The flu vaccine: A high-stakes gamble

It's not a vaccine, it's a booster shot. Real vaccines have efficacy above 50 or 60% or 90% and last a lifetime. Those are awesome. Tetanus, Measles, Hepatitis, Meningitis, Ebola! etc. Science has had great success with many, but not as well with flu

Because of this reality it ruins the notion that vaccines are good because the flu shot fails for so many people every year. Public Health ruins their reputation by putting their flag on the flu shot when they should not and instead using the scientific method to improve it. They are afraid that if they say anything negative about the flu shot, even at 10% efficacy which is ridiculous, then people will stop taking all vaccines. This all or nothing approach has made a mess of things by not separating what works and what helps.

Meanwhile back in Science Land, Japanese scientists determined that people eating wakame salad get a boost in their immunity higher than a flu shot. Also eating mushrooms boost immunity. And green tea! Really a tribute to Japanese cuisine that should be a part of everyone's regime to stay well. This should be celebrated in the news in Japan and elsewhere to fight the infections.

The workplace sick warrior who doesn't stay home and companies that have sick days on paper but not in reality perpetuate the disease by spreading it around. A society not washing its hands also can't be helpful.

The "herd immunity" line is always given as an excuse to take the shot even if it doesn't work. If you have a working immune system, and take the days off away from people to heal, then are back in society when you're better, you are also adding to herd immunity. It's not mutually exclusive to have a working immune system

If you have a terrible meat based diet then you're probably sick a lot and a perfect flu candidate. There are many ways to fight, but to lie to oneself about health isn't working for those people

As veganism spreads it'll be interesting to see what diseases go down and turn out to be meat related

Some vaccination is better than no vaccination and the medical community is pretty good at successfully calculating the statistics of best benefit.

@ sf2k

If you have a terrible meat based diet then you're probably sick a lot and a perfect flu candidate. There are many ways to fight, but to lie to oneself about health isn't working for those people

As veganism spreads it'll be interesting to see what diseases go down and turn out to be meat related

Ah, that's a pity. What started out as an interesting and informative post soon degenerated into vegan propaganda.

Geoff

https://nutritionfacts.org/video/how-to-boost-your-immune-system-with-wakame-seaweed/

Japanese science plus others showing wakame and immunity response. Scientific papers from Kyushu and Osaka. Link will give you citations.

It's not a conspiracy to read science or watch a video about it

Our Mom lived through the 1918-1919 Spanish Flu epidemic, in New York City. She said that people would carry their dead family members down to the street, where a horse drawn cart would pick up the bodies and carry them away. She remembered that a couple living near them had beautiful triplet girls, Indonesian-Dutch, and that all three girls died from the flu.

wipeout

Right, because you invalidated over 1000 videos of scientific nutrition from scientists all around the world from over a dozen countries as noted from pubmed.gov . You invalidated the thousands who make science. He's just speaking to the science so a general population might learn what the latest science has to say about nutrition. This matches the UN.

can't lead a horse to drink

vegan food 8% growth a year

meat 0.2%

Dr Gregor also wrote and debunked Atkins and is healing people. Meanwhile a former healthy Japanese diet is adding more meat by the year and with it come the diseases associated with it. Who says so? Japanese scientists studying nutrition in this particular video. Apropos to Japan

Did you know that it is scientifically proven that wakame salad, green tea, and button mushrooms all boost immunity? Don't you think that a country who eats these foods should take advantage of that during flu season so people don't get sick? You got to be kidding if you think the answer is no

you can do a swab test like a grade 9 biology class. Swab your mouth, put into agar petri dish and leave for 24 hours. Do the same with a vegan. The next day look under a microscope. How many varieties and quantities of disease do you think will show up between the two? Do the experiment, if you want your mind blown. Otherwise leave scientific inquiry to those who care about human health and have questions

The video is all of 4:17 long. Maybe watch it first before losing it in the thread?

Your first sentence, "It's not a vaccine, it's a booster shot" is a complete fail.

Correct. The public health use of the term is itself a fail. Making up a real term would be confusing. "In theory, there's no difference between theory and practice, but in practice, there is!." It is neither a vaccine nor a booster. It is a Best-Guess-Of-The-Year shot. A Greatest-Hits-Of-2017 shot. My personal fav: Mutagenic-Memories-Of-2017. Booster would be the closest to what it is, but it's really neither, true.

I'm also interested why you chose to focus on 10% percent efficacy of flu vaccines when it's normally far higher.

It's in the video if you actually bothered to watch it. 10% is about where the elderly get as a baseline immune response after they take their shot. Immunity drops as you get older so shots don't work much. Elderly are most of the flu cases.

I won't spoil it here. Can you guess the immunity response when they eat wakame prior to their shot?

Seriously the video is all of 4 min 17 seconds long. I cited from it but it just has the basics. Inferences made are my own. Indeed I went vegan last year and haven't got sick since (knock on wood!!). My usual 3-4 colds a year and flu are now nada nothing zilch zip zero. I've been tired a few times. I guess that's being sick now? It's actually kind of hilarious. Thanks to Japanese foods too. Wakame-Mushrooms-Green tea are staples for me now. So yeah, I'm enthusiastic to share that. So sue me for trying to save your health

Try any of the other 1000++ videos on the NutritionFacts.org website. Here's another neat one that includes Japanese science: https://nutritionfacts.org/video/alzheimers-disease-grain-brain-or-meathead/ Yep, real science. Peer reviewed, published and everything. For world science you have to be published in English.

NF is a fully certified non-profit, so they're not selling you vitamins or anything. They just want to train you to understand what's going on. With 100,000 peer-reviewed articles a year in nutrition it's their full time job.

I'd recommend the end of year in review videos. He goes over the leading killers and what you can do. Why not know? Even if you don't want to stop eating meat, at least you can find out what to eat to attenuate your diseases

I recommend this one, as it gives you a real sense of the doctor and what's he's trying to get at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B-8ovk81nNM . There are more recent ones but they have similar data. This one is 1 hr and 2 min. Worth your time!

Good luck

a more recent one if you like: https://nutritionfacts.org/video/how-not-to-die/

I'm sorry, someone else then will enjoy the information (and the cool Japanese scientist connections) and be healthier the same as someone introduced and did for me. I'm hardly the first

But the vitriol on spending probably and hour on a 4 min video is pretty funny. All data from nutritionfacts.org is data from pubmed.gov . If you're from the USA, you funded it.

Thank you!