 This is going to be a short video. Someone sent me this link to an article on natural news. Natural news is a hive of anti-science, anti-vaccine, and pro anything demonstrated not to work, also called alternative medicine. But it's also given me a classic example of bad science blogging. The author here, Ethan Huff, is attempting to make the flu vaccine sound like it's really ineffective. He focuses on the official CDC statistics, which show the current seasonal vaccine to be about 60% effective in preventing influenza. He links that to the current serious outbreak across the Northern U.S., with 24 states at high activity, and another 16 at moderate activity. That's a big deal. But it's when Ethan here attempts to outsmart the evil corporate governmental pressers at the CDC that the comedy really begins. Here, he implies that the CDC is attempting to confuse you or overstate the effectiveness by calling it 60%. His reasoning, only 2.7 in 100 adults get the flu every year, and that number drops to 1.2 in 100 among those who are vaccinated. Thus, he concludes the vaccine is only 1.5% effective, not 60%. I can only face palm. The reduction in absolute incidence, that is the number of people who get sick, does indeed decrease by 1.5 percentage points. But that is a 60% reduction in disease when compared to the unvaccinated population. This is a common mistake when people talk about percentages. A percentage point is unit change per 100 units, while a percentage change is the amount of change divided by the total. Why does it matter? Well, in actual disease prevented for one, a vaccination that was 1.5% effective would reduce the absolute rate from 2.7 to 2.66, which would save about 140,000 people from several days of misery. While the actual value, a reduction of 60% or 1.5 percentage points, if you prefer, would actually prevent over 4.5 million cases of wishing you were dead. Given that influenza infection generally increases mortality by about 1 in 10,000, that would translate to about 500 people who will see 2014 that would not have without vaccination. So, how does the regular audience of natural news respond to Ethan's rather obvious mistake? Exactly like you would think. Even after the error is pointed out by an astute reader, the rest of the group are so eager to pile on the bandwagon that they aren't prepared to stop and fact check the glaringly obvious mistake. Who, after all, thinks that any medical condition that was less than 2% effective would still be in use? Why, there aren't any practices like that. Well, outside the world of alternative medicine. Stay safe and healthy out there, and thanks for watching.