Refuting the Ridiculous

With so many vaccine fan boys and fan girls in the mainstream media it is difficult to keep up with all the Internet polluting trash they are able to produce. This piece, by a Ms Julia Ioffe and appearing on the far left New Republic website, came to my attention this week and provided an insight into the muddled thinking that afflicts so many in the cult of vaccination. It was not until a number of fans on our Facebook page asked us to respond did I decide to take the time to publicly debunk this confused piece of hysteria, misinformation and self-pity.

Many of you have already suffered the tedium of reading the piece to which we're responding, but for those who have not, it is one woman's self-absorbed account of her case of pertussis and her ludicrous claim that either Jenny McCarty or unvaccinated people in general are to blame. The title says it all: I've got whooping cough. Thanks a lot Jenny McCarty. Here's our response:
Thank pertussis you entitled little cry-baby, because that's what's got you sick, not Jenny or any other unvaccinated person.

Everybody in the nation must get shot after shot of pertussis vaccine so you don't get a cough? Sorry, it doesn't work that way. Pertussis exists where people do, so you might just have to leave society if it is too dangerous for you.

You’re sense of entitlement is off the charts as evidenced by the fact you don’t think YOU should not have to get the vaccine because everyone else should. That's right, even though the vaccine is available and recommended for adults she blames us, not her failure to vaccinate herself. Ever hear of individual responsibility Ms. Ioffe?

Apparently this writer is quite a sickly individual as evidenced by her claim to have what appears to be the worst adult case of whooping cough in the history of the adult cases of pertussis. For almost every other adult, the illness is quite mild. Apparently you have an inability to fight of illnesses – that’s not Jenny’s fault either.

*Mild

(And what about that claim saying even a little vaccine makes cases milder. I guess that’s just a another medical establishment myth.)

If pertussis does this to you, I’d hate to see what shape the flu would leave you in. I guess that's another shot all 300 million American’s will have to get - after all we don't want you to blame us for your lack of personal responsibility.

Finally, after what seems to be an eternity, she mercifully departs from her account of each and every coughing spell she’s experienced over the past few months and moves on to parroting a few talking points crafted by the vaccine establishment.

She prattles on about vaccination not being an individual choice because it affects others. This is absurd. My not vaccinating affects no one. I did not get the flu shot this year and that has affected no one. Besides our choices affect other people all the time. I offered to pay more for my current home than another interested party. I got the house and he didn’t. He was affected by my decision. So what?

She then implies there is some type of obligation for everyone in America to lap up each and every vaccine Merck can produce in order to create the holy grail of the vaccine idolaters: herd immunity. Unfortunately she fails to provide any support for her implication. This is not surprising since no such obligation exists

She then goes on to reveal her scientific illiteracy by claiming vaccine exepmptors were behind a 2010 epidemic, quoting a study whose data in no way supports such an assertion. The bogus study to which she refers was manufactured by the vaccine establishment as a way to provide a naive media a way to support their false and ignorant claims. The “study” only finds some association between areas with more vaccine exemptions (and it is important to remember exemptions are calculated based on as few as one exemption and need not be an exemption to the pertussis vaccine) and cases of pertussis. It does not demonstrate this association was meaningful enough to have any impact on the outbreak. The real reasons for the increase in cases are well know: a bad vaccine and increased reporting

And even if her claim were true, those who did not vaccinate would not be “responsible” for her pertussis since there is no responsibility to medicate one’s self so someone else doesn't get sick. It is important to understand poor Ms. Ioffe’s illness is caused by pertussis, not any unvaccinated individual.

He rant continues as she goes on to thank the unvaccinated for her pertussis (I guess we’re responsible for her feeble immune response as well) but, as this post demonstrates, she needs to thank pertussis not anyone of us.

She completes her self-indulgent decent into lunacy by claiming being unvaccinated killed babies during the epidemic. Only someone either in a total state of delusion or one who is willfully ignorant of how causality works could make such an absurd claim

This poor little hothouse flower ends by saying how humiliating her bout with pertussis was, not realizing that broadcasting her ignorance across the internet does far more to humiliate her than any case of pertussis ever could.

