CBS News Reported the Truth on Flu Shots Decades Ago

Written by Trevor Thomas

I’m 55 years old. I’ve never taken a flu shot. I doubt I ever will. I don’t recall this CBS News report shown below, but it’s totally unsurprising.

This might blow your mind.

Nearly 20 years ago, CBS aired a segment on the flu shot, revealing a shocking truth: despite flu shot uptake among seniors rising from 15% to 65%, flu deaths kept going up.

NIH scientists were devastated. This was not the result they were hoping to… pic.twitter.com/K7xbjE8j8U

— The Vigilant Fox (@VigilantFox) March 12, 2025

The full post declares:

This might blow your mind. Nearly 20 years ago, CBS aired a segment on the flu shot, revealing a shocking truth: despite flu shot uptake among seniors rising from 15% to 65%, flu deaths kept going up. NIH scientists were devastated. This was not the result they were hoping to find. They assumed other factors must be “masking the true benefits of the shots.” “But no matter how they crunched the numbers, they got the same disappointing result. Flu shots have not reduced deaths among the elderly,”
@SharylAttkisson reported. And when they looked at other countries? They found “the same poor results in Australia, France, Canada, and the UK.” So what did the CDC do? They doubled down. Instead of admitting failure, they kept pushing flu shots. Even worse, they turned to a “roundabout way” of protecting seniors—injecting kids to “protect grandma.” Sound familiar? They pulled the same stunt during COVID. When the pharmaceutical product didn’t work as promised, they injected kids to “protect grandma” all over again. “If they were doing this 20 years ago, they managed to make the same mistake again. That’s a little bit hard to believe it’s a mistake.”

With little more than anecdotal evidence, I’ve long thought that the flu shot was near useless. The COVID scam has now put such treatments under much more scrutiny. Many people are, and will continue to be, much more skeptical towards such “medicine.”