Mike Adams vs. the flu vaccine

The purpose of flu shots is to “soft kill” the global population.

Doesn’t seem to be working in our county — no one has died of the flu shot yet but we had three deaths in 2010 from H1N1.

I’m reminded of the Charles Addams cartoon showing the mad scientist leaning over a parapet with a blast-type weapon in his hands and saying, “Death ray, fiddlesticks! It doesn’t even slow them up.”

“The purpose of flu shots is to “soft kill” the global population.”

Really? Then why are we quickly on the way to 7 billion people on this planet?? As a method of population control the “vaccine method” isn’t very effective! Perhaps he should check his OWN data! LOL

I’m not sure, but to me Bill Gates words simply state that with better health care and more knowledge about birth control, people in thirth world countries are likely to give birth to less children.

But well, since I’ve seen the cancer-industry cartoons from Mike Adams website, cartoons which are just as funny as a concentration camp (they aren’t funny at all, but just very aggressive propaganda) mr. Adams belongs in my view to the most despicable persons on earth.

Adams is a crank, and either crazy or dishonest, but he does have a valid point hidden away in his paranoid rantings about the possibility of confusion between absolute and relative risk or benefit. Ben Goldacre has often talked about how the unwary can be confused by such statistics

I know, I know, saying that Mike Adams has just laid down yet another hunk of napalm-grade–nay, hydrogen-bomb grade–burning stupid is akin to saying that the sun rises in the east and sets in the west, that water is wet, that we need oxygen to survive, or that the moon rotates around the sun.

Is this a very clever joke that my numbed brain just isn’t getting? The Moon revolves around the Earth, of course, and rotates about its axis.

Of course, a far greater error is made by Adams:

It’s very likely that upon injecting 100 adults with vaccines containing chemical adjuvants (inflammatory chemicals used to make flu vaccines “work” better), you might get 7.5 cases of long-term neurological side effects such as dementia or Alzheimer’s. This is an estimate, by the way, used here to illustrate the statistics involved.

Adams uses the word “estimate” here incorrectly. The phrase he was actually looking for was “numbers I pulled out of my hinder”. Given that there is no evidence vaccines cause any of these conditions, it beggers the imagination that he could have figures for “illustrative” purposes which are not mere guesses. Of course, I don’t think he’s really guessing. That would imply an effort to speculate realistically. He’s come up with a number that supports his premise instead, which isn’t guessing, it’s inventing.

All right, Mr Adams. So most people don’t get the flu in the first place, therefore most people won’t end up being helped by the vaccine. Ignoring for now that you can’t tell whether you’re going to be one of the many lucky ones or not (how many people skip flu vaccines but buy lottery tickets, I wonder?), I wonder how you feel about these things:

* Seatbelts. The vast majority of automobile trips end without incident. Indeed, most people probably will never be in a car accident where seatbelts would have made a difference. (I never have.) Seatbelts were not widely used for the majority of the history of the automobile, and they are not commonly found on buses. Should we therefore conclude that they are a pointless intervention?

* Rape. Stranger rape is rare. Though most women (and probably more men than are currently recognized) will experience some form of sexual abuse in their lifetimes, and up to a quarter will be assaulted to some degree, few are assaulted by strangers. It’s nearly always someone they know. Does this make efforts to reduce rape meaningless? Should women inherently trust every male they encounter, knowing stranger rape is so rare that it’s not worth worrying about?

* Severe weather kills people every year; the Joplin tornado was especially bad. But most people will never see even a tornado-producing mesoscale convective system, much less the actual tornado, and much less be in any way impacted by it. Towns in this part of the country spend a lot of money on tornado sirens and emergency preparedness, and everybody is supposed to practice taking shelter once a year. Huge amounts of money are spent on our meteorological infrastructure, allowing advance warnings to go out. But since tornadoes are so rare (even here, statistically speaking, most people won’t see one much less be adversely affected by it), is it really worth worrying about?

Just because something happens to nobody you know doesn’t make it unimportant or not worth trying to prevent. It also doesn’t mean it won’t happen to you. If you honestly believe influenza is something that won’t happen to you, go ahead and skip the shot like Adams recommends. But remember that people think the same thing about car accidents, earthquakes, muggings, fires, lightning strikes, and workplace injuries and such.

