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>"We have kind of hyped this vaccine so much for so long we are starting to believe our own hype. Really, what we should be doing is looking for better vaccines

>"We have kind of hyped this vaccine so much for so long we are starting to believe our own hype. Really, what we should be doing is looking for better vaccines," The PR on the flu-vaccine/campaigns and the efficacy of the vaccine itself have long been misaligned. Good to hear scientists and public health-officials start to acknowledge this. We'll see how long it takes to trickle down to the general public.

Someone1234 12y ago
In particular as it was only 23% effective this year: http://www.ajc.com/ap/ap/top-news/flu-vaccine-not-working-well-only-23-percent-effec/njp3t/ http://www.ajc.com/ap/ap/top-news/flu-vaccine-not-working-we...
- skj 12y ago
  Is that bad? The ease of getting a vaccine needs to be enough such that it's not a burden to do so. Once that's achieved, 23% effective is actually quite a good benefit, given that those 23% also fail to infect others and improve our overall herd immunity.
  - _red 12y ago
    You do know that vaccines makers have legal immunity, right? One of the little quirks of the Patriot Act was to make it impossible to sue vaccine makers -- which is exactly why since 2001 you've seen a proliferation of every grocery store offering vaccines. Presumably you are a start-up minded person. Imagine the legal challenges you would face in trying to come up with a business plan where you could inject biological material into people....think your lawyer would permit? As for if 23% effeciancy is "worth it", well the protection you are getting must be offset by the negative effects caused by vaccines, if you doubt there are negative effects see Legal Immunity above.
    - Fomite 12y ago
      What you're looking for is the 1986 National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act, not the PATRIOT Act for limiting tort liability for vaccine manufacturers. Which is pretty much a precondition for doing business developing vaccines to address emergency vaccines. Presumably you are a start-up minded person. Would you do business if someone said "We need you to implement some very complex code, rush it into production on our timetable, and if there's a hiccup, your users will sue you into oblivion."
      - jeangenie 12y ago
        Curious how OP got this idea. USA PATRIOT Act Sec. 1013 (a)(10), (b)(5,6) mentions research, distribution and stockpiling of vaccines but nothing about liability. There was a decision in 2011 that might be of interest: http://blogs.findlaw.com/decided/2011/02/cant-sue-drug-companies-for-vaccine-defects-rules-supreme-court.html http://blogs.findlaw.com/decided/2011/02/cant-sue-drug-compa... http://www.cnn.com/2011/CRIME/02/22/us.scotus.vaccines/index.html http://www.cnn.com/2011/CRIME/02/22/us.scotus.vaccines/index...
        CamperBob2 12y ago
        It's called "Believing the first thing you hear or read on the Internet, and automatically rejecting everything you hear or read on the subject after that." It just means that some loony anti-vaxxer got to him/her first. There ought to be a formal name for the fallacy of assigning greater credibility to earlier information, but I'm not sure what it would be.
        Fomite 12y ago
        It's essentially confirmation bias.
        _red 12y ago
        No, its called I got the name of the Act wrong. Do you deny the primary point? That its illegal for you to sue vaccine makers?
  - Someone1234 12y ago
    > Is that bad? More people literally died this year than most years. So I am going to say an emphatic: yes, it is bad.
    - bryanlarsen 12y ago
      And without the vaccine, even more people would have died. So it was good. Could have been better, but still better than no vaccine.
      - Someone1234 12y ago
        It is 23% this year, compared to 50-60% for most other years. It is bad and people are now dead who would still have been alive if it was a typical year. Nobody is suggesting no vaccine would be an improvement so that isn't relevant. What is relevant is figuring out if we can do better, for example, instead of calculating risk in Feb for the upcoming winter, can we improve manufacturing so we can forecast in e.g. July, or better look at the data every month and change the formula mid-year if required (so people getting the vaccine in August and December might get a different formulation). As I said, until someone suggests cancelling flu vaccines, the argument that it is "better than nothing" isn't relevant. Instead we should assume the vaccine is staying and compare it to itself.
        bryanlarsen 12y ago
        "Nobody is suggesting no vaccine would be an improvement so that isn't relevant." There are lots of people doing so. Probably very few here on Hacker News, but there are many in the real world. Many people who read the linked article will use that as an excuse to not get the flu vaccine next year.
        mikeash 12y ago
        One of the top level comments here questions if the vaccine is worthwhile, with a strong implication that a) it's not worthwhile for a disease which a healthy adult can recover from without it and b) nobody has been smart (or unbiased) enough to ask the question before.
