Most people have suffered flu symptoms such as fever, cough, aches and pains, and fatigue at some time during their life. When a patient goes to his or her doctor with flu-like symptoms, the doctor will often administer a nasal swab looking for genetic confirmation that a specific organism was responsible for the symptoms.
But most nasal swabs fail to confirm that an influenza virus is present in patients suffering from flu-like symptoms.
During the 2008-2009 flu season, out of 183,839 samples tested and reported to the CDC, only 25,925 (14.1 percent) were positive for influenza virus. That means that 85.9 percent of patients suffering from flu-like symptoms had probably contracted a different viral infection.
The flu vaccine would not have prevented their symptoms. In fact, taking the flu vaccine could make those people more susceptible to other viruses that cause flu-like symptoms.
A 2019 Department of Defense (DOD) study analyzed the hypothesis that receiving the flu vaccine may increase the risk of infection by other flu-like viruses. This is a phenomenon referred to as “vaccine interference.” What it means is that vaccination for one virus can trick the immune system into thinking it has immunity to another organism that is similar to the one vaccinated against.
When the immune system is presented with a slightly different virus, it does not react appropriately to the new virus because it assumes the body has developed immunity to it. Because the immune system fails to respond, the infection can become severe.
The DOD study compared flu-vaccinated individuals to nonvaccinated individuals and reported that those vaccinated for influenza had a 36 percent greater risk of infection from coronavirus than those who did not get the flu vaccine.
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