It's been a dreary spring in New York, but with Memorial Day approaching, we finally (hopefully) have some warmer weather to look forward to! I hope you emerged from winter , perhaps a little whiter, perhaps a little plumper, but overall happy and healthy. It is winter sickness, in the form of the flu, that got me thinking (something I do once in a while).
I don't know how many times this winter I heard a little fallacy floating around: that the flu shot causes the flu. In fact I heard it in so many forms: "I got the flu after getting the flu shot", "if you didn't get the flu after the shot then you're protected", "my friend got the flu after the shot but it's much less potent than the full blown flu" that I started to wonder if this year's flu, like HBO's take on the Game of Thrones books, was changing the rules.
But no: no the flu shot can NOT cause the flu. A simple Google search shows, in a variety of reputable forms, that no, no you can't - or are highly, highly unlikely - to get the flu from the shot.
Flu vaccinations are most commonly prepared by using an 'inactivated' form of the virus. Translation: the infectious part of those little Vs is dead. Recombinant technology and a cell-based nasal spray are alternate preparations, but each of these technologies has only one FDA approved vaccine on the US market. In randomized, blinded studies, where some people get flu shots and others get salt-water shots (placebo), the only differences in symptoms were increased soreness in the arm and redness at the injection site among people who got the flu shot. There were no differences in terms of body aches, fever, cough, runny nose or sore throat. What does that mean? It means people from both groups probably thought they had the flu, but there was no increased amount of "flu" in the group that got the shot.
So what's going on? What's the disconnect? Why do almost half of Americans think that the shot can cause the flu? I think it comes down to these three things:
1)Humans are naturally inclinatined to find patterns. The flu shot is only ~ 65% effective. So sometimes if you get the shot, you still could get sick. People have a natural tendency to see two events and assign one as the cause, and the other as the effect. This suspected causal link may look even stronger if someone gets the flu almost immediately after the shot. This does happen, but the shot wasn't to blame. The flut shot isn't actually effective for about two weeks - it takes time for antibodies to develop in your body. The incubation period for the flu is 1-4 days. What that means is if you're exposed to the flu during that two week period, you could absolutely contract the flu, because you weren't protected yet. Coincidental: yes. Causal: no
2) The internet can be a vehicle for the spreading of disinformation. When I want to go learn about something, my PhD diploma requires me to go look at scientific journals and government approved sites before I form my opinion (I'm being facetious, but you get my point). But because ANYbody can post almost ANYthing, there is a ton of crap out there. I think an interesting side effect of the connectivity of the internet is that instead of informing and spreading truth, the internet can actually entrenching people in their ideas. If a falsehood is published, and it resonates because it happens to align with people's uninformed ideas of things, is said by a person of importance, sounds really good, would explain something that you heard once, etc, then it can actually make clarity of the truth MORE difficult to achieve, and make people MORE convinced that their wrong ideas are in fact correct.
3) Americans are deeply distrustful of medicine and science. It's a confusing world out there: big pharma is price gouging (that sounds wrong), GMOs are bad for you (we don't want to eat science, right? what does GMO means?), shots are giving our children autism (heard about that, must be true), people are overdosing on pain killers (doctors must be to blame).... while I'm oversimplifying to prove a point, I can understand why a level of distrust has arisen. We should monitor what goes in to our bodies, and there are some causes for public concern, even if they are placed there by the media or other's with something to gain. But many people seem to believe the whole medical and scientific community is out to get them. I think what this comes down to is people want to be in control. Perhaps it's not that people want to believe medicine is a conspiracy theory or a ploy to get money into someone else's pocket, but just that they have a desire to understand. And in trying to do so, perhaps in complex situations it's easiest to point the finger at something one doesn't fully comprehend.
I think all three of these phenomenon influence the way we form opinions, not just about the flu but the millions of things we are exposed to every day. There's a ton of noise, but we're each just trying to find a signal in it. :)
I don't know how many times this winter I heard a little fallacy floating around: that the flu shot causes the flu. In fact I heard it in so many forms: "I got the flu after getting the flu shot", "if you didn't get the flu after the shot then you're protected", "my friend got the flu after the shot but it's much less potent than the full blown flu" that I started to wonder if this year's flu, like HBO's take on the Game of Thrones books, was changing the rules.
But no: no the flu shot can NOT cause the flu. A simple Google search shows, in a variety of reputable forms, that no, no you can't - or are highly, highly unlikely - to get the flu from the shot.
Flu vaccinations are most commonly prepared by using an 'inactivated' form of the virus. Translation: the infectious part of those little Vs is dead. Recombinant technology and a cell-based nasal spray are alternate preparations, but each of these technologies has only one FDA approved vaccine on the US market. In randomized, blinded studies, where some people get flu shots and others get salt-water shots (placebo), the only differences in symptoms were increased soreness in the arm and redness at the injection site among people who got the flu shot. There were no differences in terms of body aches, fever, cough, runny nose or sore throat. What does that mean? It means people from both groups probably thought they had the flu, but there was no increased amount of "flu" in the group that got the shot.
So what's going on? What's the disconnect? Why do almost half of Americans think that the shot can cause the flu? I think it comes down to these three things:
1)Humans are naturally inclinatined to find patterns. The flu shot is only ~ 65% effective. So sometimes if you get the shot, you still could get sick. People have a natural tendency to see two events and assign one as the cause, and the other as the effect. This suspected causal link may look even stronger if someone gets the flu almost immediately after the shot. This does happen, but the shot wasn't to blame. The flut shot isn't actually effective for about two weeks - it takes time for antibodies to develop in your body. The incubation period for the flu is 1-4 days. What that means is if you're exposed to the flu during that two week period, you could absolutely contract the flu, because you weren't protected yet. Coincidental: yes. Causal: no
2) The internet can be a vehicle for the spreading of disinformation. When I want to go learn about something, my PhD diploma requires me to go look at scientific journals and government approved sites before I form my opinion (I'm being facetious, but you get my point). But because ANYbody can post almost ANYthing, there is a ton of crap out there. I think an interesting side effect of the connectivity of the internet is that instead of informing and spreading truth, the internet can actually entrenching people in their ideas. If a falsehood is published, and it resonates because it happens to align with people's uninformed ideas of things, is said by a person of importance, sounds really good, would explain something that you heard once, etc, then it can actually make clarity of the truth MORE difficult to achieve, and make people MORE convinced that their wrong ideas are in fact correct.
3) Americans are deeply distrustful of medicine and science. It's a confusing world out there: big pharma is price gouging (that sounds wrong), GMOs are bad for you (we don't want to eat science, right? what does GMO means?), shots are giving our children autism (heard about that, must be true), people are overdosing on pain killers (doctors must be to blame).... while I'm oversimplifying to prove a point, I can understand why a level of distrust has arisen. We should monitor what goes in to our bodies, and there are some causes for public concern, even if they are placed there by the media or other's with something to gain. But many people seem to believe the whole medical and scientific community is out to get them. I think what this comes down to is people want to be in control. Perhaps it's not that people want to believe medicine is a conspiracy theory or a ploy to get money into someone else's pocket, but just that they have a desire to understand. And in trying to do so, perhaps in complex situations it's easiest to point the finger at something one doesn't fully comprehend.
I think all three of these phenomenon influence the way we form opinions, not just about the flu but the millions of things we are exposed to every day. There's a ton of noise, but we're each just trying to find a signal in it. :)
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