"A 10% Effective Flu Vaccine? Count Me In!" Says The Vastly Uneducated Public.

There's this funny idea in the United States that if you don't get vaccinated for the flu, God help you, you really must be an idiot, a terrible person, an endangerment to your own health and that of your family's. Especially this year, with the worst strain of flu out on rampage, why wouldn't you get the flu shot?

Well, the real question is, why would you?

A recent study from the journal Eurosurveillance has discovered that this year's flu vaccine has a measly immunogenicity of just 10% against H3N2, a nasty subcategory of the flu that is currently running amok in the US. H3N2 is especially difficult to protect against as a result of how rapidly it mutates, but that isn't the only reason the vaccine is failing.

This year's flu vaccine has a measly immunogenicity of just 10%

Every year, public health officials must decide which influenza strain (A or B), will flaunt the flu best on the malady cat-walk. Based off of this selection, the proper vaccine is manufactured; however, whenever the officials are mistaken, the vaccine's success rate plummets dramatically. Either way, the effectiveness of the flu vaccine is at best between 40 and 60 percent. That means that even if you do get the shot, there is no guarantee that you'll stay flu-free. And what about that nasal spray? The CDC itself has recommended that people stay away from the painless alternative because of its long record of ineffectiveness.

The general low effectiveness of the flu vaccine is not the only shocker. As a matter of fact, the more flu shots you get, the more likely you are to contract illness. According to the CDC's own research, each flu shot that you add to your inventory decreases the amount of protection you receive. Not only that, but the flu vaccine can actually increase your chances of acquiring worse influenza infections.

According to The Vancouver Sun Newspaper:

• "Researchers, led by Vancouver's Dr. Danuta Skowronski, an influenza expert at the B.C. Centre for Disease Control, noticed in the early weeks of the [2009 H1N1] pandemic that people who got a flu shot for the 2008-09 winter seemed to be more likely to get infected with the pandemic virus than people who hadn't received a flu shot. Five studies done in several provinces showed the same unsettling results."

The more flu shots you get, the more likely you are to contract illness.

In addition to the vaccine's shockingly miserable success rate, the flu shot is known to cause adverse effects such as shoulder damage and even miscarriage. Various people complain about the nagging pain that they experience in their shoulders after receiving the flu shot. According to a 2011 report by the Institute of Medicine, "The Adverse Effects of Vaccines: Evidence and Causality," the study found, "convincing evidence of a causal relationship between injection of vaccine … and deltoid bursitis, or frozen shoulder, characterized by shoulder pain and loss of motion."

But shoulder damage from the flu vaccine is not nearly as alarming as the potential for miscarriage during pregnancy. When the swine flu epidemic (pH1N1) broke out in 2009, various reports of miscarriage began to surface. It turns out that a recent 2017 study from Vaccine, a medical journal, has confirmed these reports. The study found that, SAB (spontaneous abortion) in the 28 days following the vaccination was more likely among pregnant women who received the pH1N1-containing flu shot for two successive years.

SAB (spontaneous abortion) in the 28 days following the vaccination was more likely among pregnant women who received the pH1N1-containing flu shot for two successive years.

The CDC, however, had otherwise to say about the alerting find. Amanda Cohn, CDC adviser for vaccines stated the following:

• "I think it's really important for women to understand that this is a possible link, and it is a possible link that needs to be studied and needs to be looked at over more [flu] seasons. We need to understand if it's the flu vaccine, or is this a group of women [who received flu vaccines] who were also more likely to have miscarriages."

The CDC has thus far not altered its recommendation for pregnant women to receive the flu vaccination, and continues to encourage women to do so during any stage of their pregnancy.

I don't know about you, but to me it looks like the CDC, an organization that claims it is devoted to the advancement and maintenance of public health, is more concerned with racking in revenue from flu vaccinations than it is concerned with the health of pregnant women and their developing fetuses.

Unfortunately, in this country, we tend to trust everything that public health officials tell us. The mass of flu vaccination advertisements that we are annually bombarded by is no different than propaganda. Nobody wants to discuss the truth about how ineffective the flu vaccine really is–not even the CDC. But I don't blame them. The more BS they spit out about how great this year's flu shot is, the more profit they receive. There is only one way to combat this: we must educate ourselves and educate the public about the truth of the matter, and stop believing everything we hear. Even if you did receive the flu vaccine, and it did prevent you from contracting the virus, just remember this: just because a person has the title "Doctor" and is wearing a white lab coat does not automatically mean you should trust them.

The mass of flu vaccination advertisements that we are annually bombarded by is no different than propaganda.