A new study by the Cleveland Clinic conducted in the United States on the flu vaccine has caught the interest of the vaccine skeptics, which caused questions and concerns about vaccine safety.
“Get the flu vaccine and have 27% more likely to receive the flu!” Read an April 7 publication that referred to a predimpression study published on April 4. “Get the shot, get the disease!”
🚨🚨 Breaking: Get the flu vaccine and have 27% more likely to get the flu!
Like Covid and almost any other “vaccine” blows, it seems that the flu vaccine is an abject failure. In a predimpression study of the Cleveland Clinic, employees who received the flu vaccine had 27%… pic.twitter.com/w70BVF3WA3
– Tom Renz (@renztom) April 7, 2025
The next day, another publication X announced news from the study with a call to action: “All flu vaccines” must be extracted from the market waiting for great prospective studies of their safety and effectiveness. “
The warnings cite an article not reviewed by the researchers of the Cleveland Clinic entitled Effectiveness of the Influenza Vaccine for the Viral Respiratory Season 2024-2025. It was published on April 4 on the Preprint Medrxiv server, which reveals in bold typography at the top that “reports a new medical research that has not yet been evaluated and, therefore, should not be used to guide clinical practice.”
What the study says and what does not
The study involved 53,402 employees of the Health System of the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio and discovered that their vaccinated participants had a large incidence of infection in the most recent flu season. But a spokesman for the Cleveland clinic said it is misleading to use the study to draw broader conclusions on vaccines and susceptibility to infection.
“The data came from a relatively healthy population of approximately 50,000 health workers and did not represent the general population,” said Cleveland Clinic spokeswoman Andrea Pacetti.
The flu vaccine helps prevent flu cases from becoming more serious and that require hospitalization. Each year, the vaccines of the United States Food and Medicines Administrations (FDA) and the Related Biological Products Advisory Committee decides which virus to use for the flu vaccine next season. Data collected by the FDA, the World Health Organization, the US control centers and prevention centers (CDC) of the US and other partners on which world information about the committee’s decision circulates. (The committee meeting to discuss the strains of influenza vaccines for the 2025-2026 influenza season was canceled).
According to CDCs, the duration seasons when the strains of the flu vaccine and circulating flu strains coincide, it has been shown that the vaccine “reduces the risk of having to go to the doctor with flu by 40% to 60%.”
Robert H Hopkins JR, medical director of the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases, said the Cleveland Clinic follows does not evaluate the main benefit to vaccinate against influenza: reduce the risk of serious diseases and death.
“People must be aware that the effectiveness of flu vaccines varies from year to year, but even when flu vaccination does not avoid complete infection, it can make the disease softer and prevent serious complications, including hospitalization and dathins.” Hopkins.
Hopkins said “complete” does not agree with the publication of social networks that require the elimination of vaccines against the flu of the market. “That action would result in more diseases and flu death,” he said.
Nbin Shrestha, a doctor and co -author of the study, said that Althegh the results found a greater risk of influenza among the vaccinated participants, the authors understood that the greatest risk “could have made bone and, dated thogognis, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and.
Shrestha also said that the study did not suggest that the influenza vaccine should be extracted from the market because people are more likely to obtain flu. “In general, the flu vaccine is an important public health tool,” he said.
[BELOW: We have an incomplete photo credit – no full photog’s name]
Who participated in the study?
Cleveland Clinic requires that workers obtain the annual flu vaccine or seek a medical exemption or based on religion, so this study involved a high number of vaccinated people.
Of the participants, 43,857 were vaccinated during the study period with 98.7 percent receiving the trivalent inactivated influenza vaccine. At the end of the studies, 1,079 participants had GOOTHS the flu, approximately 2 percent of the entire study population.
Pacetti said it was remarkable that only 2 percent of the participants contracted influenza doors for the study period. “The population did not include children and contained very few elderly or immunocompromised individuals,” he said.
The results of the study indicated the accumulated incidence of influenza, or the number of new cases divided by the total number of people in the study at risk (vaccinated and not vaccinated), increased faster among the vaccinated participants than not vaccinated.
The authors found that the influenza vaccine had a negative effectiveness, “suggestion that the vaccine is not effective in prevention influenza” for that season.
What do these findings mean?
The effectiveness of the flu vaccine can vary per season and per person (factorization in characteristics such as age and health), CDC said. Its effectiveness is also branched in its similarity with the influenza viruses that circulate in the community, the agency said.
The agency’s data showed seasonal effectiveness of the flu vaccine, or how well, the vaccine prevents severe disease and hospitalization changes per season with an effectiveness rate of 42 percent that rotates the 2023-2024 season. The researchers discovered that it reduced the risk of outpatient visits and hospitalizations of outpatient patients who date back to the flu between children, adolescents and adults.
Hopkins said the study did not discuss whether the workplace had masking policies or other restrictions for non -vaccinated employees, which “could have an important impact on the incidence of influenza”, especially for those who work in clinical environments. Around 10,900 participants had a clinical nursing work, according to the study.
Pacetti and Jeffrey Morris, director of Bioestadistics of the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Pennsylvania Perelman, also said that vaccines mainly reduce the risk of death or serious illness, that the study does not address.
The article said that the effectiveness of the vaccine in a certain year “depends on how similar are the strains contained in the stress vaccine that cause infection that year.”
The authors of the study also said that because almost all of their participants used the trivalent inactivated influenza vaccine, it is possible that other influenza vaccines may have been more effective.
