Back in May we reported on The Gateway Pundit website a curious and emphatic correlation between the flu jab and Covid-19 mortality. Comparing data from across Europe, we found that countries with high coverage of influenza vaccination in the elderly had the highest death toll from the coronavirus pandemic. Correlation, of course, is not causation, and we presented our findings tentatively. Our article drew smears of ‘fake news’ and ‘anti-vax conspiracy theory’. However, this putative risk of the flu vaccine should be taken seriously, particularly after our findings were corroborated by a peer-reviewed scientific analysis.
Christian Wehenkel, in the journal PeerJ (1 October 2020), studied 26 European countries and found a strong correlation (r = 0.62) between flu jab uptake and Covid deaths in older people. This result is slightly lower than ours (r = 0.7). Conducting his analysis after the ‘first wave’ of the virus in spring 2020, Wehenkel was able to compare countries by their public health response, but he found no significant differences due to lockdown or mandatory masks.
Our earlier study arose from observing stark contrasts in Covid-19 mortality in Europe. Why were the UK, Belgium, Italy and Spain so high, and Germany, the Nordic countries and eastern Europe so low? A multitude of ecological, demographic and diagnostic factors may explain this, but on searching for answers we were struck by flu vaccination data. Could this be a case of iatrogenic medicine; in other words, a medical intervention that does more harm than good?