I got my flu shot ten days ago and my TDaP on Saturday. Shouldn’t the tentacles be sprouting by now?

OK Orac, I’ll see you that Adams and raise you two Nulls and an Olmstead**

Truth be told: woo-meisters hate vaccines for perfectly good reasons because these innovations represent the triumph of SBM in eradicating or diminishing the effects of serious and often deadly diseases that have plagued humans for millenia. If you peer into your own family history – even a hundred years ago, even in the western world- you might find that children died of “Spanish flu” or had polio, adults died of TB, men in the armed forces might have encountered and suffered malaria as well as other tropical illnesses. Anti-biotics- thoroughly despised- also represent a threat to “natural medicine”. As do ARVs. Because they work.

Because woo ( herbalism, homeopathy, supplements, nutrition, “Oriental” medicine, faith healing, etc) has no data illustrating improvements in any of these illnesses, it must rely upon muddying the waters by calling “Pharma Conspiracy!” at every turn in the road; recently they’ve needed to add, “Governmental Conspiracy!” and “Media Conspiracy!” as well.

Adams is so over-the-top, I can’t imagine people taking him seriously but he seems to have many fans ( 140,000 +) and I’m sure all of them aren’t reading him for sport, snark-fodder, and low-hanging-fruit gathering as we do.

** for your reading and listening … uh, “pleasure”- “The Flu Vaccine: the Hidden Dangers”; Null and Ashley: ProgressiveRadioNetwork; also @ same-see Archives/ Progressive Commentary Hour 10/24/11 re the vindication Of Andy W.

“Vaccines: Catalyst for the AIDS Epidemic”; Dan Olmstead @ AoA.

I would’ve thought the same thing as Adams about what the 60% meant. As has been noted many times, technical words have specialized meanings. I have no problem with using such words when they fit the level of English needed for the topic. But how is the average reader supposed to know what “efficacy” is, as opposed to longer but more familiar ways of summarizing a study (assumptions, statistical mean and variance, confidence, etc.)?

The Lancet report may as well have said “cranks, eat your heart out”.

The question is, Pareidolius, do you think it’s worth the expense and risk of vaccinating millions of people in order to give a small number of them a slightly improved chance of not having to spend two days in bed with a headache and runny nose?

What a waste of time and money the flu shot is. Classic medical over-servicing.

Wow Vince, I guess you’ve never attempted to calculate the economic costs of all of those people missing work (even a couple of days adds up across hundreds of thousands of people)…..

Left a comment there asking him to be more specific about the size of his wager.

Mike lives in a funny little fantasy world, where people are secretly plotting to cull the world population but can’t resist leaking out the big secret during public meetings.

Lest there be any confusion @21: “Flu vaccine is an expense but how many people died from getting the flu shot? And, flu is not like the common cold…it can have devastating effects”.

Actually, the control groups were indeed proper control groups. In fact, let’s for the sake of argument assume that Adams’ lies are true and that adjuvants can cause immune system disorders making the control group more susceptible to disease. That would actually distort the data not in favor of vaccines because the same adjuvants are in the vaccine test group. In fact, the very reason placebos for vaccines often contain everything except the antigen used to provoke the immune response is to produce the best control group possible.

That’s a flawed argument: in terms of efficacy of the vaccine, having a control group consisting of adjuvants minus active ingredient is proper. But in terms of investigation of side effects, such a control group masks them, making side effects due to the adjuvants invisible when compared to placebo. The proper way to investigate both efficacy and side effects would be a three-arm study: adjuvants+active ingredient, adjuvants, and placebo (e.g. saline).

Adams’ other complaints include the usual litany, such as no comparison with completely unvaccinated controls (a complaint I’ve dealt with before); that there are no long term studies of the effects of vaccines (also not true);

But it was a meta-study about efficacy and effectiveness, so why would that matter? Or is Adams claiming that people who have never been vaccinated get the flu less often than people who’ve been vaccinated against the flu?

@Dangerous Bacon:

I’m still waiting for the “vaccines are for population control” loons to explain why greedy Big Pharma would want to kill off a substantial part of the world’s population, thus sacrificing a large number of potential customers.

