danielpalos
Diamond Member
- Banned
- #81
The swine flu affair, the New York Times concluded after the programme was suspended, had been a “sorry debacle” and “fiasco” marked by political expediency and unwarranted confidence. “The danger now is that the whole idea of preventive medicine may be discredited,” the editorial warned.53 people died from the swine flu vaccine after 163 million were injected. That program was shut down.
While it would be a stretch to suggest that it led directly to the anti-vax movement decades later, the botched decisions of 1976 would remain in the American memory, and would have done little to boost confidence in vaccines and public health advice for years afterwards.
The fiasco of the 1976 ‘swine flu affair’
With a pandemic looming, the US president announced a warp-speed effort to vaccinate every man, woman and child in the country. The mistakes that followed hold lessons for today.
www.bbc.com