How’s that vaccine working out? Don’t ask the CDC.
“The nation’s early flu season continued to grow in the U.S. this week, with no sign yet of a peak in the spread of coughing, achy, feverish illness, health officials said Friday… More telling, for people who reported both flu symptoms and vaccination status, of those who got the flu, three out of four were not vaccinated, while a quarter had gotten their flu shots. Brownstein cautioned that can’t be used as a true measure of this season’s vaccine efficacy because of variables in reporting. But the CDC says that in the 2010-2011 flu season, vaccine effectiveness was about 60 percent for all age groups combined. The agency has received reports that people who were vaccinated still developed laboratory-confirmed strains of flu. CDC officials said it’s not possible to know whether that’s happening more this season than usual and that the agency is “watching the situation closely.” [NBC News]
Unfortunately the flu vaccine does have a poor record, but I believe that is because they need to guess the flu strains one year out, so they can make the vaccine.
I t would be nice if they could switch all manufacturing to cell based vaccines rather than egg based, and they could get a new vaccine in less than 3 months. – or even create a second vaccine for the season if needed. Governments are holding this back – though we are slowing moving in the cell based direction.
Third – if you vaccinate everyone against flu X, Y, and Z every year – and the flu season is bad, that doesn’t necessarily mean the flu vaccine was bad for the year. Having a large percentage of the population vaccinated against X,Y and Z probably stopped those viruses cold, so virus A and B can come in its place.
Right but did you have the flu, or merely a cold? Flu is pretty serious, it will lay you up for a week, where you almost can’t go to work, cold feels bad but is usually shorter and folks go to work.
I have had colds but have not had the flu in at least 10 years – while taking the shots regularly.
I’d like to see the effectiveness stats for the vaccine (properly corrected for age) with respect to:
1) Preventing getting the flu, and
2) Preventing dying of the flu.
I know of a few tragic cases of people dying of the flu and none were vaccinated. Tiny sample but it makes me wonder.
How’s that vaccine working out?
Got mine is September last year. I’ve been sick 3 times since.