Vaccination is an important weapon in our arsenal of weapons against infectious diseases, as I have written about before.
However, there is a very real problem with how our health officials are presenting vaccination. It appears calculated to make people distrust the very tool they are touting!!!
After all, most people are not stupid: we can tell when we are being told things that demonstrably are not true. This includes oversimplifications to the poin of error: we see the real-life results while the ‘experts’ are describing ideal ‘lab conditions’ outcomes…and the two are never the same. (I’ll come back to this point later.)
I am convinced that the vast majority of anti-vaccination sentiment ‘out there’ is among people who have once believed the health officials statements which touted the benefits of vaccinations, overstated its effectiveness and understated (or left out cmpletely) its risks. There is no critic so hardened as one who was once a true believer and was proven wrong by real-life experience!
What do I mean?
If somebody sold you, say, suit of body armour and told you this armour can stop any bullet so that you will be safe wearing it anywhere in a combat zone – but omitted to tell you that the neck and joint areas of the suit are not actually armoured, you went out and got shot through the elbow, you might be annoyed. Had you known, you would have behaved differently – guarded your unarmoured bits better… But, having been told that the armour is impervious, you will not be as trusting when they try to sell you the next suit of armour…
There are two main things that health officials are not properly informing people about when it comes to vaccination:
- risk
- efficacy
Now that this is out of the way – it troubles me greatly to see how the latest ‘measles outbreak’ is being handled by the health officials and/or and mainstream media.
Background:
All school kids (with only very few conscientious objectors and health exceptions) are vaccinated against measles. Yet, despite this, every few years, there are measles outbreaks. What sets this one apart is how the story is being spun.
The first statistics that came out were that there were just under a hundred kids infected in the initial outbreak, but well over half of these kids were ‘properly vaccinated‘. This seems to have baffled the health officials beyond belief – suggesting that these health officials are woefully unaware of the efficacy of vaccines…
Not only do vaccines have a surprisingly low rate of efficacy (some are below 20%), the ‘protection’ they confer on someone is not identical to the ‘protection’ that having the illness would. This is a function of our immune system: the sicker a germ makes it, the more dilligent it is about storing the antibodies against it – both in strenght and in length of time it ‘stores’ the antibodies for (hence the need for ‘booster shots’). Since vaccinations only produce a very mild, immitation version of the disease, the body does not consider these antibodies ‘priority antibodies’ and will often drop them if it has too many other antibodies to worry about.
Therefore, we have consistently seen that may childhood illnesses like measles and chicken pox appear in teenagers or young adults, when they are much more dangerous illnesses than had they been suffered through in childhood. This is what one would expect to see in a ‘properly’ vaccinated population!
It is similar to the not-often-mentioned fact that until very recently (when arrivals of people from the third world changed the situation), the only cases of polio were found in children vaccinated with the live vaccine and the grandparents who were looking after them. No vaccination confers protection for more than 20-30 years – something our health officials also should be stressing.
But, back to our story: since the initial news story, the outbreak has grown to over seven hundred. Since the percentage on unvaccinated kids is small, it seems reasonable to presume that, as before. more than half of these students were also ‘properly’ vaccinated.
So, how do the health officials propose to deal with the outbreak?
MORE VACCINATION!!!
That is insane!
And irresponsible beyond belief!
Either the strain that is ravaging the teens has mutated from the original – which viruses do on a regular basis, in which case giving them the ‘standard’ vaccine would have no effect (there has not been sufficient time to adjust the vaccine), or there is a genetic pocket of people whose immune systems don’t respond to vaccination typically….in which case vaccinating them some more is both idiotic and dangerous.
Plus this creates the false impression that the problem is being contained, when all this activity will have no significant impact whatsoever. People need to take personal precautions – yet the authorities are assuring them that they don’t need to since they have everything under control…
I know I am sounding like a broken record, but…
Vaccinations are an important tool for combatting infectious disease. But, like all tools, it must be used properly and its limitations must be clearly stated and generally understood – and this is not happening right now. Our health officials, through their attempt to manipulate us to all make the ‘right’ choice and misrepresenting the effectiveness of this tool are actually undermining people’s trust in it and feeding the anti-vaccination hysteria!
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