the issue with the flu vaccine is, the formulation has always been a guessing game as to what version of flu will dominate a year from now.
I just spent 7 days in the hospital with a tough case of Type A flu requiring high-flo oxygen for 4 days. (the hospital didn’t tell me but i assume seasonal vs bird flu). The current vaccine is only about 30% effective against Type A so the vaccine likely wouldnt have prevented me from catching Type A. Ancedotally, some sources report this flu season is the worst in 28 years, with 1/3 of flu tests returning as positive and 24 million reported cases. The SoCal hospital I was in had returned to mask policy and no visitors in the ER/ICU, even the person coming in with you was excluded. The CDC needs to get better at modeling to produce more effective vaccines.
Vaccine effectiveness was 34.5% against hospitalization, according to interim estimates from a new article published by the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report
CDC alerts clinicians to accelerate type A flu subtyping in hospitalized patients
CDC: Flu activity remains high, COVID-19 increasing while RSV peaks
The pharmacy staff at my Kaiser Permanente are all wearing masks. I asked if it was due to the flu outbreak and the answer was that it was.
“the issue with the flu vaccine is, the formulation has always been a guessing game as to what version of flu will dominate a year from now.”
If the guess isn’t made, the chance of getting it right is 0.