A question that has lingered since the 2009 mass vaccination campaign against pandemic H1N1 swine flu is whether seasonal influenza vaccination might make pandemic infections worse or more prevalent.1
Early on in the
COVID-19 pandemic, Dr. Michael Murray, naturopath and author, confirmed what
Judy Mikovits, Ph.D., told me in her second interview with me, namely that
seasonal influenza vaccinations may have contributed to the dramatically
elevated COVID-19 mortality seen in Italy. In a blog post, he pointed out that
Italy had introduced a new, more potent type of flu vaccine, called VIQCC, in
September 2019:2
“Most available influenza
vaccines are produced in embryonated chicken eggs. VIQCC, however, is produced
from cultured animal cells rather than eggs and has more of a ‘boost’ to the
immune system as a result.
VIQCC also contains four types
of viruses — 2 type A viruses (H1N1 and H3N2) and 2 type B viruses.3 It
looks like this ‘super’ vaccine impacted the immune system in such a way to
increase coronavirus infection through virus interference …”
Vaccines and Virus Interference
The kind of virus
interference Murray was referring to had been shown to be at play during the
2009 pandemic swine flu. A 2010 review4,5 in
PLOS Medicine, led by Dr. Danuta Skowronski, a Canadian influenza expert with
the Centre for Disease Control in British Columbia, found the seasonal flu
vaccine increased people’s risk of getting sick with pandemic H1N1 swine flu
and resulted in more serious bouts of illness.
People who received the trivalent influenza vaccine during the
2008-2009 flu season were between 1.4 and 2.5 times more likely to get infected
with pandemic H1N1 in the spring and summer of 2009 than those who did not get
the seasonal flu vaccine.
To double-check the
findings, Skowronski and other researchers conducted a follow-up study on
ferrets. Their findings were presented at the 2012 Interscience Conference on
Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy. At the time, Skowronski commented on her
team’s findings, telling MedPage Today:6
“There may be a direct vaccine
effect in which the seasonal vaccine induced some cross-reactive antibodies
that recognized pandemic H1N1 virus, but those antibodies were at low levels
and were not effective at neutralizing the virus. Instead of killing the new
virus it actually may facilitate its entry into the cells.”
In all, five
observational studies conducted across several Canadian provinces found
identical results. These findings also confirmed preliminary data from Canada
and Hong Kong. As Australian infectious disease expert professor Peter
Collignon told ABC News:7
“Some interesting data has
become available which suggests that if you get immunized with the seasonal
vaccine, you get less broad protection than if you get a natural
infection …
We may be perversely setting
ourselves up that if something really new and nasty comes along, that people
who have been vaccinated may in fact be more susceptible compared to getting
this natural infection.”
Flu Vaccination Raises
Unspecified Coronavirus Infection
A study8,9 published in the January 10, 2020,
issue of the journal Vaccine also found people were more likely to get some
form of coronavirus infection if they had been vaccinated against influenza. As
noted in this study, titled “Influenza Vaccination and Respiratory Virus
Interference Among Department of Defense Personnel During the 2017-2018
Influenza Season:”
“Receiving influenza
vaccination may increase the risk of other respiratory viruses, a phenomenon
known as virus interference … This study aimed to investigate virus
interference by comparing respiratory virus status among Department of Defense
personnel based on their influenza vaccination status.”
While seasonal
influenza vaccination did not raise the risk of all respiratory infections, it
was in fact “significantly associated with unspecified coronavirus” (meaning it
did not specifically mention SARS-CoV-2, which was still unknown at the time
this study was conducted) and human metapneumovirus (hMPV10).
Remember, SARS-CoV-2
is one of seven different coronaviruses known to cause respiratory illness in
humans.11 Four of them — 229E, NL63, OC43 and HKU1 — cause
symptoms associated with the common cold.
OC43 and HKU112 are also known to cause bronchitis, acute
exacerbation of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and pneumonia in all age
groups.13 The other three human coronaviruses — which are
capable of causing more serious respiratory illness — are SARS-CoV, MERS-CoV and
SARS-CoV-2.
