Quote:
Originally Posted by Derranged
I was actually buying into it until I realized the name of the site: Health Impact News. Clearly an "alternative" news site of sorts, which more or less means it pedals conspiracy theories.
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Well exactly. Just browse the site for other interesting facts.
http://healthimpactnews.com/2013/mia...ting-flu-shot/
Both the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and CVS Pharmacy do warn people of the risk of contracting GBS. But the warning is vaguely written in fine print: “If there is a risk of GBS from current flu vaccines, it would be no more than one or two cases per million people vaccinated.”
The CDC says the minute risk of GBS is worth it.
Stec questions that logic, however. “You can risk getting paralyzed, or you can risk a couple of weeks with the sniffles,” he says. “How can you put this in comparison?”
Easy. The risk of GBS is greater from contracting influenza than it is from getting a vaccine. That's without even accounting for the other effects of influenza including pneumonia, fibrile seizures, bronchitis and heart disease.
The numbers above are also a bit misleading.
There are approximately 1 cases per 100,000 people under 30 per year of GBS. The flu vaccine increases your chance to 1.1 per 100,000 per year
at the most. Studies range from zero increase to one in 1 million increase. Your risk of death from influenza is 1 in 10,000 cases and your risk of GBS from catching the flu is 1 in 100,000. In other words if you catch flu you double your chances of catching GBS from 1 in 100,000 to 2 in 100,000.
That's the sort of scaremongering nonsense on these kinds of sites.