Let's say your Uncle Jerry takes the advice of every health-care professional and public health official and shows up in mid-October to have his vaccination against H1N1 -- the swine flu virus.

Now, let's say Jerry tragically has a heart attack three days later and the next big event in your family is his funeral. You mourn the premature passing of Jerry, all 240 steak-and-bacon-loving pounds of him.

The lessons may seem clear -- let's avoid that flu shot. Linda in the floor above us at work also had the shot, and then had a mild stroke.

Clear lesson, perhaps.

But the wrong one.

Public health officials know this could be a scenario playing out uncounted times as they try to prepare the population for a swine flu outbreak whose dangers, while we think they are exaggerated, nonetheless pose some real risks.

But engaging in our national confusion over cause and effect, and panic, won't help us combat this year's flu threat.

More than three decades ago, public fears over the fatal side effects of a flu vaccine kept probably millions away from receiving it. But subsequent studies made clear those fears were greatly exaggerated.

Here's the problem, as The New York Times reported Monday.

"Every year, there are 1.1 million heart attacks in the United States, 765,000 strokes and 876,000 miscarriages, and 200,000 Americans have their first seizure. Inevitably, officials say, some of those will happen within hours and days of a flu shot."

Or, as Dr. Harvey W. Feinberg, author of a book on the fumbles of the 1976 vaccine campaign, told The Times: "People are dying every day, with our without flu shots."

That's not to say medicine can't have tragic side effects.

But as we approach the swine flu season, let's be careful not to let coincident deaths stampede us from a vaccine that looks as if it might protect many of us from an illness that will sideline most of us who get it for a couple days and is potentially fatal for those in high-risk populations.