According to wikipedia, over the past 25 years or so, they range from 10% to 60+% effective.
Which means that in good years, the fraction of individuals who succumb to flu "and flu-like-symptoms" is smaller than it would be otherwise, so it represents a benefit for those people.
No one can say for sure "If I hadn't had this shot, I'd have missed work/important events on x days of this year" but we can measure a benefit in aggregate.
The "and flu-like-symptoms" makes things difficult, because in the cases where we know it didn't work, we really don't know that it didn't work.
I did not get my shot. I went through a 2 week stomach flu, which generated a small ulcer, which then perforated.
It was April 1st I was operated on and I can only say Canadian medical is just amazing. Everyone in the damn hospital was operating at a very high level.
I'm OK and improving but my hemoglobin levels are still not good. My favourite mountain just gets looked at from the bottom. That's 2 miles to look at it but enough for now. ;) I go for Iron infusion tomorrow, my first of 5 over a couple of months.
We don't like things to be percentages, we like them to be yes-no. Yet few things in life guarantee any result, good or bad. 2-pack smokers live into their 90s, 100km/week runners have heart attacks at 50.
PenGun is right. Better to play the odds correctly.
Ideally I would like to know what the effect is on my physiology and circumstances. I can figure out whether I'm sensitive to the vaccine or not pretty quickly (I'm not), but to learn whether it helps or not is likely to demand quite a number of years of statistics. I don't usually get the flu anyhow, so maybe a couple of decade worth of flu shots...
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According to wikipedia, over the past 25 years or so, they range from 10% to 60+% effective.
Which means that in good years, the fraction of individuals who succumb to flu "and flu-like-symptoms" is smaller than it would be otherwise, so it represents a benefit for those people.
No one can say for sure "If I hadn't had this shot, I'd have missed work/important events on x days of this year" but we can measure a benefit in aggregate.
The "and flu-like-symptoms" makes things difficult, because in the cases where we know it didn't work, we really don't know that it didn't work.
I did not get my shot. I went through a 2 week stomach flu, which generated a small ulcer, which then perforated.
It was April 1st I was operated on and I can only say Canadian medical is just amazing. Everyone in the damn hospital was operating at a very high level.
I'm OK and improving but my hemoglobin levels are still not good. My favourite mountain just gets looked at from the bottom. That's 2 miles to look at it but enough for now. ;) I go for Iron infusion tomorrow, my first of 5 over a couple of months.
Get your flu shots folks. They do help.
We don't like things to be percentages, we like them to be yes-no. Yet few things in life guarantee any result, good or bad. 2-pack smokers live into their 90s, 100km/week runners have heart attacks at 50.
PenGun is right. Better to play the odds correctly.
Ideally I would like to know what the effect is on my physiology and circumstances. I can figure out whether I'm sensitive to the vaccine or not pretty quickly (I'm not), but to learn whether it helps or not is likely to demand quite a number of years of statistics. I don't usually get the flu anyhow, so maybe a couple of decade worth of flu shots...
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