Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Vaccines Are Not Going to Kill You
This chart has been floating around Farcebook and other sociopathic media for awhile. I finally saw it a couple of hours ago.
“Hmm,” I said, “that doesn’t look right.”
Let’s do some research, using the same websites that “t. sixx” purports to get his data from: The Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
I’ve been kicking around pediatric medicine for a year or two, so I immediately noticed a couple of anomalies. Very few people are just vaccinated for Mumps or Measles or Rubella. The grand majority, well over 90%, are given a combo vaccine called MMR. The same goes for Diphtheria, Tetanus and Pertussis. Since that’s the case, how do you know which portion of the combo was the cause of death? Also, look at all the coincidences. Mumps, Rubella and Varicella vaccines all caused four deaths each. Well, deaths from those three appear to be incredibly rare, so that number is not out of the realm of possibility. But Diphtheria and Tetanus? Exactly 72 each? Pneumonia and Polio, 85 each? Really?
Well, maybe so. After all, incredible coincidences do happen. So I went to the VAERS database, the same source that “t. sixx” gets his/her/their/it’s data from, and plugged in every combination of Mumps, Measles and Rubella vaccines for 2014. “t. sixx” says those three caused 14 deaths. The VAERS database says three. Well, that’s only off by 79%; maybe “t. sixx” hit the wrong key. Anyone can make a mistake. How about Diphtheria, Tetanus, and Pertussis? “t. sixx” says those three vaccines caused 221 deaths. The actual number, again from the database that “t. sixx” claims as a source, is 36. Just a little bit off.
How about the other column? “t. sixx” claims that the CDC says that only 19 people died of the flu in 2014. Hallelujah! We’ve conquered the flu!!! Oopsy, that’s just a bit off. The CDC actually says that flu deaths in 2014 were estimated to be 51,376. That’s not even close enough for government work. Well, maybe he was just talking about children? 803 deaths in 2014 according to the source “cited” by “t. sixx.” Children under four years old? 396 deaths from the flu in 2014, still off by a factor of 20 to 1.
I did find one thing right: 13 people died of Hepatitis B in 2014. Unfortunately, according to VAERS, there were six deaths from the vaccine for Hep B that year, not 50.
And even supposing that every line on that chart is true, the reason that there are so few deaths from these diseases is because most people have been vaccinated. Does anyone really think that there would be still no deaths from Tetanus if we stopped vaccinating?
So this is the same as all anti-vax propaganda: Blatant lies to fool the gullible. And they obviously know they are lying. As Derek Hunter says about Adam Schiff, “If the truth was on their side, they wouldn’t have to lie.”
Published in Healthcare
Outstanding. Thanks so much for putting this together.
That was my first thought when I looked at this. This is proof that vaccines work.
No one gave much thought to polio when I was a kid, but my parents would talk about how scary the threat of polio was when they were growing up. What changed? A vaccine. Without that, who knows how many would be killed or paralyzed today.
Because I homeschool, many people assume that I don’t vaccinate my children, but I don’t homeschool so I can avoid government-mandated vaccinations, I homeschool so that I can avoid government-mandated indoctrination.
My mother-in-law nearly died of polio. My husband’s aunt lives in a group home because her mother was exposed to rubella before she was born. Young men can be made eunuchs by contracting mumps after puberty.
Thank God for vaccinations. They may not be perfect but they improve the world immeasurably.
Yikes!!! I might take my chance with dying, but becoming a eunuch? That should convince the boys to get their shots.
I wouldn’t call myself vaccine friendly, but even I thought that when looking at the numbers. (I’m not anti-vax, either, per se, but my family members are mutants and have been known to have some strange reactions, so I am careful.)
My father had polio when he was young. So, yeah, I was happy to have that vaccine. Thank you, Dr. Salk.
Yeah. I had it when I was only eight, but there was no vaccine back then.