The Picture of Desperation

As more people become aware of the low risks posed by infectious illnesses, vaccine fanatics have had to take their campaign of fear mongering to a new low. In a desperate attempt to deceive parents, the extremists, holed up in basements and garages throughout the USA, England and Australia, are compiling a series of photos they hope will scare parents into vaccinating. (At first I was not going to give credence to the reprehensible tactics used by these reprobates by linking to the actual photos. But now I realize linking to them is the best way to expose this particular act of desperation )  Oddly, some of the photos actually show nothing more than a frowning child with a rash - I guess some illnesses are so mild even a worst-case scenario photo is incapable of instilling even moderate concern. On the other hand, a few pictures do portray incredibly rare but undoubtedly severe outcomes that can rarely result from the combination of infectious illnesses and contributing factors such as impaired immune status or environmental deprivations.

Since a picture tells us nothing about these co-factors it is entirely without context and therefore tells us nothing meaningful, it is simply an appeal to emotion designed to override reason. For example is the picture from Botswana or Baton Rouge? Is the victim a homeless drug abuser or a healthy adult? Was the child healthy or severely malnourished?

Additionally, if we don't know how often a severe outcome will occur we cannot measure the risks of that outcome and therefore cannot use the photo as a means by which we make a decision to vaccinate or not.

That is the intent of propaganda. Photos without context do little to inform our decision making. This type of tactic demonstrates the utter lack of scruples in the vaccine fanatic cult. Let's break down the photos one by one:

The mumps one is silly. It is just a child with a swollen neck. The photo often used because most cases are not noticeable to this extent. So an extreme case must be used or there would just be a picture of a normal looking child in a textbook section on the mumps. Mumps is universally acknowledged to be a mild illness

The measles photo is another that can't be taken seriously. It is a child with a rash and a frown. Not very worrisome

Pertussis is another silly one. It is a photo of a child coughing. I wonder where the photo of the crying caused by the pain of injection after injection is.

Rubella or German measles is the next. The photo does not really show much but science says the German measles are, as illnesses go, the mildest of the mild. Just be sure to get them as a child because if a woman gets them while pregnant her child could suffer severe outcomes. Intentionally getting them as a child was what doctors of the 1960's recommended. [2]

Diphtheria photo is probably the most deceptive since it is not a photo of the common form of the illness. It is rather a photo of cutaneous diphtheria. According to patient.co.uk

Cutaneous diphtheria is most often associated with the homeless and those with poor personal and community hygiene.

Hunter's Tropical Medicine describes it this way:

Outbreaks of cutaneous diphtheria have occurred among impoverished or indigent populations, homeless individuals and alcoholics, and in environments with overcrowding and unhygienic living arrangements

So if your child isn't a homeless alcoholic, I wouldn't worry.

Finally we come to polio. The vaccine cultists would not know what to do with themselves if they didn't have to polio card to play. Because they know little about the history of polio, the extent of their argument cannot progress past the point of parroting, "what about polio?" What about polio indeed. First polio was blown out of all proportion by a campaign of fear created by the March of Dimes in order to raise money to fight the illness. [1] Second overzealous doctors caused many cases of polio as a result of their mindless quest to vaccinate children or the era and remove parts of their immune system, specifically the tonsils and appendix. Third paralytic polio only emerged in 1 of 200 infections (1-1,000 in children) and half of those resolved on their own. Fourth polio in epidemic form did not exist before the late 1800's and one must conclude environmental changes precipitated the disease's emergence. Since polio fell about 50% before vaccination became widespread, one cannot say what the state of polio would be today because environmental conditions are again quite different from the 40's and 50's. For example at that time children were regularly exposed to two potent immune suppressants. Lead (scientists at the time said it was as safe as apple pie) and DDT. Lead, from the exhaust of automobiles filled the air while DDT both contaminated the nation's milk supply and was sprayed upon children as they played in the streets.

So to assert polio would return if vaccination against it stopped has no basis in science is nothing more than wild speculation of a handful of vaccine cultists.

In a future post, we'll cover a few more of these illnesses - including the dreaded chickenpox. In the meantime, I wouldn't let one of these pictures scare me into vaccinating anymore than I would let a picture of a car crash scare me from driving to the supermarket.




