The Annual Fear-Mongering on the Flu…and the Questionable Efficacy of Flu Vaccines

There is little evidence that flu vaccines are effective in preventing the flu, says one of the world's leading experts on influenza vaccines.

Even though deaths from influenza have not increased at all in the past 30 years, have you noticed how much fear and anxiety the media has created about the common flu in the past couple of decades? And even though the number of people getting the flu vaccine has increased tremendously during this time, the number and percentage of people getting the flu has not decreased.[1]

Why, oh, why then, is the media so obsessed with the flu?

The answer is simple: Big Pharma is wonderfully creative in marketing this disease…and doing all they can to create fear so that people think that they need a vaccine to prevent it.  The only problem here is that, according to Science magazine, the flu vaccine is notoriously poor in preventing the flu, with many years having less than 20% efficacy.

And what is worse is that Big Pharma, with the help of Big Media (who like to do anything they can to support their biggest advertisers!) use “tricky statistics” and “fuzzy math” to create this fear.  To be more specific, there are very few deaths each year from influenza…and therefore, Big Pharma and Big Media have expanded their definitions of deaths from influenza (caused by a virus) to include deaths from pneumonia (primarily caused by a bacteria).

Just prior to Donald Rumsfeld becoming Bush’s Secretary of Defense, he was the Chairman of the Board of Gilead Sciences, the drug company that created Tamiflu (a drug that was thought to slightly reduce the length of a person’s flu symptoms but later was discovered to be ineffective). Rumsfeld and his associates seem to be as (in)effective in fighting viruses as they are terrorists, but this doesn’t stop them from making a buck or two (or more).

So, every year for the past 20-30 years, the wintertime becomes the time that Big Media do their greatest fear-monger about the flu…and 2023 won’t be any different, even though deaths from the flu in the past couple of years have been reduced to 20% of their previous levels. We can and should expect the regular fear-mongering about the flu because more and more people are getting flu shots even though the evidence that they provide benefits to anyone is so sparse.

These statistics means that there were five times more deaths from the flu just a couple of years ago, and it would seem that it is newsworthy to note that death from the flu has been so significantly reduced…but heck, such facts might actually reduce fear of the flu…and the media (and its advertisers) wouldn’t want you to know about that.

In Big Pharma’s wonderfully creative ways that it markets various pandemics, it tried to do so with the H5N1 (the “bird flu),” H1N1 (the swine flu), and Monkeypox…but none of these diseases hit pay-dirt.  In any case, do flu vaccines work?  According to the best science, the answer may surprise you…

The Questionable Efficacy of the Flu Vaccines 

There are numerous challenges that flu vaccines have.  First, because flu viruses evolve so fast, by the time Big Pharma creates the vaccine, the circulation of the viruses often change.  But the second and possibly greater challenge is that the vaccines may prevent infection with a specific flu virus, but the vaccine may actually create “vaccine interference” with other respiratory viruses.  Vaccine interference is when a vaccine may provide short-term benefits to a specific virus but actually increase the chances of having reduced immunity to other respiratory viruses.

For specific example, the U.S. Department of Defense conducted a study that was published January, 2020, just as the Covid-19 pandemic was beginning to emerge.  This study was published in one of the leading vaccine journals, and they found, the influenza vaccine led to “Vaccine derived virus interference was significantly associated with coronavirus and human metapneumovirus.” (Please note that because this study was conducted BEFORE the Covid-19 pandemic, it does NOT mean that the flu vaccine led to a larger number of cases of Covid-19, though it does suggest that the flu vaccine leads to a larger number of cases of the “coronavirus.” No study to date has asked the question if the Covid vaccines led to increased infection of other respiratory viruses)

Tom Jefferson, MD, is widely recognized as the foremost physician/researcher who has authored dozens of articles reviewing the efficacy of the flu vaccines, all of which have been published in the most respected medical journals in the world.  Dr. Jefferson has had a long-time work with the prestigious Cochrane Collaboration, and is presently a Fellow of the Centre for Evidence Based Medicine of the University of Oxford.

Jefferson’s previous detailed analyses of flu vaccines show very little efficacy in providing real health benefits. Jefferson’s team asserted strongly, “There is not enough evidence to decide whether routine vaccination to prevent influenza in healthy adults is effective.”[1] Jefferson’s research confirmed that flu vaccination did reduce slightly the number of adults experiencing confirmed influenza, but there were increased numbers of adults experiencing “influenza-like illness” (its symptoms are similar to the flu, though are presumably caused by other viruses, not the flu viruses). The bottom line is that the number of adults needing to go to the hospital or take time off work did not change between those adults giving the flu vaccine and those who did not.

