Flu Shots: Useless by "Rigorous" Scientific Standards

Voodoo offers at least 30% efficacy from placebo

Over two years ago I wrote "Flu Shots and Magical Thinking" deriding the efficacy of US "flu shots."

The basic idea in their creation is that the CDC looks at likely flu that will occur in the next year and orders a vaccine based on this prediction.

Since it takes many months to manufacture a significant quantity of vaccine the CDC can only guess as to what flu to put into the vaccine.

So if the CDC guesses wrong than the vaccine will inoculate you against flu viruses that you will never encounter.

So now Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy, notes that "We're operating largely in the 1950s for our flu technology" according to USA Today.

According to the article "Osterholm last year published an influential analysis in The Lancet showing that, according to very rigorous standards, evidence indicated that flu shots were less effective than commonly reported. For children and seniors over age 65, there was no rigorous data showing their efficacy at all."

No rigorous data showing their efficacy at all...

(For those with a college education this means they don't work...)

Useless.

But somehow the CDC and the drug industry work hard to maintain the fiction that these are valuable contributions to society.

The good news is that the useless vaccine probably produces a significant placebo effect.