Preteen Vaccine Week...Really?

ZET59V6G69VD

While gathering information to debunk the myth that low vaccination rates had anything to do with the pertussis epidemic of 2010, I stumbled across a chilling phenomena: the inner working of The Vaccine Machine.

While the CDC gets most of the attention when it comes to the relentless promotion of vaccination, it's shadowy organizations such as The California Immunization Coalition that do the real, behind-the-scenes dirty work upon vaccination depends.

The California Immunization Coalition calls itself a public/private partnership. I call it a collection of vested interests drawn from medicine, public health, insurance, the American Association of Pediatrics.

With the goal of further increasing the number of vaccines our children receive, The California Immunization Coalition has concocted something known as Preteen Vaccine Week.

The group calls Preteen Vaccine Week (occurring February 13-19 - mark your calendar) an "observance" to highlight the importance of vaccinations in 11 and 12 year olds - it's striking that they would use "observance" (a word often used in reference to religious affairs) in reference to this vaccine sales campaign

The event's 2011 goal is to encourage healthy children to go see the doctor so they can of course be vaccinated. This year features a special promotion: the implementation of a new law compelling 7th to 12th grade students to accept yet another dose of pertussis vaccine. Thankfully this law is, like all vaccination laws, still subject to the California philosophical exemption.

Of course pertussis is, according to public health groups not involved in preteen vaccine week, usually mild in older children and adults

So what happens (besides the pertussis vaccination) when they get the kids into the doctors office? Well eleven and twelve year olds just happen to be eligible for some really great additional vaccines.

They get a little meningococcal, a little flu, a second dose of the chicken pox, three doses of Gardasil and, as an added bonus when you fulfill your pertussis commitment, a dose of tetanus and diphtheria - both included in a kind of biologiccal happy meal that makes up the Tdap vaccine. Ah to be young again.

And no wonder these vaccine pushers are so excited. Eleven and twelve year olds have the potential to deliver one million more victims of compulsory vaccination to the Machine.

The California Immunization Coalition's web site offers materials  for immunization coordinators and immunization program staff (I'm guessing these are functionaries working in either public health or the schools themselves] The ordering of campaign kits (featuring posters and brochures and reminder cards) is encouraged. These kits also contain "talking points" along with materials to craft press releases and implement media alerts.

Public health authorities, seeing every aspect of our lives as falling under their purview, even use their vaccine propaganda materials to exhort families to have dinners together and encourage children to get involved in community.

They talk incessantly of the new law requiring yet another dose of pertussis vaccine for middle and high school children yet not one word (unless well hidden) about the right of parents to receive an exemption.

The California Immunization Coalition's web site also offers links to The California Department of Public Health where one can obtain additional promotional materials. And, at the department of health, they're not only observing preteen vaccine week, they're "celebrating" it.

Sadly, during a time of massive budget deficits, they have the resources to indulge their public health fantasies

They encourage teachers to engage their students in herd immunity propaganda sessions. Other suggestions involve the playing of Vaccine Jeopardy (like the TV show) and vaccine-related scavenger hunts (perhaps to look for all the dead bodies strewning the neighborhood as a result of the flu). High schoolers are encourged to do vaccine skits for preteens while students of all ages are to do comic strips and posters extolling the miracle of vaccines - awards to the best little propagandist.

Sounds like a program Chairman Mao would be proud of.



*Note trying to work with some of their documents will cause your Word programs to freeze and crash. Also the documents did not allow for cutting and pasting.