Medical Science: COVID-19 - What about Flu Shots?
- Details
- Category: Medical Science
- Published on Thursday, 21 January 2021 11:37
- Written by Dr. Jane M. Orient, M.D.,
Doctors and public health authorities are still pushing flu shots, fearing a "twindemic," but should you pause for thought? Some quip that COVID-19 is a great killer, having wiped out deaths from influenza, heart disease, and cancer.
Deaths that are somehow "associated with" COVID, as with a positive PCR test within a certain time period, are attributed to COVID without definitive proof. They might, however, result from COVID-caused blood clots.
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Death rates from influenza have declined to close to zero, as the graphic below shows—the "flu season that wasn't." Does coronavirus "shut the flu out"?
Might the flu shot provide some cross-protection from COVID, while you are awaiting your COVID shot? It may provide some protection against some other diseases. But one study found a 65 percent increased risk of non-flu acute respiratory illness within 14 days of receiving the flu vaccine, due to rhinovirus, enterovirus, respiratory syncytial virus, and coronaviruses. A randomized placebo-controlled trial in children showed that flu shots increased fivefold the risk of acute respiratory infections caused by a group of noninfluenza viruses, including coronaviruses.
In a study of Department of Defense personnel, influenza vaccination had a protective effect against some respiratory viruses—but a 36 percent increased risk of coronavirus.
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While correlation does not prove causality, it can provide clues. In Europe, the rate of COVID-19 deaths per million increased with influenza vaccination rates, as the second figure shows. In nursing homes, where nearly half the COVID-19 deaths have occurred, influenza vaccination is likely to be nearly universal, making a comparison between vaccinated and nonvaccinated persons impossible.
Is vaccination your only shield against influenza (except possibly for early Tamiflu)? There is evidence that hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) might help patients with severe influenza, but appropriate research has not been done—perhaps because of $69 billion in annual vaccine profits.
Influenza vaccine may help, or it may hurt your chances, but there is plenty of evidence that early treatment of COVID does help, and the worldwide death toll from denying early treatment has passed 1.2 million according to some scientists' estimate.
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For further information, see:
· A Home-Based Guide to COVID Treatment
If you would like to discuss these issues, contact me at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..
Influenza (Grippe) Statistics according to World Health Organization
COVID death rate versus influenza immunization rate in 26 European countries
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Jane M. Orient, M.D. obtained her undergraduate degrees in chemistry and mathematics from the University of Arizona in Tucson, and her M.D. from Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons in 1974. She completed an internal medicine residency at Parkland Memorial Hospital and University of Arizona Affiliated Hospitals and then became an Instructor at the University of Arizona College of Medicine and a staff physician at the Tucson Veterans Administration Hospital. She has been in solo private practice since 1981 and has served as Executive Director of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS) since 1989.
She is currently president of Doctors for Disaster Preparedness. She is the author of YOUR Doctor Is Not In: Healthy Skepticism about National Healthcare, and the second through fifth editions of Sapira's Art and Science of Bedside Diagnosis published by Wolters Kluwer. She authored books for school children, Professor Klugimkopf's Old-Fashioned English Grammar and Professor Klugimkopf's Spelling Method, published by Robinson Books, and coauthored two novels published as Kindle books, Neomorts and Moonshine.
More than 100 of her papers have been published in the scientific and popular literature on a variety of subjects including risk assessment, natural and technological hazards and non-hazards, and medical economics and ethics. She is the editor of AAPS News, the Doctors for Disaster Preparedness Newsletter, and Civil Defense Perspectives, and is the managing editor of the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons.
