Southern Bread Blog

I’ve always been skeptical of seasonal flu hysteria, and this year it’s just become totally ridiculous. The reason that I’ve never bought into the whole “you must get the flu vaccine” thing is that it violates some of my rules of common sense analysis. Here’s what I mean:

• If it’s new, be skeptical: Ok, this might sound like I’m a dinosaur or an old curmudgeon, but that’s not true. What I mean is that whenever something new hits the scene we have a duty to be skeptical about it until it’s been thoroughly researched and proven out. The idea of taking the flu vaccine every fall is something relatively new. It’s only been during the last 20 years or so that this idea has become prevalent. Before that, any talk of the flu vaccine was met with proper skepticism and only recommended for those where the risk of flu outweighed the risk of the vaccine side effects. This article from the NY Times in 1981 proves my point:
  

  In general, influenza is a bothersome disease, but not a serious one. Those who are most likely to develop serious and potentially fatal complications, including the elderly and people who are chronically ill, are advised to obtain flu vaccinations each year.

  –Jane E. Brody, NY Times

• If different rules apply to this one thing, be skeptical: What I mean here is that if there seems to be a different set of rules for this particular thing than are being applied to all the rest of a class of like things then you have to dig deep to find out why. For instance, the cold is a virus. Why aren’t we vaccinating that? And what about strep throat? And how about viral pneumonia? And, if we can’t vaccinate efficiently against all those things then why do we assume that the influenza virus is so susceptible to vaccination? It just seems that the flu is having different rules applied to it than every other disease. Seriously? A new vaccine every freakin year? That just doesn’t seem to fit.
• If an easy financial gain link can be found, be skeptical: Ok, just ask yourself for a moment who benefits from a national campaign to be vaccinated against the flu every year. It’s easy to see that drug companies would benefit greatly from this. The largest manufacturers of flu vaccine are Glaxo-Smith Kline, Novartis and Sanofi-Aventis. Familiar names to be sure. Such an obvious link between drug company profit and a public health scare should make anyone skeptical. Think of it this way. If all of the sudden the government came out with a report next month that said that buying a new car was necessary for health reasons because old cars harbour germs in the cushions wouldn’t you be a little skeptical that GM and Chrysler had something to do with it? Also, you have to wonder why nobody knows or reports on who actually makes these vaccines. All you ever see reported is “vaccine makers” said this, or “vaccine manufacturers” did that. They never actually use their company names. For example, do a google search for “largest manufacturer of flu vaccine” and notice that you only get like 8 hits. Seriously?! Eight hits? That’s fishy. What’s to hide?
• When you see fascism, be really, really skeptical: It’s fairly obvious to me that there is a mutual benefit scenario that plays out with annual flu-scare vaccinations. The government gets the benefit of the increased power and control that comes with any national “emergency” via the ratchet effect. And that plays perfectly into the profit motives of big, fascist pharma. If you know anything about me at all then you’ll know that I have absolutely nothing against profit. I’m an anarcho-capitalist to be sure. But profit by fascism is ill-gained and wrong.
• When the numbers lie, reject it: The truth about the whole flu thing is that the 36,000 flu deaths each year that the CDC reports is just complete aggregate nonsense. Statistics are easily skewed by using aggregated numbers. When you break down the actual causes of death in detail, you’ll see that less than 1000 people actually die directly from the flu complications each year and those almost always have complicating health factors such as severe asthma. Most all of those deaths are from people in the extreme age ranges and those who already have other illnesses like HIV. The numbers lie.

One link that has been gaining more and more solid independent research behind it is the link between Vitamin-D and cold/flu contraction. There is a lot of good evidence now showing that Vitamin-D deficiency is a main factor in a weak immune system. You can read about it here on Steve Gibson’s Vitamin-D page and the video below is a good reference too. Vitamin-D is actually not a vitamin at all. It’s a sort of super-hormone that the body uses for all kinds of things. It’s not naturally found in food either. But you won’t find any of this in any of the CDC/HHS propaganda literature because Vitamin-D isn’t patentable so it therefore doesn’t help big pharma to push that headline.