During the 2009-10 flu season, public health officials across the world were concerned about a flu pandemic caused by the H1N1 influenza virus. In response to the dangerous new flu, these same public health officials made certain to protect their citizens with new a new H1N1 flu vaccine that would protect individuals from the pandemic H1N1 flu virus.
There have been two H1N1 flu pandemics in recent history. The first, the 1918 pandemic, also called the Spanish Flu, infected over 500 million people worldwide (when the planet only had about 2.5 billion humans) and killed between 50-100 million. And no, it didn’t target babies and the elderly, it killed everyone targeting healthy young adults.
In the USA alone, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated that the 2009 pandemic resulted in over 43-89 million cases, 195-403 thousand hospitalizations and between 8,870 and 18,300 deaths. The CDC also estimated that over 300,000 people died worldwide from the 2009 H1N1 flu.
No wonder the world’s public health authorities made sure the H1N1 flu vaccine was widely available. I cannot imagine what those numbers would have been without it – possibly millions of deaths worldwide.
Recently, anti-vaccine hawker, Peter Doshi, continues with his perverse, pseudoscientific assaults on flu vaccines by now using a ridiculously amateurish conspiracy to invent safety concerns about the 2009 H1N1 flu vaccine. I’m not one to let this nonsense pass, so here goes. Continue reading “H1N1 flu vaccine – Peter Doshi invents a myth about GSK Pandemrix”