Flu Vaccines: Scam Central

[dualstow]

Sorry you had to go through that! My dad described a similar experience to yours, but also said it felt like electricity. For years afterward, he occasionally felt shocks.

[MachineGhost]

So if you have had chicken pox then the varicella vaccine is useless? I wish I had known that before I got it...
And I got shingles anyway!

Thank you for proving the OP.  Even the local library is now offering free flu shots.  I suspect there is a huge kickback scheme going on from vaccine manufacturers and/or the Feds because it is freakin' relentless everywhere without any critical thought.  Sometimes I feel like I'm living in one of those creepy dystopian SciFi movies.

As I mentioned to Reub privately, with everyone and their mother being an unthinking boob and getting ineffective flu shots with shingles as the common side effect, then getting vaccinated against shingles to protect yourself from the herd may actually be prudent if you've not had any previous exposure to chicken pox.  That's assuming, of course, that the shingles vaccine is actually effective and safe.  Hah!

D3 is safer and cheaper and has many more benefits to boot.

[dualstow]

Does the flu shot really increase one's chances of getting shingles? I've seen anecdotes about this on the web but no official stuff, nor have I heard it from doctor.

[dualstow]

What I mean to say is, I think it's bullshit.

[Reub]

"Flu vaccines may not adequately protect recipients from some of this flu season’s most common viral strains, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced Thursday."

Right again, MG!

http://www.usnews.com/news/newsgram/art ... -flu-virus

[dualstow]

It's never been a guarantee, though.

[MachineGhost]

Yeah, well what they're not telling you about are all the negatives you get along with the non-guarantee.  That's what is deceptive.  If people knew the risk wasn't worth the non-existent reward, I doubt there would be such nonchalance about offering it all over the place.  It's just smarmy groupthink.

It's kind of like GMO labeling.  Sales would collapse; so better keep "the little people" ignorant, obfuscate and and in doubt.

[WiseOne]

I don't think that info has ever been hidden.  The flu vaccine is necessarily a best guess at next year's flu virus, that is, an attempt to predict the next antigenic shift is involved.  This year it appears the guess off more than usual, because there's been a pretty big shift.  Hang on to your hats, stay away from people who are coughing, and wash your hands a lot.

There are several vaccines out there that don't provide complete protection, and again...no one is trying to hide the info.  The ones that immediately come to mind:  cholera, typhoid, Neisseria meningitis, hepatitis A.  A little public service announcement for anyone considering those vaccines.

[Mountaineer]

I don't think that info has ever been hidden.  The flu vaccine is necessarily a best guess at next year's flu virus, that is, an attempt to predict the next antigenic shift is involved.  This year it appears the guess off more than usual, because there's been a pretty big shift.  Hang on to your hats, stay away from people who are coughing, and wash your hands a lot.

There are several vaccines out there that don't provide complete protection, and again...no one is trying to hide the info.  The ones that immediately come to mind:  cholera, typhoid, Neisseria meningitis, hepatitis A.  A little public service announcement for anyone considering those vaccines.

WiseOne, 

You are a welcome breath of objective air in the world of conspiracy theories, bunk supplements, conflicting nutritional information, and medical profession integrity.  I enjoy your posts as you usually take the time to distinguish between fact, opinion, and hysteria.

... Mountaineer

[MachineGhost]

I don't think that info has ever been hidden.  The flu vaccine is necessarily a best guess at next year's flu virus, that is, an attempt to predict the next antigenic shift is involved.  This year it appears the guess off more than usual, because there's been a pretty big shift.  Hang on to your hats, stay away from people who are coughing, and wash your hands a lot.

I think we may have a different perspective in regards to what "hidden" means.  The CDC's active suppression of what is "hidden" makes it difficult to confidently say for sure that there are unrevealed risks if we're all unaware of them, right?  So I risk coming off as a "conspiracy theorist" (for lack of a better term) whereas someone like you in the medical field that has a natural bias in being a "CDC apologist" (for lack of a better term) looks rational in comparison.  That's the problem with challenging the status quo.

[Mountaineer]

"Measles, mumps, polio, rubella, whooping cough... All diseases that are eminently preventable by vaccination. But, as this data visualization shows, while their incidence has decreased by 57 percent around the world between 2008 and 2014, in the U.S. it's soared by 6,000 percent.

