Re: “Flu vaccine statistics don’t add up,” November 16
It is not clear the writer’s arguments add up. To begin with the writer’s central argument, namely the “60 per cent” claim concerning the efficacy of the vaccine.
The writer herself shows the claim to be factually correct. The fact it doesn’t apply to the whole population is meaningless since the same could be said for virtually any public health measure. Why?
The reason is simple: almost without exception, threats to the health of the population involve small subsections of the population. This includes everything from car accidents to nutritional deficiencies.
If treatments were eliminated solely on the basis that only a small percentage of the (overall) population is impacted, a reasonable argument could be made for doing away with everything from seat belts to smoking suppression programs.
To focus solely on the success rate now, while 60 percent might not appear so remarkable a success rate, most would agree it is better than doing nothing. And this is especially true for vulnerable groups for whom the infection rate is significantly above the 2.73 per cent the writer quotes. It would certainly be of little comfort to members of those groups to be denied a treatment solely on the basis that the number in the general population affected is much lower than their own.
Further to this, it would likely strike most people as reasonable that even those in less vulnerable groups be vaccinated as a means of lowering the incidence in the general population, due to its larger impact on the vulnerable.
One final consideration concerning the absolute risk reduction (reduction in the population as a whole): the infection rate cited in the article is an average across many studies and therefore presumably many years. As such, it obscures that fact that the infection rate varies, sometimes greatly, from year to year, something which cannot be predicted with great accuracy.
The problem with guessing wrong? i.e. supposing the infection will be low (say, close to the average rated cited) when it in fact is not, could be catastrophic, so that basing a vaccination program on the worst case, or at least a higher rate than the average, is not unreasonable.
As for the writer’s “mercury” argument, this is a example of the “perfection” fallacy, which holds that since a remedy is not perfect it is unacceptable. The problem is that in the real world few, if any, remedies are perfect so that from a common sense point of view most reasonable people would not expect them to be only better than the alternatives, especially doing nothing.
It is never difficult to find negative aspects of remedies which is why a more rigorous consideration of their impact is required. Unfortunately this writer’s letter does not provide it.
Dave Haynes
Nelson