Flu hysteria
The virus of deception
According to Rospotrebnadzor, the truly alarming situation with influenza today is only in six regions of the country.
Many scientists claim that "flu hysteria" is artificially inflated in Russia in order to increase sales of medicines.
Svetlana Basharova, Novye IzvestiaIn Moscow, the flu epidemic will end in the last days of February.
This is the forecast of the chief specialist in infectious diseases of the Health Department of the capital, Nikolai Malyshev. According to Rospotrebnadzor, the epidemiological threshold remains seriously exceeded in the Moscow region, in the Irkutsk, Kaluga and Chelyabinsk regions, as well as in the Krasnoyarsk and Khabarovsk Territories. But if the flu virus leaves these regions in a few weeks, then false information about it, according to a number of Russian experts, will remain. Thus, Professor of the Moscow Medical Academy named after I.M. Sechenov, Deputy chairman of the Formulary Committee of the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences Pavel Vorobyov claims that the state policy in this area is intimidation of the population and whipping up hysteria in order to sell more medicines and vaccines. At the same time, flu remedies, which are promoted by officials, facilitate the purse more effectively than they treat the disease itself.
Vaccination is "the most effective measure to combat the flu," according to the website of the Ministry of Health and Social Development of the Russian Federation. According to the ministry, those who were vaccinated before the current epidemiological season fell ill three times less often. In total, vaccination covered just over 20% of the country's population – 30 million people. Basically, these are those whom the state vaccinates for free: children, health workers, education workers, people over 60 years old. This time, a three–component vaccine was used, containing strains of A/H1N1 (porcine), A/H3N2 and B viruses - those that have spread throughout the country. Vaccines of Russian manufacturers, according to the Ministry of Health and Social Development, are inactivated, that is, they do not contain a "live" virus and are among the safest and most effective.
A number of Russian experts express the opposite point of view. "We don't know much about the effectiveness of the vaccines offered to us," says Vasily Vlasov, MD, professor of the Moscow Medical Academy, president of the Society of Evidence–Based Medicine Specialists. "All the studies conducted did not calculate how many of those vaccinated fell ill with influenza during the epidemic, but studied the process of producing antibodies to viruses in the body." According to Pavel Vorobyov, the Cochrane Cooperation (an international organization of researchers) stated that the effectiveness of foreign vaccines has not been proven. "I have no reason to believe that our vaccines will be much better," says the professor.
According to Vasily Vlasov, there have been almost no studies of the effectiveness of vaccines among children and the elderly, whom the Ministry of Health and Social Development especially strongly recommends to be vaccinated. "Among these population groups, the effectiveness of vaccination should be much less than among healthy adults," says Mr. Vlasov. – Young children and the elderly have weak immunity, there is a high probability that their body will not cope with the task of producing antibodies to the virus, which the vaccine sets. Then vaccination will not save you from the flu, but on the contrary, it will make you get over it in full." One of the examples is on the website grippol.ru . "My daughter was vaccinated against influenza with the influenza vaccine,– writes Oksana Kravtsova. – My daughter is 10 years old. The next day, redness and compaction appeared at the site of the vaccine administration, the daughter's temperature rose 38, she began to cough."
"The effectiveness of the vaccine still needs to be proved, and there is always a risk of complications," Kirill Danishevsky, president of the Society of Evidence–Based Medicine Specialists, admits to NI. – Serious side effects after vaccination are really extremely rare. But they reach serious complications." The most common side effects of Russian flu vaccines are allergic reactions. For example, in 2006, Rospotrebnadzor recorded 68 cases of severe allergy to the Grippol vaccine in nine Russian regions: those vaccinated had laryngeal edema, palpitations and difficulty breathing.
According to Pavel Vorobyov, vaccination is even more meaningless due to the fact that only 4-5% of influenza viruses in the general bouquet of viruses during the epidemiological season, and it does not affect all others.
