Is the CDC keeping track of how well matched the flu vaccine is to the flu that is circulating this flu season? I know they have to make an estimate (a guess) weeks and months ahead of time as to which strains will be dominant when the time comes. How well did they do this year? When it's not well matched to the strain that's attacking us, it can't do much at all.
So why isn't everyone getting vaccinated for the flu?
Maybe because many of us know that the risks far outweigh the benefits.
I am speaking as a physician in practice for over 25 years. The reality is that there are many more reactions than are reported. Reactions range from redness, swelling at the site of injection, malaise following the shot, fever, headache, soreness at site of injection, musculoskeletal aches, nausea and long term neurological dysfunction some of which can be life altering.
The "public health" community and many ill informed physicians say that these are normal responses.
They are not.
Don't fall for such propaganda.
Most flu vaccines are made using eggs, so they could cause a reaction in people with an egg allergy.
After you are debilitated by the effects of the vaccination frankly, no one will really care nor be sympathetic.
Caveat emptor.
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@simon sez Thank you for speaking out. I too am a physician who sees that the benefits of flu vaccination have been vastly over-rated. While the benefits are there for the roughly 30-40% of people who are ESTIMATED (not proven) to benefit, according to CDC research, for the remaining 60-70% of the population there is no benefit. In addition a small but significant portion of the population has significant adverse effects. In my practice I hear about this very frequently. A tell-tale sign of journalistic submissiveness and suppression of normal inquisitiveness is the failure to point out the low efficacy rate and the higher rate of adverse effects that occur in clinical practice than the CDC reports. Moreover, little or no attention is paid to other preventive measures, such as not touching doorknobs, or using safe disinfectants on one's hands, boosting natural immunity through the use of Zinc and Vitamin D, taking anti-viral supplements such as ginger and L-Lysine. The journalistic dumbing down of preventive medicine when it comes to flu vaccination, and other vaccination to boot smells rotten to me. This is probably because the subject of vaccination has become radioactive, and the thought police, who tolerate no dissension from the accepted non-science based wisdom are ever on the prowl.
Look out, if you dare to question authority! 1984 has arrived. Thank you, Simon Sez for having the courage to speak the truth, even as you know others will attack you for it.
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Speaking as a physician? Really? Seeing as you cannot prove you hold this qualification and your statements fly in the face of medical consensus, you are presenting a quack's opinion. Anti-vaxxers are a health threat in and of themselves.
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One problem is that many people think “flu” and “cold” are the same illness.
4
I live in Los Alamos NM. New Mexico was hit hard by flu, real flu. My family got free vaccinations at a high school health fair. Our neighbors, our friends, school friends got flu and got it bad.
We didn't get sick at all. Vaccination works. Don't be duped by the fools that will tell you that it isn't worth the risk. The risk is tiny compared to driving to the grocery store or any number of things that we do every day without thinking about it.
Get vaccinated.
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"Though the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends administration of the flu vaccine by the end of October, a new study published in Clinical Infectious Diseases suggests that vaccine effectiveness may begin dropping within weeks of administration, adding more evidence of waning protection over the course of a single flu season.
Researchers from Kaiser Permanente Northern California showed that the risk of contracting the flu climbs about 16% for every 28 days after vaccination. That means many people could be less protected during the height of flu season if they get vaccinated at the beginning of September"
http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2018/09/study-flu-vaccine-protection-starts-wane-within-weeks
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It absolutely drives me up the wall that every time an article with the word “vaccine,” in it gets published, every crackpot, acupunctuarist, ignoramus and flack for the “organic medicine,” industry materializes and starts spouting nonsense.
It’s stupid, it’s shameful, and it literally kills people.
Congrats on knowing less science that Edmund Jenner; congrats on your agreement about Them Gubmint Scientists, which is literally shared by the Taliban and similar terrorist groups.
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My son and I got the flu already this year but my husband had already received a flu shot and didn't catch it from us.
I know I should get flu shots every year but I tend to have bad reactions to them so I didn't get it this year.
2
Thanks for the reminder...just got mine. Better late than never, I hope?
8
Did flu shot get anywhere closer to the kind of flu we have this year ? We know that flu vaccine made out of guess work every year , sometime they get it right or close enough sometimes not . But those who promote flu shots don’t explain that to the patients. I wonder why? Be well !
