Monday, October 19, 2009

2626 On flu vaccine effectiveness

Monday, October 19, 2009

"There is no necessary connection between the desire to lead
and the ability to lead....
Leadership is more likely to be assumed by the aggressive than by the able
and those who scramble to the top are more often motivated
by their own inner torments
than by any demand for their guidance."
(?)Evans, in a letter to the Kingston Daily Freeman

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The Atlantic Monthly has a very good article on the effectiveness of flu vaccines, "Does the Vaccine Matter", at http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/print/200911/brownlee-h1n1.  It goes into how hope and belief can stifle scientific verification.  One researcher makes the same argument on statistics that I made in this post, that the numbers can't be trusted because the participants are self-selected.

The article is long, but it's full of meat, makes a lot of good points, and gives you things to think about.  It's well worth taking the time to read.

By the way, although some researchers are skeptical about the effectiveness of the vaccine in reducing the spread of flu and fatalities in the general population, even the skeptics agree that it is effective in children and health care workers.  That news might disappoint some readers.

Read the article to find out why they say that.
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