Dr Katz:
Thank you so much for writing this article! You have expressed much of what I was thinking — but more coherently than I could.
But I am disappointed by your reference to, “anti-vaccine nonsense” regarding the flu vaccine…and I hope you will check out these studies that suggest that getting a flu vaccine might actually make one more likely to be harmed by COVID-19. I hope that you will follow the science on this, rather than the misinformed, “believers.” who seem to get the most coverage by the media.
1) This study
https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.1000258
says:
“Prior receipt of 2008–09 trivalent inactivated influenza vaccine was associated with increased risk of medically attended pH1N1 illness during the spring–summer 2009 in Canada.”
2) Cochrane (largest independent reviewer of medical science)
Said this:
“…those who received trivalent influenza vaccines had higher risk of acute respiratory infection associated with confirmed non-influenza respiratory virus infection.”
3) Also did you realize that during the polio epidemic of the 1950s — people who had gotten the Diphtheria vaccine close to the time that they were exposed to polio actually had an increased risk of being paralyzed by polio?
From this study:
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(14)61251-4/fulltext
“…it was not until the end of World War II that injection-induced polio emerged as a public health concern. The application of epidemiological surveillance and statistical methods enabled researchers to trace the steady rise in polio incidence along with the expansion of immunisation programmes for diphtheria, pertussis, and tetanus.”
4) And this military study was quite interesting: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31607599
suggesting that Influenza vaccination was significantly associated with coronavirus
5) And another… https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0264410X18303153?via%3Dihub
I would love to hear your thoughts.
Thanks.
JoAnn Farb
