About the H1N1 (swine flu) vaccine

In today's information-rich world, the difficulty is finding the reliable sources, not necessarily finding information. In light of questions that have arisen from those around me, I have collected what I know about the vaccine for this record, hoping to make a little order in the mess

The flu virus is not new, it appears every year. In fact, about 5-20% of the world's population gets infected with the flu every year. In the US, 200,000 people are hospitalized and 3,000 people die from the flu and related illnesses. The typical symptoms of the flu are fever, chills, muscle aches and cough. After a day or two of incubation the disease erupts and lasts for several days and even up to two weeks. The main impact of the flu is on people over the age of 65, 60% of hospitalizations and 90% of deaths from the flu occur in these ages. Although among children there is a high infection rate and low mortality, only about 100 children a year die from the common flu in the US.

The virus itself contains genetic material of the RNA type, a feature that allows for a high rate of mutations during the creation of new virus copies. The hereditary material of influenza consists of eight parts. This special feature allows the exchange of parts between viruses of different strains and the creation of a new strain of influenza. Thus, every year we come across new strains of influenza. If by chance the new strain is easily transmitted between humans, and it belongs to a subspecies that the human population has not been exposed to, a plague results.

Today there are three main strains of influenza in nature classified as influenzavirus A, B, C. The seasonal flu, also called H3N2, and the swine flu, also called H1N1, belong to group A.

The H1N1 virus that causes the current pandemic contains genes from influenza viruses originating in humans, pigs and poultry. The virus was first discovered on March 18, 2009 in Mexico. After four weeks the virus reached the USA, ten weeks later it had already reached 23 countries all over the world. Three months after its discovery, the virus was declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization. The main distribution of the virus today is in the Western Hemisphere - America and Europe.

H1N1 showed uniqueness right from the start. It appeared at the end of the typical flu season and most of its spread took place in the season when you hardly ever see the flu - in the summer. Another thing unique to this virus is that almost no one under the age of 50 has natural antibodies to it, and only about a third of people over the age of 50 do. The third thing is that the virus hits the "wrong" people. In normal flu, most of the deaths occur among the very old and the very young, but H1N1 hits the hardest on young people under the age of 50. 88% of the deaths from H1N1 are under the age of 65 compared to normal flu where 90% of the deaths occur over the age of 65.

In some of the references to the flu epidemic in the media, comparisons can be found between the regular flu and that of the current pandemic. Although we are not used to giving special attention to the seasonal flu, it must be remembered that it kills about 500,000 people worldwide every year. Even if the H1N1 flu was like the regular flu, it is a serious disease and people die from it. It remains to be reminded that H1N1 came together with the normal flu and not in its place and it is not yet known how the two influences will behave with each other. In Israel, about 500 people die from the common flu every year. This may not sound like much, but it is more than the number of people who are killed in car accidents every year. According to the reports of the Center for Diseases in the USA, CDC, and the World Health Organization, WHO, about 5000 people have died so far from the H1N1 flu all over the world, 62 of them in Israel.

The purpose of the article is not to incite fear, it is the flu and we are facing a more severe flu season than usual. You should drive carefully and take preventive measures, increase public awareness - wash your hands, cough into your elbow, reduce exposure, stay at home if you suspect infection. So far everyone agrees, the disputes start with the vaccines.

About the regular flu vaccine

The anti-vaccine movement arose following a study, which has since been refuted several times, that talked about the link between the triple vaccine (measles-rubella-rubella) and autism. This movement grew and grew while being fed by the fear of parents and their desire to do well with their children. Over the years, this movement began to attack any vaccine whatsoever, regardless of the research being carried out in the field. Regarding the flu vaccine, the main piece of information used to scare people away from vaccines stems from the 1976 pandemic.

In 1976 another strain of H1N1 circulated which led to a large vaccination wave in the population. Following the vaccine, there was an increase in the chance of developing a neurological syndrome called Guillain-Barre. It is an autoimmune disease that arises as a result of infections or anything else that stimulates the immune system. In Guillain-Barré syndrome, the immune system attacks the nervous system and causes numbness and weakness. In severe cases the disease leads to paralysis and in the most severe cases there is a mortality rate of 3-10% due to the fact that the patients are too weak to breathe on their own, or as a result of stopping the activity of the autonomic nervous system responsible for the activity of the lungs and heart. Even today there is still a dispute as to whether the flu vaccine causes the syndrome since it also occurs in the unvaccinated population. In 1976 the chance of developing the syndrome was only 1 in 100,000 more than the background in the population. Since then, 30 years of experience with the seasonal flu vaccine have been accumulated. The articles that do link the syndrome to the flu vaccine today talk about a chance of one in a million above the natural incidence in the population. Even if these studies are correct, the chance of dying from the flu still exceeds the chance of having the syndrome.

