{"id":7553,"date":"2017-09-08T23:48:47","date_gmt":"2017-09-09T06:48:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/?p=7553"},"modified":"2017-09-12T13:31:49","modified_gmt":"2017-09-12T20:31:49","slug":"should-i-get-the-flu-vaccine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/2017\/09\/08\/should-i-get-the-flu-vaccine\/","title":{"rendered":"Should I Get The Flu Vaccine?"},"content":{"rendered":"

An article titled \u00a0Johns Hopkins Researcher Releases Shocking Report On Flu Vaccines<\/a> \u00a0made it around Facebook about how you shouldn’t get the flu vaccine for a variety of reasons. The article used several dubious pseudoscientific scare tactics but I kept reading. Way down the list, it hit on an idea that looks pretty important. I’ve done some research and I am surprised to say that, in my mind, the jury is still out on the usefulness of the flu vaccine for many people.<\/p>\n

Short form<\/strong>:<\/p>\n

The CDC (a usually reliable source) says that getting the flu vaccine each year will reduce your chance of getting the flu by about 50% and it will usually shorten any flu you do get. But then I found another usually reliable source (Cochrane) that says flu vaccines are not worthwhile unless you are sick or a youth between 2 and 18 years-old. Hmmm. Hmmmmmmmm. Cochrane didn’t find any real downside to the vaccine so if you’re worried for your long term health, getting it is still the safer bet.<\/p>\n

Long form:<\/strong><\/p>\n

First, here is Snopes tearing apart the article I found<\/a>, calling it “mostly false.” So that’s not a good start!<\/p>\n

In the “Johns Hopkins” article, they write \u00a0“… a study by the Cochrane group studied hundreds of thousands of people and found it offered zero protection for those three things in the general community.” I tracked that study down \u00a0here<\/a> \u00a0 (no thanks to the author, they need to cite their references!!! grrr). \u00a0This large meta-analysis reported “The preventive effect of parenteral [injected or inhaled] inactivated influenza vaccine on healthy adults is small: at least 40 people would need vaccination to avoid one ILI [influenze like illness] case”<\/p>\n

The main conclusion of this Cochrane-backed meta-analysis with lots of participants is that \u00a0getting the flu vaccine decreases an adult’s (18-65 year-old) chance of getting the flu by 1 in 40, or a measly 2.5%!<\/strong> \u00a0That’s not worth $20 and feeling yucky for a week!<\/p>\n

I went looking for other Cochrane meta-analyses:
\nChildren<\/a> – The flu vaccine probably doesn’t help kids 0-2 years-old. The flu vaccine helps kids 2-18 years-old.
\nElderly<\/a> – They looked for research on flu vaccines for people over 65 years-old but found, astoundingly, very poor evidence of the \u00a0safety, efficacy or effectiveness of vaccines for this population!<\/p>\n

So at this point it’s not looking good for the flu vaccine for anyone except kids aged 2-18. But the CDC reports the flu vaccine is quite effective!<\/strong> This article<\/a> \u00a0 reports that it is roughly 50% effective, and works pretty well across all age ranges. Googling “cdc influenza vaccine effectiveness<\/a>” turns up reports each year of how the vaccine saved thousands of lives!<\/p>\n

Is the flu vaccine valuable? Probably, maybe, no. I don’t know.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An article titled \u00a0Johns Hopkins Researcher Releases Shocking Report On Flu Vaccines \u00a0made it around Facebook about how you shouldn’t get the flu vaccine for a variety of reasons. The article used several dubious pseudoscientific scare tactics but I kept reading. Way down the list, it hit on an idea that looks pretty important. I’ve […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7553","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7553","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7553"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7553\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7554,"href":"https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7553\/revisions\/7554"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7553"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7553"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7553"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}