Actually, they do. Often and loudly.
9
Straingly enough, US doctors worry about the flu but ignore the recent progress in beside diagnosing pancreas cancer, till now define the silent killer. I'm sad to see, e.g.,in the websites of paramount universities, that in the US they still consider pancreatic cancer as the silent killer, ignoring the easy bedside diagnosis of this malignant tumor, from birth using a common stethoscope. Unfortunately, in the US the doctors ignore Medicine advances, as the Oncological Terrain-Dependent, inherited Real Risk, eliminated with inexpensive medical terapy.
1
This is a joke, yes?
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I’m a retired ObGyn who did recommend the seasonal flu vaccine to my pregnant patients. I was rewarded by never having one of my pregnant patients admitted to the ICU for overwhelming complications of flu. We know quite well pregnant women are more susceptible to serious consequences of flu. These complications include preterm delivery and death. Some of my colleagues who were less committed to recommending the flu vaccine, did see these horrors play out in their patient populations.
Is the vaccine perfect? No. Is it fine to “take your chances”, and get the flu instead? Sure. But this path must be taken with the understanding that medical services may be overwhelmed at the time of your entry into our health system.
I’m retired, and just turned 61 years of age. For now, I choose to get the flu vaccine each year. But, I also observe common sense measures to limit my exposure to those who may be ill.
I am that annoying passenger who wipes down her airline seat, armrests, and tray table. I take my vitamins/supplements, do my best to keep a daily schedule of sleep, and wake, and prepare most of my meals. Using common sense when dining out, should be obvious. If the chef or waitstaff seem unwell, don’t eat the food. These are the commonsense bedrock of supporting our immune systems: lifestyle measures aimed at prevention have to be included.
If one imagines they can work their body past its capacity, and a flu vaccine will offer full protection, they are thinking incorrectly.
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Why are you handing ammo to the antivaxx crowd?
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There's nothing annoying about wiping down the trays and armrests on a plane. Two weeks ago, when I did that, three of my neighbors on the plane asked me for disinfectant wipes so they could do the same.
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Great thanks for sharing info . More people will be benefited .
UltimateQuotes
You have to be careful here. Today's medical science can save your life but also since we live in a de facto criminal health care system, our health care puts the billionaire HMO/big pharmaceutical exec. over the health of the average American.
Flu shot success rates are notoriously low, so times as low as 10-20%.
Every yr. when I ask my friends and family member who got the flu if they got the shot, it was about 50-50.
About ten yrs. ago in the winter I went to my medical clinic on a routine issue, waited 30 minutes while people were coughing all over me, cleared up the issue and then the doctor was aggressively pushing the flu shot which I took. Seven day later I was in bed with the flu, not from the shot if you believe the pros but probably from the germs in the waiting room. I never took the shot again and so far no flu. I may get it again but it will have nothing to do with not getting the shot.
Bottom line, until success rates are much higher, I will skip the hype and the money made by the industry and skip the shot.
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But this is exactly the philosophy that is bringing back once eradicated diseases
like the measles. Vaccines only work if everyone gets them. That forces the etiological agent out from the host species. If everyone around the world said they weren’t going to get the polio vaccine Americans would still be in wheel chairs. If everyone had gotten the flu vaccine early on last year (CVS gets it in late Aug), 80,000 Americans wouldn’t have died from the flu. Think about it again. Please.
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@Djr
Not a valid comparison, as the measles and polio vaccines have very high efficacy (98-99%) whereas the efficacy of the flu vaccine is so low that its population-level effect would be minimal, even if every single person got the flu vaccine. Yes it probably better than nothing, and the more people receive it the more noticeable the population-level effect might be. But it is not at all comparable to vaccines with high efficacy like polio.
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If you were in bed with the flu seven days later you didn’t get it in the waiting room. The incubation period is two or three days at most and then it hits you like a board in the forehead. Sadly it takes two weeks for your body to build up full immunity after the shot so you wouldn’t have seen any benefit from the vaccine.
I agree however about the less than stellar performance of the vaccine. It is a best guess based on the evidence available many months in advance of the actual start of the season in the US, but the virus mutates every year and persists. We need faster, more responsive vaccine production in this country - we still grow the virus in eggs for goodness sake.
