AoA's David Burd is a bird brain

I read this article at Age of Autism and was left confused.  Where was David Burd getting this...'data'?

Firstly, I live in Canada.  I am also the person responsible for keeping our 'Pandemic Preparedness' binder current at work and as such I receive updates on current flu clinics, flu trends, outbreaks etc.

David Burd starts off by with this little gem; "Last September, a large study by Canadian scientists Danuta Skowronski and Gaston De Serres threw Canada into an uproar with their findings showing people who had prior "seasonal flu" shots were much more likely to come down with newly appeared H1N1 (Swine) flu illness."

Saying that people that get the seasonal flu shot are more at risk for H1N1 is inflamatory.  Many of the persons that get the seasonal flu shot are more at risk for all flu virus's.  (My employer has Crohn's for example, and the medication he takes leaves his immune system weakened.).  I also do not recall any uproar, other than people being lined up and turned away for the shots as our government was not prepared for the high demand for the H1N1 vaccine.  By the time I was able to take my family in for the shots, my daughter had already been ill with H1N1.  The rest of us still got the shot. 

The study he is talking about is unpublished according to this article. This article also states that "Marie-Paule Kieny, director of the WHO’s initiative for vaccine research, said no other researchers had presented similar findings and it could be a “study bias”, although the Canadian investigators were well known and capable."

Burd goes one a bit more then says "All this was front page in newspapers across Canada".  Huh? What newspapers?  Not where I live.  A quick google shows me that key words "Canada, H1N1, study" brings up the AoA post by Burd, the article above and yet no links to any major newespapers.  How odd.

He rambles on about the conspiracy to hide this unpublished studies findings from the American public and brings up what is fast becoming AoA's new punch line "in the immortal words of NBC's Dr. Nancy Snyderman on national TV, "just take your damn flu shot.""

He then goes into some rambling about New Brunswick, hammering in his point that he has no idea what he is talking about-but the AoA'ers lap it up! Its a conspiracy! It's vaccines! (I notice that what it is not is Autism), so all the little AoA sheeples are happily bleating.

Then David writes in third person, telling us about his professional acheivements in technology related fields.  He consults on surgical devices related to intellectual property rights (patents) and claims that he was in the first grad class of 'rocket scientists' (quotes are his, not mine).  All of which of course make him more than qualified to write about vaccine studies.

One comment caught my attention:

"Request for authors: For those of us interested in original sources, please reference the source of studies referred to and please provide urls that lead to specific pages such as the Canada Fluwatch website mentioned in this article. I think I found the correct website by googling, but several hits were returned. I also was not able to glance at the home page and find the specific information mentioned.

I'd live to pass along articles such as these to skeptical friends in the field of science, but know without sources, they will not take the articles seriously. And it is frustrating to take time to try to recreate an author's sources. Even spending much time and effort to track down sources, it's often necessary to preface them with "I think this is the source but am not positive."
Thanks in advance for those who will begin doing this! It will save your readers a lot of time!
Posted by: L Brasher "

Burd replied:
"Dear L Brasher, The keywords 'Canada' and 'Fluwatch" go right to the source. You could also add years such as '2010' or flu season phrases such as "2009 - 2010"

However, what is provided by Fluwatch are the wonderful tabulations of all the Provinces in Canada, the respective flu seasons, cases per Province, etc.
It is me, the author of the piece, that uses these facts, and makes deductive analyses, and conclusions. Canada's Public Health System, like the U.S. CDC actually believes it is good to give flu shots (tho they are rethinking in light of Skowronski and De Serres).
Hope this helps -- David Burd"

So there you have it! Mr Burd has used a table that he is not qualified to interpret and written this garbage article for the entertainment of the AoA crowd.

Beauty, eh?