Did You Get This Year's Flu Shot ?

My employer pays the cost of the shot. So I get one every year.

As I see it, a 10% chance of not getting the flu is better than Doc's precious metals investment advice 100% of the time.

 

"On average, past flu vaccines have been about 42 percent effective, though that number can range anywhere from 10 to 60 percent in a given year.

But Sabeti says even though the effectiveness of this year's vaccine is particularly low, it's still worthwhile to get a flu shot.

"Even 10 percent effective is better than nothing, and a lot of it has to do with herd immunity -- the more people are protected from it, the more other people will also be protected," she said. "In fact, in a year where it's low effectiveness, it's even more important that everybody get it so we can get as much resistance and we don't allow the virus to thrive and grow and keep changing."

Experts say that if you do get the flu, it will likely be less severe if you have gotten a flu shot.

The CDC estimates that the flu virus has caused between 9.2 million and 35.6 million illnesses in the U.S. each year since 2010. Those cases resulted in between 140,000 and 710,000 hospitalizations, and between 12,000 and 56,000 deaths each year."

Flu cases this season are double what they were last year. Make your own choice , based on best available evidence.

 

He is just doing the math and explaining it as he goes. If you can't follow the math a link won't do you much good.

 

Explanation of NNT: http://www.thennt.com/thennt-explained/

Vitamin D NNT: http://www.bmj.com/content/356/bmj.i6583

US population: https://www.census.gov

Common cold stats: https://www.webmd.com/cold-and-flu/common_cold_overview

Bronchitis stats: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/copd.htm

Pneumonia stats:
https://www.cdc.gov/pneumococcal/about/facts.html

Influenza stats: https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/disease/burden.htm

Sum of probabilities of mutually exclusive events: https://www.theproblemsite.com/refe...ing-probabilities-mutually-exclusive-outcomes

 

I don’t disagree... just figured that since the op didn’t post any citations (other than an article that said the flu vaccine was 10% effective, nothing regarding what NNT is or where his NNT numbers came from) and since everyone seemed ok with it that this particular standard didn’t apply to this thread.

 

This is the exact misconception that I addressed in my first post... 10% effective means that your relative risk of getting infected is reduced by 10%. If 7% of people get infected, a 10% effective vaccine means that if you are vaccinated, you have a 6.3% chance of catching the flu (or a 93.7% chance of not catching it). What you said above would only be correct if 100% of unvaccinated people caught the flu.

 

I've personally received a flu shot annually for quite some time and haven't had the flu. On the other hand, I've had the prescribed round of two pneumonia shots and still last year I got pneumonia. Go figure how the odds played out for that.

 

I don’t know the exact numbers off-hand, but I do know that the pneumococcal vaccine is more effective at protecting against invasive pneumococcal infection (infection of the blood or brain/spinal tissues/fluids) than it is at preventing pneumonia (pneumococcal infection of the lungs). Generally speaking, the invasive infection is more dangerous than pneumonia. Even though it is less effective at preventing pneumonia, it does appear to reduce the severity of illness (fewer hospitalizations for pneumonia).

 

AND dat's da' truth!!!!

All I do is get the flu after the shot Da' heck with that noise .. I can catch it by myself .. if I have too

 

Years ago doctors and hospitals didn't push Flu shots, people got sick or they didn't. Now it's a $1,600,000,000 money maker for the Medical and Drug industries and people either get sick or don't still.
https://www.cnbc.com/2015/10/19/the-16-billion-business-of-flu.html