I think you’ve misquoted the situation there old bean.
Hi
I know, I am having a frivolous day.
Perhaps you could offer some other reports from Cochrane that have been proved to be true and forced changes to the use of some medicines. If you can’t, why should we be expected to accept that this report is right?
No only after you have a free flu jab and you are feeling unwell for about a month and then 5 days of not being able to move to go get a drink of water what is the point of the flu jab.
Waste of money.
Please note this review is called ‘‘Vaccines to prevent influenza in healthy adults’’.
Myself and many other older people as pointed out earlier in the thread are not ‘healthy’ we have pre-existing serious conditions which predispose us having complications should we become infected with the flu.
Now you are asking me to do your research for you. The entire point of my posting in this thread is to encourage people to do their own research, to do their due diligence. I’ve highlighted the Cochrane Library because it is the defacto medical research organisation worldwide. Internationally renowned and respected. If you feel the need to question and evaluate that then . . .
GREAT !
my work is done, it means you are going to exercise due diligence and assess the facts.
By way of helping here are what some other prestigious organisations say about the Cochrane Library/Collaboration:
Australian Government - Department Of Health
http://www.health.gov.au/internet/main/publishing.nsf/Content/health-cochrane.htm
[i]The Cochrane Library is the main output of the internationally acclaimed Cochrane Collaboration, a highly respected international collaboration of health professionals, researchers, and consumers.
The Cochrane Collaboration is an international, non-profit organisation that produces unbiased analyses of reliable and relevant research studies. Cochrane systematic reviews are widely acknowledged as constituting the highest level of scrutiny of the scientific evidence available. [/i]
Wales NHS
http://www.wales.nhs.uk/sitesplus/878/page/42193
[i]The Cochrane Library is a collection of six databases that contain different types of high-quality, independent evidence to inform healthcare decision-making and includes the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews.
The Cochrane Library is freely available to NHS staff, patients and the public in Wales. [/i]
Oxford University
http://learntech.physiol.ox.ac.uk/cochrane_tutorial/cochlibd0e604.php
[i]The Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews (CDSR) contains two types of document: Cochrane Reviews and Cochrane Protocols.
Cochrane Reviews are full-text systematic reviews which provide an overview of the effects of interventions in health care.
The reviews are highly structured. Evidence from clinical trials is included on the basis of explicit quality criteria, thus minimising bias. Each review covers a specific and well-defined area of health care.
Data from reviews are often combined statistically to increase the power of the findings of numerous studies,
which on their own may be too small to produce reliable results. [/i]
London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine
http://www.lshtm.ac.uk/library/resources/databases/info_cochrane.html
[i]The Cochrane Library is an electronic publication designed to supply high quality evidence to inform those providing and receiving care, and those responsible for research, teaching, funding and administration on all levels. It contains full text systematic reviews, full text critical appraisals of systematic reviews and clinical trials, and a register of clinical trials from around the world.
It is one of the premiere sources of current knowledge in all aspects of healthcare.[/I]
I sympathise but your condition doesn’t alter what the flu jab is or isn’t.
Were I in your condition I would be researching very carefully to be sure that I didn’t take any drug or any vaccine that may weaken my immune system further.
To that end I would be seeking out any and all studies I could relating to my condition. Thus in the case of the flu vaccine I’d be looking for studies that have been done involving people with those specific or similar conditions.
What I absolutely would not personally be doing is having a vaccination for which there is no evidence of its efficacy. I would deem that an unnecessary risk. I also would not allow fear to sway my objectivity in such an important matter.
Sorry Realist, I am not interested in what other people think of them, I want to see proof.
I don’t need to do research because I, and the NHS, are very happy with the results of the flu jab. The NHS have cared for me medically for all of my life and I have been very satisfied with that care.
When somebody can demonstrate that the Cochrane Library have saved lives with their research I may consider looking further into what they do, but until that happens I am happy to remain with the opinions that have saved my life, on several occasions, in the past.
Reply if you like but I have no intention of continuing this discussion any further.:!:
But I am not you Realist…
We have discussed this topic before at length and nothing you can write will prevent me from having the flu vaccination indeed I have already had it.
I would give more credence to your posts if the majority were not filled with weird conspiracy theories which I am sorry to say for me puts you in the category of someone who has little or no credibility.
I also find the tone of your some of your posts to be patronising, I don’t recall asking for your advice on vaccination.
We are having ours on Tuesday, GP running evening clinics especially this year as each year the take up is more and more and they can’t fit it all in during the day. Hoping to survive as if will mean I can’t start work until 7pm, so won’t finish until 11pm that’s a late night for me these days ! I like to be asleep by 9.30pm. Think the late night is going to affect me more than the jab 
Good for you. I’m not posting to try to prevent you from having the jab.
This is just smoke and mirrors. There is no iota of conspiracy in this thread. I’ve presented links to facts, nothing more.
People look for fights where there are none. They are clearly frustrated by those links and facts and that results in them trying to concoct all manner of silly nonsense to deflect.
All one can do is highlight the facts, nothing more. It’s up to individuals to be objective and review them or to just ignore them. It matters not to me what they choose. I don’t know anyone here.
Flu vaccines are updated each flu season to better match circulating viruses.
