Five days after Dr Trotman said the flu vaccine didn’t work in healthy normal people (blog entry 27 July), various news outlets around the world commented on a new study in the 2 August edition of the Lancet, showing that the flu vaccine did nothing to prevent pneumonia in healthy elderly living in the community, aged between 65 and 94 years of age.
Medscape today said that vaccination
reduced pneumonia rates by a
nonsignificant 8% during the flu season,
and increased risk by 4% during season
peaks. The study pointed out that all
participants had normal immune systems.
Note that word, “nonsignificant”.
Yet in 2007 we were told in a
New England Medical Journal study,
that “vaccination was associated with a
statistically significant 7% decrease in
risk of hospitalization and a 33%
reduction in all-cause mortality risk.”
In this study, the researchers cautioned
that their findings may not be
applicable to older adults or the
"frailest elderly in nursing homes”, who
may have impaired immune responses
further reducing the effectiveness of
influenza vaccination.!
So what’s it to be? A statistically
significant 7% decrease, or a
nonsignificant 8% decrease?
Having said this, we are told that,
“Despite lingering questions, physicians
should still be recommending the flu
shot.” Without the benefits of large
randomized trials we are told that, for
older frailer elderly, that “there could
still be” a 5% or 10% reduction in
pneumonia or pneumonia hospitalization.
We are told the lack of benefit, “could
be that the flu causes only a small
proportion of pneumonias in this
population, or that the vaccine is
ineffective in reducing influenza
infection risk in older people at risk
of pneumonia”. Huh?
Let’s rephrase that another way:
1) The vaccine is ineffective in
reducing influenza infection risk.
Having not read the whole study, I can’t
see if they looked at that, but you’d
think that if they had found a reduced
incidence of the flu in both groups,
they would have said so. Perhaps the
pneumonia news was bad enough, so they
decided not to discuss the lack of
reduction in the flu.
2) It “could” be that the flu only
causes a small proportion of pneumonias
in this population.
You mean, they don’t know what causes
the most pneumonia in this population?
Wait up here… isn’t the reason the flu
vaccine is recommended for the elderly,
because influenza is the main cause of
pneumonia in the frail in rest homes?
Are they now saying that flu might not
be the main cause of pneumonia? Did
they not study that before the
recommendations to shoot up all elderly
in sight with a dud vaccine?
I’m sure the flu "experts" will think I
just don’t get it, but here’s my
problem. If the flu vaccine doesn’t
work in the healthy young, or the
healthy old, how then is it suddenly
going to work in frail elderly with
immune systems far worse than either the
healthy young or the healthy old?
After all, a previous
study showed that: ”Antibody
responses to the influenza vaccine in
placebo-controlled randomized controlled
trials were only about one-quarter to
one-half as strong among older adults as
they were in younger adults.”
Obviously the flu vaccine is a dud, so
can we toss it out now?
Of course not!
One of the authors of
the 2 August Lancet study, Michael L
Jackson, said: "Despite our
findings, and even though immune
responses are known to decline with age,
I still want my grandmother to keep
getting the flu vaccine …The flu vaccine
is safe. So it seems worth getting, even
if it might lower the risk of pneumonia
and death only slightly."
Jackson’s co-author heartily agreed,
saying that everyone over 65 should
still get the useless flu shots every
year, while the researchers conduct lots
of large scale randomized controlled
trials to see whether bigger doses of
vaccine, or stronger types would work
better.
Life is certainly not boring when you
are an influenza vaccine expert, trying
to justify your existence.