1 - Patenting the Sun Page 82

The L.A. Times: Wrong on Vaccination

Over the weekend I came a across a laughable editorial in the L.A. Times parroting some common establishment talking points in support of compulsory vaccination. Readers of this blog will be familiar with them since they are trotted out on a regular basis by the vaccine extremists and public health fanatics that seem to have open access to the editorial pages of the nations mainstream media. This particular writer, a Nina Shapiro, a professor at UCLA's Geffen School of Medicine, incorporates a number of shop-worn distortions into her piece attacking vaccine exemptions. She claims illnesses that almost never kill are life-threatening in their nature, suggests that in some schools 80% of the children are unvaccinated and implies that if we're not good little boys and girls, polio is going to come back and get us.

I responded to Ms. Shapiro's nonsense with this comment:

Let me educate you on some facts “doctor.” The measles is not a life-threatening illness. Measles almost never kills. And when it does it is due to a combination of the virus and mitigating factors such as poor nutrition. Pertussis is also almost never a killer. With between 500,000 and one million cases each year only about twenty deaths occur. Sweden abandoned the whole-cell vaccine for 17 years and deaths were apparently so minimal the literature makes no mention of them. So please spare us your wild-eyed hyperbole.

It is no surprise far-left extremists such as those running the LA Times would publish a call to take away a parents right to make medical decisions and hand it over to the state and the public health crazies whose very existence depends on America’s insane vaccination policy

Your “goal” of “protecting children” from mild illnesses by forcing parents to make those children endure a series of painful, risky and never-ending unwanted vaccinations is an idea incompatible with the concepts of liberty upon which this nation was founded. A moral government’s only role is to defends rights – not save lives, decide how much soda we can drink or decide where and when fast-food restaurants can be built. With their rights secure, individuals are perfectly capable of protecting their own children without the heavy hand of government compulsion guiding their every decision. 

What they need protection from is statists and the out-of-control vaccine schedule they propagate

Rather than attack exemptions, we should abolish them altogether and let parents, not self-serving bureaucrats and vaccine shills, decide what is right for their children.

Additionally your claims about unvaccinated children are highly deceptive since even one missed vaccine out of the countless ones that populate the schedule can place a child in your unvaccinated category. Your implication that 80% of children in some schools fall into this category are ludicrous and you should be ashamed for making it.

And where did polio kill millions. Certainly not in the Western world. Even in the worst years it killed perhaps 3,000 with a peak of 6,000 in 1916. And polio was in great measure the result of an out-of-control medical system that indiscriminately removed the tonsils of almost every child of that era. Perhaps you unaware of the fact that the tonsils are part of the immune system and their removal greatly increases the risk of polio. Injections as a result of vaccination also predisposed children to paralytic polio.

Cases were down almost 50% before the vaccine was widely used and they fell further as a result of the disease being reclassified. Additionally much of the nation’s milk supply was contaminated by DDT, a potent immune suppressant, during polio's peak era: the late 40's and early 50's . Polio emerged in epidemic form from nowhere in the late 1800's due to factors too numerous to describe here, and with conditions wildly different today, it is abject speculation to say polio would be today what it was 60 years ago - vaccine or not.

Trust the Liars

You guys are gonna get a kick out of this. Vaccine pusher / drug company shill Amy Pisani the executive director of Every Child By Two @3:08 states "Vaccines save millions and millions of lives every day around the world." Millions means at least two million, so millions and millions means at least 4 million. So according to Amy, four million lives are saved each and every day due to the miracle of vaccination. This is of course impossible. In one year alone 1.46 billion lives would be saved because of vaccines. The population of the entire planet only amounts to about seven billion souls. In just five years time the entire planet would be saved by vaccines. Absurd! Ms. Pisani is yet another unfortunate example of an establishment functionary being either obliviously ignorant about the vaccination issue or incredibly dishonest. I don’t know which is worse. So for parents who have heard the song and dance about how we should only accept immunization information from websites approved by a conflicted vaccine establishment, remember it’s people such as Amy who are running and recommending these sites.