions that there is a limit makes us value each membership much more than they’re really worth!

I will therefore bet that because they’ve put a limit, whether or not it’s real or artificially so high that it’s in essence unlimited, that they will get a LOT more sales than if they had the very same sign with just the two words “only 500″ removed!

Scarcity can be an effective marketing tactic, and this is a perfect example.

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It’s official, Apple has just released the new hardware offering, the iPad a few minutes ago. It’s basically a big brother to the iTouch with some additional features and performance (at least as much as I can tell this far into Steve’s introductory presentation).

Although the price hasn’t yet been announced, I suspect this will be in direct competition with the Kindle, so it’s no wonder Amazon released their Kindle development kit early. But is it enough for Amazon?

I will bet that even if the Kindle is cheaper, and has a longer battery life, the iPad will trump the Kindle soon enough. Not only does it do a lot more (watch movies, etc.), IT’S IN FULL COLOR!! Being able to read a book in color is much more exciting than if it’s just in black and white. And Apple already has the iTunes store ready for distributing and selling digital media, including books. Never mind the hundred thousand plus applications in the App Store!

I hate to say it since I buy tons of books from Amazon, but watch out for digital media (digital books). It’s going to be hard for Amazon to compete with the iPad. Even if the iPad ends up costing significantly more than the Kindle, which I suspect it will.

Update: Apparently the battery life on the iPad is 10 hours of video or 1 month of standby time!

Update 2: I predict the demise of the Kindle if Amazon doesn’t do something very very soon. At a $499 entry price for the basic iPad, it’s a no brainer. The iPad $499 version has multiples more storage space, better processor, gaming, videos, tons of apps, books of course, and did I mention it’s FULL COLOR! The only benefit the Kindle has right now is the quantity of books and Amazon’s distribution channels. For now…

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2009 has been my busiest year to date since I’ve started blogging almost 4 and a half years ago and founded LandlordMax 6 years ago! Looking back, it’s hard to believe everything that’s happened. Which is why I’m going to take a breather today and look back at 2009, to share with you all that’s happened. Every once in a while I like to do that, and it’s been way too long since the last time.

When 2009 started, LandlordMax (the property management software company I founded) was growing at a very nice pace and the real estate market hadn’t collapsed as far as it has today. We were in the process of trying to release our biggest ugprade, version 6.05. We were also trying to get a Mac version out in the first half of the year, and hopefully get much further on the networked multi-user version. I had also just published my book Blog Blazers (November 2008) in which I had interviewed 40 top bloggers about their take on blogging. Above that I was in the process of a major redesign of this blog. Those were the major items on my plate as 2009 started.

Overall it mostly went as planned, with some surprises and exceptions. The biggest unexpected was just how much work it was going to take to make it all happen. If I had known ahead of time just how busy 2009 was going to be, I probably would’ve been a lot more stressed. Sometimes ignorance is best. In any case, here is my journey broken down into sections:

LandlordMax

Just to quickly re-iterate, LandlordMax is the company I founded about 6 years ago. The company primarily builds and sells property management software to real estate investors, property management companies, property managers, banks, colleges, and anyone else who needs to manage rental properties. The software manages the accounting, workorders, invoices, leases, tenants, buildings, and about a million other things. It’s a very useful and powerful piece of software.

When 2009 started, we were very actively working on a major upgrade of LandlordMax, which eventually was released as version 6.05 in May 2009. In it we included many new features, including a large amount of charting, email integration, Outlook support, whole new sections (accounts, contacts beyond tenants, vendors, etc.), over 20 new reports to the already more than 100 reports, and lots of other exciting new features. It was a massive undertaking that although started long before the year began, was finished before the year ended.

The only downside is that we couldn’t offer all the features we had wanted to and release it within a reasonable time. For example, we wanted to offer a feature we called “Archiving”, but as we tried to implement it, I realized it was going to be a major undertaking, taking more time than I wanted to get this version completed.

We also tried to get check printing into the software but had I to make the very hard decision to push it to a future release. After having committed a lot of time and money to check printing, it became clear that it wasn’t going to be doable within the time frame we had. So for now, this is a feature that has been put on hold. I hate to see all that effort put on hold, especially after having already invested so much effort and time, but it was the right decision. It was the hardest decision I that I had to make in 2009.

