As someone who had one of the products mentioned here, the side effects were not slight, and to be honest more annoying than the flu itself. We only received the medication (here in the UK) because at the time there was the fear of an outbreak of avian or swine flu, and the idea at the time was to head things off. I think even if they do show any effectiveness in longer term trials (didn't do much for me personally), I would be wary of seeing them widely used, as it seems they should be targeted mostly at those individuals with compromised immune systems, or perhaps in the future, those individuals identified as having a genetic makeup that could aid and abet a flu related fatality.