Not too long ago, the Centers for Disease Control decided that it would not be recommending the FluMist nasal spray vaccine this year. For the last three years, the spray vaccine failed to be reasonably effective and offered very little protection in children aged 2 to 17. The CDC also said that only injections are effective – or at least more effective than the spray.

Because of the CDC’s position, many doctors will not be stocking the FluMist spray, and many insurance companies will not be paying for it either. However, in spite of their opinion of the spray vaccine, there is still plenty of love for the flu vaccine in general, and doctors continue to push people to get jabbed.

There are many questionable aspects of the flu vaccine. The theory behind annual vaccination for influenza is that research will somehow predict what strain of flu will be most prominent in a given year. The idea that they have to make an “educated guess” about what will be happening nine months into the future is less than encouraging. Oftentimes, vaccine developers’ choices do not match up well with the disease strains that are actually present in the environment, which means that their vaccines are not as effective or as helpful. The flu shot is truly a “best guess” vaccine, which leads many people to wonder if it is even worth the potential health risks (it’s not).

Year after year, the CDC claims that its newest concoction will somehow be better than the last, but that is rarely the case. The CDC itself has noted that 80 to 90 percent of all influenza-related deaths occur in patients who are over the age of 65. In 2013, it was reported that the vaccine for the 2012 to 2013 year was hardly helpful to older adults. Indeed, it was only effective against the season’s worst strain 9 percent of the time in adults over the age of 65, and provided a meager 27 percent efficacy in total.

In spite of what the medical establishment wants us to believe, it seems that those who actually need protection and immune system support  get very little of it from the flu shot.

Sources:

ABC7NY.com

WINKNews.com

CDC.gov

CBSNews.com