But if you should catch another strain it will be milder because of the immunity already given.
Realist
I also would not allow fear to sway my objectivity in such an important matter.
Isn’t that what you’re trying to achieve by these continuous attempts to discredit the vaccines effectiveness?
Either that or browbeat those that have declined your attempts to convince.
So am I Realist…
On the contrary you haven’t provided a single piece of scientifically backed fact in this thread or in any of the other flu jab threads on the forum. You didn’t even know of the NHS’s “Flu Fighter” campaign to push the vaccine !
There does not exist any reliable peer reviewed study that demonstrates the flu jab is remotely effective. But by all means prove me wrong and cite one.
Read what I said again…I said I hadn’t had any aimed at me.
I don’t need to as I always have the vaccine anyway.
Hi
Cochrane is indeed a very useful source of information for professionals.
However. like all such sources of information, it can be misused or misunderstood to prove a point based on the users perspective of things.
There was an example of this earlier, the Mercury claim, wrong maths and wrong comparisons gave a very misleading outcome which has unfortunately been repeated widely on the Internet.
The issue of Mercury content in flu jabs is nothing to do with the Cochrane study. The latter is an impartial and comprehensive study of the effectiveness of the flu jab in adults, which concludes that the jab is pretty useless.
On the issue of the Mercury content, yes, I agree there are lots of internet sites with varying data. What is NOT in question however is that:
-
There IS mercury in flu jabs in the form of Thimerosal
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Thimerosal is 50% Mercury
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Mercury is one of THE most toxic substances to the human body
These are indisputable facts.
What CAN be discussed is the actual level / amount of Mercury in each flu jab. Deniers will say that ANY amount is unacceptable and a stupid risk to take.
Supporters of the jab will say the amount is so tiny as to be ridiculously negligible.
Supporters of the jab won’t get into a discussion about the difference between INGESTING mercury (say through eating some Tuna fish) and INJECTING it straight into the blood stream.
The former of course sees the Mercury go through the digestive system. The latter of course will see it go straight to the brain and organs.
In the end the entire Mercury issue is a red herring here, albeit a quite alarming red herring. The first principle is that the flu jab has been shown to be ineffective to the vast majority of people. Once that principle is understood, messing with ANY amount of Mercury intravenously would seem pretty foolhardy imo.
Again one can look back to the dubious actions of the US government and associated food and drug administrations who have seen to it that Apricot Kernels can no longer be sold in the US. The excuse given for removing this freedom from citizens was that they could overdose on the kernels and give themselves cyanide poisoning. However people would need to eat a large amount of those kernels to do that.
Meanwhile the same citizens can freely overdose on say a handful of paracetamols or other tablets widely available in stores.
So where is the difference?
The answer is simply money and control of the markets.
Apricot Kernels being a natural and good product of Nature can not be patented or exploited by the Big Pharma companies and are a direct threat to their own expensive drugs and treatments for cancer. Likewise, they control pills and potions like paracetamols. It is fine for you to overdose on pills that they sell, but you can’t overdose on a good product of Nature ! Wake up people !
The flu jab is a huge marketing exercise which let’s face it has been pretty successful. They put out a purposeful campaign of fear, esp amongst the sick and elderly and as a result they flock to the GP surgeries like robots without researching the vaccine at all. Big Pharma is making $billions from this situation.
One can tell from reading the available data that just about everyone in the upper levels of the medical industry knows exactly what is going on, but are helpless to do anything because if anyone stands up they will likely lose their lucrative jobs and salaries.
Some articles show people getting as close as they dare when they say that it doesn’t seem to make good medical and health care sense to expend so much time and effort and money promoting the flu jab when there are far more important things to concentrate on. These people are essentially protesting that the whole health care situation has become just a Big Business enterprise making $billions for fat cats instead of concentrating on making people well.
Reason many of us won’t get into discussion about it is we see the jabs working, you can warn as much as you like but colds are less severe, no chest infections, no breathing problems in the cold. If it causes me to die a couple of years early it’s worth it for the added good feeling now.
This is simply un-objective anecdotal evidence which is of no use in a serious discussion about the effectiveness of the flu vaccine. You equate specific outcomes with the jab rather than with anything else (such as say the food you eat, who you are coming into contact with etc).
If you are prepared to be objective about this whole thing you would understand not only the scale of the tests and studies that you would need to conduct, but equally the controlled and structured way those tests would have to be done to be unbiased and meaningful.
The Cochrane Collaboration was the primary organisation that set out the foundations of such testing protocols to ensure that any medical studies were sound, unbiased and scientific. That’s why they are internationally respected.
You are taking a sample of ONE person’s experience. You are drawing a conclusion from that single experience without having actually conducted any scientific analysis of the situation. Without any standard controls, without any actual data. Did you take blood samples from your body to be analysed to see if you had the flu virus in there?
The Cochrane studies involved MILLIONS of people, not just ONE.
The real reason many won’t enter into discussion about the flu jab is that they have nothing, nada, zippo by way of tangible scientific evidence that the vaccine is even remotely effective and because all the peer reviewed evidence confirms it is largely useless. Yet they will bow to the fear campaign and trot off to their GP to have the jab anyway . . . Go figure !