Responding to a question on our Facebook page, in this episode Graham and Ray talk about whether the flu vaccine is safe, why the formulation changes every year, what disease surveillance systems are, and introduce the epidemiological concepts, “bias” and “confounding.”

We mention that many modern vaccines don’t have the actual infective organism, but instead are made up of subunits of the organism which act as antigens. Here is a summary of which vaccines are typically made of actual organisms and which are made from inactive subunits:

Important links:

• “Risk of Guillain-Barré syndrome after seasonal influenza vaccination and influenza health-care encounters: a self-controlled study”
• “Post-H1N1 Flu Vaccination Narcolepsy in Switzerland: A Retrospective Survey in the 30 Sleep-Certified Swiss Centers”
• “AS03 adjuvanted AH1N1 vaccine associated with an abrupt increase in the incidence of childhood narcolepsy in Finland”
• “Risk of Narcolepsy after AS03 Adjuvanted Pandemic A/H1N1 2009 Influenza Vaccine in Adults: A Case-Coverage Study in England”
• “Narcolepsy and influenza A(H1N1) pandemic 2009 vaccination in the United States”
• Influenza mortality and morbidity stats in Canada
• “Overdue for a Pandemic?”
• “Is SARS a precursor to pandemic?”