Before I head off on my cruise, woohoo!, I wanted to post something that was dropped in my inbox today regarding flu vaccines. Off the natural skin care subject, but a natural subject none the less. The summary recaps an article Does the vaccine matter? written by Shannon Brownlee and Jeanne Lenzer. The article tells of some of the most eye-opening information you’ve probably ever read about the failure of the flu vacine. I encourage everyone to take the time to read these articles and pass them along.
Does the vaccine matter?
What follows is my point-by-point summary of this groundbreaking article by Shannon Brownlee, originally published in The Atlantic. My opinion statements are shown in brackets and italics.
• Vaccination is the core strategy of the U.S. government’s plan to combat the swine flu.
• The U.S. government has spent roughly $3 billion stockpiling vaccines and anti-viral drugs.
• The CDC is recommending that 159 million Americans receive a swine flu vaccine injection (as soon as possible).
• What if vaccines don’t work? More and more researchers are skeptical about whether they do.
• Seasonal flu (that’s the regular flu) currently kills an estimated 36,000 people each year in the United States. [But most people who die are already suffering from existing diseases such as asthma.]
• Most “colds” aren’t really caused by the flu virus. As few as 7 or 8 percent (and at most, 50 percent) of colds have an influenza origin. There are more than 200 viruses and pathogens that can cause “influenza-like” illnesses (and therefore be easily mistaken for the flu).
• Viruses mutate with amazing speed, meaning that each year’s circulating influenza is genetically different from the previous year.
• The vaccine for each upcoming flu season is formulated by health experts taking a guess [a wild guess, at times] about what strain of influenza might be most likely to circulate in the future.
• The 1918 Spanish Flu infected roughly one-third of the world population and killed at least 40 million.
• In the U.S., the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology predicted that H1N1 influenza could infect up to one-half of the U.S. population and kill 90,000 Americans.
[Keep reading, the good part is coming...]
• Of those who have died from the Swine Flu in the U.S., roughly 70 percent were already diseased with some serious underlying condition such as asthma or AIDS.
• Public health officials consider vaccines to be their first and best weapon against influenza. Vaccines helped eradicate smallpox and polio. [I don't agree with that assessment. Vaccines did relatively little compared to improvements in public sanitation.]
• Each year, 100 million Americans get vaccinated, and vaccines remain “a staple” of public health policy in the United States.
Why the research is bogus
• Because researchers can’t exactly pin down who has influenza and who doesn’t, the research conducted on the effectiveness of vaccines simply calculates the death rate from all causes among those who take the vaccine vs. those who don’t. [This includes deaths from accidents, heart attacks, medications, car wrecks and everything.]
• These studies show a “dramatic difference” between the death rates of those who get the vaccines vs. those who don’t. People who get vaccinated have significantly lower death rates [from ALL causes, and herein lies the problem...].
• Flu shot propaganda cites these studies, telling people that if they get their flu shots every year, they will have a significantly reduced chance of dying. But this is extremely misleading…
• Critics question the logic of these studies: As it turns out, compared to the number of deaths from all causes, the number of people killed by influenza is quite small. According to the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, deaths from influenza account for — at most — 10 percent of the total deaths during the flu season (and this includes all indirect deaths aggravated by the flu).
• This brings up a hugely important dilemma: If influenza only accounts for roughly 10 percent of all deaths during the flu season, how could an influenza vaccine reduce total deaths by 50 percent? (As is claimed by the vaccine manufacturers.) [It doesn't add up. Even if the vaccines were 100% effective, they should only reduce the total death rates by 10%, given that only 10% of the total deaths are caused by influenza.]
• Here’s a direct quote from the story: Tom Jefferson, a physician based in Rome and the head of the Vaccines Field at the Cochrane Collaboration, a highly respected international network of researchers who appraise medical evidence, says: “For a vaccine to reduce mortality by 50 percent and up to 90 percent in some studies means it has to prevent deaths not just from influenza, but also from falls, fires, heart disease, strokes, and car accidents. That’s not a vaccine, that’s a miracle.” [Emphasis added.]
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