From what I understand, according to this conspiracy theory Big Pharma is owned/controlled by people who either:

1) Have an ideological reason for wanting to kill of the majority of humanity (like thinking too large a population is bad for humanity, so they’ll kill of a large chunk of it for humanity’s own good)

2) Want to rule humanity, and somehow killing off a large chunk of humanity will help them with this goal.

I would’ve thought the same thing as Adams about what the 60% meant. As has been noted many times, technical words have specialized meanings. I have no problem with using such words when they fit the level of English needed for the topic. But how is the average reader supposed to know what “efficacy” is, as opposed to longer but more familiar ways of summarizing a study (assumptions, statistical mean and variance, confidence, etc.)?

Not sure what your point is here? I can’t think of a simpler and better statistic than the quoted 60% to describe how effective the vaccine is. Because, in reality, 60% of people who were given the vaccine were immune to the disease. The fact that 97% of them didn’t actually catch it doesn’t change that fact. In the last days of smallpox, almost nobody caught it, and yet everybody who had the vaccine was (almost) totally protected. Does this mean the vaccine was useless? No, only that what it was fighting against was not common anymore. 60% is the accurate figure, and efficacy is the best way to describe the performance of the vaccine. If people are too stupid to understand what this means, perhaps they shouldn’t be making their own healthcare decisions based on reading such articles.. I don’t fully understand aerodynamics, turbofan engines and avionics, which is why I don’t make decisions about flying the plane I’m on, or even offer an opinion (apart from how I’d like my martini made).

Adams, not known for his subtlety, succumbs to the Nirvana fallacy- so beloved of woos and other black-and-white thinkers: if it’s not perfect, i.e. 100% effective- it is worthless. So 60% being less than 100% = precisely 0.

This idea is often reflected in alt med’s calls for “guarantees” of total efficacy *without* side effects, in vaccines or pharmacological treatments: again, “all-or-nothing” as opposed to considered weighing of benefits to risks. Skills of this type are subsumed under formal operations, developed during adolescence along with other types of abstract thought including some of the pre-requisites for understanding research like knowledge of combinational possibilities, hypothetical thinking, holding a variable constant, etc. Not the strong suit for Mikey’s audience, I fear.

Left a comment there asking him to be more specific about the size of his wager.

So far no response.
On the other hand, there is no response either to the three people who have pointed out the obvious error where Adams says that of the total control group, “only 1.2% did not catch the flu.” Either Adams does not read his comments, or he is even less interested than Orac in pedantic corrections to his proof-reading.

“Adams, not known for his subtlety, succumbs to the Nirvana fallacy- so beloved of woos and other black-and-white thinkers: if it’s not perfect, i.e. 100% effective- it is worthless. So 60% being less than 100% = precisely 0.

This idea is often reflected in alt med’s calls for “guarantees” of total efficacy *without* side effects, in vaccines or pharmacological treatments: again, “all-or-nothing” as opposed to considered weighing of benefits to risks.”

It’s especially puzzling, given the altie refrain about how we’re all different so it’s expected that alt med cures won’t be effective in clinical trials, what works for one person won’t work for another, and you’ve got to try all the different panaceas until you find one that works for you etc.

I sense a double standard.

I’m surprised he doesn’t complain that the studies don’t include controlled exposed and non-exposed groups as well.

Without that kind of control, it’s hard to determine the absolute protection of a vaccine, because you don’t how many of the people who didn’t get sick were or weren’t actually exposed to the influenza virus in question. You also don’t know how many of those exposed may have had naturally acquired protection from previously contracting that strain or a closely related strain of influenza.

So what you would really need for Adam’s end all to be all, last word on flu vaccine effectiveness (for any particular strain) is a very large number of people who have never been vaccinated or infected with any strain of influenza sealed into sterile environments and randomly assigned to groups where some are vaccinated and some are not while all are exposed to a specific strain of influenza virus.

Also one of the keys to effectiveness of a flu vaccine is strain matching, which is why the 2009 Pandemic H1N1 flu vaccine was a bit more effective, since we had a pretty good strain identification there. Every year, the WHO makes their best prediction of which three strains will be most prevalent in each hemisphere for their recommendations of what strains to vaccinate against. So even if a particular vaccine were somehow 100% effective in protecting against 3 particular strains of flu, you’d still have the risk of catching a difference strain. There’s no guarantee the WHO will predict the right strains or that there won’t be other strains circulating as well.