There is, of course, one very compelling reason why whooping cough became an epidemic in California and measles hit New York hard—and that is anti-vaxxers. The mistaken belief that vaccines are bad is causing swathes of perfectly avoidable illness."

http://gizmodo.com/the-soaring-u-s-outb ... 1668670020

... Mountaineer

[WiseOne]

I don't think that info has ever been hidden.  The flu vaccine is necessarily a best guess at next year's flu virus, that is, an attempt to predict the next antigenic shift is involved.  This year it appears the guess off more than usual, because there's been a pretty big shift.  Hang on to your hats, stay away from people who are coughing, and wash your hands a lot.

I think we may have a different perspective in regards to what "hidden" means.  The CDC's active suppression of what is "hidden" makes it difficult to confidently say for sure that there are unrevealed risks if we're all unaware of them, right?  So I risk coming off as a "conspiracy theorist" (for lack of a better term) whereas someone like you in the medical field that has a natural bias in being a "CDC apologist" (for lack of a better term) looks rational in comparison.  That's the problem with challenging the status quo.

I can understand your frustration.  All I can say is, don't ascribe to conspiracy (for lack of a better term) what is probably better explained by incompetence.

I know about the flu shift not only because it was reported on the major media outlets, but because I received notifications from the hospital & state department of health.  I thought it should be easily available on the CDC website, but it isn't - I looked.  Try the New York State Department of Health flu site:

http://www.health.ny.gov/diseases/commu ... /seasonal/

where you will find this document referring to a CDC report:

https://apps.health.ny.gov/pub/ctrldocs ... _17804.pdf

I think the model is that you're supposed to go to your primary care physician or NP for this information, but of course that won't work.  Because the reimbursement structure puts such a low value on office visits, the pressure is to see more and more patients per unit time.  Meanwhile, relatively more and more time must be spent on documentation.  This means that face to face time is rapidly vanishing, and the first thing that goes out the window when that happens is patient education and counseling.

[Mountaineer]

Government overreach, or government exercising its role to keep the public safe?

Michigan has a problem. Over the past decade, the number of unvaccinated kindergartners has spiked. "Nearly half of the state's population lives in counties with kindergarten vaccination rates below the level needed for "herd immunity," the public health concept that when at least 93 percent of people are vaccinated, their immunity protects the vulnerable and prevents the most contagious diseases from spreading." Surprise, surprise, the state is now in the midst of a whooping cough outbreak. How do these kids get into public schools without being vaccinated? Well, Michigan is among the 19 U.S. states that allow "philosophical" objections to the vaccine requirements for schoolchildren. (And one of the 46 states allowing religious exemption.) A new editorial is now calling for an end to the "philosophical" exemption.

The article says, "Those who choose not to be vaccinated and who choose not to vaccinate their children allow a breeding ground for diseases to grow and spread to others. They put healthy, vaccinated adults at risk because no vaccine is 100 percent effective. They especially put the most vulnerable at risk — infants too young to be vaccinated, the elderly, people with medical conditions that prevent vaccination, and those undergoing cancer treatments or whose immune systems have been weakened." They also encourage tightening the restrictions on religious and medical waivers so that people don't just check a different box on the exemption form to get the same result. "They are free to continue believing vaccines are harmful, even as the entire medical and scientific communities try in vain to tell them otherwise. But they should not be free to endanger the lives of everyone else with their views."

http://science.slashdot.org/story/14/12 ... edium=feed

... Mountaineer

[WiseOne]

Government overreach, or government exercising its role to keep the public safe?

Indeed yes.  Public health trumps individual liberties on several fronts - cf the recent discussion of quarantines for people potentially exposed to Ebola, and the notion of travel bans.

I think MG's questions have been about the effectiveness of the flu vaccine, which is more open to question than that of the measles vaccine.  So I doubt you can apply the herd immunity argument to the flu.  But I am absolutely 100% for tightening up the MMR vaccination exemptions.  A person should be free to put themselves at risk if they are an adult, but it is not reasonable (or moral) for someone to put their child at risk and simultaneously contribute to outbreaks that can threaten people who can't be vaccinated for whatever reason (too young, allergic, immune-compromised etc), or those rare individuals who didn't mount an immune response to the vaccine.  The vaccine and autism thing has been studied to death.  Enough already.