"Arbidolization" of the populationThe website of the Influenza Research Institute of the Ministry of Health and Social Development of the Russian Federation lists immunomodulating and antiviral domestic drugs that should be taken with the flu.
According to Pavel Vorobyov, the effectiveness of none of them has been proven by benign tests. The chief clinical pharmacologist of the Ministry of Health and Social Development, Vladimir Petrov, admitted in December that there really is no publication of studies of the most popular of them – arbidol. And he promised to fix this situation soon. In the meantime, according to Vasily Vlasov, only one study comparing the effect of arbidol and the effect of placebo can be found in databases. Although it cannot be called benign, even it indicates a low effectiveness of arbidol. According to Mr. Vlasov, a study was conducted in China, in which 232 people participated. Those with colds – half of the patients – were soon excluded, since arbidol did not help them. In those who had the flu, the duration of the symptomatic period of the disease decreased by one day.
Arbidol's advertisement promises that it will help both with the flu and with colds. As Ksenia Nedogovorova, a specialist in pharmaceutical monitoring at DSM Group, explained to NI, it is advertising that provides arbidol with demand. And the director of the analytical company Pharmexpert, David Melik-Huseynov, says that thanks to advertising, other flu remedies recommended by the Ministry of Health and Social Development are also being sold out. "When buying medicines, Russians most often focus on advertising," notes David Melik–Huseynov of NI. – Many also consult with a pharmacist and choose products that their friends liked. And only 10% of medicines are bought on the recommendation of doctors."
According to the president of the League for the Protection of Patients' Rights, Alexander Saversky, doctors, prescribing medications, also often focus on advertising. "The state has long since left the sphere of informing doctors about new drugs and methods of treatment. And science is moving forward by leaps and bounds," Mr. Saversky shares with NI. – The most convenient source of information for Russian doctors turned out to be medical representatives of pharmaceutical companies. Today they give doctors 95% of the information about medicines." According to Alexander Saversky, the largest Russian companies have an average of 400 medical representatives. "Unfortunately, many of them can be called rather hucksters," the expert says. "For many years, quite complex marketing technologies have been worked out. Medical representatives give a pen or a robe, and the doctor, sometimes, already feels obliged. And when he is taken to an educational symposium abroad for free, even more so. At the same time, there are also more crude forms of bribing doctors, when, for example, they receive small amounts for issuing "correct" prescriptions and sending a patient to a specific pharmacy."
Wallet ReliefSales of vaccines and medicines, as in the last epidemiological season, are also spurred by the fact that the state continues to sow panic and frighten the population with the horrors of swine flu.
When the WHO declared a swine flu pandemic in 2009, almost immediately scientists from many countries of the world began to make claims that this was done with the aim of enriching pharmaceutical manufacturers. According to them, swine flu is no more dangerous than seasonal. In December, PACE made the same accusations. The organization's report stated: "In order to promote their patented medicines and flu vaccines, pharmaceutical companies have influenced researchers and official agencies responsible for health standards to raise the alarm among governments around the world. They forced to spend already small health resources on ineffective vaccination policies and senselessly exposed millions of healthy people to the risk of unknown side effects of insufficiently researched vaccines." WHO and PACE, according to Pavel Vorobyov, remained at their own: "The soap bubble of the pandemic was inflated competently, there is no one to bring charges of violating the laws."
Russian officials, like last season, continue to intimidate society with pandemic influenza. "Alarming data suggests that the pandemic A/H1N1 virus is beginning to raise its head," said Gennady Onishchenko, Chief Sanitary Doctor of the Russian Federation, on January 16 this year. A few days later, he expressed himself even more figuratively: "There are regions where influenza A/H1N1, which is also called swine, really behaves like a pig."
