How many Americans have died from swine flu compared to deaths from other major causes of deaths. This chart will surprise a lot of people. I checked out some of the stats with reputable sources and they seem legit.
Number of swine flu deaths versus other kinds of deaths
There is another factor to consider. many of the deaths attributed to the swine flu are due to complications involving a preexisting condition.
I also wonder how many deaths are caused by OTC cold and flu remedies that interact with preexisting medical conditions.
The CDC maintains a database of adverse reactions that are voluntarily reports by patients and their doctor.
The VAERS (Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System) data is available for the public to download in comma delimited format, but because the data is supplied voluntarily, it is impossible to know if it represents 1 percent or 100 percent and can't be used to implicate any vaccine as a cause for any chronic illness. It does indicate some vaccines are more likely to cause certain adverse reactions, and it also indicates that the severity and range of reactions increases disproportionately as the number of vaccines administered at the same time increases.
but for the most part, for the majority, vaccines are safe. The problem is that there are no guidelines for identifying who is at risk for adverse reactions and if there were, there are no alternative vaccine protocols for those who are at risk.
But this is all beside the point. There are only a handful of companies that manufacture the vaccines. A good scare that can cause shortage is good for business.
One of the provisions of the health care reform that is so opposed by the republicans is to fund the creation of a national medical database.
This would have many advantages toward improving emergency services, it could also be used to simplify management of prescription meds, to prevent "Doctor Shopping" and prescription related fraud.
Of course there is also the possibility for abuses of the system, but there is one use of a national medical database that scares the pharmaceutical industry.
It would be a resource of all-incluse data that could be analyzed in ways that might associate medical problems caused by medications. Such information would definitely be harmful to the industry corporations which have worked so hard to hide the serious effects of medications like Vioxx and Celebrex.
Now that I think of it, I should update my copy of the VAERS data and see what problems are showing up with the flu vaccines.