That being said, LandlordMax version 6.05 was very successfully released in May 2009. The feedback and comments we received have been amazing. Here’s just a few samples of the latest testimonials: 1, 2, 3. And those are just the ones I’ve published here on my blog, there’s many more on the LandlordMax Success Stories page.

Within days of version 6.05 being released, a big push went forward to make it available on the Mac. We’ve been working on this on and off for some time, going as far back as 2007. The problem with the Mac version is that there’s always tons of small and extremely annoying differences that need to be correctly handled. Things from how the installer works to how the program is rendered on the Mac. But this year I decided we had to make it happen no matter what. What I initially thought was going to be a certain amount of worked turned out to be a lot more than I had planned. And I mean a lot more! On the scale of 3-5 times more work!

Back in August 2009, I was already mentioning here how the Mac version was going to be coming very soon. That we only had one issue remaining. How wrong I was! A month later, in September I wrote about it again saying how wrong I was in my last post. We had resolved it, but now there were other issues.

One issue that was particularly troubling was due to the fact that LandlordMax is built on the Java platform. On the Mac, Leopard uses Java 5, and Snow Leopard uses Java 6. There is no overlap, and you can’t choose one version or the other, they each use a different version. Which means to support Leopard and Snow Leopard we needed to make LandlordMax fully Java 6 AND Java 5 compliant!! We’d been planning to upgrade to Java 6, but we were hoping to push that off until after the Mac version was released. Turns out we had to deal with it now.

At the end of October, we finally released the Mac version of LandlordMax! And it was compatible for all versions of the Mac OS, Leopard and Snow Leopard. Not only that, but you could take a backed up database file from the Windows version and move it to the Mac, and vice versa. In other words, you could use LandlordMax interchangeably on the Mac and Windows!

The Mac version of LandlordMax has since been received with lots of enthusiasm as shown in this initial testimonial, with many more to come. But in terms of estimated cost, we spent several times more than I had initially planned. And this is after having already committed lot of resources in the past.

During all this, the property management software market has dramatically changed. A company that’s been buying up many of our competitors over the last couple of years in the hopes of becoming a major player, Domin-8, has filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy. They acquired companies such as Rent Right, Spectra, Tenant Pro, iCam, Management Plus, and so on. This is big news because most companies have very limited success after filing for Chapter 11. Not only this, but we’re already starting to see people jumping ship as they’re learning the news. No one wants to be stuck with a software from a company that’s no longer around, especially with the speed of technology today. Which means 2010 may be a very interesting year for the property management software market. A shakeout year…

And as you all know by now, the real estate market has also been going through a major recession! You would expect our sales to be impacted negatively, but quite the contrary has been going on! Our revenue growth hasn’t stopped in the slightest, we’re still growing at the same fast rate as before as shown below (the graphs below only include sales of LandlordMax):

All in all, it’s been a great year for LandlordMax. Things have definitely been going in our favor. The only thing we haven’t yet succeeded in doing is releasing the networked version. A lot of work has already been done here, but the progress has been slower than I’d have liked. Not because it’s hard or a lot of work, which it is, but because I’m always having to allocate effort away from it to other more immediate items. For example, to get LandlordMax version 6.05 out on time, we had to pause the effort on the network version for several months. And for the Mac version, well let’s just say that all the effort was focused on the Mac version during those months. Like I said before, the Mac version required much more work than anticipated and I made the commitment to follow it through, even at the cost of delaying other items.

Which means that this year, we’re now working very hard on the network version. I expect there will be a new version of LandlordMax before the networked version is available, but I can’t confirm this. I also believe it won’t be until at least late in the year that the networked version will be available, if not in 2011. Above this, the website is in the process of going through a major uplift! That’s what’s going on right now. We’ll see what happens. I can’t wait to write a similar post when 2011 comes on what happened this year!

Blog Blazers

In November of 2008, I published the book Blog Blazers. In Blog Blazers, (also available on Amazon), I interviewed 40 top bloggers, (bios can be found here). The book took me a good year to publish and I’m very proud of the results. In it I asked everyone the same questions so that you the reader can compare apples to apples and oranges to oranges. Not only that, but one of my goals was to make sure the questions had a lot of follow-up material so that you could continue learning after you were done reading the book. Questions such as What was your most successful blog post ever? Which books and websites do you recommend to new bloggers? What’s your best tip for writing a successful blog post? To name just a few. I even wrote some follow up posts to help people find further resources such as 10 Most Popular Books in Blog Blazers.

