The Flu Vaccine Cult
So at the MAJORHO$PITAL where I work (apologies to rimrunner for stealing her notation style), there's been a full-court press to induce everyone who works there to get the flu vaccine. It's like a freakin' cult, I swear; everywhere you turned, there was someone asking if you'd gotten your shot yet. They actually literally had nurses wandering the halls,
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Which is my point, exactly. The virus mutates too quickly for any vaccine to keep up, and as all evidence seems to point to the finding that a vaccine providing immunization to one strain or substrain doesn’t necessarily provide immunization to any other strain or substrain (and might, in fact, make you more susceptible; see below), I don’t see what all the urgency is about getting everyone vaccinated. It might as well be a $20 placebo.
Hmmm…
c) no vaccine is 100% effective. None. That's why everybody's so worried about whooping cough; you can get vaccinated and still get sick. More people immunized lowers the odds of the disease spreading. That said, some protection is better than none, and we're overdue for a pandemic.
I'm not anti-vaccine; there are some, like polio and smallpox, which have clearly benefited human existence. I just don't understand why there's such a push to get everyone shot up, at least once a year, with something the efficacy of which is at best debatable.
From [ http://metronews.ca/health/403896/us-report-questions-flu-vaccine-and-use-policy/ ] this article: “Flu vaccine is not as effective as public health messaging traditionally has claimed, says a new report that suggests overselling of flu shots is getting in the way of developing more effective and longer lasting vaccines.
Existing flu shots offer moderate protection some years and less in others and in general are ‘sub-optimal,’ according to the report, from public health experts at the Center for Infectious Diseases Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota.
[Nevertheless:] ‘We recommend you continue to get your flu shot. It’s the best protection we have. But it’s not enough,’ [Dr. Michael Osterholm, director of the Center] said.”
Strange how even those presenting evidence against the “conventional wisdom” still feel compelled to parrot the party line.
As for pandemics, [ http://metronews.ca/health/363279/canadian-problem-maybe-not-study-finds/ ] (tip o' the hat to herongrrrl) this article reports that a study has found that the 2008 influenza vaccine actually contributed to the pandemic of that year:
“[The first] theory relates to the fact that the 2008 vaccine protected against an H1N1 virus that was related to - but not similar enough to - the pandemic virus to generate antibodies that would neutralize it. The thinking is that might actually have facilitated infection with the pandemic virus.
[Lead author of the study, Dr. Danuta Skowronski,] likened the mechanism to what happens with dengue viruses. People who have been infected with one subtype of dengue don’t develop immunity to the other three. In fact, they are more at risk of developing a life-threatening form of dengue if they are infected with one of the other strains.”
Skowronski called the second theory the infection block hypothesis. Having a bout of the flu gives the infected person antibodies that may be able, for a time, to fend off other strains; flu shots only protect against the strains they contain. [Italics added.] So under this theory, people who didn’t have flu in 2008 because they got a flu shot may have been less well armed against the pandemic virus.
But in the meantime, Skowronski insisted the findings should not deter people from getting seasonal flu shots. [And there it is again, that party line.]
‘I do think it’s important to clarify that our findings are unique to the pandemic,’ she insisted.”
So it seems that annual flu vaccination may not actually protect against an influenza pandemic, but might actually increase its spread and severity.
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