The 2024-2025 flu season in the USA has led to increased hospitalizations and deaths, surpassing COVID rates. Severe complications, including neurologic issues in children and pneumonia from superbugs in adults, are reported. Low vaccination rates contribute to the ongoing crisis.… Read More »2024-2025 flu season is becoming more intense
The COVID pandemic led to the extinction of the B/Yamagata influenza strain, which has not been observed since 2020. Consequently, it was removed from the 2024-25 seasonal flu vaccine. Although other flu strains remain, this instance marks a significant impact… Read More »A flu strain has gone extinct thanks to the COVID pandemic
I am hoping that someday this vaccines-autism myth will disappear into the ether, but here we go again with the 159th peer-reviewed, published, and scientific article that says there is no link between vaccines and autism. OK, there’s probably more than 159, but that’s how many I’ve counted.
Why do I keep posting articles about vaccines and autism? Many of us, and I include me in that “us,” think that there’s no convincing the anti-vaccine zealots using real science, so why bother. It’s true that the pseudoscience-pushing anti-vaxxers are going to cover their eyes and just believe what they want to believe.
However, I’ve always felt that our job on the internet is to contradict the misinformation from the anti-vaxxers not to convince them, but to convince those who are on the fence – those parents who keep reading good and bad things about vaccines, trying to decide if they want to protect their kids.
Recently, I received a message on Facebook from a young mother that said she had decided to give her teen daughter the HPV vaccine just because of my relentless support of that cancer-preventing vaccine. It makes this worth the effort.
So, here I am talking about the (at least) 159th article that debunks the vaccines and autism trope. Maybe all of these articles will help calm the fears of a new parent wonder if they should vaccinate their child.Read More »Vaccines and autism – the 159th scientific study that says not related
The CDC recently issued an interim report on the 2018-19 flu vaccine effectiveness. Usually, after these reports, there are all kinds of consternation from everyone with a stake in the seasonal flu vaccine.
Last year, the flu vaccine effectiveness was a challenge. Typically, the anti-vaccine religion (or terrorists) massively understated the effectiveness of last year’s vaccine, despite good evidence that, although it wasn’t great, it was fairly good against most subtypes of flu.
Vaccine effectiveness is an important measurement to determine how many individuals who are vaccinated against the flu are actually protected from the infection by the vaccine. Despite the wild pseudoscientific claims about various flu treatments, the best preventive tool against influenza and influenza-related diseases, complications, and deaths are flu vaccines.
Well, let’s get the facts straight with what we know so far about the 2018-19 flu vaccine effectiveness.Read More »2018-19 flu vaccine effectiveness – interim CDC report
The upcoming flu season may be a rough one. A strain of the influenza A, H3N2, is showing up in small clusters of outbreaks throughout the USA. Unfortunately, the 2017 flu vaccine effectiveness against the H3N2 may be lower than expected.
We will get into the details further in this post, but I do not want to bury the headline. This does not mean the 2017-18 flu vaccine is ineffective – the quadrivalent 2017 flu vaccine effectiveness against three of four flu strains is still fairly high. The flu vaccine is extremely important in stop lots of flu strains, and just because it may have an issue with one of the four strains, does not imply that it is useless.
Let me repeat that, just in case someone misses the point – only one of the four strains of flu in the 2017-18 vaccine may have lower effectiveness. The vaccine remains highly effective against the other four strains.Read More »2017 flu vaccine effectiveness – getting the facts straight
During the 2016-17 flu season, over 100 children died from the virus. Yet, only 60% of children were vaccinated, despite the fact influenza kills.
Not only do children die of the flu, but between 12,000 – 56,000 adults die every year from the flu in the USA. Some of those people are healthy young adults. In some years, the flu kills more people than many other things that we consider dangerous, like firearms and cars.
It’s difficult to understand why parents seem to ignore the flu vaccine for themselves or for their children. Many people just don’t think the flu is that dangerous. Or they think the vaccine doesn’t work. Or they believe in some other myth that simply isn’t true.
Whatever the reason for avoiding the vaccine for children or adults, it’s important that people know what the flu can do, even for a healthy child or adult. It’s not a disease you can ignore, despite the claims of the anti-vaccine corps. And the flu cannot be treated or prevented by supplements or vitamins. Read More »Influenza kills – the flu vaccine saves lives, it’s fairly simple
Here we go again. Just like the popular zombie TV shows, the flu vaccine myths continue to rise from the dead, scaring people away from protecting themselves from a dangerous disease. And just like Rick Grimes, it’s my job to help my fellow skeptics stop this zombie outbreak and safeguard the innocent from the brain-eating tropes of the anti-vaccine crowd.
Since we’re entering the 2017-2018 flu season in the Northern Hemisphere, your best weapon to avoid the effects of the flu is the seasonal flu vaccine. Despite the known overall safety and effectiveness of the flu vaccine, the anti-vaccination cult is pushing their ignorant nonsense all over social media, especially Facebook.
Despite all the good reasons to get the vaccine, the CDC estimated the flu vaccine uptake in the USA is around 40%. This is well below the 80-90% uptake required for herd immunity against the flu.
Let’s take a look at these zombie flu vaccine myths, and debunk them once again. Zombies are so hard to put down.Read More »Flu vaccine myths – zombie anti-vaccine lies blanket Facebook
The influenza A subtype H1N1 was responsible for the 2009 flu pandemic, the last flu pandemic to strike the planet. It was estimated to have killed 477 children in the USA alone. In response to the 2009 pandemic, the H1N1 flu… Read More »H1N1 flu vaccine – highly efficacious in preventing influenza in children
The ignorance of the anti-vaccine crowd is so annoying because I have to spend valuable time trying to clear up their myths, tropes, and outright lies. An anti-science website, Health Impact News, recently published an article discussing a flu vaccine study from 2012. I don’t know why it took them this long to use this as an “anti-vaccine” study, but I don’t think keeping up with primary research is high on their list of goals.
I’m going to look at a few of the points the anti-vaccine crowd tried to make, refuting them one by one, by looking at the original article published in the relatively high impact factor journal, Clinical Infectious Diseases. The TL;DR version is that they didn’t get anything right. so, here we go into the fray.
Read More »Flu vaccine study does not show it causes 5.5X more respiratory infections
As I mentioned previously, I got the flu vaccine a few days ago. As of today, I do not have a fever, febrile seizures, Epstein-Barr, a reptilian tail growing out of my back, sudden desire to eat durians, or abrupt inclination to watch English Premier League soccer.
But I know I am protected against the flu, and that’s a good thing. I haven’t had the flu since the 1980s, not because I am a superior human being with the most powerful immune system in the world. It’s because I make sure I’m vaccinated against the disease every single year.
Part of the reason I got the flu jab was because my employers demanded it. They needed me healthy when I passed out bribes to physicians and surgeons–oops, I mean when I was visiting top physicians and surgeons to plan clinical trials.
Of course, my employers demanded I wear lead aprons when training physicians on imaging and diagnostic procedures in cardiac cath labs, so maybe they actually cared about me.
But seriously folks, the flu vaccine is important. But there’s always reluctance to get it, so the 2015 flu vaccine update is here to address the issues that may be on your mind.Read More »Your officially unofficial 2015 flu vaccine update