80% of people with the syndrome do not experience long-term side effects. If we accept the figure that 5 in a million vaccinees will develop the syndrome, then 1 in 20 million will experience some kind of long-term effects and less than 1 in 10,000 million will die from Guillain-Barre. This, compared to the XNUMX in XNUMX chance of dying from the flu itself. That means there are several orders of magnitude difference.

Now, protecting our children is a very important thing, but we have a natural tendency to ignore big risks that "we can't do anything about" and intensify small risks over which we have control. According to scientific research, vaccines are actually one of the safest things in medicine. This does not mean that they are risk-free at all and this is the point to which we treat them as anti-vaccinators. You have to take things in proportion, just think how many children die in car accidents every year, how many children are injured and die from sports clubs and no one is calling to ban swimming clubs just because a few children drown every year. In 1976, 50 people died in the USA as a result of the flu vaccine. In the US every year 50 people die because of the airbags in their cars. Will you remove the airbags? By the way, the same number of people are run over by cattle in the US every year, it's hard to believe that anyone would go against the cattle industry because of this.

Following the event of 1976, today in the USA all neurological doctors are obliged to report every new case of Gillian Bera in the event that if there is an increase in the chance of developing the syndrome following the vaccine we will know about it as soon as possible. However, no one expects such an increase, after all it has been 30 years of experience with flu vaccines since then, but monitoring is done just in case.

Opponents of vaccines jump on everything case the conspirator Inside Vaccination with another health event. Every day in the US 3000 people experience a heart attack, but if by chance a heart attack came a day after receiving a vaccine, the opponents of vaccines will link the cases. In fact, if they succeed in vaccinating half of the women in the US, 12,000 women will experience a spontaneous abortion in the 24 hours after the vaccination, and all this as part of the natural spontaneous abortion rate in the population. Before starting to panic about different cases that appear in the news, it is very important to know the background noise of each phenomenon before starting to connect events. As of the latest report on the vaccines for the H1N1 virus The vaccine Sure.

Fear factors in the components of the vaccine

Trimersol - only present in some flu vaccines. It contains mercury which is what causes the fear. Opponents of vaccines link mercury to the development of autism, but the research evidence does not show any such connection. In fact, since 2001 there are almost no vaccines that contain mercury, simply because the production methods have been perfected. The rate of autism in the population has not changed. The amounts of mercury that do remain in vaccines result from the vaccine preparation process and are biologically insignificant residues. To be precise, if you ate tuna you probably consumed more mercury than you would get from a vaccine containing trimersol.

When you want to vaccinate large populations quickly one of the methods is to add boosters to the vaccine. Thus, even a smaller amount of the vaccine will create the desired immune effect. In other words, the use of these substances allows vaccination of more people. These substances allow a good dissolution of a fatty substance in an aqueous solution. Among these materials can be found Squillin (squalene), aluminum and MF59.

The fear of squiline stems from research conducted on the anthrax vaccine during the Gulf War. In a test conducted after the vaccination, it was discovered that many participants had anti-squiline antibodies in their blood. The problems: 1. There was no squiline in that vaccine. 2. Squelin is one of the substances that participates in the production of cholesterol naturally in the body, so a large part of the population has antibodies to it. 3. Many food supplements in complementary medicine use squiline, as do cosmetics.

Herd immunity - just because you are young and healthy does not mean you will survive the flu. Young people died from it all over the world. But even if you don't think about yourself, think about the people around you who are not as healthy and strong as you. If you get vaccinated, and more young people get vaccinated, the virus will not be able to run amok in the population and thus your vaccine will protect the weaker people around you. Those who are not allowed to be vaccinated for health reasons (such as an allergy to eggs or a weakened immune system for example).

Public opinion in the world and in Israel is easily swayed. The media uses panic to sell, but we may yet regret it. In Canada, many people said they would not get vaccinated, but then a healthy 14-year-old hockey player died of swine flu and since then the supply has not met the demand. The token has fallen - we are all in the game. You can put your immune system in front of a test that it is not certain that it will pass or, for a much smaller risk, get vaccinated.

The record is based on a conversation conducted between four doctors belonging to the indicated site Science Based Medicine. The conversation was published under the podcast The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe. The four doctors who participated in the conversation: Dr. Steven Novela, Dr. David Gorski, Dr. Joseph Elwitz and Dr. Mark Crislip.

More of the topic in Hayadan:

• Influenza - the threatening virus?
• The swine flu vaccine is safe
• The diary of a swine flu patient
• Vaccines, autism and scientific quackery