I can understand people believing what they're told about the flu shot. ("It's easier to fool people, than to convince them they have been fooled" as the saying goes.) All I know is that when I got the flu shot, I got sick right after, as did many others, some right here in this thread. Yet when ever I mention ANY concerns about this admittedly poor, problematic "solution" to seasonal flu, I am often faced with rabid anger from those who seem to feel that the survival of all mankind pivots on every single human being getting their yearly flu shot.
I found this blog post that EXACTLY mirrored my own experience with the flu shot, and the Dr who wrote it, lays out her search for the truth, and her findings in well researched detail. This is NOT hysterical anti-vax stuff,
it is just plain common sense to distrust something that makes many people ill, and seems ridiculously hyped for the truly thin veil of "protection" it might possibly afford. s/bbm
https://bentonintegrative.blogspot.com/2017/10/why-this-doctor-doesnt-get-her-flu-shot.html
Why This Doctor Doesn't Get Her Flu Shot!
Smart doctors don’t get flu shots.
Smart patients don’t either.
Does that mean you’re not smart if you got a flu shot?
No.
It means the pharmaceutical industry has you and your wallet right where they want you.
It means you believed the hype instead of looking at the science.
Smart doctors don’t get flu shots. But I’m a doctor and not only did I get them, I insisted my mom and my siblings get their flu shot too.
Once you hear my story, you will see that I can’t judge anyone who gets a flu vaccine.
But I do judge an industry that tries to terrify and deceive people into getting a flu vaccine they do not want or need.
I made my mom and siblings get the flu vaccine too
Growing up, I never had a flu shot and I also never had the flu. But as a young adult thinking about starting a family,
I listened to my doctor. I was told getting a flu shot was not only good for me and my family, it was essential. Life-saving.
And not getting a flu shot?
Only irresponsible, unintelligent patients and crackpot parents refused the flu vaccine.
How could there be a problem with the flu vaccine?
Everyone was getting one. You could get them at the supermarket. Besides, my doctor couldn’t be wrong.
Since my husband and I were starting a family, I made my mom and siblings get the flu shot too.
I didn’t want my family spending time around my children if they were not fully vaccinated. That was just good common sense.
We had three children in five years and I insisted every year that family members get the flu shot. Every year.
Guess what happened?
My mom, who had not had the flu since childhood, my brother, and my sister all got high fevers, body aches, and upper respiratory infections, all within 24 hours of the flu vaccine. All lasting a week or two. For three years in a row.
I am a conventionally trained medical doctor. I saw my family get sick within a week of the flu vaccine. Three years straight. But I dismissed it.
An unfortunate coincidence.
Nothing to do with the flu vaccine.
You can’t get sick from a vaccine.
That’s what I had been taught. And that’s what I believed."
snip
It took me three years but I figured it out. Every year the flu vaccine was making me and my family sick.
My colleagues keep telling their patients you can’t get sick from the flu shot.
And they say it “would have been so much worse without the shot.”
Can you hear the BS meter going off? I couldn’t back then but I can now. The sound is deafening.
Look at the science. We now know, from both animal and epidemiology studies in humans, that the flu vaccine can and does make you sick.
Mandatory flu vaccines for doctors and nurses
I used to work for a group practice. Our practice decided to mandate the flu vaccine.
They did not mandate that we eat vegetables with every meal, get optimal amounts of sleep, have our vitamin D levels checked and supplement with sunbathing or supplements if they were below optimal levels, or adopt other health strategies proven to support the immune system.
Why mandate the flu vaccine?
That dictate started wheels turning.
How important is it really to get the flu shot?
What are the real risks and benefits?
snip
"The scientific evidence does not support having a yearly flu vaccine
I contacted the chair of the committee that was recommending flu vaccine mandates at my work and asked him to share the scientific evidence that mandating flu vaccines for health care workers actually reduces death rates from the flu.
He could not offer me a single article to read. I don’t know, he told me, adding that all the major health organizations recommend the flu vaccine and, “I trust them.”
Then he rattled off several major medical organizations recommending the flu vaccine, including the American Academy of Pediatrics, American Academy of Family Physicians, and the American Heart Association.
So what does this bulldog do? I write them all, asking for a list of scientific studies supporting flu vaccine mandates and requesting the information that proves that mandating the vaccine for doctors and nurses contributes to better outcomes.
Some ignored me but some responded. They all said the same thing: That they didn’t have the information I’d requested! One prominent organization recommended I contact the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the National Institutes for Health (NIH), as they based their recommendations off the CDC’s and the NIH’s.