Rubella in pregnancy or even early childhood can really mess things up. The sister of a friend was deaf due to an early infection. In my family, the two younger boys had it when three and four and have very poor eyesight. The eldest brother did not, and his eyesight is normal (for a guy approaching sixty).
attending government mandated schools.
Boy, Jose, you sure have a lot of nerve–bringing common sense and a rational evaluation to the discussion! [sarc off]
My sister caught whooping cough as an infant and nearly died. The vaccine came out right afterward. Thank goodness for the local fire dept. that saved her life.
However, in the interest of accuracy: the CDC’s flu mortality information also states that children usually don’t die of the flu in and of itself. Most pediatric flu deaths are caused by fast-moving, highly virulent opportunistic secondary infections that can be treated with antibiotics.
The CDC has revised their website and at this moment I cannot find the source I usually cite. However, it is really important to be crystal clear and emphatic about this. Parents and caregivers need to know that if a child has the flu or other upper respiratory illness and suddenly takes a turn for the worse–higher temperature, lethargy, cough that disappears (because pneumonia strikes below the cough reflex), or whatever signal the child’s pediatrician is watching for–they should get the child to the hospital or pediatrician right away.
I agree with every word of the post, but there’s another major criticism of the chart: even if it were cited accurately, the VAERS data is essentially worthless for this type of comparison.
Anyone – from doctors to patients to relatives to random Joes – can submit an adverse event report to VAERS, and the submissions are not verified or otherwise checked for accuracy. Basically, if a doctor, vaccinee, or relative thinks that someone might be having an adverse reaction to a vaccination (or have died due to a vaccination), they can simply report that with no further substantiation. There is also no mechanism in place to detect outright fraud.
In fairness, there may also be genuine adverse reactions to vaccines that do not get reported for a number of reasons. But whatever the case, comparing self-reported vaccine deaths to mortality reports that are much more stringently (albeit not perfectly) curated is truly an apples-to-oranges comparison.
This shouldn’t be construed to mean that the VAERS database is worthless. It’s valuable for detecting changes in reactions to the same vaccine over time, which could be helpful in identifying, say, a bad batch of vaccine (which luckily is an incredibly rare occurrence).
I agree completely with your medical advice here, and I would extend it to say that many (the majority?) of non-pediatric flu deaths are also caused by bacterial superinfection.
From the perspective of vaccination statistics, however, it’s very reasonable to include those deaths as caused by the influenza virus* (and hence potentially preventable by influenza vaccination), since the secondary infection would not have been possible without the primary influenza infection. Similarly, nobody actually dies of HIV infection, they die of secondary infections – that their immune systems would have easily repelled had they not been depleted by the virus.
*Again in the interest of fairness, it should also be pointed out that many statistics on “influenza” actually measure “influenza-like illnesses”, i.e. based on symptoms and not an actual molecular diagnosis. While most influenza deaths due end up being tested specifically for the virus, many other “influenza” statistics are indeed an overestimation of actual viral infections.
This is my position as well. My wife and children seem to have a lot of sensitivities and histories of bad reactions with some of the vaccines. We are not wild-eyed crazies just because we advocate caution, but sometimes we have been treated as if that were the case.
Why get vaccinated when the planet has less than 10 years before mass extinction? #Science
Exactly. I had a neighbor who, being Christian Science, didn’t vaccinate her children. She scoffed “and my kids didn’t get any of those diseases!”
I was just old enough to now remember the 2 summers before the polio vaccine came out very well. All the parents in the neighborhood were really anxious and talked a lot about all the kids who got polio. Swimming was dangerous all of a sudden. It was really scary and even a little kid was aware that her parents were frightened about something. The next summer everyone in the neighborhood went to the nearby elementary school and got vaccinated. All at once right away no waiting no second guessing. Parents wanted their children protected from something they had seen and knew was really dangerous. They wanted their children protected.
Yes. #kidcoder contracted Meningitis this way. He was saved only because we were mis-medicating his flu fever (with ibuprofen on an empty stomach) and he vomited blood so we rushed him to the hospital to arrive just as “the rash” came out. A few more hours….
