Most Canadians, Americans skipped H1N1 vaccine last year

Saturday, October 02, 2010 by: Jonathan Benson, staff writer
Tags: H1N1, vaccines, health news

(NaturalNews) Despite all the scare tactics, fear mongering, and pseudoscience about the alleged importance of being vaccinated, a new report from Statistics Canada has revealed that 60 percent of Canadians decided against getting an H1N1 influenza vaccine last year. Even the World Health Organization's (WHO) declaration of a stage 6 pandemic was not enough to convince most Canadians to get the shot.

According to the report, 74 percent of the people who refused the shot said they "did not think it was necessary," indicating a high level of distrust among the public towards federal and international authorities, even during supposed health emergencies. Other reasons for not getting the shot included "had not gotten around to it yet" and "fear".

"Many people don't think that they needed it, and that might help us understand how public health education campaigns could improve in the case of another pandemic," explained Heather Gilmour, a researcher in the analysis division of Statistics Canada.

But government-funded "public health" campaigns are exactly what most people seem to be ignoring these days. After all, the mainstream media continually repeated the mantras of federal health agencies about the dangers of swine flu and the importance of getting vaccinated, and people simply did not believe it.

As a case in point, the lowest vaccination rate in Canada was in Ontario, where a universal vaccination campaign has existed for almost a decade. Of all the provinces and cities throughout Canada, health experts believed the H1N1 vaccination campaign would have fared better in Ontario than in most other places.

Vaccination rates were even lower in the U.S. where 80 percent of adults refused the H1N1 shot.

Sources for this story include:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-11443945