It appears that old people aren’t actually protected from potentially deadly diseases such as pneumonia by flu shots. The vaccine was over appreciated however it does protect against certain strains of influenza.

This new study included more than 700 elderly people, half of whom had received a flu shot and half of whom had not. The differences between the results showed that flu vaccines don’t necessarily keep death away.

"Previous studies were likely measuring a benefit not directly attributable to the vaccine itself, but something specific to the individuals who were vaccinated - healthy-user benefit or frailty bias," Dean T. Eurich of the School of Public Health at the University of Alberta said. Therefore a healthy way of living makes your life longer, not any kind of flu vaccine. This is an attribute that is almost impossible to capture in large scale studies because it is so dependable on millions of other factors.

The results will appear in the first issue for September of the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, a publication of the American Thoracic Society.

Dr. Eurich and colleagues hypothesized that if the healthy-user effect was responsible for the mortality benefit associated with influenza vaccination seen in observational studies, there should also be a significant mortality benefit present during the "off-season".

"Over the last two decades in the United Sates, even while [flu] vaccination rates among the elderly have increased from 15 to 65 percent, there has been no commensurate decrease in hospital admissions or all-cause mortality," added Eurich.