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Last year I treated a child whose dad is an ICU hospitalist. He told me that every year he sees healthy young people die in his ICU due to flu. No one is immune.
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@Cathy Collyer, OTR
So last year - a bad year - there were 185 pediatric deaths from flu. About half are attributable to an underlying condition making the child especially at risk. That's a risk of less than 3 in a million - closer to 1 in a million if your child doesn't have a condition putting them at risk. Additionally, 20% of the children that died had received a flu vaccine. While no one is immune from death obviously, the push to vaccinate children against the flu doesn't seem warranted.
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@Lisa,
The burden of flu lies not only in death but serious illness requiring medical care outside the usual rest/fluids. I would want to protect against that risk as well. I feel fortunate that we have been spared this year (till now) and yes, thankful to have access to the vaccine. We pushed it till early December before we got the shots seeing that the flu lasted till April in NY last year.
6
Nonsense, Lisa. How much is Big Organic oaying you to make these claims? It’s a multibillion-dollar industry.
9
At 77 I prefer to take my chances with the flu rather than subject myself to the CDC. While their vaccinations may indeed reduce my chances of getting sick it most certainly would adversely effect my immune system and make me more susceptible to other varieties of the flu as well as other sickness.
If the CDC is really concerned with the health of our people why are there 22 countries healthier than we are? Why are we so sick?
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@Allan
One reason could be people like you that don't pay attention to the recommendations the CDC and other health care providers are giving you. While I agree you are free in this country to decide not to vaccinate, at 77 you are in the highest risk for fatal outcome from influenza infection. Also, people your age tend to have higher virus loads when you are ill, meaning you have a higher rate of transmission to others. Part of being a good and productive member of society, regardless of your age, is being aware of any risk you may have to your fellow citizens. Be aware the other highest risk of fatal influenza is to small children, so if you have grandchildren, you put them at risk - especially during the early part of infection when you may not be symptomatic. Being free doesn't mean it's ok to be irresponsible.....
As an aside, I wonder if you bought Romaine lettuce during the recent recall? Do you trust CDC when they say you shouldn't buy lettuce or other foods that may be tainted? If you do that, then why not vaccinate?
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@Allan
Amen amen. My wife and I are also in our 70's and rarely get even mild colds. This year we both got the flu shots and we are both still recovering from awful colds. We didnt get sick from the shots but the shots left us so comprimised we picked up the first thing that came along. A healthy common sense life style makes more sense for us. BTW we got the flu shots because our health insurance offered us Home Depot cards if we did. Greed kills
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@Tom
Because the CDC gets 30,000 complaints every year on complications from vaccinations.
1
Like JM, I had a very bad reaction to a flu shot. I followed the reporting and learned that the flu shot I got that year (Swine flu in the mid-70's) was notoriously bad and today's vaccines are very different. For starters, they no longer contain live virus.
But it is more than 40-years later and I haven't had a flu shot since which speaks to the power of one bad experience compounded by misinformation/denials about the swine flu shots that was provided by the government. I remain skeptical about information promulgated by government agencies. This includes military denials of agent orange and other such incidents, often based on an unwillingness to assume responsibility rather than scientific curiosity to solve identified problems.
In the 40+ years I have been paying attention I have seen little or no improvement. More honesty and emphasis from public health organizations about how to strengthen one's immune system would help to build trust. (Cut sugar out of your diet, eat more vegetables, exercise, etc.) Pair this with an objective look at alternatives like acupuncture and specific supplements shown to provide good results (which would likely require more research). Instead, our public health system seems too strongly tied to big pharma and big agriculture (we subsidize sugar and not vegetables) to fairly serve the best interests of the citizens.
I recognize that at some point I will need to try a flu shot again, and I will - maybe at 75!
13
Acupuncture will protect you from the flu.
Good grief.
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@Robert
Acupuncture can indirectly protect you, but I am absolutely not comparing it to the effectiveness of a flu shot. I recommend both.
Acupuncture helps vitality, the feeling of being strong and energetic when one is in shape, has a healthy diet, and good sleep habits.
Those with energy related health problems, for example becoming sluggish or depressed in the winter, tend to notice the benefits of Eastern based practices.
At a basic level, the idea of acupuncture is to release tension so the body can operate optimally without unnecessary stress.
