“Demand for jabs puts squeeze on supply” squealed page 2 of the New Zealand Herald. And those of us who have collected these headlines for decades realise that there will be suckers out there who think the news is for real. Even if they know that this is the typical selling technique for all advertising. “Stocks limited” “One per person”. A few discrete enquiries, revealed a few baffled medical practice receptionists, who said that it was pretty much business as usual. The New Zealand Herald – if they keep clippings files, which I doubt – seemingly doesn't remember that just these sorts of headlines have been trotted out with monotonous regularity: 2000: “Early demand exhausts flu vaccine” and “100,000 more flu jabs on the way”; 2004: "Vaccine readied to ward off killer flu strain” 2005 “Bird Flu shots coming in winter” (Yeah, right...) “Crisis talks on flu vaccine” and so the headlines roll on.
And of course this is greatly encouraged by the annual flu mongers, because… this is CDC/USA POLICY. Yes, you heard me right. The Plan. Here, read it yourself. All they are doing is taking the old adage of “Never give a sucker an even break” and applying it to the flu vaccines.
The Ministry of Health, in it’s desire over the last two decades to get as many people as possible to have the flu shot, decided to adopt the American policy of flu death data inflation. It was 1996 to be precise, and the document is still on the web. It goes like this. For every death you know about add in ones supposedly caused by pneumonia by multiplying each influenza death by 7.7 and voila. And from that point on, the newspapers told us we have 400 deaths in New Zealand per year.
And they even say it to their own doctors to pull the wool over their eyes:
Most annual reports, like this one here:
say:
“The highest number of ILI related deaths (94) in New Zealand was recorded in 1996 during an A(H3N2) epidemic.”
Remember, that’s “INFLUENZA LIKE ILLNESSES” ... not influenza itself.
And after touting 400 deaths a year through the newspapers since 1998, the rate of flu vaccination in this country has crept up slowly to just over 20%. Great, eh?!!
In “non-pandemic” years, flu vaccine is the regular annual, “money for scam” for vaccine manufacturers.
Yes, I said scam, and I mean scam, not jam.
Here is the scam as outlined by the head of the Cochrane Collaboration, Dr Tom Jefferson in a presentation which he presented to the Social, Health and Family Affairs Committee of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe and if you’re interested, here’s another statement by another doctor
Here are the facts in brief for those who haven’t decided to read the documents:
Every country has a statistical data base called “influenza-like illnesses” which includes over 50 different greebies like cold viruses and others, which when they cause a sniffle with a temperature, are classified as “influenza-like-illnesses”. Buried in this mountain of massaged data is about 7 – 15% of “real” flu. So as Dr Jefferson says, even if the flu vaccine worked 100% it would only prevent 7 – 15% of the whole heap of data the Health Department shoves under your nose as representing “the flu”. Problem is, as he also illustrates, you have to vaccinate 100 people to prevent 1 set of symptoms. Some vaccine.
For those of you who are into reality and not conspiracy, here are the facts.
There are some doctors who are prepared to tell the truth and Dr Jefferson is one of them http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1967306,00.html
The Cochrane 2010 review on influenza vaccines for health workers, as usual, says it’s pretty much a dud. http://mrw.interscience.wiley.com/cochrane/clsysrev/articles/CD005187/pdf_fs.html
The Cochrane 2010 review on the flu shot in the elderly, yet again, says the flu shot is pretty much a dud http://mrw.interscience.wiley.com/cochrane/clsysrev/articles/CD004876/pdf_fs.html
So there you go. Business as usual.
Do you think that the effectiveness of this year’s flu shot will be any different?
The three you will be offered are Fluvax, Influvac and Vaxigrip. As to which one, well toss a coin. They all look much the same in formulation to me.
