More US adults believe in Santa Claus than the flu vaccine.
Okay, I made that up, but sometimes it feels that way.
Poll: Have you gotten your flu shot this year?
— Vamp Capital ??♂️ (@RampCapitalLLC) October 24, 2019
Despite constant hand-wringing over its effectiveness, receiving a flu shot is the best way to lower the odds of contracting a life-threatening form of the illness.
Results have definitely varied over time, making the widespread skepticism more understandable. And maybe there’s somewhat of a self-fulfilling prophecy at work here too, as public skepticism has likely led to less-than-stellar vaccination rates overall.
Other vaccines (like those for smallpox, polio, and tetanus, for instance) have far better track records, and are consequently much more respected than the red-headed stepchild of vaccines – the flu shot.
What’s so difficult about creating a flu vaccine anyway?
For starters, the “flu virus” is kind of a catch-all for influenza’s many iterations. The flu is far less stable than other illnesses. It exists in a near-constant state of mutation, reinventing itself many times over the course of just one calendar year.
In order to produce an annual flu vaccine, drug companies in their respective nations are given guidance by the World Health Organization regarding which strains of the flu to include in their vaccination-cocktail. A lot of research and collaboration goes into their recommendations, but it’s important to note that their guidance is effectively an educated guess. This is not meant in a derogatory sense – short of a crystal ball, how could it be anything more?
Additionally, the medical community needs at least six months to produce large quantities of the flu vaccine, so it must decide well ahead of time which strains to include each year.
So to answer my own question – what’s so difficult about creating a flu vaccine anyway? Literally everything.
We face underdog odds when creating the annual flu vaccine, but we play the game anyway because it is a net positive for society. Even the least effective year in recent history meant thousands of lives saved, hospitalizations avoided, and suppressed symptoms. I don’t see a downside to that.
We play a similar, yet far less productive, game with our investments all the time. Again, we’re underdogs, but in this case the typical outcome is more of a detriment to society than anything else.
Attempting to predict the next bear market catalyst is a national pastime.
We love trying to figure out what will cause the next crash. The side-step remix of the market-timing siren song is an all-time greatest hit, of which we never tire. We glorify previous top callers, and thirst for their future premonitions irrespective of accuracy. Nobody has shown a consistent or repeatable ability to predict market downturns, but we just can’t quit. The allure of being right when everybody else is wrong may be one of the strongest forces in the world.
But predicting the next bear market is as difficult as predicting next year’s dominant flu strains. Bear markets are as dynamic as the flu virus – constantly mutating over time. This is why no two bear markets are exactly alike.
As a result, any immunity to future bears we gain by living through their predecessors is of limited use. There are broad lessons to learn from history, but the specific answers to the last test won’t help us ace the next one. Despite this, we continue to give credence to the notion that those who were right before will be right again.
Unfortunately, we are far less skeptical of top-callers than we are of flu shots, which seems precisely backwards to me. Despite what some may say, we don’t know exactly what will cause the next market downturn, and there are certainly no bear market vaccines.
[…] “Predicting the next bear market is as difficult as predicting next year’s dominant flu strains. Bear markets are as dynamic as the flu virus – constantly mutating over time. This is why no two bear markets are exactly alike.” – Brendan Mullooly […]