An example of the overlap of Eastern and Western medicine, see diagrams of acupoints, trigger points, and the tender points in fibromyalgia patients.
1
Acupuncture does not prevent infectious diseases.
8
I got nailed in the 2009 H1N1 pandemic. I still showed up for work with a 103 deg temp, as did so many others in my department, because we were on a tight project deadline, and as a "lean company" there was only one person that could do your job. You. If your part didn't get done then that impacted the deliverables for everyone else on the team.
This is insanity in the cause of corporate productivity. The pressure to come to work puts others around you at risk.
For that reason most Silicon Valley companies now bring in medical teams to give free flu shots to their employees. Right at their desk, so they only have to pause for a minute from their work.
Since flu rates are compiled from hospital and doctors visits where blood samples are taken, the incidence of flu is going to be under-counted by all the "heros" that go to work and infect their fellow employees.
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People should consider suing employers that allow obviously sick people to come to work, subjecting otherwise healthy people to a infection. In almost every case I could pinpoint the person that coughed or sneezed in my direction when they were sick and soon afterwards I became ill.
But of course allowing people to stay home to recover and paying them is against everything corporate America stands for, forget the fact that a office full of sick people are hardly very productive.
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@Paulie
And how would that work for elementary schools, which are germ swamps of kindergartners who do not wash their hands and parents who desperately need daycare ?
My concern is the flu vaccinations for 6 month old babies, actually. How effective and risk free is that ?
Go nuts; look it up. I did; took twenty seconds.
https://www.cdc.gov/flu/protect/children.htm
By the way, ever had the happyhappy joyjoy of goving an IPPB treatment to try and get a dilator down the eensy windpipe of a child or infant with h. influenza croup? I have.
You should try it. Sometimes the chest sucks in three inches between the ribs, which is what happens when you fight to get air in through a pretty much closed airway.
Hey, keep going. Maybe we can bring diptheria back. i hear that’s even more fun.
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According to the CDC, 180 children died from the flu last year, 80% of them were not vaccinated.
As a parent, make a wise choice for your child.
There were 80,000 flu deaths total. If everybody had a flu shot, it would only be a fraction. The US is paying a very high price for being so averse to science.
Maybe it's time to call for a national emergency. Many many more lives lost here than are killed by illegal immigrants.
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@Suz Try calculating a child's risk of dying from the flu, you will find that calming. The widely reported 80,000 deaths last year in total is an estimate - flu deaths are not really reported except in children. Try finding out the risk of death to yourself from flu, with a confidence interval, if you do and if you do not get the flu shot. Surprisingly hard to find that data. Doesn't really seem to me like a national emergency.
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@Lisa
That is totally untrue. All flu deaths reported to state health departments and then the CDC are reported, and a detailed breakdown by age, socioeconomic, and risk (including those vaccinated/unvaccinated) is available. The risk of getting the flu, and dying from it is significantly reduced by vaccination. That is a fact. While there are many factors that contribute to the potential for exposure and infection with virus, but there is no debate that having pre-existing immunity to the currently circulating strains of influenza through vaccination can provide protection. It is not 100% however, and is dependent on your immune competence, level of exposure, etc. Very few public health measures have been as successful as vaccination for influenza and other infections, and as someone who has spent the past 30 years discovering new vaccines, and improving current vaccines it is very hard for me to see many people adopt this attitude about vaccination - for flu or any vaccine preventable disease....
11
What is this year's data regarding those who get the flu even though they get a flu shot? Everyone in our extended family got the flu shot in October, the grandkids still got the flu and now we have their flu. At 64 we are really sick!
Tried to report to our HMO - Kaiser - but there is no system in place to collect the data.
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@Susan Tate
That data isn't available as of yet. It is collected by physicians when patients present themselves. They do not use self reported data as people (not saying you) are notoriously bad at determining if they really have the flu or not.
6
@Susan Tate data that you have the flu?
3
Symptoms match the flu, not a cold. But hey, I could be wrong. We all had sudden onset, bad headaches, body aches, chills, fever, barky cough with lingering chest congestion. If it happens again we will go to Kaiser and get tested. Thx for asking.
7
But how effective is this year's vaccine against the strains seen? I haven't seen this information anywhere.
