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Health See other Health Articles Title: Flu Misinformation and Coronavirus Fears: My Letter to Dr. Sanjay Gupta Dear Sanjay, Last week, your CNN producer, Matthew Reynard, notified me that CNN is featuring me in a documentary about “vaccine misinformation”. As usual, Mr. Reynard did not point out a single factual assertion by me that was incorrect (I carefully source all of my statements about vaccines to government databases or peer-reviewed publications). CNN uses the term “vaccine misinformation” as a euphemism for any statement that departs from the Government / Pharma orthodoxy that all vaccines are safe, necessary, and effective for all people. I respectfully point out that CNN and particularly you, Sanjay, are today among the most prolific broadcasters of ‘vaccine misinformation.’ I have always admired you, Sanjay. Your obvious talents aside, you seem to be genuinely compassionate and to value integrity. Earlier in your career, you showed a courageous willingness to challenge Big Pharma’s vaccine orthodoxies. However, I respectfully point out that CNN and particularly you, Sanjay, are today among the most prolific broadcasters of “vaccine misinformation”. Over the last several years, I cannot recall seeing a single substantial CNN segment on vaccines that did not include easily verified factual misstatements. CNN’s recent special, “Pandemic”, was a showcase of erroneous assertions about the flu vaccine. Since I don’t like to think that you deliberately mislead the public—particularly about critical public health choices—I have taken the time to point out some of your most frequent errors. The Vitamin D Revoluti... Soram Khalsa Best Price: $1.25 Buy New $10.69 (as of 08:00 EST - Details) I hope you will take time to read this. This critique has special relevance during the current coronavirus crisis, not to mention its important implications for the roles of government and press in a democracy. CNN and other media outlets treat CDC, NIH, and WHO pronouncements as infallible truths. In fact, regulatory capture has made these agencies subsidiaries of Big Pharma, and the lies that CDC has been telling us about flu are now muddying the debate over coronavirus. Furthermore, of the mere 257 cases that could reasonably be blamed on the flu in CDC’s mortality data, only 7 percent were laboratory confirmed cases of influenza. 1. CNN assertion: In your annual flu shot promotions, you routinely parrot CDC’s estimates of overall flu deaths which have ranged in recent years from 36,000 for the 1990-1991 flu season to 80,000 for the 2017-2018 flu season. Fact: The HHS’s mortality and morbidity data—available on the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) website—show that CDC’s (and CNN’s) annual estimates are off by orders of magnitude. NCHS data report the average number of mortalities attributable to influenza on death certificates is little more than 1,000. CDC devises its inflated estimate by deliberately conflating flu deaths with pneumonia deaths. This device is deceitful since most of these fatalities are unrelated to the flu (and therefore, impervious to flu vaccines). In 2005, the British Medical Journal (BMJ) Editor, Dr. Peter Doshi, published a comprehensive rebuke of CDC’s annual ritual of exaggerating flu mortalities entitled “Dissecting CDC’s Deception: Are US Flu Death Figures More PR Than Science?” Doshi accuses the CDC of purposefully inflating flu deaths to frighten the public into purchasing vaccines. To illustrate CDC’s chicanery, Doshi observed that CDC’s announced number of reported pneumonia and influenza deaths in 2001 at 62,034. Yet less than half of one percent of those were actually attributed to influenza. Furthermore, of the mere 257 cases that could reasonably be blamed on the flu in CDC’s mortality data, only 7 percent were laboratory confirmed cases of influenza. That’s 18 lab confirmed influenza cases out of 62,034 “pneumonia and influenza” deaths—or just 0.03 percent, according to HHS’s own National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS). Subtracting pneumonia, the true number of influenza-associated deaths from 1979 to 2002 averaged 1,348, according to the NCHS data. CNN routinely reports figures forty times this number. Magnesium: Reversing D... Levy, MD Jd Best Price: $23.53 Buy New $24.58 (as of 02:51 EDT - Details) Dr. Doshi charges the CDC with deliberately lying about annual flu deaths to “[work] in manufacturers’ interest by conducting campaigns to increase flu vaccination”. He warns that “by arbitrarily linking flu with pneumonia, current data are statistically biased.” By faithfully parroting CDC inflated numbers—with no due diligence—CNN has made itself complicit in this annual charade, making it difficult now to accurately assess the relative risk of COVID-19 as compared to flu and, therefore, rationally measure an appropriate response. … 2010 meta-analysis of published influenza vaccine studies found that the influenza vaccination has no effect on hospitalization, and that there is no evidence that vaccines prevent viral transmission or complications. 