Forbes: Magazine of the Machine

Forbes magazine and Forbes.com have become, over the past year, particularly active in dispensing establishment propaganda. I’ve come across a number of their pro-vaccine pieces in recent months but have not had the opportunity to comment. That is until now. Yesterday I came across an article by Steven Salzberg, a Professor and Director of the Center for Bioinformatics and Computational Biology at the University of Maryland, College Park, that was so absurd it demanded action.

Characteristic of Forbes reporting, the piece contains a slew of either unsubstantiated or patently false talking points.

The author begins by imagining that a few cases of the measles now appearing across the country are the product of an amorphous “anti-vaccine” movement. Unsurprisingly, he provides no evidence of such causality. (Vaccine propaganda requires only assertions not evidence)

Arguing against this theory are record high vaccination rates and the fact that, since the introduction of vaccinations, there have always been sporadic cases of vaccine preventable illness, “anti-vaccination movement” or not.

Unless there were a 100% vaccination rate, no one too young to be vaccinated, no travel and vaccines that were perfectly effective, sporadic cases of infectious illnesses will occur. Besides, not everyone who is unvaccinated is under the spell of the anti-vaccine movement.

Moving along, the author goes on to parrot the Machine talking point that the “measles is a dangerous …virus,” employing, to support his assertion, an unsubstantiated CDC claim that:

“For every 1,000 children who get measles, one or two will die.”

The CDC provides no basis for the figure but they’re likely clinging to data obtained during a single US outbreak occurring in the 90s affecting a particularly unrepresentative and especially vulnerable population: the urban poor. Further, underreporting of cases was widespread during this outbreak, making the measles seem more formidable than they actually were.

As a matter of fact, in the pre-vaccine era out of 3-4 million cases only about ~450 deaths were reported. Additionally, a recent European outbreak to which Salzburg, in his piece, refers, shows one death occurring out of 6,500 cases. This is in line with other recent European outbreaks. Additionally, as mentioned previously, it’s well known that measles cases are widely underreported; so deaths are likely to occur in at a rate of even less than 1 per every five or six thousand cases.

It is upon this rickety foundation that Salzberg claims, in regards to the measles, “This is not a disease to take lightly.” But, as far as “diseases” go, the measles is one to be taken lightly. It’s hardly even worthy of being called a disease. In the pre-vaccine era, when kids got the measles, parents said their kid was sick. Not that he or she had a disease.

Salzberg’s attempts to paint the measles as “dangerous” is just another example of the Machine distorting language in order to create a false impression under which vaccination seems warrented.

His obsessive fondness for vaccination then compels him to lament:

California now has about 2% of parents refusing vaccines for their children for personal beliefs. This gaping hole in our public health system needs to be closed.

Calling a 2% personal belief exemption rate a “gaping hole” is nothing more than wild hyperbole. The sad fact is that (since there should be no such thing as a vaccine mandate) there is an exemption rate at all. As to the “gaping hole,” one does exist, but it is in regards to the gaping hole in a parent’s freedom to raise their children as they see fit and without the interference of a hyperactive public health apparatus.

Salzberg then turns to a common - yet absurd - talking point popular with vaccine peddlers: those who don’t vaccinate put others at risk.

…they [parents who don’t vaccinate] appear unconcerned about the risk they forcing on the rest of us…if parents refuse to vaccinate their children, they are putting the rest of us at risk, and these children need to be kept out of public schools.

As to putting you at or forcing risk upon you, the risk of infectious illness exists and has existed for thousands of years. No one forces it upon you. My not vaccinating simply denies you additional protection to which you have no right. It’s you, not I, who is responsible to protect yourself. Vaccines give you the means by which to do this.

In regards to keeping kids out of school, people, kids included have a right to reject unwanted medical interventions. This right does not stop at the schoolhouse door. If not for government interference in education, one would be free to attend whichever school one chose. Schools would be free to set their own requirements for admission. Vaccination could be among those requirements. Fans of vaccination such as Salzburg could attend those with rigid vaccination policies while others not so enamored with the practice could attend schools without a vaccination requirement. Unfortunately, government makes a scenario involving free choice impossible and therefore morally abrogates it’s right to set such vaccine requirements

Continuing, Salzburg claims:

Parents who follow this advice [not to vaccinate] rely on the immunization of others to protect their own children,

But we don’t rely on you to do anything. Stop vaccinating. I dare you. You vaccinate because you’re afraid of the mumps. I’m not. Besides, rely implies that I’d be in dire straits or I’d have to act without you. Neither is true.

His terror at being put at risk by unvaccinated children cavorting through schools continues:

They also neglect to consider that vaccines are never 100% effective, so even those of us who vaccinate our kids are still bearing a greater risk by allowing the unvaccinated to attend school.

 Yes, your risk is greater than if you had the right to have government thugs force unwanted vaccines on other people. But you don’t have that right so get over it. You just have the right to the protection you can obtain by your own voluntary actions; not actions forced upon others.

In conclusion, Salzburg floats the bizarre suggestion that: 

We could start by telling people to get vaccinated before they leave the country. If they refuse, we could require them to be tested for infections when they return.

He fails to comprehend is that people have rights and these rights supercede his personal desires. People, going about their everyday lives, cannot have their freedom violated. And freedom involves the right to travel without being poked with the vaccinators needle. It also includes the right not to be, unless probable cause exists, tested, examined and probed for signs of infectious illness.

Crazy ideas such as the one proffered by Salzberg warn us about what the police state of the future may look like. And we must be vigilant in resisting  such a regime. But more importantly we must begin to dismantle the hidden police which already exists and has as it's foundation  mandatory vaccination