4 ms·
"Basically worthless" seems like an overstatement. If 16 out of 100 flu cases were prevented, that seems like it could prevent a few hundred to a few thousand d
by ivraatiems 5y ago
"Basically worthless" seems like an overstatement. If 16 out of 100 flu cases were prevented, that seems like it could prevent a few hundred to a few thousand deaths given the number of cases/deaths annually.
https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/index.html https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/index.html says between 12k and 50k deaths per year.
Not great, but not nothing.
- native_samples 5y agoIf you go by the headline, sure. If you read the paper then: "Overall, vaccine effectiveness (VE) against medically attended outpatient ARI associated with influenza A(H3N2) virus was 16% (95% CI = −16% to 39%), which is considered not statistically significant ... This analysis indicates that influenza vaccination did not reduce the risk for outpatient medically attended illness with influenza A(H3N2) viruses that predominated so far this season" In other words the vaccine may have been zero percent effective or actually made flu worse (this has happened in the past). They don't actually know what it did, but they're sure it didn't work by any definition that normal people would use.