Dr. Oz Got the Swine Flu Vaccine

Update March 2, 2010: Last October, in the article below, I warned folks that some prominent doctors weren't having their loved ones vaccinated. Now comes data showing that after surging in the early fall, the number of flu cases during the winter has been far below prior years.






Plenty of Americans are confused about whether to get the swine flu vaccine. If vaccines provided only benefits without any drawbacks, the decision would be simpler.

The downside of getting the flu are reasonably obvious - in the worst case, the flu can kill. I was surprised to learn that the CDC doesn't systematically track adult flu fatalaties. They do track pediatric deaths associated with the flu. The graph below shows why fatalities are up. As you can see, the swine flu persisted during the normal off-season for the flu (late spring, summer and early fall) and we have swine flu and seasonal flu hitting the population.

Why Some Doctors Aren't Vaccinating Loved Ones...

During a CNN interview, Dr. Oz admitted that his wife and children were not getting the flu vaccine. CNN has for some reason had that video removed from the online world but Fox News Chicago got a similar admission from Dr. Oz:












And here's another interesting question: Why are the high risk elderly not having vaccine allocated to them?