2. CNN assertion: CNN routinely promotes the flu shot for everyone older than 6 months, proclaiming that the best way to protect against serious cases of the ailment “is to get a flu shot”. Fact: In reality, there is absolutely no scientific basis for the CDC’s assertion that the influenza vaccine is the most effective way to prevent the flu. The Cochrane Collaboration’s comprehensive 2010 meta-analysis of published influenza vaccine studies found that the influenza vaccination has “no effect” on hospitalization, and that there is “no evidence that vaccines prevent viral transmission or complications.” The Cochrane Researchers concluded in 2010 that the scientific evidence “seem[s] to discourage the utilization of vaccination against influenza in healthy adults as a routine public health measure.” Four years later, Cochrane published a follow-up meta-review including dozens of more recent scientific studies and again concluded bluntly that the body of scientific data provides “no evidence for the utilization of vaccination against influenza in healthy adults as a routine public health measure.” Sodium Bicarbonate: Na... Mark Sircus Best Price: $7.25 Buy New $10.32 (as of 10:37 EST - Details) In other words, despite CNN’s relentless hectoring, there is no scientific evidence that all the billions of dollars America spends on influenza vaccination each year actually provides any health benefit, much less a net economic benefit—apart from the financial windfall to the four pharmaceutical companies that manufacture these vaccines—and who happen to be among CNN’s top advertisers. …[a study published in PNAS] found that influenza vaccination actually increased transmission of the virus, with vaccinated individuals shedding more than six times as much aerosolized virus in their breath than unvaccinated individuals. 3. CNN assertion: You and CNN frequently parrot CDC’s claim that a flu shot reduces the chances that an individual will transmit the flu to others. Pandemic repeated this assertion. CNN offers this supposed benefit as the justification for school vaccine mandates. Fact: However, in their 2010 systematic meta review of the literature, the Cochrane researchers found “no evidence that vaccines prevent viral transmission or complications”. Even more worrisome, a study from January 18, 2018, in the Journal of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, PNAS, found that influenza vaccination actually increased transmission of the virus, with vaccinated individuals shedding more than six times as much aerosolized virus in their breath than unvaccinated individuals. Those scientists were not altogether surprised by this finding explaining that “certain types of prior immunity”—in this case, the kind of immunity conferred by the vaccine as opposed to naturally acquired immunity— “promote lung inflammation, airway closure, and aerosol generation.” They conclude that, “If confirmed, this observation, together with recent literature suggesting reduced protection with annual vaccination, would have implications for influenza vaccination recommendations and policies.” 4. CNN assertion: CNN frequently repeats CDC’s advice that children should get the flu shot, which you assure CNN’s audience has been proven safe. How Not To Die With Tr... Henriques, Tiago Best Price: $18.23 Buy New $17.97 (as of 08:00 EST - Details) Fact: A 2012 Cochrane review looking at studies of influenza vaccination in healthy children found no safety studies in children under age two, and declared that safety studies were “urgently required”. Every influenza vaccine package insert contains warnings about the lack of safety studies in pregnant women and nursing mothers. 5. CNN assertion: CNN also promotes CDC’s recommendation that all pregnant women get a flu shot. Fact: CDC recommends the flu shot for pregnant women despite the fact that FDA—the agency charged with assessing vaccine safety—has refused to license the flu shot during pregnancy due to grave safety concerns. (Sanjay; I encourage you to confront FDA and make inquiries about this inter-agency conflict.) Every influenza vaccine package insert contains warnings about the lack of safety studies in pregnant women and nursing mothers. A 2014 Cochrane review found that the number of randomized, placebo-controlled trials examining the safety and effectiveness of vaccinating pregnant women was zero. A 2019 article by Alberto Donzelli in Human Vaccination & Immunotheraputics, asks the question, “Influenza vaccination for all pregnant women?” and argues, “So far the less biased evidence does not favour it”. Donelli found that public health recommendations on flu shots during pregnancy had systematically overestimated “the vaccine effectiveness and safety”—and that the published science showed “an excess of local adverse effects and a tendency for serious adverse events with uncertain or very limited protection against influenza”. Donzelli observes that flu vaccine trials in Africa and Asia have shown excessive infection and deaths in infants associated with flu shots during pregnancy. Although the vaccination rate for elderly people had increased by as much as 67 percent from 1989 to 1997, there was no evidence that vaccination reduced hospitalizations or deaths. On the contrary, mortality and hospitalization rates continued to increase rather than decline. 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