What is it about?
Influenza vaccination is shown to exert either net benefit or net disbenefit against winter mortality. While net benefit is an anticipated outcome, net disbenefit is not. Indeed, unexpected outcomes are 'normal' in complex systems, and winter is already known to be a very complex system involving multiple pathogens. It is proposed that the ability of influenza vaccination to alter the balance between pathogens may partly explain this unexpected behavior.
Featured Image
Photo by Towfiqu barbhuiya on Unsplash
Why is it important?
While it is true that influenza vaccination offers a measure of protection against influenza mediated death, this does not immediatly imply that influenza vaccination will act to reduce total deaths each winter. This is because winter is a highly multipathogen complex system. Influenza vaccination can therefore have unintended adverse effects.
Perspectives
My interest in this topic began when it was observed that despite a very large increase in the proportion of elderly vaccinated in the UK since the 1990's there was no apparent change in the observed excess winter mortality (EWM). nor in the winter pressures experienced by the NHS. Such a large increase in vaccination coverage should have led to a reduction in EWM unless other more complex forces were at play. It would seem that system complexity is indeed generating unintended outcomes.
Dr Rodney P Jones
Healthcare Analysis & Forecasting
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: System Complexity in Influenza Infection and Vaccination: Effects upon Excess Winter Mortality, Infectious Disease Reports, April 2022, MDPI AG,
DOI: 10.3390/idr14030035.
You can read the full text:
Resources
Contributors
The following have contributed to this page