Although the media commonly promotes the flu vaccine for children, Jefferson and his research group summarized their investigation on this subject by asserting, “National policies for the vaccination of healthy young children are based on very little evidence.”[2] They expressed strongest concern about the lack of efficacy and safety of flu vaccination of infants two years of age and under. They did note that the flu vaccine is effective in reducing the flu in children over two years of age, but they found little evidence that the flu vaccine was even effective in reducing school absences. Needless to say, if flu vaccines don’t reduce absenteeism in children, it is unlikely that they are really diminishing the disease. Further, they found “no convincing evidence that vaccines can reduce mortality, hospital admissions, serious complications and community transmission of influenza.”

Most problematic about these studies on children is the fact that adverse event data were not adequately studied or described. Therefore, while the media tends to proclaim that flu vaccines are safe, what they don’t mention is that studies are not conducted in a way that allows them to determine what short-term or long-term adverse events take place.

The strongest evidence of benefit to the flu vaccine is in the elderly.[3] However, the researchers found that the benefits to the elderly were “modest.” In fact, the number of flu-related deaths in elderly Americans has actually increased steadily during the past 33-year-period despite the fact that there has been a large increase in flu vaccinations for this population. Only 20% of all elderly Americans had a flu shot in 1980, compared with 65% in 2001.

Jefferson expresses some considerable surprise at how few studies have been conducted on the elderly, especially recently. He notes, “Only five randomly controlled trials have been carried out in elderly people, of which only one was carried out in the past 2 decades using vaccines available today.”[4]

Dr. Jefferson’s team noted that the benefits of the flu vaccine for the elderly are “consistently below those usually quoted for (national policy) decision or economic model making.”

Is the World Health Organization’s Definition of a Pandemic Serve the Public Health or Big Pharma Companies?

Something “fishy” seems to be going on at the World Health Organization (WHO) in the past several decades. Although most people assume that the WHO is an objective and science-based organization that works for the good of the world public health, fundamental changes in the organization that has occurred over the past couple of decades that seems to suggest that Big Pharma companies has captured some of its policy-making definitions. 

For example, in 2009, when the H1N1 (or “swine flu) began to spread, the WHO declared the highest level of “pandemic alert” to “level 6, but many media sources later acknowledged that this was the “pandemic that wasn’t.” The reason that the WHO was even able to declare this disease to be a “pandemic” is that they had formally changed their definition of the word “pandemic” earlier that year. 

The earlier version defined pandemic as: “An influenza pandemic occurs when a new influenza virus appears against which the human population has no immunity, resulting in epidemics worldwide with enormous numbers of deaths and illness [emphasis in the original document].” The NEW definition of pandemic omitted any reference to the numbers of deaths or illness and instead just emphasized a disease must from a virus in which the human population has no immunity,” and if there seems to be “a high rate of transmission.”    

Because flu viruses change on a regular basis and there is a relatively high infectivity rate for influenza and for many respiratory viruses, the WHO can declare a new “pandemic” whenever they wish.  And then, Big Pharma, with its huge advertising budgets, are compelled to “warn” people about the yearly possible pandemic, pumping more fear into the hearts and minds of the susceptible and gullible public.

Inevitably, Big Media love to remind people of the 1918-1919 flu pandemic where they claim 40 to 50 million people died.  However, the media never report on the fact that the “wonder drug,” aspirin, went off patent in 1917, making it cheaper than ever.  And because aspirin is effective in lowering fevers, the AMA recommended its regular use.  To be more precise, the AMA recommended huge doses of this drug, the equivalent to 25 aspirin tablets a day. Doctors that would recommend these high doses of aspirin today would probably have their medical license called into question. It was no wonder that this 1918-1919 flu was uniquely known to have bleeding in the lungs, which is a typical side effect from aspirin in patients who have respiratory infections. 

Ultimately, for those of us who like to follow the science, the flu vaccine is a questionably effective in preventing the flu.  Is it safe?  Well, although the media repeatedly claim that it is safe, it is more accurate to say that there is not much evidence to show that the flu vaccine causes any symptoms.  However (!), the primary reason for this is that vaccine studies today do not test the vaccine against a real saline (salt water) placebo.  Because of this, there is no way to know which symptoms may be the result of the vaccine. 