I’ll get the shot–it still works–I like those odds”

What do the safety studies on 60 years of flu shots say?

Cumulative, Chris. Cumulative. I’m also curious why some of you take such great pleasure in using my real name. Of course it doesn’t matter to me, but i see no such impulse to respond to this blog’s owner is a similar fashion. Finally, Chris, I saw this on your link:

The most common side effects from a
flu shot are a sore arm and maybe a low
fever or achiness. The nasal-spray flu
vaccine might cause congestion, runny
nose, sore throat, or cough.

(basically a mild case of the flu)

Which made me think all these sheep will be at risk for these side effects when the vaccine only reduces cases minimally. The flu shot’s an even worse bargain then I ever imagined. No wonder they have to be free and come with coupon books.

What do the safety studies on 60 years of flu shots say?

That they are safe. That they prevent outbreaks. That they lower pneumonia in the elderly. That they reduce the excess number of deaths from complications. That people with chronic lung disease should get them. That kids with asthma are really encouraged to get it. That pregnant women who get it are less likely to end up in the hospital with the flu. That there is no credible association will all the evil things you accuse it of being/doing out of your weird fear of the government. And that you’re a troll.

Guys, did I miss anything?

Yeah, I’m a total HTML noob… all those strikeouts were supposed to be bolds, Bob. But you get the point.

Perhaps I’m naive, but it seems to me there’s value in emphasizing the “do it for the sake of others” angle.

I’m scientifically literate and I know about disease vector paths. Yet my attitude toward flu shots was “I don’t get sick much anyway.” Then someone pointed out the item about herd immunity. I’ve gotten the shot every year since then. There are more of us around: people who can be convinced to get the shot not to protect ourselves but to protect others. This approach also produces the contrast whereby anti-vaxers are widely recognized as selfish arseholes who deserve to be shamed until they change their behavior.

—

Back a ways to a woo list that included “nutrition.” Please. Don’t. Someone comes into your clinic and tells you they’re eating organic veggies and they feel so much better: what do you tell them? “Nutrition is quackadoodle stuff, you’re having a placebo reaction,” or “Good for you, I like organic tomatoes, and we can all do to eat more vegetables.” If what you mean by “nutrition” is the nonsense about carrot juice enemas and obsessive tweaky-tweak over food combinations, sure, I’m with you there. But let’s avoid sweeping generalizations that throw the vegetables out with the dishwater.

—

The way to deal with this Mike Adams guy is to go undercover, wear a recording device, catch him making preposterously fraudulent claims for whatever dreck he’s peddling, and then turn him in to whatever law enforcement agency for medical fraud or whatever he can be busted for. Personally I wish the 1st Amendment could be interpreted more narrowly to exclude the promotion of pernicious lies (provable lies that cause demonstrable harm). But in lieu of that, just play dumb and let these bastards try to fleece you, and then spring the trap on them. Whatever it takes to put them out of action is justifiable in my book. Hell, play the “other woman” game on them too if that’s what it takes.

—

Dumb question department: any risk for any of the usual vaccines for a 24-year-old who’s been in remission from astrocytoma for 4 years? My inclination is that they’re safe, but I want to hear it from people with more initials after their names than I have after mine.

@ g724: At your young age (very young to me!), you should have had all the recommended childhood vaccines. If you missed out on some of them, by all means be certain to get “catch up” vaccines.

There is absolutely no reason for you to not get the yearly seasonal flu vaccine and the ten year Td booster. The newer Tdap vaccine is recommended as a booster for those under age 65 who expect to have close contact with infants under the age of 12 months of age. All the information about each childhood and adult vaccines are readily available on the VIS (Vaccine Information Sheet) website;

VIS-(name of the vaccine-preventable disease)

I don’t have too many initials after my name, but I am recently retired from a County department of health-division of communicable disease control.

Best wishes to you for permanent remission of your astrocytoma.

lilady-BSc-Nursing, RN

@ O A Wehmanen: I located the entire article that your referred to, and you are correct with the incidence of morbidity and mortality in the elderly, associated with vaccinating youngsters in Japan:

The Japanese Experience With Vaccinating Schoolchildren Against Influenza

NEJM March 22, 2001

And Mr. Schecter, you are not this author. Why should we pretend you were a friend of Kurt Vonnegut?