  - Fomite 12y ago
    It's not good but it's probably more beneficial than harmful. But the flu vaccine is one of the least compelling cases for vaccination - but also one of the most important ones for public perception.
  - dragonwriter 12y ago
    Its bad compared to how effective the vaccine normally is, its good compared to no vaccine at all. The idea that its one vaccine in the first place that is being "hyped" is wrong, each year a new vaccine is created, and its done based on the strains of the flu that seem likely to be prominent. One of the reasons this year was worse than normal is that the strains that were prominent weren't what was predicted. I don't think anyone would be against developing a better vaccine, though I do think lots of people would be opposed against trading off efforts to assure that each years vaccine made under the current process gets well promoted to the public and distributed to achieve that. Those aren't the only possible uses of resources in our society, and there is no reason that efforts to develop are better flu vaccination system need to be traded off against efforts to assure the reach of the current system.
    - unclebucknasty 12y ago
      >there is no reason that efforts to develop are better flu vaccination system need to be traded off against efforts to assure the reach of the current system I'm not sure that this is true. From a purely market-driven perspective, pharma is able to successfully move this product each year, without risk of liability, and without additional R&D. As long as there is a PR machine around this current product that continues to "reach" and drive customers, then what's the incentive to engage in expensive R&D needed to develop the next round?
      - dragonwriter 12y ago
        Since its a public health problem, I would expect that, were it adopted as a priority, that the incentive would be in the public funds allocated to grants for vaccine R&D, and (for existing Big Pharma firms) to avoid being left without a chair when the current gravy train ends (apologies for the mixed metaphors) when better vaccines are deployed.
        unclebucknasty 12y ago
        >were it adopted as a priority, Agreed. Once it becomes a priority with the subsequent funding/grants, I think that's when we'd see movement. Ironically, however, I wonder if the hype around the current program even slows adoption of new priorities. Though, perhaps acknowledgments such as the type referenced by public health officials in this article portend the start of some movement. >left without a chair when the current gravy train ends when better vaccines are deployed I wonder if their thinking is that this problem is easily fixed through acquisition if/when the time comes, especially in an industry as M & A-driven as pharma. Meanwhile, gravy-train.
  - dorfsmay 12y ago
    23% would not be bad if it increased your chances of avoiding the flu with near to zero risk. I've been a strong advocate of the flu vaccine, because why not putting all the odds, even if they're not 100%, on your side. But... Have you read the article? It lookalike getting vaccinated is actually not zero risk, on the contrary.
    - deleted 12y ago
      [deleted]
  - unclebucknasty 12y ago
    >23% effective is actually quite a good benefit, Well, my comment was pointing more to the disparity between the PR around the vaccine vs. the reality of it. It's well-known that it's a hit-or-miss proposition each year and, here, we're seeing evidence of further holes borne of the annual effort itself. That is, there's now a downside to actually following the advice, beyond side effects and ineffective vaccines. So, I'm speaking more to the juxtaposition of that reality against the "vaccine-is-everywhere-better-get-it-or-you-might-die" kind of PR in which public health officials and pharma engage every year.
- MBCook 12y ago
  After some quick Googling for comparison, there was a study in 2011 that seems to say that on average it's about 66% effective. http://journalistsresource.org/studies/government/federalstate/influenza-flu-vaccines-review-meta-analysis/ http://journalistsresource.org/studies/government/federalsta...
- zippergz 12y ago
  Yeah, as a pure anecdote, I got the vaccine and am just now getting over a brutal case of the flu. My doctor said he's been seeing tons of people in the same boat this year. Bummer.
- pella 12y ago
  "In Canada, the flu vaccine could be working even more poorly, with "little or no protection."" ... "About 98 per cent of the viruses are mismatched that have been characterized in Canada, whereas in the U.S. its closer to about 68 per cent, or about two-thirds are mismatched. So it's not a good omen," said Dr. Danuta Skowronski of the British Columbia Centre for Disease Control. " http://www.cbc.ca/news/health/flu-vaccine-only-23-effective-in-u-s-even-less-effective-in-canada-1.2902091 http://www.cbc.ca/news/health/flu-vaccine-only-23-effective-...
benihana 12y ago
Money quote right here: "We have kind of hyped this vaccine so much for so long we are starting to believe our own hype." Scientists and doctors are just as susceptible to bias as the rest of us. We'd all do well to remember that.
