Hm. I'll have to poke my newsreader about not showing me the dev log...
The very reason flu vaccines haven't ever been foolproof - well, the biggest one - is that the flu virus, in general, mutates so fast that there are always new strains out there. Any given year's influenza mortality rates is going to include all of them - there's often not much point in separating individual strains unless they are unusually virulent. Yes, one tends to dominate any given year, but the others are not entirely insignificant.
Swine flu is notable for that virulence; yes, it's common this year, but it's still not the only deal in town.
Also, 22 years is an awfully long time to average over, concerning relatively modern advances in medical science.
As for vaccines - any vaccine has a calculated risk of triggering the infection it's intended to prevent, because the only way to do it is to try to heat-kill or otherwise disable the viruses and inject them. Anything guaranteed to render them noninfectious would destroy the markers that the immune system needs to recognize the virus at all.
And in this day and age, "acceptable margin of risk" is shrinking into oblivion.
Public awareness of this one is spawning vastly increased caution, which is going to distort the figures to some degree or other. The same cautions in place for H1N1 could help with any influenza epidemic; but not the public nor the medical establishment can maintain that vigilance forever.
Especially not with corporations generally expecting their employees to come to work unless physically unable to perform their jobs, and requiring documentation of even that to be provided at employee expense.
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Topic: I can only assume the worst. (Read 8926 times)