“I’m also curious why some of you take such great pleasure in using my real name.”

I’m innocent of that charge, Offal.

@ Herr Doktor Bimler: Mikey’s offer to bet was rhetorical and his other statements are bullshit.

@g724

Here in New Zealand, previous malignancy means a person gets free vaccinations instead of being charged for them. My own teenage offspring is also in remission from astrocytoma and gets free flu vaccination every year on the first day it’s available!

I have a few initials after my name and frequently see patients in remission. My advice to them is exactly the same as I give to patients without malignancies: “Keep up to date with your vaccinations.”

I would really encourage the son of your friend to keep up to date with his vaccinations.

Shatner, what color is the sky on your planet?

Or you could just post actual evidence for your claim that “Gates vaccine campaign hasn’t simply killed people, it has just maimed the shit out of them and left them with soft-sign neurological damage.”

You made the claim, you need to prove it with real evidence. Just post the journal, title, date and author of the papers that show there has been neurological damage from the vaccine campaign. Something of this kind of quality:

Neurologic Disorders after Measles-Mumps-Rubella Vaccination.
Makela A et al.
Pediatrics 2002; 110:957-63

Association Between Thimerosal-Containing Vaccine and Autism
Hviid A, Stellfeld M, Wohlfahrt J, Melbye M
Journal of the American Medical Association, October 1, 2003, Vol. 290(13):1763-6

Thimerosal and the Occurrence of Autism: Negative Ecological Evidence from Danish Population-Based Data
Madsen KM, Lauritsen MB, Pedersen CB, et al
Pediatrics, Sept. 2003, Vol. 112(3 Pt 1):604-606

Autism and Thimerosal-Containing Vaccines. Lack of Consistent Evidence for an Association
Stehr-Green P, Tull P, Stellfeld M, Mortenson PB, Simpson D
American Journal of Preventive Medicine, August 2003, Vol. 25(2):101-6

Impact of specific medical interventions on reducing the prevalence of mental retardation.
Brosco JP, Mattingly M, Sanders LM.
Arch Pediatr Adolesc Med. 2006 Mar;160(3):302-9. Review.

Encephalopathy after whole-cell pertussis or measles vaccination: lack of evidence for a causal association in a retrospective case-control study.
Ray P, Hayward J, Michelson D, Lewis E, Schwalbe J, Black S, Shinefield H, Marcy M, Huff K, Ward J, Mullooly J, Chen R, Davis R; Vaccine Safety Datalink Group.
Pediatr Infect Dis J. 2006 Sep;25(9):768-73.

Pediatrics. 2010 Jun;125(6):1134-41. Epub 2010 May 24.
On-time vaccine receipt in the first year does not adversely affect neuropsychological outcomes.
Smith MJ, Woods CR.

59%. Because vaccination is a woo. Enough said.

“Does that actually represent a new entry in Th1Th2’s vocabulamentarium?” I dunno, maybe. We should look it up in the Thinglish dictionary.

Maybe it is the result of a Haldol injection…Thingy may have been quite “agitated” recently.

(Note to self: 99-44/100%. Because Ivory Soap is a woo. Enough said.)

Yes, Th1Th2 still thinks the Cutter incident alone is proof that all polio vaccines are equally dangerous. Just as the Trabant alone proves all cars are made of cotton.

http://www.sciencefriday.com/program/archives/201110281

And, Dr. Jay, what are your thoughts?

I listened to that episode, and I still think that getting the annual flu shot is a good idea. Do you not think that protecting older folks by increasing herd immunity by younger folks is not a good idea?

Or do you think old people should just die because they are just old? And why do you prefer folks to get influenza than the vaccine?

Do you enjoy the pain folks get from the actual disease? Because that is just a sick attitude.

No Thingy, those people in Staphorst got polio, because their parents thoght it was against Gods will, to have their children vaccinated.

@ Mr. Jenssen: I am assuming that you reside in the U.K. and I haven’t heard that the NHS has made changes to their policy regarding eligibility for flu vaccine.

The NHS has various websites. Some state that respiratory diseases “such as asthma” qualifies a person for the flu “jab”.