Service members who
had received a seasonal flu shot during the 2017-2018
flu season were 36% more likely to contract coronavirus infection and 51% more
likely to contract hMPV infection than unvaccinated individuals.14,15
Influenza Vaccination Linked to
Higher COVID Death Rates
October 1, 2020,
professor Christian Wehenkel, an academic editor for PeerJ, published a data analysis16 in that same journal, in which he reports finding a
“positive association between COVID-19 deaths and influenza vaccination rates
in elderly people worldwide.”
In other words, areas with the highest vaccination rates among
elderly people also had the highest COVID-19 death rates. To be fair, the
publisher’s note points out that correlation does not necessary equal
causation:
“What does that mean? By way of
example, in some cities increased ice cream sales correlate with increased
murder rates. But that doesn’t mean that if more ice creams are sold, then
murder rates will increase. There is some other factor at play — the weather
temperature.
Similarly, this article should
not be taken to suggest that receiving the influenza vaccination results in an
increased risk of death for an individual with COVID-19 as there may be many
confounding factors at play (including, for example, socioeconomic factors).”
That said, one of the
reasons for the analysis was to double-check whether the data would support
reports claiming that seasonal influenza vaccination was
negatively correlated with COVID-19 mortality — including one that
found regions in Italy with higher vaccination rates among elders had lower
COVID-19 death rates.17 “A negative association was
expected,” Wehenkel writes in PeerJ. But that’s not what he found:
“Contrary to expectations, the
present worldwide analysis and European sub-analysis do not support the
previously reported negative association between COVID-19 deaths (DPMI)
[COVID-19 deaths per million inhabitants] and IVR [influenza vaccination rate]
in elderly people, observed in studies in Brazil and Italy,” the author noted.18
“To determine the association
between COVID-19 deaths and influenza vaccination, available data sets from
countries with more than 0.5 million inhabitants were analyzed (in total 39
countries).
To accurately estimate the
influence of IVR on COVID-19 deaths and mitigate effects of confounding variables,
a sophisticated ranking of the importance of different variables was performed,
including as predictor variables IVR and some potentially important
geographical and socioeconomic variables as well as variables related to
non-pharmaceutical intervention.
The associations were measured
by non-parametric Spearman rank correlation coefficients and random forest
functions.
The results showed a positive
association between COVID-19 deaths and IVR of people ≥65 years-old. There is a
significant increase in COVID-19 deaths from eastern to western regions in the
world. Further exploration is needed to explain these findings, and additional
work on this line of research may lead to prevention of deaths associated with
COVID-19.”
What Might Account for Vaccination-Mortality
Link?
In the discussion section of the paper, Wehenkel points out that
previous explanations for how flu vaccination might reduce COVID-19 deaths are
not supported by the data he collected.
The influenza vaccine
may increase influenza immunity at the expense of reduced immunity to
SARS-CoV-2 by some unknown biological mechanism … Alternatively … reduced
non-specific immunity in the following weeks, probably caused by virus
interference. ~ Professor Christian Wehenkel
For example, he cites research attributing the beneficial effect
of flu vaccination to improved prevention of influenza and SARS-CoV-2
coinfections, and another that suggested the flu vaccine might improve
SARS-CoV-2 clearance.
These arguments
“cannot explain the positive, direct or indirect relationship between influenza
vaccination rates and both COVID-19 deaths per million inhabitants and case
fatality ratio found in this study, which was confirmed by an unbiased ranking
variable importance using Random Forest models,” Wehenkel says.19 (Random Forest refers to a preferred classification
algorithm used in data science to model predictions.20) Instead, he offers
the following hypotheses:21
“The influenza vaccine may
increase influenza immunity at the expense of reduced immunity to SARS-CoV-2 by
some unknown biological mechanism, as suggested by Cowling et al.
(2012)22 for non-influenza respiratory virus.