Because the book was released in mid-November, it was just in time for the Xmas rush. And of course, because it’s a new book from a new company (Levac Publishing House – owned and operated by yours truly), there were some initial distribution issues. For example, Amazon will only initially order a limited number of books for new books and from new publishers. And because of this, Blog Blazers was almost immediately out of stock on Amazon. The good thing is that although it took alittle bit of time, we were able to resolve the issue quickly enough. And of course, it’s a good problem to have!

Other than that small initial glitch, Blog Blazers as a whole has been a pretty smooth ride. Most of the issues with the book were in it’s production, the marketing and sales was fairly similar to LandlordMax. Actually, I learned so much from the production side that I ended up writing a 3 part series on how to publish a book. Here is the link to the series: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3.

The biggest thing I learned about publishing books is that profits can only really be made by selling books in large volumes. You have to move at least 10,000-100,000 books to make any kind of money. Less than that and I’m at a loss how you can make any profit (assuming you have a marketing budget). The profit margins are definitely lower than I expected. To be honest, I really did learn a lot more than I ever expected about the book publishing industry. I now have a very big appreciation for the effort that goes into making a good book, and just how hard it is to produce and succeed. I now thing that books in general are under-priced. That being said, lots of copies of Blog Blazers were moved. Right now there’s just a fraction of what I initially printed left before I need to make a decision on the next print run. So that’s pretty exciting.

In regards to how the book has been received, it’s gotten a ton of glowing reviews. It’s been reviewed on major websites, blogs, magazines. It’s landed me several interviews, podcasts, radio spots, video reviews, guest appearances, etc. It’s been used used for a workshop at Drake University. What’s also very excited is that on Amazon, a site known for it’s reviews, Blog Blazers has gotten an average 4.5 star out of 5 stars! Almost no books get 5 star reviews, it’s extremely rare. Most books get anywhere from 3 to 4 stars. 4.5 stars is exceptional!

As the year has been wrapping up, I’ve had to decrease my marketing efforts. Right now the book is mainly selling itself through word of mouth. I might put another big marketing push or two, but I don’t expect to put as big a marketing push as I did in 2009. It’s a lot of work and because of that I believe it took a lot of my time away from LandlordMax. It was ok for 2009, but I can’t commit as much time to promoting Blog Blazers in 2010 as I did in 2009, not with everything coming down the pipe for LandlordMax.

Overall though, Blog Blazers was a success which I’m very proud of it. The only thing is that in retrospect had I known beforehand what it takes to publish a book I doubt I would have done it. The last time I had calculated, I put 1000-2000 hours into publishing the book. That’s just my time! This doesn’t include the money I invested. It’s definitely a costly endeavour. So if you’re planning to write a book, you should really check out my book publishing series I wrote on my blog (mentioned earlier). It’s a BIG project! Not that there’s anything wrong with it, it’s just nice to know what you’re signing up for before you actually do sign up.

FollowSteph

As always, in 2009 I continued to write articles/posts here. The biggest workload came from a complete custom re-design of the site. And I have to give credit to Reuben Whitehouse for it’s success. He designed the new logo, as well as the whole look and feel. If you’re interested, Reuben wrote a blog post about how he designed and came up with the FollowSteph.com logo. It’s a pretty cool post with lots of pictures and explanations on how he did it.

The other big news for FollowSteph is that the Feedburner subscriber count, which I don’t publicly post yet, has been climbing fast. In 2009, the blog grew in subscriptions by 500%!! I can’t even begin to describe how exciting that is!! Normally I’d see a 50% to 100% yearly growth, never 500% times. 2009 was a big year. Very exciting stuff!

For 2010, my main goal is to increase my blog postings, bring it back to my pre-2009 levels. 2009 was just so insane that I have to admit I didn’t post as much as I use to. Especially the last few months of 2009. In November and December I only had 2 posts each. My goal is to get back to my usual posting schedule of at least once a week, preferably more if time permits. It’s definitely not a lack of ideas and things to say, it’s a lack of time.

RealEstatePigeon.com

RealEstatePigeon.com is a completely new website/project sponsored by LandlordMax! I’ve never once talked about it. This is the very first time right now!

RealEstatePigeon.com is expected to be publicly released later this week or early next week. You’re more than welcome to check it out now, just be aware that we’re putting on the final touches as we speak. There are a few outstanding graphical issues. That and I’m in the process of seeding it a bit more before fully going public with it.

