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‘Deeply Concerning’: This Year’s Flu Shots Led to 27% Higher Risk of Flu

By Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D. | The Defender | April 8, 2025

People who received a flu vaccine formulated for the 2024-2025 flu season had a 27% higher risk of getting the flu than those who didn’t get the vaccine, suggesting “the vaccine has not been effective in preventing influenza this season,” according to a new preprint study.

The study of 53,402 employees of the Cleveland Clinic, an Ohio-based nonprofit academic medical center, concluded that the flu vaccine had a negative effectiveness rate of 26.9%.

According to the study, published last week on the MedRxiv preprint server:

“The cumulative incidence of influenza did not appear to be significantly different between the vaccinated and unvaccinated states early on, but over the course of the study the cumulative incidence of infection increased more rapidly among the vaccinated than among the unvaccinated.”

TrialSite News called the findings “deeply concerning” because they suggest “harm rather than protection” and contradict public health narratives about the flu vaccine.

“This Cleveland Clinic study reveals the complete failure of annual flu vaccines. Americans are tired of toxin-loaded injectable products that backfire and deteriorate their health,” said epidemiologist Nicolas Hulscher.

Dr. Clayton J. Baker said the study “strongly suggests the shot was outright harmful.” He said the findings “not only demonstrate that this year’s flu shot was a disaster, but it calls into serious question the whole endeavor of seasonal, population-wide vaccines for respiratory viruses.”

Internist Dr. Meryl Nass said the results weren’t surprising. “Flu shots are not tested for efficacy before use,” she said. “They are grandfathered in, based on the license of earlier flu vaccines, with rudimentary safety testing.” As a result, “negative efficacy is possible.”

‘One of the most consequential influenza vaccine studies’ in recent years

Although the study hasn’t been peer-reviewed, scientists and medical experts said it is methodologically sound. “This was a large and apparently well-designed study,” Baker said. “We should take the results seriously.”

Nass said the study’s authors used a “great dataset” with a complete timeline, which included the dates participants were vaccinated and subsequently tested positive for flu.

“This wasn’t a flawed population,” TrialSite News reported. “The cohort skewed young (mean age 42), mostly healthy, with high occupational compliance. … The results should be peer reviewed.”

Writing on Substack, research scientist and author James Lyons-Weiler, Ph.D., said the study “is one of the most consequential influenza vaccine studies published in recent years” because of its large sample size, real-world design, risk-based outcome, the robust statistical methods used and no industry funding.

“It is rare to see a study of this scale, clarity, and independence produce a result so directly at odds with national vaccine policy,” Lyons-Weiler wrote.

Baker agreed, noting that the negative efficacy of the vaccine “suggests the vaccine caused some kind of unintentional immune impairment. This suggests the vaccine makers do not understand how the vaccine is acting upon the immune system.”

“The whole endeavor of trying to produce an effective flu shot every year appears to be something of a farce, if the manufacturers cannot even avoid producing one that increases the likelihood of contracting the flu,” Baker said.

“Given all the variables that can influence the effectiveness of the influenza vaccine in any given year, and our current processes for developing the vaccine, it may be asking for too much to expect the vaccine to be highly effective year after year,” the study stated.

Study’s findings ‘not without precedent’

According to the study, Cleveland Clinic employees “either receive an annual influenza vaccine or seek an exemption on medical or religious grounds.”

Karl Jablonowski, Ph.D., senior research scientist for Children’s Health Defense, said the study would not have been possible if the clinic didn’t recognize such exemptions.

“If the Cleveland Clinic did not allow a religious exemption, it is likely the unvaccinated group would be too small to perform this study,” Jablonowski said. “It is an utter absurdity that those who were medically and religiously exempt posed measurably and significantly less of a threat of spreading influenza to patients than those who were mandated.”

Lyons-Weiler noted that the study’s findings are “not without precedent.” He cited a 2012 peer-reviewed study published in Clinical Infectious Diseases showing that children who received the flu vaccine were at significantly increased risk of contracting non-flu respiratory virus infections.

A peer-reviewed study published last year in Scientific Reports examined 19 vaccines and found that 17 of those vaccines, including flu shots, were associated with reported cases of Guillain-Barré syndrome — a rare condition that attacks the peripheral nervous system.

Most flu vaccines contain ingredient linked to neurodevelopmental disorders

According to the study, one reason this season’s flu vaccine was ineffective and increased the risk of infection was strain mismatch — where the strain the vaccine protects against was different from the strain that resulted in infection.

“In years where there is a poor match between vaccine strains and the circulating infecting strain, vaccine effectiveness is expected to be poor,” the study noted.

According to Lyons-Weiler, “The most likely explanation involves immune modulation caused by the vaccine — where prior exposure via vaccination may reduce the immune system’s capacity to respond to circulating strains, especially when strain mismatch is present.”

Lyons-Weiler noted that most flu vaccines also contain thimerosal, “a mercury-based preservative still used in many multi-dose flu vials.” In the study, 98.7% of the participants received a flu vaccine that contained thimerosal.

Thimerosal is a mercury-based preservative used in some vaccines. It has been linked to the buildup of inorganic mercury in the brain. A 2001 report by the Institute of Medicine found a “biologically plausible” connection between thimerosal exposure and neurodevelopmental disorders.

“Many trivalent inactivated influenza vaccines contain thimerosal and must be considered as a potential culprit in making the vaccinated’s immune systems weaker,” Jablonowski said.

“Though the mechanisms may differ, the principle is the same: vaccination can, under certain circumstances, impair the broader immune response,” Lyons-Weiler wrote. He said the study “calls into question the wisdom of universal flu vaccine campaigns that fail to deliver consistent benefit — and may cause net harm.”

According to CDC data, the number of healthcare workers receiving flu and COVID-19 vaccines declined during the 2023-2024 cold and flu season, potentially indicating increased skepticism on the part of hospital workers and other medical personnel toward those vaccines.

“In an era of mounting skepticism and vaccine fatigue, public health authorities must reckon with data like this — not dismiss it,” TrialSite News wrote. “Annual flu vaccine strategies may need a serious rethink, particularly in years of poor strain matching.”

“The hubris with which we mandate vaccinations ought to be humbled by this study,” Jablonowski said. “If one of the premier medical institutions in the country endangers their patients based on an employee mandate, all institutional mandates may cause the harm they seek to avoid.”

This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.

April 11, 2025 - Posted by aletho | Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | United States