One of the many examples of the limits of parental refusal are Jehovah's witnesses who refuse blood transfusions.  They can do so for themselves, but it's not legal for them to refuse for their children.  The MMR vaccine should be handled similarly, IMHO.

[MachineGhost]

I think MG's questions have been about the effectiveness of the flu vaccine, which is more open to question than that of the measles vaccine.  So I doubt you can apply the herd immunity argument to the flu.  But I am absolutely 100% for tightening up the MMR vaccination exemptions.  A person should be free to put themselves at risk if they are an adult, but it is not reasonable (or moral) for someone to put their child at risk and simultaneously contribute to outbreaks that can threaten people who can't be vaccinated for whatever reason (too young, allergic, immune-compromised etc), or those rare individuals who didn't mount an immune response to the vaccine. 

Yes, I'm talking mostly about the flu vaccines in this thread which is a bit of a different beast.  However, the reason the "herd immunity" is collapsing is because public policy got to the point where unproven and unsafe vaccines and outrageous multi-vaccine bomb doses were being fostered onto babies and kids, nevermind neurotoxic preservatives.  So naturally, the lack of transparency, safety and efficacy caused parents to increasingly opt out.  Can you blame them?  It's a public policy failure that has still not been owned up to.  The typical pro-statist mindset of upping the ammo and damning individual rights is not going to solve the philosophical divide.  What we need is a frank and honest conversation and discussion with all stakeholders involved and many egos and wallets are going to have to give up their "my way or the highway".  When does that ever happen in politics?

The vaccine and autism thing has been studied to death.  Enough already.

I wouldn't say that.  Only the mecury has been investigated so far (and not very impressively at that), not the other potential confounders.  And I don't consider studies that reference a few originakl studies for their study to be the same thing as original research.  How can anyone say for sure that its not the aluminium or the GMO DNA-vaccines, etc. for which basic safety studies haven't even been performed?  Why does everyone get their panty's all twisted in a bunch on the mere suggestion that these variables may play a role in causing neurological or microbiota damage that dooms a poor kid to somewhere on the autistic spectrum disorder?  It can't be a liability issue now that there's a vaccine court to protect the corporate interests.  Its just very weird.

One of the many examples of the limits of parental refusal are Jehovah's witnesses who refuse blood transfusions.  They can do so for themselves, but it's not legal for them to refuse for their children.  The MMR vaccine should be handled similarly, IMHO.

And Christian Scientists, but thats not what is driving the collapse of "herd immuntiy".  Hint: its the "latte-drinking liberal elites".  When you have that cohort losing faith in ever-so-sacrosanct public policy, you better realize there's a huge problem brewing.

Here's some more relevant flu news:

This year's flu vaccine still contains neurotoxic mercury; still being given to infants and pregnant women: http://www.cdc.gov/flu/protect/vaccine/thimerosal.htm

People vaccinated two years in a row aren't protected against the flu at all: http://www.nbcnews.com/health/cold-flu/ ... ork-n21446

Italy Suspends Batches of Novartis Flu Vaccine After 3 Deaths: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-11-2 ... eaths.html

Kids given Vitamin D3 are 43% less likely to get the flu:
http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/91/5/1255.long

So because this year's new GMO-engineered flu quadvalent vaccine (untested for efficacy or safety, as per usual) is such a dud, the CDC is recommending physicians use up the U.S. government's scam stockpile of ineffective Relenza and Tamiflu and give it to their patients.  Bravo!  Relenza reduces rate of infection only by only a paltry 8%.  And Tamiflu is no more effective than aspirin but Roche covered it up*.  On the other hand Tamiflu's wonderful side effects include nasuea, vomiting, headaches, renal issues, psychiatric episodes and possilby serious heart rhythm problems.  And both drugs only shorten "influenza-like illnesses" (Newspeak if I ever heard of any!) by an amazingly awesome half-a-day.

* http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/11/opini ... ecret.html

[Reub]

"The vaccine and autism thing has been studied to death.  Enough already."

So its like global warming?