Alternatively, weaker
temporary, non-specific immunity after influenza viral infection could cause
this positive association due to stimulation of the innate immune response
during and for a short time after infection.23,24
People who had received the
influenza vaccination would have been protected against influenza but not
against other viral infections, due to reduced non-specific immunity in the
following weeks,25 probably caused by virus interference.26,27,28
Although existing human vaccine
adjuvants have a high level of safety, specific adjuvants in influenza vaccines
should also be tested for adverse reactions, such as additionally increased
inflammation indicators29 in COVID-19 patients with already strongly
increased inflammation.”30
The Flu Vaccine Paradox
Since Wehenkel’s
analysis focuses on the flu vaccine’s impact on COVID-19 mortality among the
elderly, it can be useful to take a look at information presented at a World
Health Organization workshop in 2012. On page 6 of the workshop presentation31 in question, the presenter discusses “a paradox
from trends studies” showing that “influenza-related mortality increased in
U.S. elderly while vaccine coverage rose from 15% to 65%.”
On page 7, he further notes that while a decline in mortality of
35% would be expected with that increase in vaccine uptake, assuming the
vaccine is 60% to 70% effective, the mortality rate has risen instead, although
not exactly in tandem with vaccination coverage.
On page 10, another
paradox is noted. While observational studies claim the flu vaccine reduces
winter mortality risk from any cause by 50% among the elderly, and vaccine
coverage among the elderly rose from 15% to 65%, no mortality decline has been
seen among the elderly during winter months.32,33
Seeing how the elderly are the most likely to die due to
influenza, and the flu accounts for 5% to 10% of all winter deaths, a “50%
mortality savings [is] just not possible,” the presenter states. He then goes
on to highlight studies showing evidence of bias in studies that estimate
influenza vaccine effectiveness in the elderly. When that bias is adjusted for,
vaccine effectiveness among seniors is discouraging.
Interestingly, the document points out that immunologists have
long known that vaccine effectiveness in the elderly would be low, thanks to
senescent immune response, i.e., the natural decline in immune function that
occurs with age. This is why influenza “remains a significant problem in
elderly despite widespread influenza vaccination programs,” the presenter
notes.
Sources and References
- 1 ABC News Australia March 4,
2011
- 2, 9 Doctormurray.com Does Flu Shot
Increase COVID-19 Risk
- 3 Doctorsinitaly.com January 13, 2020
- 4 PLOS Medicine April 6, 2010
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pmed.1000258
- 5 CIDRAP April 6, 2010
- 6 Medpage Today September 10,
2012
- 7 ABC News March 5, 2011
- 8 Vaccine January 10, 2020;
38(2):350-354
- 10 Lung.org Symptoms of hMPV
- 11 CDC.gov Human Coronavirus Types
- 12, 13 J Infect Dis. 2013 Nov 15;
208(10): 1634–1642
- 14 Vaccine January 10, 2020;
38(2):350-354, 3. Results and Table 5
- 15, 28 Vaccine 10 January 2020, Pages
350-354
- 16, 18, 19 PeerJ — Life and Environment
October 1, 2020, 8:e10112
- 17 Journal of Medical Virology
June 4, 2020; 93(1): 64-65
- 20 Towards Data Science,
Understanding Random Forest
- 21 PeerJ — Life and Environment October 1, 2020,
8:e10112, Discussion
- 22, 25 Clinical Infectious Diseases
June 15, 2012; 54(12): 1778-1783
- 23 Journal of Leukocyte Biology
July 30, 2009; 86(4): 803-812
- 24 Allergy February 23, 2009;
64(3): 375-386
- 26 Proceedings of the Royal
Society B September 12, 1957
- 27 Vaccine November 3, 2011;
29(47): 8615-8618
- 29 Drug Safety October 8, 2015;
38: 1059-1074
- 30 Clinical Infectious Diseases
March 12, 2020; 71(15): 762-768
- 31 Introduction to Issues
Regarding Measurement of VE in Elderly Population, WHO Workshop, Geneva
December 3-4, 2012
- 32 Archives of Internal Medicine February 14, 2005;
165(3): 265-272
- 33 DICRAP February 16, 2005
- 34 The Defender January 25, 2021
Copyright © Dr. Joseph Mercola
