d" remains healthy. The question arises: Am I being vaccinated so that everyone else is protected? That's nice of me... But I didn't give consent to be part of the "herd" and contribute to herd immunity. I consented to receive flu vaccine so that I would have less chance of getting sick with flu.

Meanwhile, CDC found that this year's flu vaccine (supposedly) protected at most 23% of people who received it. If that's true, it still prevented many thousands of flu cases and several thousand deaths. However, many millions of people took it without benefit, and without having been told that they were probably just going to be part of the herd. I'm not even going to get into the potential harms of taking influenza or other vaccines.

On top of this, three recent Cochrane systematic reviews have shown the minimal or unknown benefit in mass flu vaccination. Cochrane reviews are considered to be the "gold standard" in synthesizing medical and public health research. This is official, mainstream science. Here's what the Cochrane reviews found:

HEALTHY ADULTS:

pubmed/24623315

To prevent one confirmed case of influenza in healthy adults (ages 16-65 years), 40 adults must be vaccinated. To prevent one case of influenza-like illness, 71 adults must be vaccinated.

CHILDREN:

pubmed/22895945

To prevent one confirmed case of influenza in healthy children (ages 1-6 years), six children must be vaccinated. To prevent one confirmed case of influenza in children age 6-16 years, 28 children must be vaccinated. To prevent one confirmed case of influenza-like illness in children age 6-16 years, eight children must be vaccinated.

OLDER FOLKS:

pubmed/20166072

Despite including 75 studies, evidence quality was so low and the risk of bias from pharmaceutical industry sponsorship was so high that it was not possible to determine the effects of influenza vaccine in people age over 65 years.