(reposting this as I accidentally started a new thread)
Dear Richard
This is a late reply but I have enjoyed the September Preventing Overdiagnosis Conference in Barcelona.
With ref to you mentioning RCTs from the previous century,
I can only add these as proof in my mind if all the missing RCTs of the past century are being provided too.
Thank you also to Jeremy, Juan, David, Tom (I will ban the word flu and use influenza), Kevin, et al for your contributions.
I am aware of the shifting emphasis in the thread but my question is, do influenza vaccines really work?
This question do "Influenza vaccines really work? Keeping apart the true from the false", is the promising title of an article in Vaccine 33 (2015) 7029-7032
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0264410X15011809
Effectiveness of 50-70% is promoted based on recalculations of a Cochrane analysis that questioned influenza vaccination benefits for the elderly. This number is like the RRR statistical technique that is often used as a method to amplify trivial beneficial effects.
Vaccine safety issues are not seriously discussed in this article and are kept to side effects immediately after the vaccination or Guillain-Barré syndrome and narcolepsy. Even though there is an acknowledgement that it can affect nerves, influenza could also deliver a life changing event? As described in the BMJ with reference to Dr Arthur Conan Doyle. http://www.bmj.com/content/340/bmj.c416
As such do issues like depression, suicide or dealing with pain - because these NCDs have become major endemics - need to be taken into consideration? There are hardly any comparative studies between vaccinated and unvaccinated people, which is inexcusable.
Furthermore, are people who have been vaccinated more vulnerable to other influenza strains and viruses than those who are not vaccinated?
Despite the authors describing the problems with vaccine effectiveness (VE) and VE-issue as compared to biological vaccine efficacy and virus circulation, co-circulation of other pathogens and measurement biases induced by study designs: randomized trials are ignored and patient relevant outcomes not discussed. In general, do the epidemiological maths for influenza vaccines lean towards Daniel Kahneman's conclusion about stockbrokers in chapter 20 "The illusion of validity" in his book "Thinking Fast and Slow"?
To me there seem to be too many variables, diluting 'ebm' and making it unmeasurable.
Shared decision making (SDM) is not mentioned in the above mentioned article from the journal 'Vaccine'.
In general, there seems to be a secrecy and silence from vaccine producers and influenza vaccine supporting epidemiologists, as there is not an Open Data policy?
In the mean time public health departments have started to vaccinate for economic reasons (though not read yet the evidence to support that). Furthermore there is active surveillance going on to check on how to increase vaccine uptake. The "vaccine uptake" studies seem more prevalent than studies that check for vaccine side-effects or RCTs or comparative research between vaccinated and unvaccinated people. Overall, the main focus of the influenza vaccine lobby is to generate a bigger uptake and lobbying governments, the WHO, the UN, Unicef and making vaccine uptake mandatory, either through law or peer and fear pressure.
The above mentioned article in 'Vaccine' also reads like a sales pitch, with affirmations almost every paragraph, without any references to evidence and it also shows poor efforts that check for vaccine side-effects. All of this does not enable SDM (shared decision making), Cates diagrams should be made available rather than RRR (relative risk ratio).
It seems to me that homeopathy could be equally represented as effective should a similar plethora of studies be done as that have been done on influenza vaccines. In that way homeopathy might make a similar convincing case with epidemiological calculations of estimates that are only understandable to an in-crowd but the treatment not costing hundreds of millions per country and might actually be safer?
Dr W Havinga, locum GP, Gloucestershire, UK
@wouterhavinga
I am interested in normalising common illnesses.
Medicine focuses on symptom control rather than the developmental benefits from disease.
Infectious diseases ("Virolution" & microbiome) and life events (Salutogenesis)
can have developmental benefits but medicine, in my opinion, rather stigmatizes patients
with labels such as anxiety and depression and constantly spreads pandemic fears.
www.whopaysthisdoctor.org/doctor/312
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