There is a NHS website that expands the definition of respiratory diseases to include COPD:

NHS Choices Flu vaccination-Who should have it

“People with medical conditions

The flu vaccine is offered free to anyone who is over six months of age and has one of the following medical conditions:

* chronic (long-term) respiratory disease, such as severe asthma, COPD or bronchitis
* chronic heart disease, such as heart failure
* chronic kidney disease
* chronic liver disease, such as hepatitis
* chronic neurological disease, such as a stroke, TIA or post-polio syndrome
* diabetes
* a weakened immune system due to conditions such as HIV, or treatments that suppress the immune system such as chemotherapy

If you live with someone who has a weakened immune system, you may also be able to have a flu vaccine. Speak to your GP about this.”

Beneath this article, there are 16 comments, including comments from health care workers who care for patients with these qualifying conditions, who were denied free influenza “jabs”.

If you look at my comments at # 74 above, you will understand why health care workers in the United States are urged by the CDC and their employers to get the seasonal influenza vaccine.

“And, Dr. Jay, what are your thoughts?”

I’m not sure “thoughts” is a good term for whatever was running through Jay Gordon’s head when he posted that NPR link and then dashed away.

Actual thought would have run along the lines of “Hmm, the elderly are an especially vulnerable population when it comes to seasonal influenza, yet the current vaccine is of limited efficacy when given to seniors. Maybe I should rethink my opposition to giving influenza vaccine to pregnant moms and young kids (populations where the vaccine has substantial effectiveness), in order to limit the spread of influenza and protect our vulnerable seniors from infection.”

It appears however that Jay just decided to drop another turd pearl of antivax “wisdom” and run away before having to engage in thoughtful responses.

Sad, but typical.

Here is what Dr. Shaffner (chair of Vanderbilt University Med. Center’s Dept. of Preventive Medicine) had to say about the influenza vaccine in Jay’s linked article:

“…we all promote the immunization of people age six months and older in the United States because, as he says, even in most years, there is, at least, moderate benefit in most age groups. Influenza vaccine will if not eliminating the disease completely, modify the illness so that you do prevent some cases of pneumonia, hospitalization and death.

I like to paraphrase Voltaire: While we wait perfection, that can be the greatest enemy of the current good. And we have a good vaccine; we don’t have a great vaccine. We need to use the good vaccine.”

@ Stwart Jenssen: I think I may have messed up (again) a reply to your comment. I assume that you reside in the U.K. and in previous years you were eligible for the NHS seasonal flu vaccine, based on your respiratory disease.

I’ve checked some NHS websites and located a site that states those with COPD are eligible:

Flu Vaccination-Who should have it NHS

There are some comments on that site as well from health care workers who care for “eligible” people. It seems that many of these health care workers have had their requests denied by the NHS.

If you peruse my comment at #74 above, you can get a sense of the real need for clinicians who care for vulnerable people to get the vaccine. It is the reason why the CDC, hospitals and clinics urge their employees to get the vaccine and it is provided to employees free of charge.

@ Dangerous Bacon: Yes, Dr. Gordon did stop by momentarily and then did his usual disappearing act. I’m glad that Chris and I had the opportunity to post right after his “short visit”.

I don’t think Dr. Gordon is capable of understanding the principles of herd immunity to protect vulnerable people in our society. He doesn’t even “get it” that his endless tweets directed at people who are not his patients undermine what their own physicians have recommended. His “turds” are another example of his colossal hubris.

In really simple terms, it means you’re less than half as likely to get the flu if you’re vaccinated than if you’re not.

Got my flu shot during a CBC draw before starting my latest round of chemo. No big deal. Then again, I do still have cancer… coincidence? I think not!

You can believe what you like, AJP, but I prefer facts where available. No, all of the H1N1 flu deaths were not caused by MRSA infections, but you could easily see this for yourself if you were interested in looking up the actual stats instead of inventing ones more to your liking.

The H1N1 flu deaths were mostly caused by primary viral pneumonia or acute respiratory distress syndrome. Secondary bacterial pneumonia was usually from pneumococcus (a vaccine-preventable infection BTW). MRSA was not a factor, as far as I can see.

Since your “belief” about H1N1 and MRSA is a load of BS, why should we believe anything else you say?

