A useful case study of the divergence between the science and the public message is the New York Times article “Why It’s Still Worth Getting a Flu Shot”.
Its author, Aaron E. Carroll, characterizes the science as though it fully vindicates the CDC’s recommendation.
To support this characterization, he cites systematic reviews of the medical literature conducted by the prestigious Cochrane Collaboration.
However, as demonstrated in part one of this series, Carroll’s own sources in fact arrived at the opposite conclusion."
"An instructive snapshot of this mindset was provided in a presentation by the CDC’s director of media relations on June 17, 2004, at a workshop for the Institute of Medicine (IOM). In its presentation, the CDC outlined a “‘Recipe’ for Fostering Public Interest and High Vaccine Demand”.
It called for encouraging medical experts and public health authorities to “state concern and alarm” about “and predict dire outcomes” from the flu season. To inspire the necessary fear, the CDC encouraged describing each season as “very severe”, “more severe than last or past years”, and “deadly”"
"The larger conundrum for the CDC is the proliferation of information available to the public on the internet. As the CDC bluntly stated it, “Health literacy is a growing problem”" ~Simone Cominato
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