Written by As a followup to my previous post on influenza vaccine effectiveness, I note today reports today of a study showing that influenza vaccine doesn’t actual reduce deaths among the elderly. Actually, there’s also a second study in the same journal related to influenza vaccine, covering a much smaller time span.
I’d read the actual articles, but there’s no way I’m paying $12 to download the PDF. Journals need to figure out how to stay in business in this internet era without resorting to either extortion of the readership or killing trees.
So flu (and almost every other disease) is spread most among kids.
The real target of the flu vaccine is therefore young children, so that
they don’t spread a disease that will cause the death of a small number of very old people.
Given that (i) there is a view that unnecessarily vaccinating young children is not good
for their developing immune systems (the theory is that immune systems need the occasional
workout to grow up to be big and strong), and (ii) that some vaccines are delivered in
harmful or potentially harmful solutions; why would any parent who doesn’t live in an old
people’s home vaccinate their kids against the flu?