Posted on 10/14/2009 8:27:27 AM PDT by mlizzy
(Excerpt) Read more at theatlantic.com ...
What follows is my point-by-point summary of this groundbreaking article by Shannon Brownlee [and Jeanne Lenzer], originally published in The Atlantic. My opinion statements are shown in brackets and italics.
• Vaccination is the core strategy of the U.S. government's plan to combat the swine flu.
• The U.S. government has spent roughly $3 billion stockpiling vaccines and anti-viral drugs.
• The CDC is recommending that 159 million Americans receive a swine flu vaccine injection (as soon as possible).
• What if vaccines don't work? More and more researchers are skeptical about whether they do.
• Seasonal flu (that's the regular flu) currently kills an estimated 36,000 people each year in the United States. [But most people who die are already suffering from existing diseases such as asthma.]
• Most "colds" aren't really caused by the flu virus. As few as 7 or 8 percent (and at most, 50 percent) of colds have an influenza origin. There are more than 200 viruses and pathogens that can cause "influenza-like" illnesses (and therefore be easily mistaken for the flu).
• Viruses mutate with amazing speed, meaning that each year's circulating influenza is genetically different from the previous year.
• The vaccine for each upcoming flu season is formulated by health experts taking a guess [a wild guess, at times] about what strain of influenza might be most likely to circulate in the future.
• The 1918 Spanish Flu infected roughly one-third of the world population and killed at least 40 million.
• In the U.S., the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology predicted that H1N1 influenza could infect up to one-half of the U.S. population and kill 90,000 Americans.
[Keep reading, the good part is coming...]
• Of those who have died from the Swine Flu in the U.S., roughly 70 percent were already diseased with some serious underlying condition such as asthma or AIDS.
• Public health officials consider vaccines to be their first and best weapon against influenza. Vaccines helped eradicate smallpox and polio. [I don't agree with that assessment. Vaccines did relatively little compared to improvements in public sanitation.]
• Each year, 100 million Americans get vaccinated, and vaccines remain "a staple" of public health policy in the United States.
That's a stupid statement. Cool, I can leap from a 100 story building, crash 100 mph into a brick wall, or swim with hungry sharks and have an excellent chance of living!
In the absence of clinical trials showing that flu vaccines reduce the cahnce of getting the flu, I say no.
Is this your statement?
If it isn't, do you agree with it?
Because if so, it proves you are so ill-informed about vaccines in general that your opinion is useless.
It’s not a stupid statement, it’s just a statistic.
People who receive the flu shot are half as likely to die that winter.
What may be stupid is what you infer from it, or what you believe they are implying by it.... and to that, i think you are probably right.
Obviously the flu shot is not going to protect you from all things dangerous. What that statistic probably indicates is a correlation between those people who have access to, or who go out of their way for, a flu shit... are the type of people who lead safer lives and take more health and safety precautions
But do you agree with it?
That statement is so outrageously inaccurate that it calls into question the understanding of vaccines of the author.
The comment is directed at the vaccines used for ‘flu’. If you had read the article you would have realized that. The vaccines for things such as whooping cough and polio and small pox and other such diseases are well documented as being effective.
There is NO such double blind gold standard for the ‘flu’ vaccines.
Your response I am sure was a quick one that was off the cuff.
The statement does not say that people who take the vaccine are, because of the effects of the vaccine, half as likely to die from any cause.
The statement says that statistics demonstrate that, from a random sample, half as many of those who take a flu shot are likely to die as those who don’t.
As already pointed out, there can be other factors involved. People who take the trouble to get a flu shot and perhaps pay for it or carry insurance that pays for it are likelier to be better health prospects than people who don’t. Perhaps they are more careful, more affluent, less likely to be homeless people, and so on.
The statistic is presumably accurate. Possibly the samples were not entirely random. Possibly the reasons for better health among those who received the shots are multiple.
Did you comprehend the statement when you read it? Because I do not think you did. It shows YOUR lack of understanding about vaccines in general and ‘flu’ vaccines in particular
Or if you read the article, that those who take the vaccine are also known as ‘healthy users’.
Is anyone out there having a shortage in their area of the yearly flu vaccine?
Our area is did not get its allotment at all.
They cancelled all schedule after it came out and do not expect the shipment untill mid November.
Which for us is ok since our Asthma/allergies have been really bad for the last 2 weeks we were not planning to get it untill our brochial issues got back to the normal zone.
Almost every one is. AND please note that the German Army is using the American made vaccine ( without mercury or adjuvants) because they fear side effects from the European made vaccines ( think Glaxo-Smith)
The nasal H1N1 is a live vaccine. The shot is "dead". Let's wise up....
Maybe I missed it (long article, read most, scanned some) but the authors apparently miss a few potential reasons for flu shots reducing fatalities.
First, cross immunity and stimulated immunity. A flu shot, I suspect, can rev up one's immune system making it go after some other pathogens. I suspect that a bout of the flu weakens the patient for subsequent opportunistic infection from different pathogens.
And, second, the effects of influenza can be disabling in various ways, such as making driving more dangerous, operating machinery, etc. (Suggesting that yes, flu shots can reduce car accidents.)
Me?
I always get the seasonal flu shot.
I'll pass on the H1N1 for reasons that I believe that other versions of H1N1 in flu shots past will conform some cross immunity (in a few years, epidemiologists will be able to tell if this assumption was correct).
.
Here is the statement I am referring to, cut-and-pasted from the original post:
• Public health officials consider vaccines to be their first and best weapon against influenza. Vaccines helped eradicate smallpox and polio. [I don't agree with that assessment. Vaccines did relatively little compared to improvements in public sanitation.]
The comment is obviously directed at polio and smallpox.
I made no statement about that. My statement was in response to the assertion that improvements in sanitation were responsible for decreased in the incidence of polio and smallpox.
You must have me confused with another poster.
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