Yup - each year’s flu vaccine production is a crap shoot month’s out guess at what flu variants will affect the populace.
Last year’s flu shot efficacy estimated to be around 20%.
The doctors, hospitals and the CDC do a poor job of consistently testing and recording the exact strains of flu immunized individuals contract in order to determine solid statistical evidence that the flu vaccine is worth getting.
The insert PDR info clearly states there are some serious risks associates with getting the flu vaccine shots.
Therapist relative who rehabilitates at a large hospital encounters a number of patients who contract Guillain-Barre syndrome (Permanent Paralysis) from flu vaccinations Every flu season.
She and her nurse colleagues Refuse to get the flu vaccine for that reason, and also because they see poor medical science supporting it’s efficacy to prevent flu.
DHHS considering revising their advisory statement regarding risk of contracting GBS paralysis to 1 in 50,000.
Flu vaccine is the number 1 cause of federal vaccine injury claims awards, ie: 120+ in Dec 2013 - Mar 2014 season.
Flu vaccine is an annual placebo ritual at best.
The low efficacy was only for the H3N2 component of the vaccine. The other two components, the H1N1 and influenza B, were actually quite good matches for the circulating varieties of those strains.
The doctors, hospitals and the CDC do a poor job of consistently testing and recording the exact strains of flu immunized individuals contract in order to determine solid statistical evidence that the flu vaccine is worth getting.
In reality, the CDC and WHO keep very detailed records of which flu strains are responsible for what proportion of ILI. In fact, it is through exactly this kind of testing that researchers are able to determine the efficacy of the flu vaccine every year. They sequence the circulating strains, so that they know exactly how any given virus strain is mutating across both time and distance. This information is published so that those of us who have a professional interest in the information can access it in a timely manner.
DHHS considering revising their advisory statement regarding risk of contracting GBS paralysis to 1 in 50,000
Do you have a reference (from the medical literature) for that?
According to a fairly recent Lancet article, the risk of getting GBS from influenza is 17 times higher than getting it from the flu shot. Another article, a review of the medical literature found that any relationship between GBS and vaccines is temporal (in other words, correlated but not caused), and the only vaccine for which there *might* be a causal relationship was the 1976 swine flu vaccine.
GBS is not permanent, although it can have some long-term consequences; people get over it in a few months. I could discuss a few hypotheses about why GBS happens rarely after infections, and even more rarely (or not at all) after vaccinations, but all I can really say about it is that the syndrome seems to be related to the ramping up of the immune system in response to a pathogen. This ramping up occurs more strongly and for a longer period of time during an infection than it does after a vaccination.
Flu vaccine is an annual placebo ritual at best.
Nope. If that were the case, the efficacy calculated for the flu shot every year would be zero for all strains. Usually, the efficacy is better than 60%. The very fact that an efficacy can be calculated means that the effect of the vaccine is real, not placebo.
I get the flu shot every year (it is a requirement of my employer), and I do not get the flu--in fact, I don't think I've ever had the flu.