OPEN LETTER : Dear Drs Michael Osterholm, Kris Ehresmann and Ed Belangia; None of you get it, do you? You say you “know the idea that the flu vaccine doesn't prevent deaths in the elderly sounds almost blasphemous” and that you “didn't really want to believe it at first either,” but that the new research is “incontrovertible”? The new research is no less “incontrovertible” than the research done between 1960 and 1976, which showed exactly the same - and Dr J Anthony Morris’s honesty, lost him his job in FDA. Can’t nuke the bread-and-butter of all vaccines, the annual flu-vax till ringer! And yes, that’s what was said!
Pardon the sarcasm in this post, but I’ve got a thirty year itch that needs a darned good scratch.
Where was I…
Sorry. Lisa Jackson wasn’t amongst the “first”. She was just amongst the first Lisa-come-latelies, with the rest of you dragging resentfully along behind.
For the record - in 1974, Dr J Anthony Morris publicly, through the newspapers, pointed out that actually, the flu shot didn’t work in any age group, and warned pregnant women to never take the flu shot, because it ramped up the immune system and could cause miscarriages. Wonder how long that message will take, to also become incontrovertible truth? I suppose you’ll want to design a different vaccine for pregnant women next!
Now, don’t the Cochrane Reviews also say that the flu vaccine isn’t much cop in any age?
Oh, I understand your reluctance to think about the bigger porkie that you aren't admitting to, because again, we must placate and feed the egg-laying golden goose! Admit the little porkie and everyone will think there's nothing else to hide?
You say you didn’t know that the vaccine didn’t work, because you didn’t realise that the studies had selection bias, resulting in distorted and unreliable findings. In… credible. You also speak as if this is an isolated happening, and infer that admitting a wee bit of the big lie, will prevent people from seeing the rest of the whoppers you won’t talk about.
Like the fact that the flu vaccine is rubbish, period!
You say there is strong research showing that the flu vaccine works great in young people. Do those studies also suffer from the same (lack of) scientific rigour as the strong research that assured elderly people the flu vaccine would work for them for their lifetime?
Jackson supposedly tested the flu vaccine in health people, and said there was no difference between the vaccinated in unvaccinated, ... then you say it’s okay in healthy elderly people?
Which message is it to be? But see, we must have "business as usual", no?
Pseudo-science of this same ilk, happens in literature aligned to just about every vaccine ever marketed. Sit down and read the whooping cough vaccine’s historical literature – have a talk to Dr James Cherry about selection bias and OBSERVER bias, and then think again.
You say "I know that some people are going to find it very challenging to basically understand that much of what we've probably done has had little impact on deaths,"
I’ll tell you what some of us find very challenging. That for all those years, you believed, and said that the flu vaccine was preventing all these deaths in defiance of what was right in front of your eyes. What we find challenging, is that you people couldn’t SEE that what you were saying was lies.
If there is actually an “honest” researcher out there with their eyes properly focused they will find that the same confounders which existed in the studies of the elderly, will exist in the studies of younger people, and children as well. Same mindset, same methods, same conclusions. Just as the Cochrane Collaboration says. Wake up, will you?
We know you still think the sky is blue. But get this. The sky is actually green when it comes to lots of things in vaccine land, but you just don’t see it, and you think that any criticism of your blessed vaccines is high treason and blasphemy.
The wee blasphemy that you finally, reluctantly accept as your “truth” (because you're working hard of a new vaccine for status quo)..., I, and others have been writing about for decades.
You don’t get it either Dr Ehresmann.
"I welcome the data as a scientist," Ehresmann said. "But as someone that also does communication and public messaging, that's the part that doesn't welcome it as much, just simply because it makes it more complicated for trying to convey things to the public."
Why not ADMIT you lied? Pretty simple.
The reason why flu vaccination rates remain far lower than you would like this, is that most of the people who don’t get vaccines, have known the real deal for decades.
The only thing which will be hard for you to convey to Mr and Mrs Ewen’Me, is why you guys never saw what was in front of your eyes.
Why did you worship at the alter of mathematical models, and statistical sculpturing? For nearly fifty years, to be precise. Or don’t you get that?
It's like the obstetrician who looked at the tachodonymometer tracing of our son's labour, nearly popping his eyes, He was about to throw the panic switch, when a midwife strolled in and said, "we aren't using that machine. It's got a fault. She took off the tacho, placed her hand on my stomach and said, "Your contractions are just fine." Well, duh. Why couldn't the obstetrician put his hand on my stomach to work that out? What's with you guys?
You, Dr Ehresmann are worried that if you tell the truth, people will think there is no reason to get the flu vaccine. Don’t’ worry. The sheep will always do what you tell them, because they have no other god than you.
But the take home message thinking people have always understood is … "We're not having the flu vaccine!", and they are right.
There is no reason to get a flu shot.
Go and swat up on vitamin D, and you’ll see why. Ever wondered why so many of us have NEVER had the flu in our lives, even though we’ve never had a vaccine? Yet we’ve all been amongst communities where it was rife.
But then, - if everyone knew about vitamin D and other ideas which pharma doesn’t know about either… , that would quickly drop the numbers for many infectious diseases. Then you, the director of infectious disease epidemiology might have to find another job, so you can’t have that!
Your collective problems will continue, Drs Osterholm, Ehresmann and Belangia, because
- the problem
- isn’t JUST
- that the flu vaccine doesn’t work.
The real problem is that doctors serially LIE about the fact that the flu vaccine doesn’t work, and then worse still, tell us that… “the flu vaccine is better than nothing.”!!!!
Can you hear the cyberspace richter-scale-10-laughter on that one?
The bottom line IS NOT…. as you put it, that, “we need new and better vaccines that are going to work more effectively in the elderly”. YOU have set your work-sights on the acclaim and royalties for a new, improved type of flu vaccine, to ring your tills as well big pharma’s – YOU might need a new and better vaccine to justify your funding.
But do people?
How do you feel about having injected billions of people with rubbish for 50 years, without even saying, “Sorry we screwed up”?
How do you feel about 50 years of lying to families whose loved one died after a vaccine, from an infection you said this vaccine would prevent? What did you call it? An influenza-like-illness?
Do you feel proud of your half century of excuses?
And as Dr Robert Mendelsohn once said, “You will only hear about a mistake, when Pharma is about to launch a new and worse solution”.
The bottom line for people who think, goes like this:
We don’t need any flu vaccine. What we need are doctors who understand vitamin D, the body, and natural ways to both prevent and get over any infectious disease.
We need you to stop deceiving yourself, and lying to us.
We need you to start thinking in a square OUTSIDE the vaccination box, looking at real health for a change, and stop looking at your job in terms of lining your own royalty pockets.
We need you to take off those pre-conceived blinkers designed solely to produce a result for pharma-till.
And for those mugs who chose to worship the Flu Vaccine God, the least you could do is studies which actually represent all sectors of society, instead of using exclusion criteria which remove from trials at least 50% of the people you will eventually say the vaccine should be used in.
Please explain.
How is it that you intend to “stick” the elderly with a double vaccine, on the basis that more has to be better?
What were your end points on that little gig? More distorted and unreliable findings, because yet again, the wrong questions were asked, therefore meaningless answers garnered; more sweeping assumptions made, all in the quest of keeping all flu vaccines sanitised, and pharma’s profits double-dosed as well the elderly?
Your problem isn’t one of working up an acceptable win/win message, Dr Osterholm.
Your problem is a lot more serious than that.
It’s a fundamental one of zero credibility.
Yours nauseously,
Hilary Butler.
