WMP NOTE: After the recent media uproar about the CDC Director Brenda Fitzgerald’s resignation, which focused on the inappropriateness of her ownership in tobacco stock, the WMP team decided to investigate further. What we uncovered is new technology that utilizes tobacco leaves to produce vaccines in a much shorter time frame and clinical trials are already underway using this new technology to produce flu vaccines here in the US. So maybe Fitzgerald’s stocks had nothing to do with smoking tobacco cessation and everything to do with vaccine production?
By nearly everyone’s admission, this year’s influenza vaccine has been a colossal flop. In any given year, flu shot effectiveness in the United States varies widely anyway, but this year’s estimates point to rock-bottom effectiveness of 10 percent. The previous low over the past five years was an estimated 19 percent for the 2014-2015 influenza season, when public health researchers concluded that the shot “offered little protection” against the predominant influenza strain. (This does not even take into account research showing that individuals who get the flu shot year after year have diminished protection and are at greater risk of spreading the flu to others.) The figure below shows the flu vaccine’s inconsistent levels of effectiveness since 2004.Influenza vaccine effectiveness, 2004-2017 (Source: CDC)
