> This is flat out idiotic.

So nothing I said is factually incorrect, but what I wrote is idiotic? Good job.

> The influenza vaccine is a vaccine. Putting "vaccine" in scare quotes is either ignorant or utterly disingenuous. Or, more likely, both.

Perfectly justified considering it's much less effective than other vaccines. So it is a "vaccine".

> Even 50% efficacy is sufficient to dramatically reduce both the incidence and mortality of the disease.

That's the best case scenario. What exactly is the benefit if it's 5%? What if it's 0%? Those are real percentages from years over the last decade.

Last year was very good. This year? Who knows.

> The number of people who develop influenza because they got sneezed on in line waiting to get their vaccination is insignificant compared to the number of people who won't get sick because people get vaccinated.

You realize you can get something else there too, right? And you'll get it by touching the door or the doctor not washing their hands ... not by somebody sneezing at you.

This conveniently ignores the fact that we're essentially creating a vaccine resistant flu virus by natural selection.

I'd like to apologize to the OP (and to the rest of you) for my language. It was pointlessly argumentative and basically abusive.

The "50% efficacy" doesn't indicate that the vaccine provides 50% effectiveness in blocking a particular influenza; rather it stems from the fact that the particular influenza(s) being targeted might not be the ones passing through an area. "The flu" is an umbrella term for a number of different infectious strains (that mutate), and the object of the game is to detect early on which virulent, dangerous and uncommon strains (already active elsewhere) are most likely to spread widely and vaccinate against them. Frequently, less-virulent strains to which a large percentage of the population has already been exposed will be ignored (hitting somebody with hundreds of strains to develop immunity to simultaneously reduces the effectiveness of the vaccine for all of them). And there's always the chance that a particularly nasty strain may become epidemic after this year's vaccine has been formulated and distributed (in which case, there may or may not be an effective vaccine available in time for people to develop immunity to that strain). So even though you have been effectively vaccinated against the targeted strain(s), you can still contract other strains. And you may have a miserable time dealing with something you did catch, which can keep you from thoproughly enjoying the fact that you didn't catch something that may have been many, many times worse.

That is true.

Now, vaccines DO sometimes have complications - last time I got a vaccine (tetanus, 8 years ago), my elbow got swollen to about twice its size and was hard to bend. They weren't sure what went wrong (contaminated vaccine, parasitic infection, ??) but I had to take a two week course of antibiotics (which carries its own problems ...)

I'm sure at the herd level, 50% efficacy for individual vaccines is great.

But on a personal level, I can't find any analysis that takes into account both efficacy ("value") and complications ("price").

And on a personal note, I have the flu maybe once in ten years (if even that), despite hanging around people who get it regularly -- which is why I don't even consider getting a flu vaccine.

There is almost no research about how to improve general immune function, and I believe results on that front would be much more useful than a 50% efficacy vaccine.

Actually, it is even more dramatic. Infection rate is essentially binary: either the disease spreads (which means the number of sick people goes up until pretty much everyone in the community who is not immune gets it - this is called epidemic) or the number of sick people decreases and the disease dies off. There is a tipping point depending on the percentage of people who is immune. For common flu you need to have 50-70% vaccinated to prevent epidemic (its basic reproduction number, R0 per wiki article, is between 2 and 3).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematical_modelling_of_infec...

My OS comes with anti-virus built-in. Don't download useless shit from the Internet.

There is a lot of resources available (http://www.webmd.com/cold-and-flu/news/20111025/how-effectiv...). Numbers like 40%, 50%, 60%, 70% appear in research - a lot of bias.

"While the vaccine does work, and we still recommend that it be used, it does not demonstrate the kind of efficacy that has often been reported," says study researcher Michael T. Osterholm, MD, of the University of Minnesota Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy." - from "Lancet"

In case of flu it is difficult to measure vaccine effectivness since it is often hard to figure out if someone got flu or was attacked by some other virus that has similar symptoms.

It is usually not feasible to do indepth virus (genetical?) analysis to check which kind of virus attacted given sick person.

Symptoms are so common to many other virsu infections, so the data is very noisy and it can work both againts and for vaccines.

It would be cool if some HN community member figure out to measure that better :)

The strain of influenza each year is different. In order to create enough of the vaccine companies need to start making it before it's known which strain will be active. They make an educated guess with varying degrees of accuracy. Some years they get it spot on, some years they don't.

Dan,

The sources are diverse and just a small sample of what is out there hence why I posted them.

Do you want any of the following vaccine constituents in YOUR bloodstream?

  Ethylene glycol (antifreeze)

  Phenol, also known as carbolic acid (this is used as a disinfectant, dye)

  Formaldehyde, a known cancer-causing agent

  Aluminum, which is associated with Alzheimer's disease and seizures and also cancer producing in laboratory mice (it is used as an additive to promote antibody response)

  Thimerosal(a *mercury* disinfectant/preservative) can result in brain injury and autoimmune disease

  Neomycin and Streptomycin (used as antibiotics) have caused allergic reaction in 

some people.

Have your doctor read you the insert that comes with the vaccine.

Then have him/her explain why it makes sense to inject toxic chemicals into the human body and how such substances can aid the delicate immune system.

Vaccines are also grown and strained through animal or human tissue like monkey kidney tissue, chicken embryo, embryonic guinea pig cells, calf serum, and human diploid cells (the dissected organs of aborted human fetuses as in the case of rubella, hepatitis A, and chickenpox vaccines).

The goalposts shift, but the conspiracies remain the same.