Annual Flu Shots Can Increase Future Susceptibility to Influenza and Other Infections
Another commonly accepted myth is that seasonal flu vaccination “primes” your body to combat all strains of influenza,33 regardless of whether they’re included in the vaccine or not. However, vaccines don’t work that way. The vaccine does prime your body to fight viruses, but only those included in the vaccine.
Not only does it not protect against other strains, this priming of your immune system can also make you more susceptible to infection from other pathogens. This phenomenon is an effect inherent in heterologous immunity. As explained in a 2014 paper:34
“Immunity to previously encountered viruses can alter responses to unrelated pathogens … Heterologous immunity … may be beneficial by boosting protective responses.
However, heterologous reactivity can also result in severe immunopathology. The key features that define heterologous immune modulation include alterations in the CD4 and CD8 T cell compartments and changes in viral dynamics and disease progression.”
Heterologous reactivity has been demonstrated in several studies. For example, a 2010 Canadian study35 found people who were vaccinated against seasonal influenza were more susceptible to the pandemic H1N1 influenza strain. These findings were replicated in a 2014 ferret study.36
Similarly, a 2012 Chinese study37 found a child’s chances of contracting a respiratory infection after getting the 2008-2009 seasonal flu shot rose more than fourfold. The study’s authors concluded:
“We identified a statistically significant increased risk of noninfluenza respiratory virus infection among TIV [inactivated influenza vaccine] recipients, including significant increases in the risk of rhinovirus and coxsackie/echovirus infections, which were most frequently detected in March 2009, immediately after the peak in seasonal influenza activity in February 2009.”
Heterologous immunity is also addressed in a 2013 paper,38 which noted that “vaccines modulate general resistance,” and “have nonspecific effects on the ability of the immune system to handle other pathogens.” The authors also stated that:
“… [O]ur current perception of the immune system is … simplistic. It was, to a large extent, shaped in the 1950s with the formulation of the clonal selection hypothesis.
This line of thinking has emphasized the adaptive immune system and the specific antigen recognition and specific memory, which have been crucial in vaccine development, perhaps at the expense of examining cross-reactive features of the immune system as well as the memory capacity of the innate immune system.
Although tens of thousands of studies assessing disease-specific, antibody-inducing effects of vaccines have been conducted, most people have not examined whether vaccines have nonspecific effects because current perception excludes such effects.”
Influenza Vaccines May Do More Harm Than Good
The flawed “universal use” vaccination ideology pays no attention at all to studies that show vaccines can cause acute and chronic illness while failing to work as advertised.
Last season’s influenza vaccine had an effectiveness of 36 percent, yet they use the severity of the flu season as a goad to get you to vaccinate yourself and your children yet again — this, despite the fact that most studies find higher rates of health problems after just one or two flu shots.
A mounting body of research strongly questions the validity of annual flu vaccination as an effective public health measure. Here’s just a sampling of the evidence that is completely ignored by heath officials during the annual vaccination campaign:
| With each successive annual flu vaccination, the theoretical protection from the vaccine appears to diminish39,40 — A 2012 Chinese study41 found a child’s chances of contracting a respiratory infection after getting the seasonal flu shot rose more than fourfold, and research published in 2014 concluded that resistance to influenza-related illness in persons 9 years and older in the U.S. was greatest among those who had NOT received a flu shot in the previous five years.42 More recent research suggests the reason seasonal flu shots become less protective with each dose has to do with “original antigenic sin.” Here, they found that influenza vaccine failed to elicit a strong immune response in most participants,43 which a University of Chicago Medical Center press release entitled, “Past Encounters with the Flu Shape Vaccine Response,” explained as follows:44
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| The annual flu shot can increase the risk of contracting other, more serious influenza infections — Canadian researchers reported in 2010 that people who had received the seasonal flu vaccine in 2008 had twice the risk of getting sick with the pandemic H1N1 “swine flu” requiring medical attention in 2009 compared to those who did not receive a flu shot the previous year.45 These findings were replicated in ferrets in 2014.46 Previously, a 2009 U.S. study compared health outcomes for children between 6 months and age 18 years who did and did not get inactivated influenza vaccine and found that children who received annual influenza vaccinations had a three times higher risk of influenza-related hospitalization, with asthmatic children at greatest risk.47 |
| Flu vaccine doesn’t work well in statin users — Statin drugs (taken by 1 in 4 Americans over the age of 45) may interfere with your immune system’s ability to respond to the influenza vaccine.48,49 After vaccination, antibody concentrations were 38 percent to 67 percent lower in statin users over the age of 65, compared to nonstatin users of the same age.50 Antibody concentrations were also reduced in younger people who took statins. |
| Influenza vaccine studies document the vaccine’s ineffectiveness — A 2010 independent scientific review of influenza vaccine studies concluded that flu shots have only a “modest effect in reducing influenza symptoms and working days lost,” and “there is no evidence that they affect complications, such as pneumonia or transmission.”51 Another independent review published in 2018 found that in children aged 3 to 16 years, receipt of live or inactivated flu vaccines only slightly reduced the proportion of children with confirmed influenza.52 Moreover, the influenza vaccine fails to prevent influenza-like illness associated with other types of viruses responsible for about 80 percent of all respiratory or gastrointestinal infections during any given flu season.53,54,55 |
