The US Could Be Heading For One Of Its Worst Flu Seasons In Years

As summer turns to fall, the medical community is ramping up for their annual fight against the flu.

William Quirk and Alexander Nowak at Piper Jaffray use the number of flu cases from Australia and New Zealand to forecast the US season, and they say the numbers from the southern hemisphere point to a massive increase in sicknesses this year.

'The Southern hemisphere just went through one of the worst flu seasons on record (despite the vaccine targeting the correct strains)," wrote Quirk and Nowak in a note to clients. "Using the New Zealand influenza season (reinforced with Australia) as our basis (influenza-like illness cases +45% yoy), our analysis suggests a 31.9% rise in influenza-like illnesses (ILI) season/season for the United States."

This would mean that their average prediction for US cases is 943,356, which is the worst since the H1N1 pandemic in 2009. Last year there were 715,031 reported ILIs, and 2009 was the only year in a decade to crack 750,000.

We have oil of oregano and elderberry tincture that we take during flu season. So far so good.

We stopped taking the flu shots years ago. I have been making the elderberry tincture instead.

We start taking a very small prophylactic dose (about a teaspoon) every day starting in November. We haven't gotten the flu in years and very seldom get a cold. If we start getting symptoms we immediately up the dosage to the "illness dosage" and it always seems to knock out what ever we were getting.

Elderberry tincture is great stuff. It is easy to make although you can buy it over the counter in Sambucol. But it is much cheaper to make it yourself and it keeps for years.

<>Got my flu shot last week ... hope it works. I stopped getting them for years, because every time I did get one, sure ‘nuff, got the flu. The past few years now I’ve gotten the shot and no flu.

Each flu vaccine targets 3 (some do 4 now) kinds of flu. If you get the shot but you are exposed to a kind of flu that was not contained in the shot, you can still get the flu. It might not be as severe as it could be, because the shot can still provide partial protection. In addition, it takes 2 weeks to develop a protective level of immunity. So, if you receive the shot but were already exposed, or get exposed within a few days, you will get the flu.

People think, "Oh, I got the shot and I still got the flu, so the shot is useless!" but the real story is a bit more complicated.

I get the shot every year (actually, it is a condition of my employment), and I do not think I have ever had the flu. Even before I started getting annual shots, I don't think I have had it. I hardly ever even get colds.

Last year’s flu shot efficacy estimated to be around 20%.

The low efficacy was only for the H3N2 component of the vaccine. The other two components, the H1N1 and influenza B, were actually quite good matches for the circulating varieties of those strains.

The doctors, hospitals and the CDC do a poor job of consistently testing and recording the exact strains of flu immunized individuals contract in order to determine solid statistical evidence that the flu vaccine is worth getting.

In reality, the CDC and WHO keep very detailed records of which flu strains are responsible for what proportion of ILI. In fact, it is through exactly this kind of testing that researchers are able to determine the efficacy of the flu vaccine every year. They sequence the circulating strains, so that they know exactly how any given virus strain is mutating across both time and distance. This information is published so that those of us who have a professional interest in the information can access it in a timely manner.

DHHS considering revising their advisory statement regarding risk of contracting GBS paralysis to 1 in 50,000

Do you have a reference (from the medical literature) for that?

According to a fairly recent Lancet article, the risk of getting GBS from influenza is 17 times higher than getting it from the flu shot. Another article, a review of the medical literature found that any relationship between GBS and vaccines is temporal (in other words, correlated but not caused), and the only vaccine for which there *might* be a causal relationship was the 1976 swine flu vaccine.

GBS is not permanent, although it can have some long-term consequences; people get over it in a few months. I could discuss a few hypotheses about why GBS happens rarely after infections, and even more rarely (or not at all) after vaccinations, but all I can really say about it is that the syndrome seems to be related to the ramping up of the immune system in response to a pathogen. This ramping up occurs more strongly and for a longer period of time during an infection than it does after a vaccination.

Flu vaccine is an annual placebo ritual at best.

Nope. If that were the case, the efficacy calculated for the flu shot every year would be zero for all strains. Usually, the efficacy is better than 60%. The very fact that an efficacy can be calculated means that the effect of the vaccine is real, not placebo.

I get the flu shot every year (it is a requirement of my employer), and I do not get the flu--in fact, I don't think I've ever had the flu.

I’ve always wondered how many people every year develop cancer because their immune systems have been diverted by being challenged by some vaccination that may only be a crapshoot in terms of its efficiency.

Zero. Cancer is not caused by the immune system functioning the way it evolved to function.

Whether or not you have received a vaccine, your immune system is busy defending your body against potential pathogens every single day. It is constantly making B and T cells to fight off pathogens, because unless you are a "bubble boy" who must live in a sterile environment due to complete absence of immune system, you encounter pathogens every day.

Cancer can be caused by exposure to some chemicals or pathogens that enter the cell. In either case, they disrupt cell function and/or damage the DNA (which permanently disrupts cell function). Cancer can also be caused by spontaneous DNA mutations (i.e. damage) in cells that the normal DNA repair mechanisms fail to correct.

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