Abstract

Flu: An Epidemic of Misconceptions

Fabio Franchi, Manuela Lucarelli and Livio Giuliani

Influenza is a viral disease; it spreads during the winter season in the form of epidemics or even pandemics. Its clinical and social importance is highly amplified by International and National (mainly in Italy) Health Authorities in order to promote and justify the vaccination campaigns. This aim is achieved by providing distorted or fake information to the public. These distortions mainly concern 4 aspects: 1) the real diffusion of influenza viruses; 2) the death rate relative to this disease; 3) vaccine effectiveness; 4) the presence of new viruses in new vaccines. Each of these points will be analysed. Real data, reviews of the literature and arguments will be shown for comparison. The conclusion is that: 1) the spread of the disease is about 10 times lower to the declared one; 2) mortality is very modest, questionable and anyway far less than what was declared; 3) vaccine effectiveness has always been proved as being far low than what had previously been declared, and it has often produced unpredictable and capricious results; 4) vaccines contain antigens of viruses circulating in the 2 - 10 previous years, therefore they certainly cannot be new. Vaccines composition is decided with a sort of bet, which is made by WHO experts more than a year before their use.
Therefore, in case of influenza, the social alarm is the basis of health policy. The fear leads to adopting the offered solution that is an increasingly widespread vaccination. After analysing real data, the rationale of this preventive measure proves to be a failure.