Uh Oh...

A Canadian study shows that there is an increased chance of catching H1N1 (the “swine flu”) if you have had this year's seasonal flu shot.  The study is credible enough that Canadian provinces are re-thinking their vaccination plans:

Distributed for peer review last week, the study confounded infectious-disease experts in suggesting that people vaccinated against seasonal flu are twice as likely to catch swine flu.

The paper is under peer review, and lead researchers Danuta Skowronski of the British Columbia Centre for Disease Control and Gaston De Serres of Laval University must stay mum until it's published.

Met with intense early skepticism both in Canada and abroad, the paper has since convinced several provincial health agencies to announce hasty suspensions of seasonal flu vaccinations, long-held fixtures of public-health planning.

Flu vaccinations have been controversial for a while because they're not very reliable.  There's also a bogus controversy about the safety of the flu vaccine from the loonies who are convinced that vaccines (in general) are linked to autism, but this has been thoroughly debunked.  But the controversy about the effectiveness of flu vaccines seems to be well-founded.  For example, last year in San Diego the seasonal vaccine missed every flu variant we actually experienced – so the flu shot was worthless.

But this study shows something much more concerning: that getting a flu shot is worse than worthless – it actually increases the likelihood that you'll come down with H1N1.

I think I'll skip the flu shot again this year...