If you’re somebody who likes medicine to be perfect, you are not going to be happy by a report in the journal The Lancet. The report looked at flu vaccine and finds it’s only about 59-percent effective in adults who receive the shot.
The report is based on 31 studies going way back to 1967. The study also found that the newer nasal spray, which is used in children six months to seven years of age, works about 83-percent of the time.
So where does this leave all of us with the flu vaccine? Doctors suggest to still get it because it does provide protection.
In addition to that, you need to realize that what they try to do with these vaccines is guess what flu strains will be attacking. They don’t know in advance which ones are coming, so they just try to predict it with the best information they have. Critics of the flu vaccine say we have to do better in the future.
{CBS Philly/Matzav.com Newscenter}
I read in a medical journal that it was more like 60%, rather than 59%. All these percentages and how they arrive at them are pure comical. If it is an “average” and an “estimate” and an “assumption” of millions of people, how do they arrive at 59%?
Whichever way you look at it, fifty-nine per cent success is far better than zero per cent success.
And what makes you think there are no side affects?
We all got the flu shots (most got the nasal spray). Even though its only 59%, and my dr told me there are no guarantees that they wont get the flu. But I felt that it was better than a zero percent! I have a baby in the house and the dr said it can be dangerous if he gets it. Also, my children visit their grandparents often, and we wouldnt want the elder to chas vshalom catch the flu from us!