So far, this year's influenza vaccine appears to have been remarkably ineffective. While flu vaccines only claim to reduce flu by 60%, usually they give at least partial immunity, meaning that those vaccinated who get the flu anyway get a milder disease. However, in the North Texas area where I live, there are numerous reports of people who were vaccinated coming down with the latest swine flu--the same strain of swine flu that was supposedly included in this years vaccine. There was even a death--- a 30 year old healthy patient who had been vaccinated. I have been in practice a lot of years, and I have never heard of a healthy person who was appropriately vaccinated dying from the flu. Getting sick yes. Getting a mild illness, yes. But people seldom die from a flu to which they have at least partial immunity. Which leads to me wonder, was this year's influenza vaccine a dud? And, if so, why?
The first thing I noticed about this year's flu shot is I had no reaction to it. No sore arm. No low grade fever. No fatigue. I might as well have gotten a normal saline injection. And I usually have severe symptoms with flu vaccines. I asked around and everyone (about 30 people) with the exception of 2 reported the same thing---this year's vaccine gave them no pain, no aches, nothing. Very odd.
Then, around Christmas, people who had been vaccinated started showing up with influenza. One doctor reported seeing 20 on the day after Christmas, five of whom had a flu vaccine.
“Right after Christmas, we saw a ton of it, and this week we’re still seeing a few cases,” Haefeli said. “It all has to do with vagaries of transmission. A lot of it is based regionally. It can be calm in Northeast Tarrant County, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a pocket in downtown Fort Worth and a pocket in downtown Dallas where it’s going like crazy.”
Haefeli said the office was slammed with patients immediately after Christmas. On the Saturday after Christmas, 19 of the 20 patients he saw tested positive for the flu. Five of them had gotten flu shots.
“Either the flu shot didn’t cover it very well this year, or this is a very virulent strain,” Haefeli said.
Read more here:
http://www.star-telegram.com/...
http://www.star-telegram.com/...
According to the CDC, the strains are the ones included in the vaccine. The local strain in North Texas is the super virulent swine flu, H1N1 and it is one of the flu bugs that was included in the vaccine.
http://www.cdc.gov/...
ICUs are crowded with people on ventilators. Pediatric deaths are rising. We saw these same numbers back in 2009 when the swine flu first emerged--but there was no vaccine then. And, since then, we have not seen a major swine flu epidemic again. What happened this year? Could the lack of side effects from the vaccine be related to its lack of efficacy? Could there be something in the eggs in which the flu virus is incubated that kept it from growing? Say, Tamiflu? I decided to do an online search. And, sure enough Tamiflu has been added to the list of antibiotics that the meat and poultry industry is using.
According to Time, the amount of Tamiflu and other antibiotics used in meat and poultry production was four times the amount sold to sick humans. Under current law, livestock producers are not required to report which animals are treated with the drugs, how they use the drugs, or which drugs are used.
http://www.scienceworldreport.com/...
Consider how flu vaccine is made. The virus is injected into an egg where it is allowed to grow for several days. Then, bits of protein from the virus are extracted. When these are injected in people, the people form antibodies against the protein, which then allow them to fight off the natural flu virus which has the same proteins on its surface.
So, what happens if the eggs used to incubate the flu virus are full of Tamiflu, because Mama Chicken is being fed lots of antibiotics? Good question. Maybe, the Tamilfu inhibits the growth of the virus in egg cells the way that it does in human cells. Maybe eggs contaminated with Tamiflu do not yield enough of the antigen to give us immunity.
Do manufacturers of influenza vaccine get their eggs from the poultry industry that is dosing their birds with Tamiflu, because they are scared to death that a bird flu epidemic might kill their flocks? Don't know but the Washington Post says it takes hundreds of millions of eggs to make flu vaccine, so I am guessing that at least some of them come from the poultry industry.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
I realize that I am going out on a limb here, but maybe, just maybe it isn't a good idea to put an anti influenza agent in the incubator where we are trying to grow the stuff that is supposed to give us immunity. Not to mention the risk of creating Tamiflu resistant strains of influenza---and I shudder to think what would happen if the nation were to be struck by a new strain of bird flu (much worse than regular flu, I know I had it) that is resistant to Tamiflu.