Does the H1N1 Vaccine Matter?
|
This is the headline of a recent article from the Atlantic. The article is well written and has many good points about the controversy surrounding the swine flu vaccine. I won’t try to summarize the whole thing because I think everyone should read it in its entirety. However I do want to highlight a point or two here. The article calls into question the assertions about the effectiveness if the seasonal flu vaccine. There are estimates of 50 percent mortality reduction based on “cohort studies,” which compare death rates in large groups, or cohorts, of people who choose to be vaccinated, against death rates in groups who don’t. The issue here is that people who choose to be vaccinated may differ in many ways from those who don’t and this can have a huge influence on the chance of death during the flu season. For example, many elderly people that don’t get the flu shot are bed ridden due to some other health issues and don’t go out to the doctor or pharmacy to get the shot. Income, lifestyle, education and geography can all come into play and many cohort studies are found to be biased as such. Lisa Jackson, a physician and senior investigator with the Group Health Research Center, in Seattle, set out to factor out the cohort bias and look closely at the effectiveness if the flu vaccine. What she found was that outside of flu season, the baseline risk of death among people who did not get vaccinated was approximately 60 percent higher than among those who did, lending support to the hypothesis that on average, healthy people chose to get the vaccine, while the “frail elderly” didn’t or couldn’t. In fact, the healthy-user effect explained the entire benefit that other researchers were attributing to flu vaccine, suggesting that the vaccine itself might not reduce mortality at all. Jackson’s papers “are beautiful,” says Lone Simonsen, who is a professor of global health at George Washington University, in Washington, D.C., and an internationally recognized expert in influenza and vaccine epidemiology. “They are classic studies in epidemiology, they are so carefully done.” The general gold standard in medicine research is the double blind study. This format is supposed to limit the ever important bias from results. However there has never been a double blind research study performed on the flu vaccine, and when the results of the cohort studies are put under scrutiny they fall apart. This is the science leading our national plan to combat a flu pandemic. Nowhere do we hear mention of eating more fruits and vegetables, getting plenty of fresh air and sunshine, exercising, reducing our total stress, spending time with loved ones, and getting our spine adjusted so our bodies own inborn healing potential can function at 100%. Why not integrate some practices that have been proven to improve our own defenses against disease rather than rely on some outside chemical that may not even work and definitely has the potential for harmful side-effects. |
Related posts
the H1N1 or Swine Flu virus did put our country in disarray for quite sometime, it is good to know that at least it did not cause so many deaths.
In my opinion, the H1N1 vaccine itself doesn’t matter, but our handling of this “health emergency” does. After last year’s flu vaccine shortage, I would have thought that we would have improved in a variety of areas, but apparently there is still a way to go. I hope that we can fix what’s broken before another situation emerges.
[...] have thought that we would have improved in a variety of areas, but apparently … Read more: Does the swine flu, h1n1, seasonal flu vaccine work … Posted in H1N1 Shot Information. Tags: but-apparently, but-our, flu-vaccine, handling, [...]
One of my sisters got infected with H1N1 or more commonly known as Swine Flu. Fortunately, she did not have very high fever and she was able to recover fast .
*
My brother got infected with H1N1 or Swine Flu in Mexico. He got a mild fever and luckily he did not die.
If you look at the pandemic of 1977, when H1N1 or Swine Flu re-emerged after a 20 year absence, there is no shift in age-related mortality pattern. The 1977 “pandemic” is, of course, not considered a true pandemic by experts today, for reasons that are not entierely consistent. It certainly was an antigenic shift and not an antigenic drift. As far as I have been able to follow the current events, the most significant factor seems to have been that most people, who were severely affected, were people with other medical conditions.
during the height of the H1N1 or Swine Flu epidemic, i was very afraid to get infected with this disease and i wore face mask whenever i got into heavily populated areas.
i remember being scared of getting infected by H1N1 during the height of the pandemic. at least two of my classmates got infected by H1N1.
We should be thankful that the swine flu did not spread very rapidly. it is not very deadly like Ebola but swine flu can still kill you.
Leave your response!
Subscribe here for the email newsletter!
Recent Posts
Mind-Body Wellness Weblinks
Tags
Categories
Archives
Meta
Sponsored Links
↑ Grab this Headline Animator
Photo credits
Legal Disclaimer
Contact Us
Most Commented
Most Viewed