I find it hilarious that you simultaneously complain about “conventional healthcare professionals” having preventive measures low on their list AND complain about the single most effective preventive measure ever devised.

And we do not claim that vaccines “never” have debilitating side effects. Sometimes they do, though far more rarely than the diseases they prevent. But many of the commonly claimed side effects are simply false.

You should also check into who funds the vaccine court awards. (Hint: it’s an excise tax on vaccine doses sold; i.e. “big pharma” is paying for it, not taxpayers in general.)

It’s also funny to note that virtually every single statement you’ve made is factually false:

Weren’t all those H1N1 flu deaths really MRSA deaths from dirty hospital wards? I believe so.

You may believe it, but you have no evidence and the illnesses are not similar.

If you’re a healthy individual the flu is exeptionally minor.

Yeah, a week of unmitigated misery is such a great thing I’d love to do it every month!

Why are preventative measures against illness so low on the priorities of conventional healthcare professionals.

Yeah, no “conventional healthcare professional” has ever recommended vaccination, sensible diet, exercise, smoking cessation, etc.

Never had a vaccine in my life and my quality of health is exceptionally high. Ditto my children. Isn’t that delicious exemption clause a miraculous intervention.

The many children killed by measles and crippled by polio demonstrate how idiotic this attitude is. The only reason you can get away with not vaccinating yourself is vaccination of everybody else…

The hilarious sight of brainless zombies lining up for their aborted foetus ridden shots is a sight to behold.

No tissue from aborted fetuses is present in vaccines. By parroting this repeatedly-debunked lie you demonstrate yourself to have not the faintest clue what you’re talking about.

Imagine a world with smug people like me who never get ill. 😉

Couldn’t happen. If everybody were like you, vaccine-preventable diseases would be ubiquitous again and you’d probably be dead.

Why do vaccine producers pay out for damages caused by vaccines when according to this site vaccines never cause debilitating disease??

No such claim is made, as above.

Also why is it that the government (tax payers) are paying out damages and not big pharma? Rhetorical question of course. We all know they are exempt from all claims.

“Big Pharma” IS paying the damages, again as above.

Too easy.

thesuperbug known as methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), spiked the risk for flu-related deaths 8-fold in children who were otherwise believed to be totally healthy before they became ill.

8 fold! That’s 800% isn’t it. Mike Adams would love that stat. I’ll have to send him it.

“There’s more risk for MRSA to become invasive in the presence of flu or other viruses,” study leader Adrienne Randolph, MD, MsC, of the Division of Critical Care Medicine at Children’s Hospital Boston. Said in a statement to the media. “These deaths in co-infected children are a warning sign.” He added this is especially alarming given the rising rates of MRSA infections being carried widely among children.

“It is not common in the U.S. to lose a previously healthy child to pneumonia,” Randolph said. “Unfortunately, these children had necrotizing pneumonia eating away at their tissue and killing off whole areas of the lung. They looked like immunocompromised patients in the way MRSA went through their body. It’s not that flu alone can’t kill – it can -but in most cases children with flu alone survived.”

Damn isn’t MRSA caused by all those quacky quack quack antibiotics handed out like candy. If only Bechamp had beaten old Louis ‘bacterium’ Pastuer to death with a mallet we may have a health service worth the name. It’s the soil old boy, the soil 😉

Imagine a world with smug people like me who never get ill. 😉

If they were all like you, then I would look forward to the sweet release of death.

I too call shennanigans on the KC thing, as I see no citations in journals and the only Google links mentioning the incident all lead to whale.to. The NY Times online archive shows nothing for that year (though it does show a reported outbreak and resulting quarantine of the city in Feb 25, 1889) and none of the Kansas City newspapers with online archives mention a thing about it.

So [citation needed], and yet another link to whale.to (or a blog repeating same) doesn’t count.

— Steve

Incoherent troll is getting more incoherent.

He actually managed to say something reasonable this time around – that overuse of antibiotics contributes to problems like MRSA. Still not the faintest shred of a hint of evidence that H1N1 deaths were actually MRSA deaths, though. Just random unattributed statements.

