This year was supposed to be a catastrophic year due the shortage of flu shots but it didn’t turn out as bad as people anticipated. Plus there is this new research which calls into question the important of some of the shots:
A new study based on more than three decades of U.S. data suggests that giving flu shots (search) to the elderly has not saved any lives.
Led by National Institutes of Health researchers, the study challenges standard government dogma and is bound to confuse senior citizens. During last fall’s flu vaccine shortage, thousands of older Americans, heeding the government’s public health message, stood in long lines to get their shots.
“There is a sense that we’re all going to die if we don’t get the flu shot,” said the study’s lead author, Lone Simonsen, a senior epidemiologist at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in Bethesda, Md. “Maybe that’s a little much.”
The study should influence the nation’s flu prevention strategy, Simonsen said, perhaps by expanding vaccination to schoolchildren, the biggest spreaders of the virus.
However, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta plans no change in its advice on who should get flu shots, saying the NIH research isn’t enough to shift gears.
“We think the best way to help the elderly is to vaccinate them,” said CDC epidemiologist William Thompson. “These results don’t contribute to changing vaccine policy.”
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.