Wow.
The meningitis vaccine was not available when my kids were little, and it was the single most worrisome disease to my pediatrician. One reason, he said, it is so deadly is that it is often misdiagnosed in emergency rooms. He was adamant that I call him–day or night, he didn’t care, he was always available–rather than take my toddlers to the local ER.
The breakthrough in developing the meningitis vaccine should be right up there with the tetanus, polio, diphtheria, and pertussis vaccines in terms of importance to the world.
A boy in my first grade class wore leg braces because he had contracted polio. I never knew anyone else who had it. Since the Salk vaccine was given starting in 1955, I assume he contracted it very young or his parents hadn’t gotten him vaccinated.
Several years ago, I watched the Ken Burns documentary on the Roosevelts (that is, the Democratic Party’s version of history :-) ). Putting all the politics aside, it was really sad to see the lifelong effects of polio on FDR. The original footage in the documentary of FDR’s life that was made so arduous because of polio would make anyone grateful to Jonas Salk.
One noble thing he did in his life, off to the side of his debatable political activities, was prop up and then regularly and faithfully visit and support the therapeutic hospital at Warm Springs, Georgia. Apparently, the patients adored him–he often made them laugh, but mostly he infected them with his own enthusiasm for the work of rehab and his optimism that their efforts would pay off eventually:
One of my cousins is 5 years older than I and contracted it – luckily mild enough to treat and recover – 3 summers before Salk. The line was very bright – before and after Salk. Just like the line before/after chicken pox. Our son got it and his friend Adam – 10 months younger – did not.
But anti-vaxxers just might.
Suddenly we weren’t allowed to go swimming. A playmate down the block got polio, and after that his brother had to pull him along in their Radio Flyer red wagon. A friend of my parents’ from church got it and had a withered arm. Life Magazine had photos of kids in iron lungs. We were terrified. I think I was maybe 5 or 6 years old, I forget.
One funny thing: When we got our vaccinations, they gave me my shot high up on my thigh because it left a round scar, and they thought that part of the body would never show in public haha! This still makes me laugh.
My mother had diphtheria and a tracheostomy at age 2. On her mothers’s kitchen table. It was in 1900. She lived to 103 proving once again that what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.
Napoleon had his chief surgeon, Baron Larrey, vaccinate his entire army and publicly thanked Jenner. In the Franco Prussian War of 1871, Napoleon’s wisdom had been forgotten and 14,000 French POWs contracted smallpox, of whom about 1500 died. The Prussian army had all been vaccinated.
The vaccine nuts, at least in California, seem to cluster around Whole Foods markets. A useful indicator of the mentality.
George Washington insisted that the troops receive the smallpox vaccine.
And not one of those men is alive today, so think about that. #Science
Aren’t these relatively recent combo vaccines? MMR notoriety rose with the different way it was being made, didn’t it? Live vs dead, preservatives, etc?
And DTP is newly combo’d, as I was getting a Tetanus shot as late as 2003.
So how far back are they sourcing their data?
Well that’s because she didn’t live in the 1920s or modern day San Francisco.
It was real and not an abstract thing. People get really dumb when it comes to any level of abstraction.
Don’t forget smallpox. We haven’t seen a wild-type case in over 40 years and it was declared “eradicated” in 1980, but when it raged it killed about 1/3 of those who got the disease.
In general, we have a very good, though imperfect, “control group” to show the anti-vaxxers: either history or other countries that don’t vaccinate. They are complacent because of the responsible people around them who do vaccinate and give them coverage. If everyone did as they (categorical imperative?) and quit vaccinating, before long the rates of disease and death would approach those of the rest of the world. I say approach because our supportive health care system is better, but it would not necessarily remain so in the face of a widespread epidemic. At that point, with hospitals overflowing and beds unavailable, we might start to see third-world death rates. Or visit San Francisco’s “urban campers,” or whatever euphemism is being used these days.