Actually, you should educate yourself. The overwhelming majority of vaccines are solid and probably one of the most important discoveries mankind has ever made.
The flu "vaccine" however, is at best 50% effective and is frequently 0% effective. Notice how you have to vaccinate every year for it? But not for anything else? Yeah, it's because it's constantly mutating and it's a moving target.
We still haven't figured out how to nail that target. What's worse, you need to go to a doctor to get vaccinated ... guess where the majority of infections occur? The place where many people congregate. Especially sick people.
I'm all for vaccinations, but not if they have to be done on an annual basis and are best-case-scenario 50% effective.
1. The influenza vaccine is a vaccine. Putting "vaccine" in scare quotes is either ignorant or utterly disingenuous. Or, more likely, both.
2. Even 50% efficacy is sufficient to dramatically reduce both the incidence and mortality of the disease.
3. The number of people who develop influenza because they got sneezed on in line waiting to get their vaccination is insignificant compared to the number of people who won't get sick because people get vaccinated.
So nothing I said is factually incorrect, but what I wrote is idiotic? Good job.
> The influenza vaccine is a vaccine. Putting "vaccine" in scare quotes is either ignorant or utterly disingenuous. Or, more likely, both.
Perfectly justified considering it's much less effective than other vaccines. So it is a "vaccine".
> Even 50% efficacy is sufficient to dramatically reduce both the incidence and mortality of the disease.
That's the best case scenario. What exactly is the benefit if it's 5%? What if it's 0%? Those are real percentages from years over the last decade.
Last year was very good. This year? Who knows.
> The number of people who develop influenza because they got sneezed on in line waiting to get their vaccination is insignificant compared to the number of people who won't get sick because people get vaccinated.
You realize you can get something else there too, right? And you'll get it by touching the door or the doctor not washing their hands ... not by somebody sneezing at you.
A vaccine is a vaccine; arbitrary judgments about it's general efficacy over some hand-wavey timespan doesn't change that. And no, it's not justified to redefine it.
Influenza is a horrible virus. I want it eradicated as much as anyone. What I don't want is for us to pretend we have a solution, when we clearly do not.
That removes the incentive for us to find a real answer.
I took my infant daughter to get her second flu shot last week (babies get two). She contracted a stomach virus at the doctors' office. She was puking for hours, repeatedly, even when she had nothing to throw up. We took her to the emergency room. A day later, fever and diarrhea for me. Same for my wife. Fun, right?
If my baby doesn't get the flu, this will count as a success story. Part of the "50%" that worked. I don't even want to think about the years they don't get up to that 50% ...
And I'm supposed to do this every year?
> Are you really saying that risk of nosocomial infection is sufficient to offset the value of influenza vaccination? Really?
Yes. If you think I'm off, I want to see math, not hysterics and italics.
At best, twice as many people die from nosocomial infection as influenza in the US. At worst, twenty times as many. That's all from the CDC.
Zeroth, that's terrible to hear about your daughter. I sincerely hope that she's better. First, there is no answer to a zoonotic infection as mutable as influenza. There are only degrees of remediation. Finding a cure for flu is almost certainly impossible.
Second, nobody disputes the seriousness of nosocomial infection; but to baldly state that you face the same risk in an outpatient vaccination clinic as in e.g. the ICU or the ER is just flat out bonkers.
Finally, I was intemperate in my original language. I apologize.
50% efficacy in an individual could still have a dramatic effect on the overall infection rate. The purpose of getting vaccinated is not to protect you, it is to protect the community. If each of the people with whom you come in contact has their likelihood of being infected reduced by 50%, your chance of being infected may be reduced by much more than that.
I don't know what the relationship is between vaccination efficacy and infection rate in this specific case, but on its own a low-ish individual efficacy does not mean a vaccine isn't worth using.
