The Influenza Vaccine and COVID-19

An interesting article on the Home Vaccine Education Network suggests that those who have had regular flu shots may be at risk of more severe reactions to the COVID-19 virus and it could also be a contributing factor in the onset of so-called "long COVID" that I dealt with in an earlier post. The article also some interesting background on the flu vaccine that I'll include below:

The Flu Shot:  Never Supported by Science

In 1972, Dr. John Anthony Morris reported his research findings on the influenza vaccine to his superiors at the FDA.  A distinguished doctor and government researcher, Dr. Morris had been comissioned 13 years earlier to scientifically justify the FDA's plans to widely expand the flu vaccination program.   To his expectant audience, however, his results were thoroughly disappointing.   Dr. Morris reported that the flu shot provided no measurable net benefit, in part because the injected product failed to stimulate antibody production in the lungs, thus allowing for viral replication in this sensitive area.   It was later realised that the lack of benefit also derives from the flu shot's ability to  increase vulnerability to viruses not covered in the shot, including unmatched strains of flu and different respiratory viruses dangerous in their own right.   Dr. Morris' finding of no net benefit of the influenza vaccine has been repeatedly verified with contemporary data, including a study by Simonsen et al. (2005)   that found that the large increase in flu vaccination of the elderly between 1980 and 2001 failed to decrease flu season mortality, and a study in Britain which found that the vast increase in flu shot uptake by those who had just turned 65 (vs. those who were just a bit younger) provided no decline in hospitalisations or deaths.

Corruption, Not Public Health 

Given the powerful results of   Dr. Morris' research, the flu vaccine's only perk could be to line the pockets of Big Pharma, and should have been regulated out of existence.  Unfortunately, the cozy relationship between the FDA, CDC, and the pharmaceutical industry, well documented today, is not a new phenomena.   Instead of reconsidering the vaccination program Dr. Morris' supervisors swiftly closed his laboratory and blocked publication of his results.    Breathing a sigh of relief that good science would not be placed in the way of good profits, Big Pharma continued pushing for expansion of the flu shot market.  Even if there wasn't a huge benefit in ordinary years, they argued, it was important to have manufacturing in place in order to churn out large quantities of vaccine quickly to save the world during the next serious pandemic (History of Vaccines, by Arthur Allen).

The Flu Shot Makes A Flu Pandemic - Worse?

Enter 2009, the first major flu pandemic to occur after  mass influenza vaccination had become a reality.  Big pharma did indeed heroically turn out millions of doses of pandemic influenza vaccine.     Unfortunately,  most of the doses did not become available to the general public until after the pandemic was nearly over.  In addition there was the inconvenient finding that individuals who had obediently taken the seasonal flu vaccine the year before were  more likely  to develop pandemic influenza illness that was medically attended.    Public health experts were shocked by these findings but kept their lips sealed as Big Pharma and their sponsored government agencies used  the public spotlight on the flu in 2009 as a springboard to push for an even larger flu vaccination program.   For the first time the flu vaccine was recommended for every American citizen, especially children, who by 2020 were the largest consumers of the shot despite lack of evidence of benefit and the mercury that was allowed to remain in the vaccine.

The Flu Shot Promotes Other Viruses

As alluded to above, 2009 was not an anomaly; the flu shot  routinely increases the rate of infection with other pathogens, negating any benefits of the shot.   While many of the studies of this phenomena worked with patients who had freely chosen whether or not to take the flu shot, (Dierig et al., 2014), one study met the gold standard of a blinded, randomised, placebo controlled trial (Cowling et al., 2012).  While it has been generally hypothesised that the mechanism of the increase in non-flu illnesses is viral interference - the observation that illness with one virus may block others  - it was found by Riken et al. (2018)  that the increase in non-flu infections starts in the first 14 days after receipt of the flu vaccine, before any immunity to the flu has developed.  This indicates that like the DTP vaccine and other inactivated pathogen vaccines, the vaccine engenders non-specific immune system changes which increase vulnerability to certain other infections.  Most of the studies on the flu vaccine have focused on children, or found statistically significant results only in children, however one study to find an affect in adults found that while the flu shot appeared to offer cross protection against certain pathogens for this population, the vulnerability to several other pathogens, including coronavirus, was specifically increased.   This study was with regards to "old" coronaviruses, not COVID-19.    The potential of the flu shot to fuel COVID-19, however, was firmly established, and, as we demonstrated above, can now clearly be seen in the COVID data.

The article presents a rather simplified bar graph to illustrate the impact that the level of flu vaccinations have on COVID mortality rates (see Figure 1):

Figure 1

In regards to these results, the article observes that:

Countries with high flu vaccine coverage, as of July 2020, suffered up to at least 20 times more COVID-19 fatalities/million as countries with low coverage. There appears to be a TIPPING POINT  that occurs at 45% -50% flu vaccine coverage. At vaccination coverage levels either below or above this point there is little correlation with COVID fatality, but the average fatality rate in countries with coverage over the tipping point is significantly higher.  This indicates that reaching a certain density of individuals made especially vulnerable to COVID  by flu vaccination results in connected clusters of vulnerability that span the system (that is, the percolation threshold is reached) which suddenly creates  sharply worse outcomes.   This could be explained if there is an exceptionally virulent variant or variants of COVID that spreads only among flu vaccinated individuals, because it has adapted to immune system shifts that are commonly triggered by the vaccine.  This variant could only become widespread when it can easily spread along chains of vaccinated individuals.

The most powerful correlation, however, is seen when we look at vaccination rates of children (again, 2018/2019 season).  For this data there appears to be a small tipping point around 63% and a much larger one  around 69%.  Every single state with a high COVID death rate, including New York, had a high flu vaccination rate of children.  Since child deaths nonetheless remain low, this must indicate that the children passed a more lethal infection on to their elders, indicating again that the primary role of flu vaccination is to cause individuals to pass more severe cases of COVID-19 to each other.  

The flu vaccinations have been aggressively pushed over the past decade, especially for the elderly. In May of 2019, I posted about topic (link). Of course, the propaganda push for COVID vaccinations has reached insane levels with all sorts of tricks being used to get people to step forward. Such tricks include:

• exaggerated or simply erroneous statistics as to what percentage of a population has received shots: any statistics relating to COVID-19 should be viewed with deep suspicion.
  
  
• fabricated shortage: if something is in short supply, it incites more interest because it becomes more desirable or there is a feeling that you may miss out if you don't seize on the first available opportunity
  
  
• fear-mongering and shaming: if you don't get the jab, your risk of dying from COVID-19 is much increased or so you would be led to believe. Alternatively, if you question the vaccine or the official narrative concerning the COVID-19 pandemic, then you have some kind of psychological flaw (and vague studies and doubtful polls will be adduced to confirm this).
  
  
• the carrot: if you have the jab, you'll be able to get back to work, meet with your friends and travel because the vaccination passport is coming and you'll be eligible for it.
  
  
• the stick: if you don't have the jab, you won't be able to get back to work, meet with your friends and travel because the vaccination passport is coming and you won't be eligible for it unless you get the jab