On vaccines, safety and doublespeak

I wrote previously about balancing the pros and cons of the H1N1 vaccine in making the best decision for your family. We decided to get vaccinated. However, I still think it can go either way and each family needs to make their own choice.

Yesterday, the Government of Canada finally released its first report on H1N1 vaccine safety. Here is the summary table:



With regards to the servere adverse effects, they wrote:

The 36 serious adverse events included several reports of febrile seizures (a seizure brought on by high fever) and anaphylaxis. Anaphylaxis is a severe allergic reaction that can be life threatening. One of the reported cases of anaphylaxis has been fatal and is being investigated. To date the frequency of anaphylaxis is less than 1 event per 100,000 doses distributed and thus does not exceed what is seen with other vaccines.

They also compared the safety to the seasonal flu vaccine:

To date, the reporting rates for all adverse events as well as serious adverse events are within the range of that observed following seasonal flu vaccine.  For most vaccine campaigns, one serious adverse event occurs for every 100,000 doses distributed.

My reaction

I do think that this shows that the vaccine is generally quite safe. That said, I do object to some of their reporting tactics, including:

• They are reporting on the number of adverse effects out of the number of vaccines distributed. Not the number of vaccines administered. They do not tell us how many were administered.

• In the Toronto Star article on the report, David Butler Jones, Canada's Chief Public Health Officer says: "It is important to remember that just because a medical event follows a vaccination (does not mean it has) been caused by the vaccine." Which is interesting, because when someone has an underlying medical condition and has H1N1 and dies or is hospitalized, they say it is because of H1N1. They do not say "it is important to remember that just because a medical event occurs in someone who has H1N1, does not mean it has been caused by H1N1."  Sounds like a game of downplaying the risks of the vaccine and exaggerating the risks of the flu, which I think is completely unnecessary given that the real stats I think tell a good enough story on their own. So why open yourself up to criticism like that?

I'm glad they put out the report. It is better than nothing. But I think there is still an awful lot of spin in their messaging.

Comments

[Natasha]

I agree.

I also liked how the reminder "“It is important to remember that just because a medical event follows a vaccination (does not mean it has) been caused by the vaccine“ followed the information that "most" adverse reactions happened within minutes of receiving the vaccine.

[Cogito]

I appreciate your providing good information on this, without buying in to vaccine hysteria!

I do think your second criticism is a little off base though. The point is, kids sometimes have bad things happen to them out of the blue. Let's say vomiting - most parents have seen a perfectly healthy-seeming kid start ralphing their guts out unexpectedly. So a child gets vaccinated, and they start vomiting within 24 hours. It is a fair chance that the vomiting is in no way related to the vaccination - they just coincidentally occurred around the same time.

However, deaths of people with underlying conditions who came down with H1N1 are actually causally related to the flu virus. Sure, the underlying condition is what made the flu more dangerous for them, but the flu itself contributed to the death.

I understand what you're saying, and I'd like more details on flu statistics too, but I can't get on officials for not using the same conservative language about flu deaths as they do about vaccine adverse events.

[phdinparenting]

Cogito:

I'm not sure that I agree. If someone is very ill, they could have died/been hospitalized with or without the flu. A lot of people with chronic conditions are in and out of the hospital constantly even when they do not have the flu.

It could just be a coincidence that they got the flu at the same time that they were suffering from something else. I understand what you are saying and certainly getting the flu is risk for someone with underlying health conditions, but I don't think we can *always* say that it was the cause of death/hospitalization, just as we can't *always* say that the vaccine was the cause of medical event that happens after someone received it.

[Vidya]

In fact, it's only *because* the 'adverse reactions' occurred within minutes that these get recorded as 'adverse reactions' at all. It's well-known that medical personnel commonly refuse to attribute ailments to vaccines, because it (a) goes against everything they've been taught about the supposed 'safety' of vaccines, and (b), more importantly, makes them and their colleagues vulnerable to legal actions. In the US, it's believed that perhaps as little as 3% of adverse reactions are reported; extrapolating from those figures, the Canadian stats provided here could be as high as 1000 major (life-threatening and/or fatal) reactions, and 20,000 'minor' ones. And, even then, none of this takes into account the possibly catastrophic long-term sequalae of vaccination.

And the Canadian government has finally admitted that the overall flu death rate this year could be MUCH lower than in an 'average' year, because those older people usually most likely to die of flu-related complications are protected by previously acquired, life-long immunity -- something that the younger population will be unlikely to acquire, because the vaccine, at best, gives only moderate, temporary, and highly virus-specific protection, not the long-lasting and adaptable protection of natural viral exposure.

I weep for what humanity is doing to itself.