- mikeash 12y ago
  It's fine to be skeptical, but far too many people turn it into blind contrarianism. Far too many people talk about the flu vaccine in terms of conspiracy theory, which is not productive for anyone.
  - unclebucknasty 12y ago
    >Far too many people talk about the flu vaccine in terms of conspiracy theory, which is not productive for anyone. Well, it's productive if there's really a "conspiracy", right? Short of "blind contrarianism", there is certainly reason enough to be skeptical. At a minimum, public health officials have been putting forth an annual vaccine campaign PR effort that seems significantly overstated with regard to the true efficacy of flu vaccines, and this hasn't been bad for big pharma. Now, we can say they were doing it for the right reasons, but we can't ignore the credibility gap they are creating. More generally, I am not sure why we have a notion that anything that counters the mainstream version of events is automatically to be dubbed conspiracy theory in the dismissive sense. It's actually even weirder to encounter so much of that sort of attitude on a site called HackerNews, where there have been routine calls to keyboard arms over domestic surveillance and the like. But, I've also noticed here an adherence to scientific dogma that borders on the religious at times. It creates blind spots and a certain overstated assuredness. Overall, it's hard to put into words, but it is very real. Let the downvotes commence.
    - mikeash 12y ago
      Contrarianism and conspiracy theories are about how you think, not about what conclusions you reach. Sometimes they reach the correct conclusions by coincidence, but that doesn't make them good. Conspiracy theories aren't validated by the existence of conspiracies, any more than astrology is validated by your horoscope coming true on any given day. Conspiracy theories are about faulty reasoning. In particular, they involve highly inconsistent evaluation of evidence, and rely heavily on post-hoc rationalization. You say that "anything that counters the mainstream version of events is automatically to be dubbed conspiracy theory in the dismissive sense." That's simply not true. What's happening is that the only people who happen to be countering the mainstream version of events are doing so with conspiracy theories. Show me some good arguments that counter the mainstream version of events and we can talk. Nobody has done so thus far. When I talk about conspiracy theories, it's not because people are saying the flu vaccine is ineffective. It's because people are talking about crazy stuff like how vaccines have been pushed hard in the past decade because of a non-existent provision of the PATRIOT act.

Someone1234 12y ago

In particular as it was only 23% effective this year: http://www.ajc.com/ap/ap/top-news/flu-vaccine-not-working-well-only-23-percent-effec/njp3t/ http://www.ajc.com/ap/ap/top-news/flu-vaccine-not-working-we...

skj 12y ago
Is that bad? The ease of getting a vaccine needs to be enough such that it's not a burden to do so. Once that's achieved, 23% effective is actually quite a good benefit, given that those 23% also fail to infect others and improve our overall herd immunity.
- _red 12y ago
  You do know that vaccines makers have legal immunity, right? One of the little quirks of the Patriot Act was to make it impossible to sue vaccine makers -- which is exactly why since 2001 you've seen a proliferation of every grocery store offering vaccines. Presumably you are a start-up minded person. Imagine the legal challenges you would face in trying to come up with a business plan where you could inject biological material into people....think your lawyer would permit? As for if 23% effeciancy is "worth it", well the protection you are getting must be offset by the negative effects caused by vaccines, if you doubt there are negative effects see Legal Immunity above.
  - Fomite 12y ago
    What you're looking for is the 1986 National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act, not the PATRIOT Act for limiting tort liability for vaccine manufacturers. Which is pretty much a precondition for doing business developing vaccines to address emergency vaccines. Presumably you are a start-up minded person. Would you do business if someone said "We need you to implement some very complex code, rush it into production on our timetable, and if there's a hiccup, your users will sue you into oblivion."
    - jeangenie 12y ago
      Curious how OP got this idea. USA PATRIOT Act Sec. 1013 (a)(10), (b)(5,6) mentions research, distribution and stockpiling of vaccines but nothing about liability. There was a decision in 2011 that might be of interest: http://blogs.findlaw.com/decided/2011/02/cant-sue-drug-companies-for-vaccine-defects-rules-supreme-court.html http://blogs.findlaw.com/decided/2011/02/cant-sue-drug-compa... http://www.cnn.com/2011/CRIME/02/22/us.scotus.vaccines/index.html http://www.cnn.com/2011/CRIME/02/22/us.scotus.vaccines/index...
