What About the Flu Vaccine?

Flu vaccines "might be less beneficial and less safe than has been claimed, and the threat of influenza appears overstated."

Many decades ago before the Internet, Prevention magazine was a source of information about “natural” living. I was dismayed but not surprised to see a Prevention article in my feed advising “everyone over six months old” to get the flu vaccine. I say not surprised because the older version of Prevention, although not promoting pharmaceuticals, heavily promoted “natural” pills. Few media outlets have escaped the “benevolent guidance” of Big Pharm. You may need a second opinion if you trust Big Pharm, the CDC, or the FDA to look out for your health.

Food is your best medicine. Exercise is your best medicine. Knowing who you are, not special, but part of one humanity is your best medicine. You can work to stack the odds in your favor, yet there are no guarantees.

Before there were COVID boosters, there were annual flu shots. Many of us think we know about the flu vaccine. We believe it prevents the flu or, at the very least, reduces its complications, thus reducing deaths.

The following is what I have come to understand about flu vaccines. It is not medical advice.

The flu story we think we know is not supported by medical evidence. The history of the flu vaccine is a cautionary tale about the government promoting the pharmaceutical industry's products.

Peter Doshi, a University of Maryland pharmacy professor, in his 2013 British Medical Journal article "Influenza: marketing vaccine by marketing disease" writes, "Promotion of influenza vaccines is one of the most visible and aggressive public health policies today."

The CDC, Doshi writes, pledges "to base all public health decisions on the highest quality scientific data, openly and objectively derived." With flu vaccines, this is hardly the case. The facts show, Doshi writes, "although proponents employ the rhetoric of science, the studies underlying the policy are often of low quality, and do not substantiate officials' claims." Flu vaccines, Doshi continues, "might be less beneficial and less safe than has been claimed, and the threat of influenza appears overstated."

Through the 1990s, the “at risk” population was the elderly; promotion campaigns were aimed at them. Today CDC guidelines expand the "at risk" population and call for everyone older than six months to get the vaccine. Today, the CDC warns us that "even healthy people can get the flu, and it can be serious."

Fanciful claims are made for the effectiveness of the flu vaccine. Doshi reports on one study in the New England Journal of Medicine making the misleading claim that flu vaccines reduce deaths from any cause by 48%. The study was funded by the National Vaccine Program Office and the CDC. Doshi argues, “there is a reason CDC does not shout this from the rooftop: it’s too good to be true.” He continues,  “Since at least 2005, non-CDC researchers have pointed out the seeming impossibility that influenza vaccines could be preventing 50% of all deaths from all causes when influenza is estimated to only cause around 5% of all wintertime deaths.”

Tom Jefferson is an epidemiologist and physician associated with Cochrane. Cochrane is an international network of researchers dedicated to compiling and evaluating medical evidence. They too find evidence that the effectiveness of the flu vaccine is overstated. Jefferson explains, "For a vaccine to reduce mortality by 50 percent and up to 90 percent in some studies means it has to prevent deaths not just from influenza, but also from falls, fires, heart disease, strokes, and car accidents. That's not a vaccine, that's a miracle."

Studies of the flu vaccine are corrupted by the "healthy-user effect." Doshi explains the "healthy-user effect" is "a propensity for healthier people to be more likely to get vaccinated than less healthy people." As a result, observational studies of the vaccinated population are biased. In fact, one study suggested, "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."

The CDC itself admits that observational studies are tainted:

Studies demonstrating large reductions in hospitalizations and deaths among the vaccinated elderly have been conducted using medical record databases and have not measured reductions in laboratory-confirmed influenza illness. These studies have been challenged because of concerns that they have not controlled adequately for differences in the propensity for healthier persons to be more likely than less healthy persons to receive vaccination.

Doshi asks, "If the observational studies cannot be trusted, what evidence is there that influenza vaccines reduce deaths of older people—the reason the policy was originally created?" Doshi answers, "Virtually none." He continues,

Theoretically, a randomized trial might shine some light—or even settle the matter. But there has only been one randomized trial of influenza vaccines in older people—conducted two decades ago—and it showed no mortality benefit (the trial was not powered to detect decreases in mortality or any complications of influenza). This means that influenza vaccines are approved for use in older people despite any clinical trials demonstrating a reduction in serious outcomes.

Doshi was perplexed by "officials' lack of interest in the absence of good quality evidence." He found approval of a flu vaccine is not tied to reduction in serious outcomes. Doshi reports, "Approval is instead tied to a demonstrated ability of the vaccine to induce antibody production, without any evidence that those antibodies translate into reductions in illness."

The antibody argument should sound familiar. In the case of the Covid vaccine one doctor admitted, “if an antibody test comes back with a certain number, nobody knows what that means.”

In their The Atlantic article Does the Vaccine Matter?, Shannon Brownlee and Jeanne Lenzer quote Fauci saying it "would be unethical" to do a placebo-controlled study of influenza vaccine in older people. Fauci's tautological reason echoes other "experts”: Since the CDC "standard of care" is a flu vaccine, placebo recipients would be deprived of a potentially life-saving medical intervention.

Jefferson's work about the flu vaccine raised questions that no doubt should have been asked again about the COVID vaccine:  Is the “vaccine necessary for those in whom it is effective, namely the young and healthy? Conversely, is it effective in those for whom it seems to be necessary, namely the old, the very young, and the infirm?" Jefferson’s response, in the case of the flu vaccine, is no:

Unfortunately, the very people who most need protection from the flu also have immune systems that are least likely to respond to vaccine. Studies show that young, healthy people mount a glorious immune response to seasonal flu vaccine, and their response reduces their chances of getting the flu and may lessen the severity of symptoms if they do get it. But they aren't the people who die from seasonal flu. By contrast, the elderly, particularly those over age 70, don't have a good immune response to vaccine—and they're the ones who account for most flu deaths.

