Wouldn't it be interesting if someone (not me) could work out the odds for being vaccine damaged verses actually contracting the disease and then being damaged by it.
OK, lets have a go, for the recent Swine Flu vaccination campaign.Vaccinations handed out - many hundreds of thousands, if not millions. Credible reports of serious (long lasting) adverse effects or death due to vaccine, none.
Deaths from Swine Flu - around 360.
You do the comparison.
As an aside, it's interesting that the anti-vaxxers and the usual suspects in the press have been crowing, saying the swine flu outbreak wasn't as bad as predicted. None of them have mentioned that part of the reason for this is likely to be the vaccination of many thousands of people in high risk groups. There's no way of knowing for sure, obviously, but it strikes me that there could well have been many more fatalities without vaccination. Just a thought.
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I did one for smallpox once. It's probably not completely accurate, since recent figures on smallpox epidemics are hard to find for some reason[/sarcasm] but even if you assume I've massively overestimated the death rates for the actual disease, the results are clear.
Smallpox Vaccine
14 million vaccinated
- 143 cases generalized vaccinia (0.00102%)
- 74 cases eczema vaccinatum (0.00053%)
- 16 cases encephalitis (0.00011%)
- 4 deaths (25%)
- total chance of death from encephalitis: 0.0000275%
- 11 cases progressive vaccinia (0.000079%)
- 4 deaths (36.4%)
- total chance of death from progressive vaccinia: 0.00002844%
Total deaths from smallpox vaccine: 9 or 0.000064%
Smallpox
Hypothetical 14 million unvaccinated persons infected
- 12600000 cases ordinary smallpox (90%)
-7812000 deaths (62%)
- 1120000 cases malignant smallpox (8%)
- 1064000 deaths (95%)*
- 280000 cases hemorrhagic smallpox (2%)
- 266000 deaths (95%)*
Total deaths from smallpox: 9142000, or 65.3%
*precise numbers unavailable, but 95 is probably low.
http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/pubs/pinkbook/downloads/smallpox.pdf
http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/smallpox/en/
Of course that's all useless information, since it's from, you know, health organizations, and we all know they can't be trusted about medical stuff.
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