Comments on: Vaccination Benefits: Lying with statistics? http://spiresecurity.com/?p=242 Risk and Cybersecurity Analysis Wed, 21 Aug 2013 23:28:51 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.5.1 By: Chandler Howell http://spiresecurity.com/?p=242&cpage=1#comment-327 Chandler Howell Wed, 05 Dec 2007 12:39:01 +0000 http://spiresecurity.com/blog/?p=242#comment-327 If I recall correctly, I think this exact topic was discussed in Freakonomics as an example of counterintuitive causation.

In particular, they looked at flu vaccinations and found that vaccinations best reduced deaths in at-risk populations not by targeting the most at-risk populations (elderly and the infirm), but the group transmitted the most infections to others, specifically 3-6 year old children.

As to long-term trends, that’s all well and good, but given that the flu still kills on average about 30,000 people per year in the US alone, I believe that reducing the spread is still good risk management.

]]>