Dooley Noted: 9/13/14
Yesterday, I went to my neighborhood pharmacy to purchase a greeting card.
As the cashier rang my purchase, she failed to offer me gum or another type of appropriate impulse sale – like a stamp
Instead, she offered to sell me a flu shot.
To me, this is coming dangerously close to offering medical advice.
I didn’t even buy anything medically oriented, and yet I am offered a flu vaccine.
What an incredible sales tactic! Ask everyone if they want one, and it seems commonplace to offer them.
To me, vaccines are not casual. I want to make an educated decision.
This got me thinking: is the flu vaccine so remarkably effective that I am missing out on the immunity power it offers?
I investigated the stronger points, and these notes were the result.
1. Despite never having a flu shot, I haven’t had flu-like symptoms since I was in high school. That’s almost 20 years of flu absence. I got the flu many times as a child, when building immunity – and exposure to many other children – was at a zenith.
2. I live and work in New York City, where on a given day I am exposed to 8 million people – plus tourists – plus the germs they harbor. And I’m rarely ill, despite never having a flu shot.
3. Trying to find out how serious influenza becomes in the US is quite the challenge. According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Influenza viruses killed 3,349 in 1986–87 to 48,614 in 2007-2008.people in the US.
But the National Vital Statistics System reports the numbers were more like 500 in 2010. That’s quite the variance.
Of the flu fatalities, the CDC notes over 90% are age 65 and older, and the rest are immunocompromised people. I am not immunocompromised.
4. The flu shot makes some people sick with flu-like symptoms, since their immune systems respond to the attenuated virus found in most vaccines. Many vaccine promoters sell this point, noting you’ll get a “little sick” instead of getting the “big sick.” Actually, you don’t know if you’d have become flu sick at all. Maybe the shot made you sick the ONLY time you’d have gotten sick.
4. The efficacy of the flu shot is difficult to determine. According to the CDC, the vaccine is the best method to prevent influenza. But the people who are marked as having influenza are rarely even tested for the virus. When is the last time your doctor ran a test to assure you that you really had the flu? My guess is never.
Peer reviewed research from the American Journal of Public Health and the British Medical Journal note the numbers are likely lower, attributing only 15-20% of flu sickness to the influenza virus and 80% to other virus, like rhinoviruses that cause the common cold.
Now that makes it hard to even call flu-like symptoms the flu. While the vaccine claims to prevent flu, it’s unlikely my flu-like symptoms are even the flu! From a statistical standpoint, the flu shot is statistically unlikely to prevent flu-like symptoms.
5. The revenue made last year from flu shots equates to $10 billion. As noted in #4, it is highly more likely that you will simply lose money than prevent influenza from attacking you.
Or – you could get sick from the shot, or get sick with the more likely viruses the vaccine doesn’t prevent. Then you lost your money AND got sick.
After my research and some analyses of the aforementioned points, I made the decision to emphatically decline any flu shot offered to me unless I became supremely immunocompromised.
I’m all about statistics. I saved my $20. The odds are in my favor.
As always, it’s your call.
– Dr. Kathy Dooley