Reply #14: Maybe it was effective .... [View All]

[Techn0Girl]

And maybe it wasn't. I wasn't vaccinated, live in one of the States that had the biggest outbreaks and never came down with the flu.

We can't go by individual stories of course, we have to go by overall stats. Now the overall stats for influenza vaccine does vary and there have been many studies done. Here is one of them:

In the New England Journal of Medicine a vaccine study was done of about 850 people. Some got a placebo and some got flu vaccine.

According to the study: "those who received the vaccine reported 25 percent fewer episodes of upper respiratory illness than those who received the placebo"

So in essence you still had a 3/4 chance of getting the flu .
So at best, according to this study, the flu vaccine is can reduce your chance of getting the flu bu only 25%