What is RealEstatePigeon.com? It’s a Q&A (Questions and Answers) website about real estate. The website is based on the success of StackOverFlow.com, a Q&A website for programmers. The idea is that you’ll be able to ask real estate related questions and get answers. Not only that, but because it’s a community website, you can also show off your real estate knowledge and answer questions posed by others.

The differentiator here is that unlike discussion forums where the answers are all listed in chronological order which makes you have to read everything just to get any idea of what’s going on, you’ll be able to quickly see the best answers. This will work because all the answers get voted on, and the best answers will get pushed up to the top based on the number of votes. So the better an answer is, the higher it goes and the quicker you can get to it.

Not only that, but the website is going to have a reputation based system. What this means is that you receive reputation points for each of your questions and answers that are up voted. The more reputation points you get, the more real reputation and credibility you get. And the more real reputation you have, the more real opportunities you’ll get offline, in the real world.

For example, on StackOverFlow people have gotten such high reputation scores that it’s attracted the attention of people looking to hire experts. Yes, opportunities are being presented to people directly because of their reputation scores! People are getting contracts because of their reputation scores. People are getting hired for work because of their reputation scores. Basically, people with high reputation scores are attracting the attention of others who want to work with them.

Therefore the goal of RealEstatePigeon.com is that not only will you get answers to your real estate questions, but you’ll will be able help others (and as a side effect show off your knowledge). And in return for helping others, you’ll be able to potentially achieve success yourself! Who wouldn’t want to work with a mortgage broker who had a high reputation score. What about a knowledgeable real estate agent? When you approach an investor for money, wouldn’t it be great to be able to show them how much you know and your reputation score? Even better, I can’t wait to hear from the first person who tells me they got approached by investors instead of them having to approach investors because of their reputation on RealEstatePigeon.com!! That’s the ideal goal! To get people come to you rather than you going to them!

2010

To summarize, in 2010 I plan to:

• Continue to grow LandlordMax
• Release at least one new major version of LandlordMax
• Get very close to releasing a networked and multi-user version of LandlordMax
• Finish the major uplift of the LandlordMax website
• Sell out all the remainder copies of Blog Blazers’ first print run
• More than double the number of subscribers to this blog
• Bring back to the posting frequency to pre late 2009
• Launch RealEstatePigeon.com with success
• And have a lot fun doing all of the above!!

Let’s see what happens.

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Darren Rowse of ProBlogger is having a competition contest where he’s giving away books he’s read, one of which is the book I published called Blog Blazers.

The idea behind the contest is that you have to pick one and only one book which you’d like to have a chance to win. As of this moment, he already has 1203 people comments (entries) for the chance to win a book. What’s really exciting is how many people are voting for Blog Blazers!!

If you haven’t already commented for your chance to win a copy of Blog Blazers, now’s the time to enter!

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I hate to admit it, but I have more printers than I have computers. Why is that? Is it because I love printers? Not at all. It’s because it’s economically cheaper to buy a new printer almost every time I run out of ink.

For example, today on Amazon I can buy the Canon iP3600 Inkjet Photo Printer for $43.08. Don’t be fooled by the sale price, just do an Amazon search for printers in the $25-$50 range and you’ll find lots of printers in that price range. Many are cheaper than this Canon printer, I just picked it because the discount wasn’t as heavy as some of the other models.

Now if we look at the price of ink cartridge to replace it, what they call the value pack, to replace all the colors including black, it comes to $41.05. Yes, it’s actually cheaper to buy a new printer than to buy ink. And I get a new printer!!

I understand that ink is where printer manufacturers make their profits, and that more often than not the printers themselves are loss leaders, but this is a bit ridiculous. Is it just this one case?

Epson has a WorkForce 30 Color Printer selling for $59.99. To replace the ink requires a $16.49 purchase for black ink and a $32.99 purchase for color ink. Combined, that’s $49.48, just $10 shy of a brand new printer!

And it’s not just Canon and Epson that do this, pretty much all printer manufacturers are in the same boat. Too often the price of replacing the ink is equal to or greater than the price of a new printer.

I do understand that the ink packs they give you with new printers aren’t the same size as replacements, but most people don’t generally think about this when they’re in the store itself making the purchasing decision. What we’re thinking is in the first case I get a free printer. In the second, for $10 more we get a whole new printer!

With this in mind, it’s easy to understand why people such as myself have too many printers.

And don’t get me started on how shoddy most printers are built these days. How many printers have you had that lasted more than a year or two before they stopped working?

