So, this report from the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy was really interesting. They started off by saying that:
“In an effort to reduce influenza morbidity and mortality, over the last three decades the ACIP [Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices] has expanded the populations recommended to receive influenza vaccine. These recommendations, however, often were based on professional judgment and not on scientifically sound data.”
So, in translation, they’re saying that over the past few years, there’s been a lot of pressure on people to get the flu shot with the idea that it’s gonna prevent sickness and death, but that recommendation has been based more on professional judgment than data. And Tom Jefferson, who has done a lot of work in this area, he’s been the lead author on several of the papers, the meta-analyses and reviews that were published by the Cochrane Collaboration, which is an independent group that does meta-analyses of studies on various topics to try to reach some consensus. And over the last several years, Tom Jefferson and his group have published a number of papers in this area, so he says:
“We have conducted four reviews since the late 1990s. We calculated that you need to vaccinate between 33 and 99 people to prevent a single case of flu, depending on the match between the vaccine and the circulating strains of the virus. I want people held accountable for wasting taxpayers’ money on these vaccines. The reviews have been available for years and nothing has been done.”
Now, those are really strong words from an independent researcher. For anyone who’s read scientific papers, you will know that that kind of strong language is seldom used, and even in interviews outside of the papers themselves, researchers are very wary of using language like that because, of course, if their viewpoint evolves over time, then that could look bad. Just the nature of science, a good scientist is to keep an open mind, and so that will sometimes preclude making a strong statement like that, but nevertheless, that was the statement he made, and he’s the one who’s been doing these reviews.
The Truth About Flu Shots (and What to do Instead)