Pavel Vorobyov is sure that there is a "corruption component" in the motives of officials of the Ministry of Health and Social Development promoting useless medicines. "The coupling of officials and pharmaceutical manufacturers is obvious," Vasily Vlasov also believes. "However, the state also benefits from the promotion of vaccines and medicines for influenza," Vasily Vlasov continues. – Most vaccines are purchased by the Ministry of Health and Social Development, and then he needs to present a good report to the public. The state cannot stop the vaccine industry. It must be preserved in case of an epidemic and remain powerful enough at the same time, otherwise it will not be easy to deploy it if there is a real danger." "By promoting useless medicines, officials may consider that they serve the development of domestic industry," adds Kirill Danishevsky.
This year, Ukraine has not succumbed to hysteria in connection with the flu
In Ukraine, only about 5% of schools have been closed due to exceeding the epidemic threshold for the incidence of influenza and SARS. This is several times less than in the same period last year, when the whole country was literally in hysterics due to the flu, from which, according to official reports, dozens of people died every day. For example, in Kiev this year, additional "flu holidays" that have already become traditional over the past few years have not been announced, although the children were ill no less than last year. As the pediatrician of one of the capital's children's polyclinics explained to "NI", "we were forbidden to write a diagnosis of influenza." Someone is outraged that the pendulum has swung in the other direction from the exaggeration of the danger of the disease and the real hysteria around the flu - hiding the true data on the incidence in Kiev. But mostly parents, especially dads and moms of kindergarten students and younger schoolchildren, are happy that kindergartens and schools are not closed: most have no one to leave the child with during quarantine.
From last year's epidemic, Ukrainians, who then almost all walked in gauze bandages out of fear, made many conclusions. The first is that, apparently, those 1014 people who died allegedly from the epidemic in Ukraine in 2010 died not so much from the virus as from the complications caused by it and those chronic diseases that worsened against its background. The second is that it is worth taking care of the flu vaccination in the fall and not carrying the disease on your feet. The third conclusion is to listen less to politicians who have become the mouthpiece of pharmaceutical companies that have made excellent money on fear. The results of recent opinion polls show that Ukrainians are most afraid of losing their jobs and are almost not afraid of the flu.
Yana Sergeeva, KievThe Germans are afraid that during the flu vaccination they will catch the flu
Despite the fact that in August last year the World Health Organization officially declared the swine flu pandemic (strain A/H1N1) completed, at the beginning of January this year, two patients died from complications caused by this flu in the university clinic of the German city of Göttingen (Lower Saxony): a three-year-old girl and a 51-year-old man. These deaths could have been avoided thanks to early vaccination. Flu vaccinations are done free of charge in Germany, and ads encouraging the population to get vaccinated hang in a prominent place in every clinic. But nevertheless, vaccination against influenza is not popular. And this is due to the fact that in the mind of the layman, a flu shot is associated with the risk of getting the flu as a result of such a vaccination. However, virologists remind us that science has not yet invented anything more effective than vaccinations. First of all, they are recommended for elderly people, pregnant women and those with chronic diseases.
From autumn 2009 to August 2010, according to official statistics, more than 226 thousand cases of swine flu were recorded in the country. In Germany, in the autumn and winter of 2009/10, about 250 people died from the effects of infection with the H1N1 virus. Experts predicted in November last year that the swine flu virus would circulate throughout the country in the 2010/11 season. Since the end of December 2010, the number of flu patients in Lower Saxony has increased. In most cases, doctors have fixed the H1N1 virus, the Land Health Department confirmed. The peak of the current flu epidemic occurred at the end of January – beginning of February. At the same time, Christian Mayer, an expert at the Bernhard Nocht Institute of Tropical Medicine (Hamburg), claims that the threat of H1N1 flu in Germany is exaggerated. According to the scientist, unlike in Southeast Asia in Germany, swine flu plays "practically no role", and the usual flu, which annually takes the lives of 10 to 12 thousand people in Germany, is much more dangerous. From the mouths of opponents of vaccinations, there are still accusations of deliberately escalating the situation in the media and of WHO colluding with pharmaceutical companies to make a profit.
Adele Kalinichenko, Munich
Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru15.02.2011