RSS
Home
Media misinformants (round two): false fears about H1N1 vaccine safety
Print
Email
RSS
Subscribe
Swine flu (H1N1) vaccine multi-dose vials
In a world that runs on sensationalism, it should come as no surprise that something like an influenza pandemic should be fodder for the media’s fright machine, a device that went into overdrive on September 11, 2001 and never looked back. Your Intrepid Pharmacist drew out the parallel between hurricanes and influenza outbreaks in a previous column The H1N1 Hurricane: A Pandemic Primer. Another parallel shared by both is the sensationalism and misinformation on the part of the news media. With hurricanes the media hype causes people to panic—always before they need to—and run out to buy lots of lumber, batteries and water. With health care, it causes people to make decisions based on innuendo and insinuation rather than complete fact.
In fact, as the H1N1 outbreak has unfolded, the media’s story has progressed from “OH MY! Is there going to be enough vaccine!?” to “OH MY! Is the vaccine safe?!” And with sad predictability much of the American public has fallen for these ratings grabber tactics, saying "Baaaa" when they should be saying "Bah!" (or at the very least "Prove it").
Your Intrepid Pharmacist is appalled and once again points out this is another shining example of a) why he tells his patients to ignore the mass media and confirm anything they hear by speaking with a medical professional such as himself and b) why the general press should be barred from reporting on such matters without oversight form someone with an actual medical credentials.
Rather than bore you with links to every guilty news organization’s website, your Intrepid Pharmacist will allow the always sharp John Stewart to montage the news clips from April to October and point up some of the mass media’s many flaws on this subject.
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| Doubt Break '09 | ||||
| ||||
With The Daily Show’s exposure of media information as fear-mongering disguised as fact, here are a few facts you Intrepid Pharmacist, is going to pass along on the matter:
Fact #1: H1N1 vaccine is the same vaccine as the seasonal flu vaccine except they changed the strain of influenza in the vaccine, something they do every year with the seasonal vaccine as various strains come and go. All allergies, side effects, and risks that apply to the seasonal flu vaccine are the same ones that apply to the H1N1 vaccine. The worst thing the H1N1 vaccine will do to you is not work at all.
Fact #2: The H1N1 vaccine is made in the same facilities using the same procedures as the seasonal flu vaccine. They had to stop making the seasonal flu vaccine to start making the H1N1 vaccine and this is a) why seasonal flu vaccine was available earlier than usual this year and b) why you cannot find any more seasonal flu vaccine. Your Intrepid Pharmacist has turned away many patients in search of the seasonal flu vaccine as he, like everyone else, is sold out and unable to obtain any more.
Fact #3: In multi-dose vials there is thimerosal, a highly misunderstood component used to prevent bacterial growth after the sterile environment has been penetrated and the first dose drawn out. Your Intrepid Pharmacist exposed the flaws in the thimerosal related theories in the earlier column Holy Mercury Batman! Re-examining the Vaccine-Autism Controversy.
Fact #4: The FluMist nasal vaccine, which your Intrepid Pharmacist took as his seasonal vaccine last year, is just as safe as the injectable form. The molecule in this vaccine is heat sensitive and it deteriorates in temperatures warmer than the nasal passages. Also, for those still believing the thimerosal fear-mongering in spite of great evidence to the contrary (see column link in Fact #3), this vaccine does not contain any thimerosal as it is single dose format.
Fact #5: The Canadian study highlighted by many news sources is unpublished, which means no one in medicine has peer reviewed it for flaws in the design or execution of the study. For those readers who missed it, the study found that those who got the seasonal vaccine were more likely to get the H1N1 flu. The problem here is that for such a study to work they cannot simply divide it up between those who got a vaccine and those who did not. They have to take exposure risk into account. That is, if you work in an office with five people your exposure risk is minimal and you also are less likely to get a flu vaccine as a result, while a school teacher is exposed to many people.
Those with higher exposure risk are more likely to get the seasonal flu vaccine, and they are also the ones most likely to be exposed to the H1N1 flu, for which they were not yet able to get a vaccine. So, in order for this study to work the authors would have to match those who got a vaccine and those who didn’t within similar work environments/exposure risks. In our example then, you would have to have a teacher who did get the seasonal vaccine and got H1N1 flu and a teacher who did not get the seasonal vaccine or the H1N1 flu. Except you would need a lot more than just two such people.
Fact #6: Unlike Mr. Beck, in the video above, your Intrepid Pharmacist will give full disclosure that in addition to giving the seasonal vaccine to many patients, he has also had it. And as soon as the H1N1 vaccine becomes available at his pharmacy, he will also take that vaccine as well.
When it comes to people’s well being, sacrificing truth for ratings is a disservice to the people who need the care and an even greater disservice to the people providing it. To question the safety of something without ever explaining or comparing or examining the manufacturing processes, or the testing process and then, as Glenn Beck did, twisting it into “Do you trust the government?”, is the pinnacle of panicking an already frightened public into making uniformed decisions. All of it done at the behest of news people with no medical education or training in the name of rating shares and ad dollars. So how will you respond to the media fright machine now? “Bah!” or “Baaa!”?
Related Articles:
Comments