In other words, as Doshi explains, "No evidence exists, however, to show that this reduction in risk of symptomatic influenza for a specific population—here, among healthy adults—extrapolates into any reduced risk of serious complications from influenza such as hospitalizations or death in another population (complications largely occur among the frail, older population)."

Dr. Jefferson says, "We have built huge, population-based policies on the flimsiest of scientific evidence. The most unethical thing to do is to carry on business as usual." Yet, the “experts” “carry one” as they continue to recommend flu vaccines.

In 2018, Dr. Jefferson and his colleagues continued to report findings from their multi-decade monitoring of flu vaccination programs that showed a lack of evidence to support widespread flu vaccinations: "The largest dataset to have accumulated to date is from trials conducted in the population least likely to benefit from vaccines but most likely to produce immunity: healthy adults. In healthy adult trials, a high serological response is matched by a very small clinical effect.”  

A review of the evidence by Jefferson’s research team shows “71 healthy adults need to be vaccinated to prevent one of them experiencing influenza.” Jefferson and his colleagues are clear: "Vaccination selection and production programmes are based on aetiological assumptions which are neither explanatory nor predictive."

Since "massive worldwide machinery is needed to produce new vaccines every year to address viral antigenic changes, and to address the poor persistence of the antibody response in individuals," we can ask, Are we spending billions for nothing in return? Jefferson and colleagues write:

Current yearly registration of candidate influenza vaccines is based on their ability to trigger a good antibody response. But antibody responses are poor predictors of field protection. This is another example of the use of surrogate outcomes in biomedicine, where effects on clinically important outcomes remain unmeasured or unproven from randomised trials: complications and death by influenza.

Pharmaceutical companies hawk medications on television, while the government promotes flu vaccines to combat “a threat of great proportions.” Doshi observed,

The CDC's website explains, 'Flu seasons are unpredictable and can be severe,' citing a death toll of '3000 to a high of about 49,000 people.' However, a far less volatile and more reassuring picture of influenza seems likely if one considers that recorded deaths from influenza declined sharply over the middle of the 20th century, at least in the United States, all before the great expansion of vaccination campaigns in the 2000s, and despite three so-called 'pandemics.'

Doshi reported, "most ‘flu’ appears to have nothing to do with influenza. Every year, hundreds of thousands of respiratory specimens are tested across the US. Of those tested, on average 16% are found to be influenza positive."

In other words, flu-like symptoms do not mean you have the influenza virus.

Jefferson observes about published flu death, "The standard quoted figure of 36,000 yearly deaths in the US is based on the 'respiratory and circulatory deaths' category including all types of pneumonia, including secondary to meconium ingestion or bacterial causes."

You might say if the flu caused pneumonia, merging the two death figures is a fair thing to do. In his British Medical Journal essay, Are US flu death figures more PR than science? Doshi points out that the CDC admits that when "influenza causes death" most such cases "are never tested for virus infection."

William Thompson, of the CDC admits in a Journal of the American Association article, "Based on modelling, we think it's associated. I don't know that we would say that it's the underlying cause of death." Doshi adds, "This stance is incompatible with the CDC assertion that the flu kills 36 000 people a year—a misrepresentation that is yet to be publicly corrected.”

Doshi concluded, "If flu is in fact not a major cause of death, this public relations approach is surely exaggerated. Moreover, by arbitrarily linking flu with pneumonia, current data are statistically biased. Until corrected and until unbiased statistics are developed, the chances for sound discussion and public health policy are limited."

It's no accident that the CDC promotes the flu vaccine by increasing fear of the flu. CDC edicts, Doshi explains, work "in manufacturers' interest by conducting campaigns to increase flu vaccination." At one vaccine conference, Glen Nowak, a communications specialist at the National Immunization Program (NIP), advocated for generating fear by predicting "dire outcomes" and fostering "the perception that many people are susceptible to a bad case of influenza."

Given the flu vaccine's ineffectiveness, Jefferson’s research team conclude, “Our reviews will remain as a testimonial to the scientific failure of industry and governments to address the most important clinical outcomes for patients.”

Crony capitalists selling cures need government cheerleading compliance. Using the rhetoric of science, government and industry cover up for their scientific failure to address the most important clinical outcomes for patients.

If you believe politicians have your back about vaccines, please read this before you go:

From 1999 to 2018, the pharmaceutical and health product industry recorded $4.7 billion—an average of $233 million per year—in lobbying expenditures at the federal level, more than any other industry. Of the spending, the trade group Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America accounted for $422 million (9.0%), and the other 19 top companies and organizations in this industry accounted for $2.2 billion (46.8%). The industry spent $414 million on contributions to candidates in presidential and congressional elections, national party committees, and outside spending groups. Of this amount, $22 million went to presidential candidates and $214 million went to congressional candidates. Of the 20 senators and 20 representatives who received the most contributions, 39 belonged to committees with jurisdiction over health-related legislative matters, 24 of them in senior positions. The industry contributed $877 million to state candidates and committees, of which $399 million (45.5%) went to recipients in California and $287 million (32.7%) went to recipients in 9 other states. In years in which key state referenda on reforms in drug pricing and regulation were being voted on, there were large spikes in contributions to groups that opposed or supported the reforms. —Olivier J. Wouters