PS: The prices on Amazon have already changed from when I initially wrote this post.

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The quick answer: Yes! Absolutely get vaccinated. The quicker we can stop this virus in it’s tracks, the less chances we have that it mutates. Right now it’s a relatively mild virus, but it has has the potential to mutate. If we have the ability as a society to stop it before it can mutate, then we should. Not only that, but why get sick if you can prevent it, especially if you happen to be one of the unlucky few who gets hit really hard by it!

Because of all the media attention this vaccine is getting, and because it feels a bit rushed, a lot of people are somewhat skeptical of getting vaccinated. Today I’m going to try and answer as many questions as I possibly can about the vaccine. And although I’ve spent quite a bit of time researching this information, I’m still not a medical expert. Therefore if for any reason any information in this post is incorrect, please let me know right away.

How does the flu vaccine actually work?

Both the seasonal and the H1N1 flu vaccine work the same way. They basically help us create antibodies to fight the “real live” virus. How this is achieved is by injecting us with a tiny part of the DEAD virus. Again, it’s NOT live. And because the virus is dead, it cannot grow in us. But what it does do is allow our bodies to combat it, and hence build an immunity to it.

This is also generally why we don’t get sick from a vaccine. The virus is not live, and hence is not infecting us. It’s possible that we feel some minor flu like symptoms, and this is a good thing. It means our body is reacting to the dead virus and fighting it off, building antibodies.

Can flu shots cause the flu?

No. The vaccine ONLY contains DEAD virus. If you do get the flu after a virus it’s because you came into contact with it from another source, such as a door handle, a handshake, an infected air particle from someone coughing in the same room, and so on.

As well, do remember that the vaccine’s effect is not immediate. If you get the vaccine in the morning, you’re not immune that afternoon. The vaccine works by letting your body react to the dead virus, giving it the ability to pre-build antibodies before it’s exposed to the real live virus. Therefore you have to give your body the time to create these antibodies. For H1N1 it can be anywhere from 10-21 days for your body to build up it’s immunity.

Am I completely immune to the virus after I get vaccinated?

No. No vaccine is perfect! Most flu vaccines are 70-90% effective. It really depends on how closely matched the real virus is to the virus you were vaccinated for. So for example, if the H1N1 virus mutates significantly, then it’s possible that the vaccine’s effectiveness drops. Even more reason to get it now, so that we can stop it before it gets a chance to mutate. Studies have shown that if at least 70% of a population get vaccinated, it’s enough to extinguish most viruses.

In any case, right now it’s appears that the H1N1 vaccine is about 85% effective. That means that 15 people out of 100 people that got vaccinated will still get affected by the H1N1 virus.

The good news is that if you do get affected, it’s very likely to be much milder than if you didn’t get vaccinated. And if it does mutate, you may still have some partial immunity. Some immunity is better than no immunity.

Studies have also shown that people who get vaccinated do get sick less and miss fewer days of work.

Do healthy people need to get vaccinated?

Yes. Healthy people do get sick. Although in most cases their symptoms are much milder than the young and elderly. However when newer (for lack of better word) strains come out, such as the H1N1 flu virus, they are just at risk if not more so because of the Cytokine Storm produced by their body’s immune system. In the 1918 pandemic, it was the healthy young people that seemed to get hit the hardest.

If nothing else, although the symptoms may be milder to healthy people, they can potentially expose a lot of other people, such as their kids, their grand-parents, their parents, their grand-kids, their nieces, nephews, etc. Basically they can expose people who’s immune systems aren’t as robust as theirs.

What about the Guillain-Barre syndrome?

In 1976, a very small but unfortunate number of people developed GBS (Guillain-Barre Syndrome) after getting vaccinated (300 people out of 48 million). The vaccine that was given then didn’t go through the usual process like the H1N1 vaccine did. As well, even though it was never officially proven that the vaccine caused GBS, that vaccine is no longer used.

Studies have since then found that there is no difference between people who get flu vaccines and those who don’t in terms of getting GBS. But your chance of getting GBS after being sick from the flu is much greater than your risk of getting GBS after a flu shot.

In other words, getting the flu vaccine overall drops your rates of getting GBS. Do remember that the flu itself can cause swelling of the brain, it can cause comas, seizures, etc. The odds of getting GBS from the flu itself are higher than from the vaccine.

Is there mercury in the flu vaccine?