One of Dr. Jefferson’s most recent publications acknowledges that the “European Medicines Association now “encourages minimal use of placebo and encourages the use of active controls (such as non‐influenza vaccines)”  What this actually means is that new vaccine trials do not use “inactive” saline solutions, but instead, they use other types of (non-influenza) vaccines, even though such vaccines include a wide variety of very active chemical components that themselves have never been extensively been tested for safety.

Then, to make matters worse, as a result of lobbying from Big Pharma, the European Medicines Association and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration now has deemed it to be “unethical” to give subjects a saline placebo claiming that withholding a real vaccine from a patient is not fair to this person.  However, because the only real way to test for safety is to test against a primarily “inactive” medicine like saline, scientists cannot claim safety unless a real placebo is used.

Will Big Media ever openly admit that the vast majority of studies on vaccines do NOT include a simple saline (salt) placebo. And when Big Pharma so cleverly avoids testing for safety, it is no wonder at all that they don’t find any problems. “How convenient,” said the Church Lady.

REFERENCES:

[1] Demicheli V, Di Pietrantonj C, Jefferson T, Rivetti A, Rivetti D. Vaccines for preventing influenza in healthy adults. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews 2007, Issue 2. Art. No.: CD001269. DOI:10.1002/14651858.CD001269.pub3. (original publication)

Demicheli V, Jefferson T, Ferroni E, Rivetti A, Di Pietrantonj C. Vaccines for preventing influenza in healthy adults. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews 2018, Issue 2. Art. No.: CD001269. DOI: 10.1002/14651858.CD001269.pub6. Accessed 05 October 2023.  https://www.cochranelibrary.com/cdsr/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD001269.pub6/full

[2] Jefferson T, Rivetti A, Harnden A, Di Pietrantonj C, Demicheli V. Vaccines for preventing influenza in healthy children. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews 2008, Issue 2. Art. No.: CD004879. DOI:10.1002/14651858.CD004879.pub3. (original publication)

Jefferson T, Rivetti A, Di Pietrantonj C, Demicheli V. Vaccines for preventing influenza in healthy children. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews 2018, Issue 2. Art. No.: CD004879. DOI: 10.1002/14651858.CD004879.pub5. Accessed 05 October 2023. https://www.cochranelibrary.com/cdsr/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD004879.pub5/full

[3] Demicheli V, Jefferson T, Di Pietrantonj C, Ferroni E, Thorning S, Thomas RE, Rivetti A. Vaccines for preventing influenza in the elderly. Cochrane Database Syst Rev. 2018 Feb 1;2(2):CD004876. doi: 10.1002/14651858.CD004876.pub4. PMID: 29388197; PMCID: PMC6491101. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6491101/

Rivetti D, Jefferson T, Thomas RE, Rudin M, Rivetti A, Di Pietrantonj C, Demicheli V. Vaccines for preventing influenza in the elderly. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews 2006, Issue 3. Art. No.: CD004876. DOI:10.1002/14651858.CD004876.pub2.  https://www.cochranelibrary.com/cdsr/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD004876.pub2/information (Original research)

[4] Jefferson T. Mistaken identity: seasonal influenza versus influenza-like illness. Clinical Evidence. 2009. http://clinicalevidence.bmj.com/ceweb/resources/editors-letter-full.jsp?src=editorsletter_intro#REF3

Other useful reference: Jefferson T. The prevention of seasonal influenza — policy versus evidence. BMJ 2006;333:912–915.

BIO:

Dana Ullman, MPH, CCH, graduated from UC Berkeley School of Public Health (1978) and was interviewed by UC Berkeley’s alumni magazine here. He has written 10 books on homeopathic medicine, two of which contain a Foreword by the Physician to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II (who is a MD and a homeopathic doctor). Dana Ullman has served on advisory boards or in teaching capacities of complementary and alternative medicine institutes at Harvard, Columbia, and the University of Arizona.

Dana Ullman, MPH, CCH, is America's leading spokesperson for homeopathy and is the founder of www.homeopathic.com. This website is an important resource for accessing homeopathic books, medicines, medicine kit, software, and ecourses.

Dana Ullman, MPH, CCH, is the author of 10 books, including his bestseller, Everybody's Guide to Homeopathic Medicines. His most recent book is, The Homeopathic Revolution: Why Famous People and Cultural Heroes Choose Homeopathy. Dana’s eCourse on Learning to Use a Homeopathic Medicine Kit is a great way to make homeopathy practical in your personal and family life.

Dana Ullman, MPH, CCH, has also written chapters on homeopathy for four medical textbooks, including two published by Oxford University Press.

Dana lives, practices, and writes from Berkeley, California. He sees his patients via Zoom.