It is 23% this year, compared to 50-60% for most other years. It is bad and people are now dead who would still have been alive if it was a typical year.
Nobody is suggesting no vaccine would be an improvement so that isn't relevant. What is relevant is figuring out if we can do better, for example, instead of calculating risk in Feb for the upcoming winter, can we improve manufacturing so we can forecast in e.g. July, or better look at the data every month and change the formula mid-year if required (so people getting the vaccine in August and December might get a different formulation).
As I said, until someone suggests cancelling flu vaccines, the argument that it is "better than nothing" isn't relevant. Instead we should assume the vaccine is staying and compare it to itself.
"Nobody is suggesting no vaccine would be an improvement so that isn't relevant."
There are lots of people doing so. Probably very few here on Hacker News, but there are many in the real world. Many people who read the linked article will use that as an excuse to not get the flu vaccine next year.
One of the top level comments here questions if the vaccine is worthwhile, with a strong implication that a) it's not worthwhile for a disease which a healthy adult can recover from without it and b) nobody has been smart (or unbiased) enough to ask the question before.
Nobody is suggesting no vaccine would be an improvement so that isn't relevant. What is relevant is figuring out if we can do better, for example, instead of calculating risk in Feb for the upcoming winter, can we improve manufacturing so we can forecast in e.g. July, or better look at the data every month and change the formula mid-year if required (so people getting the vaccine in August and December might get a different formulation).
As I said, until someone suggests cancelling flu vaccines, the argument that it is "better than nothing" isn't relevant. Instead we should assume the vaccine is staying and compare it to itself.