CDC records drop in vaccination rates during last year’s killer flu season

Most were not vaccinated.

“Imagine being the parent of a child that died of influenza and had not had their child vaccinated,” said Dr. William Schaffner, spokesman for the Infectious Diseases Society of America.

And many deaths were among younger adults. “An estimated 10,300 deaths occurred among working age adults (aged 18–64 years), an age group that often has low influenza vaccination,” the CDC said.

The CDC found 30 million people aged 18 to 64 got sick with flu last season. Close to 12 million children 17 and younger got sick.

Did the flu vaccine work?

Influenza vaccines are notoriously poor at preventing infection, but last year’s flu vaccine lowered the risk of infection by about 40 percent.

But early estimates suggested, incorrectly, that it was even less effective, and surveys showed many people skipped their flu shots because they did not think they would work.

“At the very beginning of the vaccination season last year, there were widely distributed reports that the vaccine used in Australia was only 10 percent effective, and I think, by golly, that turned a lot of people off,” Schaffner said.

And studies also show that even if flu vaccines do not completely protect against infection, they do lower the severity if someone does get sick, and significantly reduce the risk of death.

“We don’t give the vaccine sufficient credit,” Schaffner said. “It does have the capacity to make the illness that you are having less severe. You are less likely to get the complications of pneumonia and having to go to the hospital, and you are less likely to die.”