Significantly more people get the flu than get West Nile Virus. As of August, there were just over a thousand WNV cases--still in the range where cases can still be counted accurately. On the other hand, millions of people get flu every year, so it is not possible to count each one. It also is cost-prohibitive to run the diagnostic tests for every suspected flu case. As a result, the number of flu cases (and deaths) are determined using statistical methods. These methods are not inaccurate, but they do not give discrete numbers.
Anyway, what you want to look at are this flu map and this weekly flu report. These reports are generated using clinical data that is reported directly to the CDC. What I see in these reports is that flu season is picking up. It is not too late to get your flu shot, if you haven't already received it!
“Significantly more people get the flu than get West Nile Virus. As of August, there were just over a thousand WNV cases—still in the range where cases can still be counted accurately.”
Which means they are NOT counting flu cases. WNV is tested for. Flu is *estimated*. What’s suspicious is the lack of background information and data available that they supposedly used to make that estimate.
Kind of like the global warming *estimates* we get from another government ‘institution’, NASA. All based on models that can be constructed to give whatever answer the modeler wants. Global temperatures on target for 5C rise over the next century. Trust us! Except we won’t tell you exactly HOW we modeled that (trade secret!) OR allow you to have the original raw data. But trust us. If you question us all the little baby polar bears will drown!
As always, I taught college. I failed kids who didn’t ‘show their work’. If we can’t know their methods or have the data their results are irreproducible. And can be published in the Journal of Irreproducible Results. This is not a high status journal. They aren’t allowing even rudimentary peer review.
I have a right to know. Apparently they think somehow their data is subject to ‘national security’.
Why is their method some great big secret? BTW, one of the guys I know who’s foia’d the requests TAUGHT at a local med school. Apparently they think he’s too stupid to ‘properly interpret’ their study. He thinks the flu shot is a scam too.
Neither you, nor I, have any way of knowing whether or not the department secretary pulled that number out of her belly button to make the report page correctly. It wouldn’t be the FIRST time big government agencies have been caught with the pants down this way.
And at least one study has linked vitamin D3 to incidence of influenza:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20219962?dopt=Citation