Flu Vaccination Hysteria: A Manufactured Narrative Against Truth and Science, By Dr Ian Brighhope

The Sydney Morning Herald article by Angus Delaney, "This is not the record we want to be breaking: Anti-vax ideology helping to fuel flu case surge: GPs" (20 October 2025), reads like a propaganda leaflet for the pharmaceutical industry rather than responsible journalism. It uncritically parrots the claims of establishment GPs and the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners (RACGP), dismissing valid scientific concerns about influenza vaccines as mere "anti-vax ideology."

What it fails to do—deliberately—is examine the evidence. And the evidence is clear: influenza vaccines have never been proven in rigorous, placebo-controlled, long-term studies to be either safe or effective.

A Narrative Built on Fear

The article invokes record case numbers and blames declining vaccination rates, as though correlation equals causation. No acknowledgment is made of viral seasonality, testing biases, or the fact that influenza case counts often rise and fall for reasons completely independent of vaccination uptake.

Instead, the narrative is familiar: guilt, fear, and blame directed toward the growing number of Australians who—quite rightly—have lost trust in the vaccine establishment after the COVID-19 debacle. This erosion of blind faith is not "ideology." It is reason. It is evidence. It is the public recognising that they have been misled for decades.

The Illusion of Effectiveness

Even the Cochrane Collaboration, the world's leading authority on systematic evidence reviews, has consistently found the benefit of influenza vaccines to be weak at best. At most, annual vaccination reduces symptomatic cases by a tiny fraction, and in many years it fails outright due to mismatched strains (Jefferson et al., 2018). Effectiveness against transmission is virtually nonexistent.

Yet the RACGP demands more uptake, without once disclosing the poor performance of the product. This is not medicine. It is marketing.

The Reality of Harm

Far from being "safe," influenza vaccines carry a significant burden of adverse events. These include:

Mild reactions: fever, muscle aches, headaches, fatigue, and injection site pain.

Severe allergic reactions: including anaphylaxis.

Neurological damage: Guillain–Barré Syndrome has long been associated with influenza vaccination (Haber et al., 2004; CDC, 2019).

Autoimmune complications: flare-ups of pre-existing conditions, and reports of neurological regression in children.

Cardiovascular and inflammatory disorders: myocarditis, vasculitis, and immune-mediated damage.

Death: though routinely dismissed by authorities, fatal events following flu vaccination are reported every year in surveillance systems such as The US VAERS.

For babies and young children—the very "sensitive" cohort the RACGP claims to protect—these injections are not just unnecessary, they are reckless.

Antigen Overload and Immune Suppression

Repeated annual vaccination exposes the immune system to artificial antigens, adjuvants, and preservatives. This contributes to antigen overload, which can dysregulate immune function and paradoxically increase susceptibility to other respiratory infections (Cowling et al., 2012). Instead of strengthening immunity, the process definitely weakens it—trapping individuals in a cycle of dependency.

Typical Ingredients / Excipients in Influenza Vaccines in Australia

According to product information sheets and published summaries, influenza vaccines may contain:

Inactivated influenza virus antigens (haemagglutinin from influenza A and B strains)

Buffers and salts (e.g., potassium chloride, monobasic potassium phosphate, dibasic sodium phosphate, sodium chloride, calcium chloride, magnesium chloride)

Residuals/allergens from manufacturing: egg protein (ovalbumin) in egg-based vaccines, traces of antibiotics (e.g., gentamicin, kanamycin, neomycin) in some products.

Preservatives/adjuvants/other excipients: e.g., formaldehyde, cetrimonium bromide (CTAB) in some older vaccine lines, polysorbate 80, sucrose, sometimes adjuvants in older formulations.

Water for injections and manufacturing residual components.

How influenza vaccines are made

Most seasonal influenza vaccines are produced by growing the influenza virus in fertilised chicken eggs. After harvesting, the virus particles are inactivated (killed) and purified to extract haemagglutinin (HA) and neuraminidase (NA) antigens.

A smaller number of vaccines are produced using cell-based systems (e.g., MDCK cells — Madin-Darby Canine Kidney cells, which are animal, not human) or recombinant DNA technology (insect cells, such as Sf9 fall armyworm cells).

Human embryonic cell lines (such as MRC-5 or WI-38, originally derived from foetal lung tissue in the 1960s) are not used in the production of influenza vaccines. These are more relevant to a few other vaccines (e.g., some rubella, varicella, or hepatitis A vaccines).

Ingredients in influenza vaccines

Typical influenza vaccines may contain:

Active components: purified haemagglutinin surface proteins from influenza A & B viruses.

Residuals: egg protein (ovalbumin), formaldehyde, antibiotics (gentamicin, neomycin, kanamycin), polysorbate 80, sucrose, and salts/buffers.

Adjuvants (in some products, e.g., Fluad Quad): MF59 (squalene oil emulsion).

The Alternative: Natural Immunity and Early Treatment

The best way to prevent serious outcomes from influenza is not through yearly injections but through:

Natural immunity, which provides broad and durable protection unmatched by any vaccine.

Nutritional sufficiency, especially vitamin D, which has been shown to dramatically reduce the risk and severity of respiratory infections (Martineau et al., 2017).

Early treatment protocols using safe, repurposed medicines, which the establishment continues to ignore or suppress.

These are inexpensive, safe, and scientifically sound measures—yet they never receive equal airtime in mainstream outlets.

Vaccines as Dinosaurs

In a healthier, wiser world, vaccines will be seen for what they are: crude, outdated interventions that belong in the museum of medical history. Public health will focus instead on strengthening resilience through nutrition, lifestyle, sanitation, and early therapeutics—not through injecting toxins into infants and the elderly year after year.

The RACGP and media mouthpieces may rail against "anti-vax ideology," but what they call ideology is actually evidence-based skepticism. The public has every right—indeed, a duty—to question medical interventions that are marketed more aggressively than they are studied.

Conclusion

The SMH article is not journalism. It is public relations for the pharmaceutical industry, dressed up as health advice. It shames the public for exercising discernment, dismisses legitimate scientific concerns as conspiracy, and promotes an unsafe and ineffective product.

Australians deserve better. They deserve truth. They deserve genuine prevention. And they deserve to know that influenza vaccination is not the solution—it is part of the problem.

References

Jefferson, T., Rivetti, A., Di Pietrantonj, C., Demicheli, V., & Ferroni, E. (2018). Vaccines for preventing influenza in healthy adults. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, (2), CD001269.

Doshi, P. (2013). Influenza: marketing vaccines by marketing disease. BMJ, 346, f3037.

Haber, P., DeStefano, F., Angulo, F. J., Iskander, J., Shadomy, S. V., Weintraub, E., & Chen, R. T. (2004). Guillain–Barré Syndrome following influenza vaccination. JAMA, 292(20), 2478–2481.

Cowling, B. J., Fang, V. J., Nishiura, H., et al. (2012). Increased risk of noninfluenza respiratory virus infections associated with receipt of inactivated influenza vaccine. Clinical Infectious Diseases, 54(12), 1778–1783.

Martineau, A. R., Jolliffe, D. A., Hooper, R. L., et al. (2017). Vitamin D supplementation to prevent acute respiratory tract infections: systematic review and meta-analysis of individual participant data. BMJ, 356, i6583.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). (2019). Guillain–Barré Syndrome and vaccines.

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