Table of Contents
Introduction
A March 2020 newsletter for McLaren Health Plan members in the state of Michigan contains a full-page promotion for influenza vaccines. Headlined “It’s Not Too Late to Get a Flu Shot” and citing the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services as its source, McLaren makes the following claims explicitly or implicitly:
- Everyone aged 6 months and older should get a flu shot, including pregnant women.
- Getting a flu shot “is the best way to prevent against getting the flu.”
- Flu shots reduce the risk of complications from influenza in children, adults, and the elderly.
- Influenza vaccines confer herd immunity by preventing transmission of the virus and thereby protecting children younger than six months old, who are too young to get the flu shot.
- If you get a flu shot, it will build your immunity to prevent the flu.
- “You cannot get the flu by getting a flu shot.”[1]
The implicit overall message of McLaren’s flu shot promotion is that the vaccine has been scientifically proven to be both very safe and highly effective. But every one of those claims is false or, at best, highly misleading.
Influenza Vaccination of Children, Including Infants
A 2018 systematic review of the scientific literature on the use of flu shots in healthy children published in the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews found with high certainty that vaccination reduces the risk of influenza illness such that five children are required to be vaccinated in order to prevent one case of the flu.
However, for children under six years of age, the vaccine “does not provide significant protection against influenza”. For children aged two years or younger, “there is very limited evidence to determine their effects compared with placebo.” For children under age two, “there is no evidence of effect”.
Furthermore, researchers found “no convincing evidence that vaccines can reduce mortality, hospital admissions, serious complications, or community transmission of influenza.”
Concerningly, data on adverse events “were not well described in the available studies”, and for children under two years of age, there were “very few randomized controlled trials”. Researchers were “surprised to find only one safety study of inactivated vaccine in children under 2 years, carried out nearly 30 years ago”. The lack of safety data for flu shots in younger children “is particularly surprising given that the inactive vaccine is now recommended for healthy children six months and older”.
There is also uncertainty about the effects of repeated annual vaccination across different flu seasons, and most studies were not well designed or conducted; the general methodological quality of included studies was judged to be “poor”.[2]
A prior Cochrane review, published in 2012, had reached similar conclusions. Researchers had similarly expressed alarm about the lack of studies demonstrating safety in children under two years of age, remarking that, “If immunization in children is to be recommended as a public health policy, large-scale studies assessing important outcomes, and directly comparing vaccine types are urgently required.”[3]
As their updated 2018 review indicates, such “urgently required” safety studies were not forthcoming.
IRISH Epidemiologist Professor DOLORES CAHIL debunking with EVIDENCE and REAL SCIENCE, the COVID 19 narrative from “21st Century Wire’: https://21stcenturywire.com/2020/05/13/interview-debunking-the-covid-19-narrative-with-prof-dolores-cahill/ Notice how she mentions what I have said for YEARS, that if your Immune system is compromised, use Vitamins C, D3 and Zinc to build it up again,and for those with other sickness conditions, such as,Cancer, in the over aged, 70, use small amounts of very economical, Hyroxychloroquine additionally.
Too bad the old vaccine manufacture inserts have disappeared from the net because they never stated the Flu shot prevented a person from catching the Flu, they stated the shot shortened the duration of the illness if a person did catch it.