From the Associated Press:

ATLANTA (AP) — The flu season is getting worse, and U.S. health officials say it’s partly because the flu vaccine doesn’t protect against most of the spreading flu bugs. The flu shot is a good match for only about 40 percent of this year’s flu viruses, officials at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Friday.

The situation has even deteriorated since last week when the CDC said the vaccine was protective against roughly half the circulating strains. In good years, the vaccine can fend off 70 to 90 percent of flu bugs.

Infections from an unexpected strain have been booming, and now are the main agent behind most of the nation’s lab-confirmed flu cases, said Dr. Joe Bresee, the CDC’s chief of influenza epidemiology.
. . .
The biggest surprise has been how poorly the vaccine has performed.

Each winter, experts try to predict which strains of flu will circulate so they can develop an appropriate vaccine for the following season. They choose three strains_ two from the Type A family of influenza, and one from Type B.

Usually, the guesswork is pretty good: The vaccines have been a good match in 16 of the last 19 flu seasons, Bresee has said.

The government claims it can protect us from the flu. How? By guessing which flu strains will be around in the coming year. It’s the Chinese Restaurant Method of prediction: two from column A and one from column B. Isn’t it comforting to know how our masters take care of us? Naturally, we should be happy to give them as much of our money as they want.

And, by the way, many or even most cases of the flu are not caused by the flu virus; they are simply misdiagnosed colds never documented by laboratory tests as flu.