AFAIK that's not actually been proven. It's clear that someone who got the flu vaccine this year is less likely to die than someone who didn't, all else being equal. But flu shots only confer partial immunity for 6 months or so, whereas getting the real flu confers partial immunity for decades. At least the last time I looked, I wasn't able to find any convincing evidence that someone getting the flu vaccine every year from birth would be in a better place at age 70 than someone who, say, just got the actual flu every year until they started getting the vaccine at age 70 or whatever. Some relevant research/articles:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2870374/
http://www.thestar.com/news/world/2013/08/28/study_raises_re...
http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2014/11/study-add...
"AFAIK that's not actually been proven. It's clear that someone who got the flu vaccine this year is less likely to die than someone who didn't, all else being equal."
Ok, that first sentence says I'm wrong and the second sentence seems to say my statement is correct. I am confused.
"But flu shots only confer partial immunity for 6 months or so, whereas getting the real flu confers partial immunity for decades. At least the last time I looked, I wasn't able to find any convincing evidence that someone getting the flu vaccine every year from birth would be in a better place at age 70 than someone who, say, just got the actual flu every year until they started getting the vaccine at age 70 or whatever. Some relevant research/articles:"
and then three study links with the first one being a study with the line "Contrary to immunity elicited by influenza vaccination, naturally acquired immunity can provide long-lasting protection against subsequent infection by the same viral subtype [22, 23]. For example, when the A(H1N1) virus re-emerged in 1977 after 20 years, people who had been exposed to the virus before 1957 were much less susceptible to infection than those born after 1957 [24]. This long-term protection against influenza viruses of the same type or subtype may be partly due to selection of cross-reactive CTL targeting epitopes on a wide variety of internal proteins [25–27]." - so supporting your statement - sort of
the second an article with no links to any studies from a paper I don't know the reputation.
and the the third having the quote "Our results support the recommendation for annual vaccination, given current vaccine options, as those unvaccinated in the current year appear to be at greater risk when considering both VE and serologic evidence."
So, I have no idea other than I'm just going to keep getting my shot because the years I don't, I get really sick and its not worth the long term gain. I suppose an anti-vaxxer would be screaming "See, See!!!!". I'm not sure I could state they are wrong, either. :(
What makes you think it's not worth the longterm gain? It obviously depends on your utility function, but for most people presumably being sick for a week now is less bad than being so sick that you die 10 years from now. I'm not saying that's necessarily what it comes down to, because the evidence isn't at all clear to me. But I do think that the pro-vaxxers have completely 100% failed to make their case here, so I don't understand why we constantly have these articles with them browbeating others and calling them ignorant when they themselves apparently have no idea about the safety/efficacy of the vaccines that they're calling others stupid and irresponsible for not getting.
Then again, coal dust and cigarette smoke were also not particularly known to be a problem until about the same part of the 20th century, so maybe it was a focus on diseases of a cardiopulmonary nature as people were living longer that contributed awareness on all such issues...
The more we know, the more fragile our lives seem, and the more dangerous the world looks.
This requires a new level of education to understand. I'm glad we're having the discussion, but science is not to blame—we are.
I often wonder if they had done their research with the original story how it would have turned out. We live in a print and fact check later[1] and I think we suffer for it.
I'm sure an anti-vaxxer upon hearing the number of warnings on each new drugs has their opinion validated[2]. Or hearing there was mercury in some vaccines.
Heck, we go about things just stupidly. Get rid of incandescent light bulbs to save the environment. Hey, what the heck, these new bulbs all have mercury?!? I cannot just throw them away and if they break I have to do what?!? Did the change really help or should we have picked that battle a bit later when LEDs were further along? Don't really know, doubt I will see any good reporting to tell me the answer.
I'm really not sure our journalists are equipped for a world that really needs us to weigh risks.
Celebrity is a big part of it these days too. Why we listen to people who are famous for a sex tape is beyond me. I guess reporters like to meet them. I suppose that explains the WHCA dinner[3].
1) it still amuses me the number of times the NY Times has mixed up the state for South and North Dakota Senators.
2) the real danger is obscuring the real big warnings with all the little crap. Look at the warnings on a Tylenol bottle and then find the one that really matters. Why are we telling everyone all the warnings for prescription drugs? Doctors will do that before prescribing and do a better job of explaining.
3) http://thehill.com/blogs/in-the-know/in-the-know/204881-whit...
My pet theory? It's a CYA measure. If you list all, even most rare or absurd possible side effects, you can protect yourself in case someone's body does something weird and the person decides to sue you. Mind you, the "side-effect" can be totally unrelated to your drug, and caused by other illness, genetics, eating something bad the night before, etc. It's often impossible to determine for an average person what caused what in their bodies, but that won't necessarily stop people from going to court.
BTW. on one drug I take I noticed a different way of listing side effects. They divided them into groups labelled (> 1 in 10, > 1 in 100, > 1 in 1000, etc.). This still keeps the CYA value while giving me the ability to prepare myself for what realistically might happen after I take the drug.
Asbestos was good and now is very, very bad (well, in uncontrolled places). I cannot help but think this lead a fair number of people to question what is really safe. It seemed quite a lot of truths suddenly became dangerous at about the same time. That is just learning, but it felt like a turing point. Heck, a lot of people learned that mistakes cost a fair amount of cash to fix. If you want a science version look at the original polio vaccine. It did give quite a few people polio, but it has had an amazing record since. Flu shots are extremely effective when they guess correctly and a pain (37% this year) when they don't, but they still save lives for a very low risk.
Look at eggs. Are they good for you or bad for you? Red wine? People have been conditioned to think studies are about as reliable as midnight infomercials, and neither of these questions fit in the sound bite length answer that is generally given to science on news programs.
Hypocrisy is painful. The average person knows when someone has a "better than them" attitude, and if you are condescending they will ignore you. As an example, if you're flying around on a G5 and telling the general public they will have to downgrade their lifestyle, then the general public won't listen to you.
Its an interesting cycle and really nothing new. I wish the media would quit blaming the "common people" and start looking at how it presents things. People loose trust in authority when authority starts acting like charlatans. They spend every news cast scaring the hell out of people when the statistics say they shouldn't. That bleeds into government and now we arrest people of letting 12 year olds walk home from school. Why would people believe anything?
tldr: if you are constantly told everything is broken and dangerous, expect people to not care anymore or be afraid of everything.