September 2010: Flu season preview

The government has released data to the end of September, 2010, and Flu related VAERS events are starting their standard upward spike. Last year, I looked at 20 years of Flu related VAERS events, broken out by month of vaccination. It showed a typical trend that starts to be noticeable in September, peaks in October, and then tapers off through the rest of the winter. This is when people get their Flu shots.

This month I will run the same analysis as last year and see how it compares. First last year's graph:

Last year at this time it was clear that September reports were unusually high. The month already had 1000 Flu-related VAERS events (see point "A"), and when all of the reports were in, September ended up with over 2500 events (see point "B", below). This is phenomenal because no prior year had recorded even 400 events: last year showed a 600% growth in Flu-related VAERS events!

So what does the graph look like this year, as of the end of September? There is much lower pressure this year for getting Flu shots: no media and government fear-reports, nobody shouting "pandemic", and no fears of insufficient serum. There should be many fewer people getting Flu shots, and therefore many fewer VAERS reports.

But it's only getting worse:

This September is already showing 1262 Flu-related VAERS events (see point "C"). This is a sizeable increase over the figure as of last September.

What is going on? Could it be that more people are getting Flu shots than ever before? Or is the Flu serum particularly toxic this year? Keep in mind that this year's Flu serum contains three different strains: Influenza B, H3N2 (Hong Kong), and last year's H1N1 Flu. Some countries have banned the H1N1 Flu vaccine, as I discussed two months ago. One of those countries, Australia, has already been through the Flu season (winter is over down-under). Their experience might be useful to us.

Regardless of the cause of all of these Flu vaccine reactions, this year is shaping-up to be an even worse year than last for Flu-related VAERS reports.

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