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CDC: Last Year's Flu Shot Was Less Than 50 Percent Effective for Children and Adolescents
Related: assembly-line medicine, correlation is not causation, follow the money, follow the self-interest, gear, gears of the machine, health, influenza, junk science, SARS-CoV-2 aka COVID-19 aka Coronavirus, The Epoch Times
re: follow the money
re: junk science
re: Repeat Influenza Vaccination Linked to Higher Risk of Infection
Correlation is not causation, and yet such logical fallacies are what pass for science at the CDC. Such studies get media hype, but they are little better than junk science.
How effective for adults? Surely that is a more important cohort, since the elderly in particular are at high risk, particularly in combination with RSV and/or COVID.
For many years, I religiously* got a flu vaccine—and most years the flu too! Then, over a decade ago, I stopped getting the flu vaccine and have not had the flu for at least 10 years. Doesn’t that make you wonder? Maybe I just got healthier that’s possible.
* Having been credulous to the point of faith as in being a “believer” in what the medical field told us forever, as most younger people are, thinking that vaccines were a wondrous miracle of modern science.
CDC: Last Year's Flu Shot Was Less Than 50 Percent Effective for Children and Adolescents
2023-11-21
During the 2022–2023 flu season, the influenza vaccine was less than 50 percent effective at preventing emergency department/urgent care visits and hospitalizations among children and adolescents, according to a study funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
The analysis, published Nov. 16, 2023, in Clinical Infectious Diseases, found the seasonal influenza vaccine was only 48 percent effective overall at reducing the risk of influenza-A-associated emergency department (ED) or urgent care (UC) visits, and only 40 percent effective at preventing hospitalizations.
...Findings Identify Associations, Not Causal or Inferred Effectiveness
Linda Wastila, professor and Parke-Davis chair of geriatric pharmacotherapy with a doctorate in health policy, told The Epoch Times in an email that she found the study a bit confusing and the authors’ claims of effectiveness against preventing emergency room and hospital admissions a "bit of a stretch."
..."I dislike using the term ‘cherry pick,’ but without randomization and/or matching of cases with controls, we cannot rule out explicit and/or implicit biases made at the site, principal investigator, and provider levels in identifying subjects," she said. "In sum, based on the lack of matched cases/controls and lack of statistical control for covariates and confounders, at best, this study’s findings reflect descriptive findings demonstrating associations, not causal or inferred effectiveness."
...
As reported by The Epoch Times, the CDC rolled out a digital ad campaign in September to rebrand the influenza vaccine and redefine expectations about what a yearly flu shot could and couldn’t do amid breakthrough cases. The agency’s new messaging is that the flu shot wouldn’t prevent a person from getting sick but would prevent severe illness should one still get sick.
This is similar to the shift in messaging adopted by U.S. regulatory agencies with COVID-19 vaccines when breakthrough COVID-19 cases started piling up among the vaccinated. U.S. health officials then admitted the shots did not prevent COVID-19 or transmission of the virus to others, and vaccine efficacy was redefined by whether the vaccine prevented hospitalizations and death.
...
This study was conducted by the CDC—which is currently marketing and promoting influenza vaccination—and its researchers and affiliates.
WIND: this is one of the worst studies you can find, with juvenile methodology, and yet it still could only show 48% efficacy. Any critical thinker would consider it the lowest level of credibility bordering on junk science.
Lousy methodology aside, correlation is not causation, and yet such logical fallacies are what pass for science at the CDC.
Why would the CDC do a study which would be laughed-out of any serious medical discussion? Follow the money: it benefits the CDC (puffs up their perceived value/credibility) as well as their corporate sponsors.
I’m not saying that no-one should get the flu vaccine. But for most, it surely is an unnecessary risk and cost and waste of time, and from my experience might encourage the flu.
Tip: no vaccine is risk free. Worse, with vaccines given together, the risks are unknown (never tested in combination, ever!). Be smart, and never get more than one vaccine in any 2 week period. Any doctor who recommends otherwise is ignorant or an idiot or malicious—no scientific basis for making such a claim = medical malpractice.
Typical behavior. Pfizer and its ilk are companies that repeatedly do harm, as proven by the courts over and over and over. Court settlements are just a cost of doing business. False claims, withholding of risks, hiding data, faking data, etc, ad nauseum. Follow the money.