      - CamperBob2 12y ago
        It's called "Believing the first thing you hear or read on the Internet, and automatically rejecting everything you hear or read on the subject after that." It just means that some loony anti-vaxxer got to him/her first. There ought to be a formal name for the fallacy of assigning greater credibility to earlier information, but I'm not sure what it would be.
        Fomite 12y ago
        It's essentially confirmation bias.
        _red 12y ago
        No, its called I got the name of the Act wrong. Do you deny the primary point? That its illegal for you to sue vaccine makers?
- Someone1234 12y ago
  > Is that bad? More people literally died this year than most years. So I am going to say an emphatic: yes, it is bad.
  - bryanlarsen 12y ago
    And without the vaccine, even more people would have died. So it was good. Could have been better, but still better than no vaccine.
    - Someone1234 12y ago
      It is 23% this year, compared to 50-60% for most other years. It is bad and people are now dead who would still have been alive if it was a typical year. Nobody is suggesting no vaccine would be an improvement so that isn't relevant. What is relevant is figuring out if we can do better, for example, instead of calculating risk in Feb for the upcoming winter, can we improve manufacturing so we can forecast in e.g. July, or better look at the data every month and change the formula mid-year if required (so people getting the vaccine in August and December might get a different formulation). As I said, until someone suggests cancelling flu vaccines, the argument that it is "better than nothing" isn't relevant. Instead we should assume the vaccine is staying and compare it to itself.
      - bryanlarsen 12y ago
        "Nobody is suggesting no vaccine would be an improvement so that isn't relevant." There are lots of people doing so. Probably very few here on Hacker News, but there are many in the real world. Many people who read the linked article will use that as an excuse to not get the flu vaccine next year.
        mikeash 12y ago
        One of the top level comments here questions if the vaccine is worthwhile, with a strong implication that a) it's not worthwhile for a disease which a healthy adult can recover from without it and b) nobody has been smart (or unbiased) enough to ask the question before.
- Fomite 12y ago
  It's not good but it's probably more beneficial than harmful. But the flu vaccine is one of the least compelling cases for vaccination - but also one of the most important ones for public perception.
- dragonwriter 12y ago
  Its bad compared to how effective the vaccine normally is, its good compared to no vaccine at all. The idea that its one vaccine in the first place that is being "hyped" is wrong, each year a new vaccine is created, and its done based on the strains of the flu that seem likely to be prominent. One of the reasons this year was worse than normal is that the strains that were prominent weren't what was predicted. I don't think anyone would be against developing a better vaccine, though I do think lots of people would be opposed against trading off efforts to assure that each years vaccine made under the current process gets well promoted to the public and distributed to achieve that. Those aren't the only possible uses of resources in our society, and there is no reason that efforts to develop are better flu vaccination system need to be traded off against efforts to assure the reach of the current system.
  - unclebucknasty 12y ago
    >there is no reason that efforts to develop are better flu vaccination system need to be traded off against efforts to assure the reach of the current system I'm not sure that this is true. From a purely market-driven perspective, pharma is able to successfully move this product each year, without risk of liability, and without additional R&D. As long as there is a PR machine around this current product that continues to "reach" and drive customers, then what's the incentive to engage in expensive R&D needed to develop the next round?
    - dragonwriter 12y ago
      Since its a public health problem, I would expect that, were it adopted as a priority, that the incentive would be in the public funds allocated to grants for vaccine R&D, and (for existing Big Pharma firms) to avoid being left without a chair when the current gravy train ends (apologies for the mixed metaphors) when better vaccines are deployed.
      - unclebucknasty 12y ago
        >were it adopted as a priority, Agreed. Once it becomes a priority with the subsequent funding/grants, I think that's when we'd see movement. Ironically, however, I wonder if the hype around the current program even slows adoption of new priorities. Though, perhaps acknowledgments such as the type referenced by public health officials in this article portend the start of some movement. >left without a chair when the current gravy train ends when better vaccines are deployed I wonder if their thinking is that this problem is easily fixed through acquisition if/when the time comes, especially in an industry as M & A-driven as pharma. Meanwhile, gravy-train.
