This year, like every year, people will line up at their local pharmacies and walk-in clinics to get their flu shot. Here are some odds you should know before rolling the flu shot dice this year.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), in the last 14 flu seasons, the seasonal flu vaccine has been less than 50 percent effective against circulating strains for that year more than half the time. For the 2015/2016 flu season FluMist, the live virus nasal spray that typically has been recommended for children in recent years, had a failure rate of 97 percent. The 2017 flu vaccine was only 36 percent effective at best. More specifically, the CDC estimated last year’s flu vaccine was 25 percent effective against the A(H3N2) virus; 67 percent effective against A(H1N1)pdm09 viruses and 42 percent effective against influenza B viruses. The majority of influenza last year was caused by the A(H3N2) virus, which was the least effective vaccine strain virus in the flu shot. (1)
What we DO know for sure… 100 percent of the time, your body will have contend with the formaldehyde, thimerisol, aluminum, phenol, glycol, nonoxynol, octoxinol 9 and antibiotics injected into your blood stream when you receive the shot (2) – a chemical cocktail that taxes the immune, circulatory, eliminative, glandular and nerve systems beyond what Mother nature intended.