Flu Folly

oped: I am a firm believer and supporter of Homeopathic/Holistic Medicine vs conventional medicine which is tied to the Pharm Industries!

by Bob Livingston 
On the local news the other day the talking head was lamenting the growing number of flu cases in Alabama. Alabama, along with 39 other States, is currently experiencing a widespread flu outbreak, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“But what about the flu vaccine?” she breathlessly asked the physician she was interviewing.
“We are treating a number of the people who had the flu vaccine but they still got the flu,” the doctor said. “In fact, most of the patients we’re seeing were vaccinated.”
What? How can that be? I thought the purpose of the vaccine was to prevent the flu. After all, the CDC tells us “Flu vaccination is the best way to prevent people from getting the flu and potentially serious flu-related complication. CDC recommends that everyone 6 months and older get a flu vaccination each flu season.”
It also tells us that as of early January, “60 percent of Americans had not yet received a flu vaccination and lacked the protection it offers from the flu and its complications.” Yet most of the patients seen by the doctor in question had been vaccinated? Something is askew.
And that something is simple truth by the CDC and the medical-industrial establishment.
The CDC and the Food and Drug Administration are nothing more than taxpayer-funded marketing arms for the medical-industrial complex. They are used to provide government-sanctioned legitimacy to a host of fake “diseases” created in labs along with their cures: expensive pharmaceuticals and tests for diagnosis.

In fact, like most Federal bureaucracies and crony corporations, they are nothing more than revolving-door employment agencies between Congress, Congressional staffs, watchdog agencies and big corporations. The former head of the CDC is Julie Gerberding, M.D., who is now head of the Vaccine Division of Merck. Merck’s vaccine division is worth more than $5 billion annually.
The CDC foists upon the public disinformation like this: “CDC estimates that from the 1976-1977 season to the 2006-2007 flu season, flu-associated deaths ranged from a low of about 3,000 to a high of about 49,000 people.” The CDC claims that the vaccine prevents flu 50 percent to 70 percent of the time.
Notice the use of the words “flu-associated deaths.” That’s because the CDC adds pneumonia deaths as if the flu is the sole cause of pneumonia. But as Peter Doshi, Ph.D., revealed in a 2005 report published in the British Medical Journal, actual annual flu deaths are measured in the dozens, not the thousands. From his report:

"[I]nfluenza and pneumonia” took 62,034 lives in 2001–61,777 of which were attributable to pneumonia and 257 to flu, and in only 18 cases was the flu virus positively identified."

In other words, the influenza virus was actually present in only 18 of 62,034 deaths attributed to both influenza and pneumonia.
Doshi research published more recently in the BMJ found that in the hundreds of thousands of respiratory samples taken each year from flu patients in the United States and tested in labs, only 16 percent test positive for the influenza virus. It turns out that most flu cases are actually caused by bacteria or fungus or any of a number of other things except the influenza virus being blamed.
Doshi writes:

"But perhaps the cleverest aspect of the influenza marketing strategy surrounds the claim that “flu” and “influenza” are the same. The distinction seems subtle, and purely semantic. But general lack of awareness of the difference might be the primary reason few people realize that even the ideal influenza vaccine, matched perfectly to circulating strains of wild influenza and capable of stopping all influenza viruses, can only deal with a small part of the “flu” problem because most “flu” appears to have nothing to do with influenza. Every year, hundreds of thousands of respiratory specimens are tested across the US. Of those tested, on average 16% are found to be influenza positive."

Each year, Big Pharma and the CDC conspire to create a vaccine based on the flu strains they anticipate to be prevalent in the coming “flu season.” But there are hundreds of flu strains out there, so it is a “hit-or-miss” proposition. This year, they missed; and H1N1 — the big scare from a couple of years ago — is back, though it wasn’t anticipated.

According to research by The Cochran Library, the average vaccine – which is produced before the onset of flu season and based on the previous year’s strains – must be administered to 100 adults to prevent one case of influenza. If the exact strain is matched, 33 adults must be vaccinated to prevent one case of the disease.
The report also stated the vaccination didn’t affect the number of people hospitalized or the number of work days lost but did result on one case of Gillian-Barré syndrome for every 1 million vaccinations. And this report relied on 15 trials funded by the pharmaceutical industry. It noted that “reliable evidence on influenza vaccines is thin but there is evidence of widespread manipulation of conclusions and spurious notoriety” of the data in industry-funded reports. In other words: Big Pharma manipulates its data.
Neither the CDC nor the vaccine manufacturers are under any obligation to tell the truth about their vaccines. U.S. law prohibits suits against vaccine manufacturers for damages. Instead, those damaged receive money from the “taxpayer-funded” bailout called the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program.
The marketing arms of the manufacturers and chain pharmacies like CVS and Walgreens are sparing no expense in deceiving the populace into lining up to be inoculated. This year, there is a new vaccine specifically marketed to seniors called Fluzone High-Dose.
David Brownstein, M.D., analyzed the study that compares Fluzone and Fluzone High-Dose. What he found was the new vaccine is .46 percent more effective than Fluzone, which is not saying much. The study shows that 217 people must be vaccinated with Fluzone High-Dose to prevent one case of the flu. That means 216 people paid double the price for the Fluzone High-Dose but received no benefit whatever.

According to the FAQ section at CVS’s website, the “high-dose” vaccine contains four times the amount of antigen (the part of the vaccine that causes the body to produce antibodies) as regular flu shots. What it doesn’t tell you — and you have to look at the fine print of the vaccine insert to find — is that 23 seniors died during the drug’s trial.
The insert also tells us that in addition to the 23 who died there were 226 other “serious” adverse events. That means 249 people out 3,833 trial participants either died or suffered a serious reaction as a result of the vaccine. The most predominant adverse event is the onset of Guillain-Barré syndrome, which is a paralyzing reaction similar to polio. It is so prevalent that if you admit to the emergency room and the physicians suspect Guillain-Barré, the first question they’ll ask is if you’ve had the flu vaccine.
There is a reason flu symptoms are experienced more often in the winter. The immune system is weakened by a reduction in vitamin D because of shorter days and because people are outside less and their skin is covered to protect from the cold.
Vitamin D supplementation is the best flu preventative, and it doesn’t carry the flu shot’s side effects. But the CDC, FDA and the medical-industrial establishment won’t definitively tell you that — if they do at all — because the medical-industrial establishment can’t make billions of dollars off vitamin D like it can and does off the flu vaccine.