Morphtroll has it wrong about MRSA and the flu. Big surprise. The necrotizing MRSA is not the variety seen in hospital-acquired infections. It is a staph that is acquired in the community, and acts very much like the usual MSSA. Pneumonia from MSSA is also necrotizing, and a very serious illness. “Community-acquired” MRSA is sensitive to antibiotics other than methacillin.
The article morphtroll quotes from actually supports the case for H1N1 vaccination in childhood. Prevent influenza with the vaccine, prevent MRSA pneumonia.

“He actually managed to say something reasonable this time around – that overuse of antibiotics contributes to problems like MRSA. Still not the faintest shred of a hint of evidence that H1N1 deaths were actually MRSA deaths, though. Just random unattributed statements.”

No he didn’t say anything reasonable “this time”…troll’s exact words in his posting about MRSA and H1N1 are “lifted” directly off Alex Jones Infowars website.

For goodness sake AJP do a bit of fact-checking before you regurgitate this stuff – just how gullible are you? They are lying to you. There is masses of this rubbish all over the place, and too many people just swallow it whole like you have. By the way, some comments get sent to moderation automatically for reasons none of us can fathom – this one will because it has two links in it. It’s not censorship.

On the Kansas City smallpox thing, there was an outbreak of smallpox in Kansas City in 1921, which was exaggerated in the press costing retailers there millions of dollars. There were 60 deaths and 290 cases reported in total. The only references to the ‘Advertiser’s Protective Bureau’ I can find are from crank sites that all repeat the same story, with none giving a source for it.

I did find a short article about smallpox written in 1921, which seems to confirm that there were just as many complacent and idiotic people around then as there are now. I found this interesting:

We should teach:
1st. That vaccination with re-vaccination until the susceptibility to vaccine is exhausted gives absolute immunity from smallpox.
2nd. That practically every person is susceptible to vaccinia and vaccination should be repeated until it “takes.”
3rd. That vaccinia is a systemic disease and that one point of inoculation is as good as more unless there is a period of time between the inoculations.
4th. That no large scratches or scarifications should be made for introducing vaccine. An abrasion one-sixteenth of an inch square is large enough or a scratch one-sixteenth of an inch is long enough. Avoid drawing blood.
5. Treat a vaccination with the same care that is demanded in all surgical procedures.
If these rules or other equally good rules are followed the occasional blood poisoning and painful sore arm would be avoided and anti-vaccinationists would be robbed of the only real argument they have against vaccination.
The neglect of vaccination alone is responsible for the presence of smallpox.

I think the tale of the wicked doctors inventing a smallpox epidemic just to line their pockets is a myth, whether it was invented in 1921 or more recently I don’t know. It wouldn’t have been the first time that an epidemic was predicted for good reasons, and then when it arrived some people blamed vaccination for it, whereas in truth if more people had been vaccinated the epidemic would not have happened and if less vaccination had been carried out the epidemic would have been much worse.

@ Ken: Dr. Shaw is not a vaccine researcher and he has some odd theories about aluminum used as adjuvants in vaccines…including his “theory” about aluminum-adjuvants-causing Gulf War Syndrome:

The H1N1 adjuvanted with aluminum vaccine was in short supply during November, 2009 when Dr. Shaw was “quoted” for that link you supplied.

The BMJ published a study about the effectiveness of H1N1 vaccine in “vulnerable” populations (infants, children and adults ages 50 years and less) who were immunized with the available vaccine through November, 2009. The conclusions of the study:

“Conclusions

We report estimates of vaccine effectiveness suggesting very high protection conferred by a single dose of the monovalent AS03 adjuvanted pandemic vaccine most used in Canada during autumn 2009, with reference in particular to children and young adults. Although limited by a small number of vaccine failures, we interpret these findings to be consistent with indicators of immunogenicity showing very high vaccine induced antibody response and with virological characterisation suggesting an excellent match of vaccine to circulating virus. Our findings are relevant to the evaluation of pandemic vaccination efforts not only in Canada but also in other countries where adjuvanted vaccines were used. Our results may help to inform the further development of influenza vaccine options.”

(Source-BMJ Published 3, February, 20ll) Effectiveness of AS03 adjuvanted pandemic H1N1 vaccine: case control based on sentinel surveillance system in Canada, Autumn, 2009

I wonder why Dr. Shaw has not “updated” his opinion about aluminum adjuvanted H1N1 vaccine efficacy and safety, now that 2 years have elapsed?