Also..."U.S. officials often look to Australia, where the flu season begins during our summer and their winter, for clues on what to expect for flu in the United States. Flu virus infections began increasing earlier than usual in Australia, hitting historic highs in some areas, and interim reports suggested that vaccine effectiveness against H3N2 was only 10 percent. The vaccine for the United States has the same composition as the one used in the Southern Hemisphere.
"But Australia vaccinates only the elderly and infirm, who generally don’t respond as well to vaccines. Its approach makes a difference in vaccine effectiveness rates because children have better responses. CDC officials said a better predictor of vaccine effectiveness for H3N2 is last season's vaccine's effectiveness in the United States. The current vaccine contains the same H3N2 component as last season, which was about 32 percent effective."
The media was pushing the 10% effectiveness story hard this flu season. I wonder how many people skipped getting the flu shot because of that. I thought this article was interesting.
https://www.abqjournal.com/1123404/flu-shots-effectiveness-is-being-misunderstood.html
1300 people got the flu shot at an Albuquerque clinic last season compared to 130 this season. I’m sure the difference isn’t anywhere close to that extreme everywhere, but could the difference still be enough nationwide to cause this flu season to be worse than usual?
I still am ambiguous as to flu shots working much more than a minimal amount as the article you posted states. I think we are on the same page with that.
When I worked the big state psych units we'd all get mandated flu vaccines and it went the same for any pts under conservator ship despite patients rights. I think I had a minor 24 hr bundle of symptoms once but other than that no problems. I do remember one case we had to go to court for a judges order to give the flu vaccine. That pt was a nemesis but really knew the law!