The "50% efficacy" doesn't indicate that the vaccine provides 50% effectiveness in blocking a particular influenza; rather it stems from the fact that the particular influenza(s) being targeted might not be the ones passing through an area. "The flu" is an umbrella term for a number of different infectious strains (that mutate), and the object of the game is to detect early on which virulent, dangerous and uncommon strains (already active elsewhere) are most likely to spread widely and vaccinate against them. Frequently, less-virulent strains to which a large percentage of the population has already been exposed will be ignored (hitting somebody with hundreds of strains to develop immunity to simultaneously reduces the effectiveness of the vaccine for all of them). And there's always the chance that a particularly nasty strain may become epidemic after this year's vaccine has been formulated and distributed (in which case, there may or may not be an effective vaccine available in time for people to develop immunity to that strain). So even though you have been effectively vaccinated against the targeted strain(s), you can still contract other strains. And you may have a miserable time dealing with something you did catch, which can keep you from thoproughly enjoying the fact that you didn't catch something that may have been many, many times worse.
Now, vaccines DO sometimes have complications - last time I got a vaccine (tetanus, 8 years ago), my elbow got swollen to about twice its size and was hard to bend. They weren't sure what went wrong (contaminated vaccine, parasitic infection, ??) but I had to take a two week course of antibiotics (which carries its own problems ...)
I'm sure at the herd level, 50% efficacy for individual vaccines is great.
But on a personal level, I can't find any analysis that takes into account both efficacy ("value") and complications ("price").
And on a personal note, I have the flu maybe once in ten years (if even that), despite hanging around people who get it regularly -- which is why I don't even consider getting a flu vaccine.
There is almost no research about how to improve general immune function, and I believe results on that front would be much more useful than a 50% efficacy vaccine.
Actually, it is even more dramatic. Infection rate is essentially binary: either the disease spreads (which means the number of sick people goes up until pretty much everyone in the community who is not immune gets it - this is called epidemic) or the number of sick people decreases and the disease dies off. There is a tipping point depending on the percentage of people who is immune. For common flu you need to have 50-70% vaccinated to prevent epidemic (its basic reproduction number, R0 per wiki article, is between 2 and 3).
You have to go to the Internet to download anti-virus. Guess where the majority of infections occur? The place where PCs congregate. Especially sick PCs.
"While the vaccine does work, and we still recommend that it be used, it does not demonstrate the kind of efficacy that has often been reported," says study researcher Michael T. Osterholm, MD, of the University of Minnesota Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy." - from "Lancet"
In case of flu it is difficult to measure vaccine effectivness since it is often hard to figure out if someone got flu or was attacked by some other virus that has similar symptoms.
It is usually not feasible to do indepth virus (genetical?) analysis to check which kind of virus attacted given sick person.
Symptoms are so common to many other virsu infections, so the data is very noisy and it can work both againts and for vaccines.
It would be cool if some HN community member figure out to measure that better :)
The strain of influenza each year is different. In order to create enough of the vaccine companies need to start making it before it's known which strain will be active. They make an educated guess with varying degrees of accuracy. Some years they get it spot on, some years they don't.
"The seasonal flu vaccine protects against three influenza viruses that research indicates will be most common during the upcoming season. Three kinds of influenza viruses commonly circulate among people today: influenza B viruses, influenza A (H1N1) viruses, and influenza A (H3N2) viruses. Each year, one flu virus of each kind is used to produce seasonal influenza vaccine."
Why run the risk of endangering yourself or others of infection?
> What's worse, you need to go to a doctor to get vaccinated
Huh? It's been years since I got a flu vaccine from a doctor. I usually get them at the drug store, when I'm there anyway to pick up a prescription. One year, I got it at a Safeway.
The flu "vaccine" however, is at best 50% effective and is frequently 0% effective. Notice how you have to vaccinate every year for it? But not for anything else? Yeah, it's because it's constantly mutating and it's a moving target.
We still haven't figured out how to nail that target. What's worse, you need to go to a doctor to get vaccinated ... guess where the majority of infections occur? The place where many people congregate. Especially sick people.
I'm all for vaccinations, but not if they have to be done on an annual basis and are best-case-scenario 50% effective.