Flu Shot Doing Poor Job of Protecting Older People This Year

New submitter Gunilla sends this news from an AP report: "It turns out this year's flu shot is doing a startlingly dismal job of protecting older people, the most vulnerable age group. The vaccine is proving only 9 percent effective in those 65 and older against the harsh strain of the flu that is predominant this season, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Thursday. Health officials are baffled as to why this is so. But the findings help explain why so many older people have been hospitalized with the flu this year. Despite the findings, the CDC stood by its recommendation that everyone over 6 months get flu shots, the elderly included, because some protection is better than none, and because those who are vaccinated and still get sick may suffer less severe symptoms." An anonymous reader adds information about a new drug that treats influenza by hijacking its own infection mechanism. The compound "binds to an enzyme on the surface of the flu virus called neuraminidase. This enzyme is responsible for severing the connection between the flu virus and human cell so it can move on and infect other cells. The new class of drugs — DFSAs — permanently bind to the enzyme, blocking its action and stopping it from spreading further, the journal Science reported (abstract). Currently available antivirals also work by attaching to this enzyme. But DFSAs do so in such a way that the flu virus cannot evolve to be resistant to the drug without rendering itself useless."

Comments

Quit promoting it when it doesn't work

[Anonymous Coward]

The CDC just keeps shooting themselves in the foot. Admit the problem and QUIT telling everyone to get the flu shot every year. It doesn't work as advertised and should not be relied on a the main defense against the flu.

- Cochrane Review - Vaccines for preventing influenza in healthy adults
http://summaries.cochrane.org/CD001269/vaccines-to-prevent-influenza-in-healthy-adults-

- Dr Lisa Jackson's out of season influenza vaccine research
http://ije.oxfordjournals.org/content/35/2/337.short

Using the proper tools for the job is very important and vaccines work best against stable targets like smallpox. Against the influenza virus it is a total joke. They go to manufacturing in June/July and the flu has 3-6 months to mutate and they wonder why it fails? Give it up. It does not work.

The more the CDC promotes something that clearly does not work the more people are going to throw out the baby with the bathwater and think that they are lying about all vaccines. Good to hear there are some advances in stopping the flu because the current approach has been a total failure.

Re:Quit promoting it when it doesn't work

[The_PS4_Will_Fail]

Millions of years of evolution are more effective than a buch of vaccines made from questionable materials, under questionable manufacturing circumstances, and being monitored by a government agency that was probably bought and sold to the pharmaceutical industry decades ago.

Our, you know, continue to throw money at big pharma and have another double cheeseburger and a Coke. I'm sure they and their lobbyists have your best interest in mind.

Is that how you avoided polio? Better living through exercise and eating broccoli?

This is why homeopathy is better than science

[smooth wombat]

With homeopathy, there is no need to test the results of taking a substance, putting it in water, then constantly diluting the amount of that substance in the water until there is only one molecule of that substance left in the water. Because water has such great memory, it "remembers" the powerful healing abilities of the substance while completely forgetting all the urine, feces, saliva and other bodily fluids the water has come in contact with.

Because of this miraculous memory, that one molecule has more healing and restorative powers than the most powerful, science-based vaccines, vaccines which do nothing except make people sick and keep big pharma rolling in the money like they do for afflictions such as smallpox, rinderpest and polio.

Unlike traditional science-based vaccines, homeopathic medicines can be done in the safety of your own home. No need to get doctors involved with their 8-10 years of medical training and untold hours of visiting patients, doing research and consulting with other so-called "medical experts". One can dispense with such safety protocols because no matter what, homeopathic medicines have been rigorously tested under the most stringent conditions including having a crystal suspended above them while the dilution occurs.

Not once has any side effect ever occurred from taking a homeopathic medicine. That one molecule in the water won't let it happen because of the exponential power it has from being the sole piece left of the original substance.

So do yourself a favor and pass on traditional vaccines and medicines. Homeopathic cures are the wave of the future, able to solve the world's medical ills in a single glass of water. It's only because the medical community doesn't want you to take matters into your own hands bypass the time-tested methods of science-based medical trials that homeopathy has such a bad rap.

Ignore the naysayers, the ones whose ills have been cured by Western medicine, they're just anomalies. Homeopathy is where it's at.