So none of the leading health organizations shaping public health policy has scientific information to support the policy to mandate the flu vaccine?
How can this be?
I had three young children and worked full time. But I wanted to read the science for myself to find out if what I was noticing clinically—with my own health, my family’s, as well as with my patients’—was valid. As helpful and important as vaccines may be, the flu vaccine recommendation left me with more questions than answers. Since none of the organizations insisting on the necessity of the flu vaccine could provide me with direct information, I went searching for it myself.
I will put it to you that any conventionally trained medical doctor who is willing to impartially research the science behind the influenza vaccine safety, efficacy, and necessity is in for a surprise.
The best place to start a search for accurate medical information is usually the Cochrane database.
Cochrane is a non-profit research organization based in the United Kingdom and they tend to be considered the gold standard in scientific medical research. Their reviews of the medical literature are comprehensive and carefully peer-reviewed.
snip
"
So what does Cochrane have to say about the flu vaccine?
· It’s not effective for children under age 18 or for adults over 65.
·Between ages 18 to 65, it is only 30-50% effective in an average year (which means it fails between 50-70% of the time) and up to 80% in a perfectly matched year (a much lower number than most vaccines).
There is no decrease in flu transmission rate or hospitalization rate for people who have gotten the flu vaccine.
Ut oh.
Here is the Cochrane review’s results and conclusions so you can read them yourself:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20614424
snip
I also found a 126-page analysis by researchers at the University of Minnesota’s Center for Infectious Disease Research & Policy (CIDRAP). Among the key findings of this 2012 analysis (in the researchers’ own words):
Influenza vaccine protection is markedly lower than for most routinely recommended vaccines and is suboptimal.
CDC recommendations about the flu vaccine over the past 30 years have not been based on scientifically sound data.
http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/sites/default/files/public/downloads/ccivi_report.pdf
I shared the results of my research with colleagues. They were stunned. Just stunned. I also wrote back to the committee member who wasn’t aware of this data to let him know that there is no scientific data to support mandating flu vaccines.
And since those studies have been published, flu vaccine efficacy rates have hit new lows.
In 2014-2015 the flu vaccine was only 19% effective.
This year FluMist, the nasal spray influenza vaccine, is no longer recommended.
Why? Because it doesn’t work at all.
In the words of the CDC, “no protective benefit could be measured.”
Oops.
snip
"So this small town country doctor made an appointment with the medical director of the influenza division of the CDC.
With sweaty palms and racing heart, I made the phone call at the appointed time.
I introduced myself and proceeded to go over the data about the flu vaccine,
including that per the national vital statistics on the CDC website, that there are only about 1,000 deaths out of over 300 million people from the flu.
After each factoid I mentioned, the CDC director just said, “Yep.”
Befuddled, I got to the end of my list of concerns, wiped my palms on my skirt, and asked, “Rebuttal?”
She said she didn’t have one!
In fact, she said, there will never be a good flu vaccine because there are over 200 different viruses that cause influenza and influenza-like symptoms and vaccine manufacturers have to guess a year in advance for the strain of flu that might be in circulation that coming year.
Like meteorologists predicting the weather, sometimes vaccine scientists are pretty accurate, sometimes they are dead wrong.
So I asked her why our government is pushing flu mandates across the country.
She denied that the CDC was recommending mandates, and admitted there is simply not enough science to justify mandating the flu vaccine. All of these hospital, school, and company policies, she insisted, were outside of the purview of the CDC.
I reminded her the CDC shapes public policy by recommending vaccines and that medical professionals were being fired across the country for refusing the flu vaccine.
She said she disagreed with that practice.
And there you have it.
The smart doctors who work inside the CDC know the flu shot isn’t working. And they probably don’t get flu shots either.
Big pharma pushes for flu mandates, smart doctors push back
Why this ridiculous push for a vaccine that doesn’t work,
that prompted more government pay-outs because of adverse events, including death, than any other vaccine in 2017 so far, and that also contains ingredients analyzed by CDC scientists and found, in a recent peer-reviewed paper, to be highly neurotoxic?
Could it be the bonuses that insurance companies pay to medical groups for flu vaccine compliance among their staff and their patients?
Could it be the hundreds of thousands of dollars paid to politicians by the powerful pharmaceutical lobby?
In an 8-year period donations by pharmaceutical companies that manufacture vaccines given to the American Academy of Pediatricians exceeded 9.4 million dollars (The Business of Baby, p. 223)."
So... Basically, my opinion boils down to: Get the flu shot if you want to, but nobody should be forced to get it, or shamed and belittled if they choose to opt out of this shady vaccine.
