An AP article by Carla K. Johnson (Chicago, Feb. 15, 2005) headlined "Study raises flu shot doubts; Analysis of U.S. data finds no drop in death rate among elderly" reports that a new study on more than three decades of U.S. data suggests that giving flu shots to the elderly has not saved any lives.
The study, led by National Institutes of Health researchers, should influence the nation's flu prevention strategy, according to the lead author, Lone Simonsen, a senior epidemiologist at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in Bethesda, Md., "perhaps by expanding vaccination to schoolchildren, the biggest spreaders of the virus."
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta plans no change in its advice on who should get flu shots. "We think the best way to help the elderly is to vaccinate them," said CDC epidemiologist William Thompson. These results don't contribute to changing vaccine policy." It seems the new study did not compare vaccinated vs. unvaccinated elderly people. Previous studies that did found the vaccine decreased the rate of all winter deaths.
The flu vaccine is less effective in the elderly than in younger people. It works, but not very well, said Ira Longini, a biostatistics professor at Emory University's Rollins School of Public Health and a proponent of vaccinating schoolchildren.
Longini and his colleague Dr. Elizabeth Halloran write in a separate report to be published today in the American Journal of Epidemiology, according to the AP article, that if 70 percent of schoolchildren were vaccinated, the elderly would be protected without flu shots. This would require 42 million doses of flu vaccine. Even during this season's shortage, there were 57 million doses available, their report says.
Yearly flu shots have been recommended for people 65 and older since the 1960s and for those 50 and over since 2000. Vaccination rates have risen among seniors from 20 percent before 1980 to 65 percent in 2001, according to the NIH study.
Simonsen and her team of researchers could find no corresponding decrease in death rates. Their analysis took into account the fact that people are living longer and that more virulent strains of flu dominated the 1990s.
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Comment:
Funny they should mention this. At the start of each of the six semesters since I've begun teaching a law class I've noticed that I've come down with the flu. (No doctor actually tests for the flu, but flu seems to be the lead presumption).
"Doctor," I said, "I'm teaching in a small room with little if any ventilation. Last class half-a-dozen students were absent. I was told they were out sick. The next week I showed up sick, not having missed a class in three years. What's causing this?"
"You've described it," he replied.
A friend suggested a throat lozenge, for ages 3-103, which includes me, called Airborne, made in Switzerland. "Developed by a school teacher who was sick of getting sick in class," it says on the box. Relief for sore throats, it proclaims. I don't know, not having tried it, as I haven't finished all the other open packages of panaceas. It was nice to have ones suspicions about the deleterious health effects of teaching confirmed in these varying ways.
The next week I told the class that from now on the three little windows in our room must remain open. Students sitting under them may come down with pneumonia, but at least that's treatable. The dean says he can have the room tested.
Perhaps we can simply insist that each student receive a flu-shot as the price of admission to class, in the interest of Constitutional Law, of course. I received mine long before, but the effect, if any, has been to reduce the course of the malady, which is a break I'll accept with a rueful sort of gratitude.
Schoolchildren, says researcher Simonsen, are the biggest spreaders of the flu virus. To which I would add, "Schooladults."
Classrooms, it seems, are a public health menace and, as a modest proposal, perhaps should be shut down entirely.