| Little evidence that flu vaccination lowers mortality in the elderly — Research56 published in 2006 analyzed influenza-related mortality among the elderly population over age 65 in Italy associated with increased flu vaccination coverage between 1970 and 2001. Investigators found that after the late 1980s, there was no corresponding decline in excess deaths, despite rising flu vaccine uptake among the elderly. According to the authors, “These findings suggest that either the vaccine failed to protect the elderly against mortality (possibly due to immune senescence), and/or the vaccination efforts did not adequately target the frailest elderly. As in the U.S., our study challenges current strategies to best protect the elderly against mortality, warranting the need for better controlled trials with alternative vaccination strategies.” Another 2006 study57 showed that, even though seniors vaccinated against influenza had a 44 percent reduced risk of dying during flu season than unvaccinated seniors, those who were vaccinated were also 61 percent less like to die BEFORE the flu season ever started. This finding has since been attributed to a “healthy user effect,” which suggests that older people who get vaccinated against influenza are already healthier and, therefore, less likely to die anyway, whereas those who do not get the shot have suffered a decline in health in recent months. |
| Flu vaccination during pregnancy may raise risk of miscarriage — Research published September 25, 2017, in the medical journal Vaccine58,59 found that women who had received an inactivated 2009 pandemic H1N1-containing flu shot the previous year were more likely to suffer miscarriage (spontaneous abortion) within 28 days of receiving another pH1N1-containing flu shot during pregnancy. The finding was statistically significant. While most of the miscarriages occurred during the first trimester, several also took place in the second trimester60,61 |
| Effectiveness of flu vaccine is typically below 50 percent — February 16, 2018, the CDC published interim estimates of the 2017-2018 seasonal influenza vaccine’s effectiveness for the U.S.62 The overall adjusted flu vaccine effectiveness against influenza A and influenza B virus infection associated with medically attended acute respiratory illness was 36 percent in 2017-2018. Put another way, the vaccine did not work 64 percent of the time. More precisely, influenza vaccine effectiveness during the 2017-2018 flu season was estimated to be 25 percent effective against the A(H3N2) virus; 67 percent effective against A(H1N1)pdm09 viruses and 42 percent effective against influenza B viruses. In 2015, a CDC analysis63 revealed that, between 2005 and 2015, the flu vaccine was less than 50 percent effective more than half the time, so 2017-2018’s low effectiveness rating (36 percent) was no great surprise. The Flucelvax vaccine introduced during the 2017-2018 flu season, which is grown in dog kidney cells rather than chicken eggs, was also a failure. Touted as a new-and-improved flu shot that would protect more people, FDA research found no significant difference between it and the conventional flu shot in protecting seniors. While flu vaccines overall had a 24 percent effectiveness in preventing flu-related hospitalizations in people aged 65 and older, the Flucelvax vaccine had an effectiveness rate of only 26.5 percent in that population.64 |
| Flu vaccine does little to lessen influenza severity — While health officials are fond of saying that getting a flu shot will lessen your symptoms should you contract influenza, a 2017 study65 by French researchers, which aimed to assess the veracity of such claims, found it not to be true most of the time. Looking at data from vaccinated and unvaccinated elderly patients diagnosed with influenza, all they found was a reduction in initial headache complaints among those who had been vaccinated. According to the authors:
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| Flu vaccine is associated with serious disability — Permanent disability such as paralysis from Guillain-Barre Syndrome (GBS) is a risk you need to take into account each time you get a flu shot. GBS was first identified as a risk for influenza vaccine during the 1976 swine flu campaign in the U.S. and in 2003, the CDC stated that for two flu seasons in the early 1990s, the flu vaccine caused an excess of 1.7 cases of GBS per 1 million people vaccinated.66 Data from the federal vaccine injury compensation program (VICP) operated by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and Department of Justice reveals that GBS is a leading injury for which people are receiving financial compensation for vaccine injuries and deaths, and the flu vaccine is now the most common vaccine cited by adults seeking a vaccine injury compensation award.67,68 Shoulder damage is another risk, caused by improper injection technique.69,70,71 Shoulder injury related to vaccine administration (SIRVA) includes chronic pain, limited range of motion, nerve damage, frozen shoulder and rotator cuff tears, and is typically the result of the injection being administered too high on the arm. This risk is particularly high when people get vaccinated outside of a doctor’s office or other clinical setting. Many people getting flu shots in a public setting like a grocery store or pharmacy simply roll up their sleeves or pull down the top of their shirt, exposing only the upper part of their deltoid, thereby increasing the risk of getting the injection in the joint space rather than the muscle. GBS and SIRVA were both added to the Vaccine Injury Table in 2017.72,73 By adding those vaccine complications to the table, vaccine-related GBS and SIRVA cases brought before the “Vaccine Court” in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims in Washington, D.C., will be more likely to receive federal vaccine injury compensation. In this lecture, immunologist Tetyana Obukhanych, Ph.D., author of “Vaccine Illusion: How Vaccination Compromises Our Natural Immunity and What We Can Do to Regain Our Health,” explains how vaccines damage your immune function, which can result in any number of adverse health effects. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8h66beBrEpk |
Source: Dr. Mercola
