Flu Vaccine Marketing Season Begins

National Foundation for Infectious DiseasesCDC Director Joins Nation's Top Health Experts to Urge Americans to Seek Influenza and Pneumococcal Vaccinations This Fall and Winter
Wednesday October 4, 2006

"Americans need to learn about the benefits of immunization. Forgoingvaccination can put your household at risk for complications like pneumonia,missed work and school days, trips to the hospital and sometimes death,"said Susan J. Rehm, MD, NFID medical director and vice chair of thedepartment of infectious disease at the Cleveland Clinic." - PR Newswire

Barbara Loe Fisher Commentary:

Here come the flu fear mongers...just in time for the flu vaccine marketing season! The CDC's cradle to the grave approach to annual flu vaccination for all Americans starts at 6 months of age and does not end until the last breath is taken in the last year of life.

This national mass vaccination policy reaps millions in profits for drug companies. In fact flu vaccine makers depend heavily upon the success of the CDC's marketing campaign, which uses instilling fear and anxiety in the population as its main strategy for persuading all Americans to roll up their sleeves (or roll up the sleeves of their children) and buy the flu shot.

Apparently they are having a problem, though, because lots of Americans are voting with their feet and resisting the cattle call. Many do not believe the hype because the truth is, not many people die of one of the three type A or type B flu strains contained in the flu shot given in America every year. In fact, only 20 percent of all flu-like illness in any given flu season is actually the flu. Most of the flu-like illlness is due to other bacteria and viruses that cause illness looking a lot like the flu. The flu vaccine can't prevent that from happening.

In the old days, everybody got the flu that was going around that year and developed antibodies the old fashioned way. And then when that type of flu came around again a few years or decades later, immunological memory served as buffer so those who had already had experience with it either didn't get it again or it was a lot milder. The flu vaccine marketeers are using fear tactics to try to take away all immunological memory with type A and type B flu from our population. What will that make us? Vaccine dependent, of course.

The flu vaccine should be allowed to float free in the marketplace and be subject to the law of supply and demand. Taxpayer money should not be spent by government employees serving as de facto advertising agents for one of the most profitable industries in the world: the pharmaceutical industry. The danger in all of this is that when public health officials can't persuade the people to do what they want them to do, they have the nasty habit of making sure laws are passed forcing the people to do what they want them to do.

No doubt flu vaccine mandates are coming but, this time, it won't be just for the children.