"Shocking" Report On Flu Vaccine Is Neither Shocking Nor Correct 6park.com
 6park.com
Steven SalzbergContributor 6park.com
Healthcare 6park.com

This article is more than 6 years old. 6park.com

Flu season is coming, and once again it’s time to get your flu shot (or snort, if you prefer FluMist). It’s not perfect, but the vaccine is your best protection against the influenza virus.
So I was surprised to stumble upon an article titled “Johns Hopkins Scientist Reveals Shocking Report on Flu Vaccines,” which popped up on an anti-vaccine website two weeks ago. Johns Hopkins University is my own institution, and I hadn’t heard any shocking new findings. I soon discovered that this article contained only a tiny seed of truth, surrounded by a mountain of anti-vaccine misinformation. Most of it focused on a report published in early 2013 by Peter Doshi, a former postdoctoral fellow at Hopkins.
First, as Snopes.com has already pointed out, Doshi is not a virologist or an epidemiologist, but rather an anthropologist who studies comparative effectiveness research. He never conducted influenza research at Hopkins. (He’s now an Assistant Professor at the University of Maryland’s School of Pharmacy.) Second, Doshi’s 2013 article was an opinion piece (a “feature”), not an original research article, and it did not report any new findings. Third, it is highly misleading to suggest (as the anti-vax article’s title does) that Doshi somehow represents Johns Hopkins University. At Johns Hopkins Hospital, the flu vaccine is required of all personnel who have contact with patients, as a good-practices effort to minimize the risk that a patient will catch the flu from a caregiver.
But what did Doshi’s article say? Even though it isn’t new, why are the anti-vaccine sites recycling it? His central argument is this:

“The vaccine might be less beneficial and less safe than has been claimed, and the threat of influenza appears overstated.”
Let’s look at this statement. It’s almost obviously true: one only has to find a few overstated claims about the risks of flu, which isn't hard to do. But it’s also completely consistent with the view that the vaccine is enormously beneficial and that the threat of influenza is very serious. See how that works? 6park.com