- dorfsmay 12y ago
  23% would not be bad if it increased your chances of avoiding the flu with near to zero risk. I've been a strong advocate of the flu vaccine, because why not putting all the odds, even if they're not 100%, on your side. But... Have you read the article? It lookalike getting vaccinated is actually not zero risk, on the contrary.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
- unclebucknasty 12y ago
  >23% effective is actually quite a good benefit, Well, my comment was pointing more to the disparity between the PR around the vaccine vs. the reality of it. It's well-known that it's a hit-or-miss proposition each year and, here, we're seeing evidence of further holes borne of the annual effort itself. That is, there's now a downside to actually following the advice, beyond side effects and ineffective vaccines. So, I'm speaking more to the juxtaposition of that reality against the "vaccine-is-everywhere-better-get-it-or-you-might-die" kind of PR in which public health officials and pharma engage every year.
MBCook 12y ago
After some quick Googling for comparison, there was a study in 2011 that seems to say that on average it's about 66% effective. http://journalistsresource.org/studies/government/federalstate/influenza-flu-vaccines-review-meta-analysis/ http://journalistsresource.org/studies/government/federalsta...
zippergz 12y ago
Yeah, as a pure anecdote, I got the vaccine and am just now getting over a brutal case of the flu. My doctor said he's been seeing tons of people in the same boat this year. Bummer.
pella 12y ago
"In Canada, the flu vaccine could be working even more poorly, with "little or no protection."" ... "About 98 per cent of the viruses are mismatched that have been characterized in Canada, whereas in the U.S. its closer to about 68 per cent, or about two-thirds are mismatched. So it's not a good omen," said Dr. Danuta Skowronski of the British Columbia Centre for Disease Control. " http://www.cbc.ca/news/health/flu-vaccine-only-23-effective-in-u-s-even-less-effective-in-canada-1.2902091 http://www.cbc.ca/news/health/flu-vaccine-only-23-effective-...

benihana 12y ago

Money quote right here: "We have kind of hyped this vaccine so much for so long we are starting to believe our own hype." Scientists and doctors are just as susceptible to bias as the rest of us. We'd all do well to remember that.

mikeash 12y ago
It's fine to be skeptical, but far too many people turn it into blind contrarianism. Far too many people talk about the flu vaccine in terms of conspiracy theory, which is not productive for anyone.
- unclebucknasty 12y ago
  >Far too many people talk about the flu vaccine in terms of conspiracy theory, which is not productive for anyone. Well, it's productive if there's really a "conspiracy", right? Short of "blind contrarianism", there is certainly reason enough to be skeptical. At a minimum, public health officials have been putting forth an annual vaccine campaign PR effort that seems significantly overstated with regard to the true efficacy of flu vaccines, and this hasn't been bad for big pharma. Now, we can say they were doing it for the right reasons, but we can't ignore the credibility gap they are creating. More generally, I am not sure why we have a notion that anything that counters the mainstream version of events is automatically to be dubbed conspiracy theory in the dismissive sense. It's actually even weirder to encounter so much of that sort of attitude on a site called HackerNews, where there have been routine calls to keyboard arms over domestic surveillance and the like. But, I've also noticed here an adherence to scientific dogma that borders on the religious at times. It creates blind spots and a certain overstated assuredness. Overall, it's hard to put into words, but it is very real. Let the downvotes commence.
  - mikeash 12y ago
    Contrarianism and conspiracy theories are about how you think, not about what conclusions you reach. Sometimes they reach the correct conclusions by coincidence, but that doesn't make them good. Conspiracy theories aren't validated by the existence of conspiracies, any more than astrology is validated by your horoscope coming true on any given day. Conspiracy theories are about faulty reasoning. In particular, they involve highly inconsistent evaluation of evidence, and rely heavily on post-hoc rationalization. You say that "anything that counters the mainstream version of events is automatically to be dubbed conspiracy theory in the dismissive sense." That's simply not true. What's happening is that the only people who happen to be countering the mainstream version of events are doing so with conspiracy theories. Show me some good arguments that counter the mainstream version of events and we can talk. Nobody has done so thus far. When I talk about conspiracy theories, it's not because people are saying the flu vaccine is ineffective. It's because people are talking about crazy stuff like how vaccines have been pushed hard in the past decade because of a non-existent provision of the PATRIOT act.