In some vaccines there are tiny amounts of thimerosal in the flu vaccine. Thimerosal prevents bacteria from growing in the bottle of vaccine. Thimerosal breaks down into a kind of mercury, but not the kind that causes mercury poisoning.

What are adjuvants?

Adjuvants are additives to vaccines to make them more effective. They basically cause your body to make more antibodies and to make them faster. It’s almost like pressing a turbo button on your immune system.

Adjuvants also help people with weaker immune systems since they aren’t as strong. Again, remember that the whole idea behind a vaccine is to expose your body to the virus and give it a chance to build an immunity to it. If your immune system is already weak, it may not be able to fully build up an immunity to it without a boost.

The other benefit of adjuvants is that it gives vaccine manufactures the ability to produce more vaccines in less time, which is great for rampping up vaccine supplies in times of pandemics. It does this because each flu vaccine needs smaller amounts of the dead virus to have effect. Less virus means less time reproducing large quantities of the virus. If H1N1 had turned out to be more virulent, or if it does ever mutate to a more virulent form, adjuvants will give us the ability to manufacture more vaccine quicker.

Are adjuvants safe?

Adjuvants are correctly considered to be safe. Most people don’t realize that many other vaccines do include adjuvants, some given to babies. They’ve been around for a long time. So far the results have been positive.

The only reason non-adjuvant vaccines are recommended to some groups such as pregnant woman is just because they’ve never been tested. It’s not because negative results have been found, it’s simply because there is no data. It’s actually been recommended that if push comes to shove for a virulent strain, and the choice is between an adjuvant vaccine and no vaccine at all, that the adjuvant vaccine be taken. It does appear to be safe, but it’s also hard to ethically test some specific groups of people (such as pregnant women).

How do you get the vaccine if you have egg allergies?

Unfortunately most flu vaccines are grown in eggs. If you have serious allergies to eggs, you may not be able to get the H1N1 vaccine.

That being said, I haven’t really done the full research into what options are avaialble for those with egg allergies, so if you do have these allergies, please feel free to comment below and let us all know.

Can kids become Autistic because of the flu vaccine?

There are two arguments people generally refer to when asking this question. Firstly, they point to the small amounts of mercury (the thimerosal mentioned early) as the cause. Studies have shown that this isn’t the case. In Denmark for example, thimerosal was taken out of the vaccines and it didn’t reduce the autism rate in that country. The WHO (World Health Organization) have also come to the same conclusion after several studies.

The second argument is that the rate of autism has gone up in correlation to the increase rate of vaccines. But if you remember your science 101, correlation doesn’t imply causation. Just because something is related it doesn’t mean it’s the cause.

For example, as the number of pirates have decreased, there has been an increase in global warming over the same period. Therefore the lack of pirates is the cause of global warming. Since the 1950s, both the atmospheric CO2 level and crime levels have increased sharply therefore CO2 causes crimes. In both of these cases it’s obivous that the correlation doesn’t imply the cause but sometimes the lines are fuzzier.

For example, as cell phones are being used more, autism rates have increase, therefore cell phones cause autism. I highly doubt this is true, but it’s a less obvious example. If you go one step further, as vaccinations have gone up, so have the rates of autism, therefore vaccines cause autism. Again, just because something is correlated it doesn’t mean it’s the cause. It’s back to the same type of argument: As ice cream sales increase, the rate of drowning deaths increases sharply, therefore ice cream is causing people to drown. Absurd, but it is actually correlated.

Conclusion

Should you or shouldn’t you get vaccinated? Yes, you should absolutely get vaccinated if you can. To be honest, there’s no reason not to.

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Although I try not to post too many customer testimonials here about LandlordMax, I just couldn’t resist the following one from Dallas Powell. Especially since we just released the Mac version of LandlordMax.

I’m just writing you to say thanks for developing this awesome  software and keeping on top of it with frequent updates and fantastic new features. You guys are a top notch company. I was really happy when you offered it for Mac’s. I liked it enough that I bought it and boot camp with Windows for my Mac to be able to use it and the only downfall was having to get on the Windows partition which I don’t like. I can now use this awesome software right on my Mac!

To those who are considering a purchase, I can assure you that you will be happy with it. I needed something easy to operate without having to spend a lot of time figuring it out. Within a couple of hours I had the software completely figured out with out having to read the literature that comes with it. Just start inputting information (a property, a tenant, etc) and it will all become clear.

- Dallas Powell

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