2
@set -Oh, I see that the effectiveness is not known yet for this year. Missed that the first time through.
Still a good question. It's January - there must be some data out there.
2
If one gets the flu, the chances of dying are about one in a thousand. (it was one in about 625 based on last years stats) The flu shot helps reduce that.
One cannot get the flu from the shot. Why roll the dice when the possibility for side effects are very close to zero.
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@Glennmr Your personal chance of dying varies by age and contributing factors - the overall stat isn't necessarily that useful.
2
@Glennmr because you can get Guillan-Barre syndrome and other adverse reactions from the shot.
My arm still hurts where I received my first flu shot last year.
There is a hard nodule in the area under the skin where the needle was injected. This was done at a major pharmacy.
I highly question the abilities/training of the person who gave it to me. If you do get a flu shot make sure you do it in a proper medical office or facility. I will not be getting another anytime soon. It felt as if I was hit hard with a baseball bat afterwards.
No thanks.
12
@JM I've never had any pain with a flu shot, but with some of the others I have. Prevnar 13 comes to mind as I had it only a year or so ago and it had that "baseball bat" effect for me. I travel a lot so I've had almost everything and sometimes there's some pain or minor sickness involved. Never had the nodule though, hope that goes away eventually.
6
@JM The flu shot is typically intramuscular shot. All intramuscular shots hurt (try having a tetanus shot sometime -- much more painful). I assure you having the flu isn't just limited to a little soreness in your upper arm - it's more like getting hit hard over your entire body with a baseball bat afterward AND has the added bonus of potentially killing you. Quit whining and stop blaming a vaccine for the actions of an incompetent medical person.
23
Definitely the fault of the person administering the shot, not caused by the flu vaccine.
1
I was hospitalized for the flu when I was 20, more than 45 years ago. Since then I've taken a flu shot every year and I haven't had another case of the flu. Flu is easy to distinguish from a cold. It comes on fast and hard in the beginning, in the first hour and there's much more fever and muscle ache with the flu.
I believe that taking a flu shot every year confers greater immunity than simply adding the shots together. The body doesn't forget the previous shots, and the later shots remind and reinforce immunity. That way, even though the current shot may not be a good match, if you've taken all or most of the shots over the years, your body recognizes it anyway. The danger is to those people who's immune system is completely naive to any similar virus. This seems obvious to me, but I've also read research that backs up this view.
43
People get sick with flu-like symptoms, but how many actually have been afflicted by the viruses in the vaccines. There are dozens of viruses that cause flu-like symptoms, and the vaccine does not protect other than for the viruses it was made for, if it even protects against those viruses. And as for mortality, why does the establishment combine pneumonia deaths with flu deaths? That's because few die of flu but many die of pneumonia. And all the claims that fl vaccines are safe? Just check the FDA's Vaccine Adverse Effects Reporting System (VAERS), a voluntary system which reports from one to 10% of actual events since most people and health professionals are even unaware of the VAERS and would be loathe to report that they had actually injured someone. And remember, the nasal flu vaccine was off the market for a couple of years because its effectiveness was zero. So you had a bunch of money spent for exactly no benefit. Add to that that the vaccine is effective in possibly just one percent of people 75 and over, the cohort for which the vaccine is recommended.
10
@Dan Time to go bone up on your science Dan.
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@Dan You are much better off taking the flu shot than not. The statistics have confirmed that for years.
32
@Dan First, let's be clear that the injectable vaccine does not contain any viruses. It simply doesn't. The only flue vaccine that contains a weakened virus is the nasal inhalant. Second, pneumonia is listed a co-morbidity because the pneumonia is brought on by the flu. For example, no one dies of HIV. What they die of are secondary infections brought about by the HIV infection. However, those deaths are still attributed to HIV *because* the HIV infection was the proximate cause of those secondary infections. Third, no medical intervention comes without risk. Even taking an aspirin can cause injury. However, the risks of a significant adverse effect from a vaccine is less than 1 in 1 million. This is orders of magnitude less than the risk of injury and death from things like the flu, measles, diphtheria, tetanus, and so forth. Fourth, the effectiveness of the flu vaccine in the elderly has been studied and shown to have a significant impact on hospitalizations, pneumonia rates, and death.
Look, if you don't believe in science that's fine. Science doesn't care.
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