I have to hand it to antivaxxers. If there’s one thing about them, they’re consistent. Whenever there’s an outbreak of infectious disease, they make and spread conspiracy theories designed to support their antivaccine views. Yes, it might be happening now with the new coronavirus outbreak in China, but it happened during the horrific measles outbreak in Samoa last year that killed dozens of children, mostly unvaccinated, and sickened thousands. (Antivaccine leader Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. even wrote a letter to the Prime Minister of Samoa warning him that it was shedding from the MMR vaccine that had caused the outbreak. Interesting how antivaxxers never mention that the outbreak started when MMR vaccine uptake was very low and didn’t break until the government had achieved >90% vaccine uptake.) Similarly, there were a great many conspiracy theories about the Disneyland measles outbreak in early 2015, in particular that the government was hiding its “true cause” (MMR viral shedding, of course) and had instigated it as a tool to usher in “forced vaccination.” Earlier, there were more conspiracy theories during the H1N1 influenza pandemic 10 years ago than I can even remember. I’m sure there were conspiracy theories during the SARS outbreak 17 years ago, but I wasn’t paying as close attention then as I do now to these issues.
The outbreak doesn’t even have to be of a vaccine-preventable disease to produce antivaccine conspiracy theories. For example, the ongoing coronavirus outbreak in China has spawned the latest batch of conspiracy theories. (Note added March 23: the virus is now called SARS-CoV-2, for SARS coronavirus-2, and the disease caused by it is called COVID-19, for coronavirus disease 2019.) The one I’m most amused by (sort of) is an attempt by the merry band of antivaccine propagandists over at that wretched hive of scum and antivax villainy, Age of Autism to blame the coronavirus outbreak on the flu vaccine. You heard that right. Because of course antivaxxers would find a way to blame an outbreak of a disease that is not vaccine-preventable (yet) on the influenza vaccine.
First, here’s some background about coronaviruses and the outbreak. The strain of coronavirus causing the Wuhan outbreak has been dubbed 2019-nCoV (novel coronavirus first identified in December 2019). As of yesterday when I wrote this, there had been reported 6,165 confirmed cases of 2019-nCoV infection, of which 6,067 were within mainland China, with 133 deaths. 2019-nCoV is related to the SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) and MERS (Middle East Respiratory Syndrome) strains of coronavirus that can also cause severe disease. By way of background, the major SARS outbreak began in China in 2002 and resulted in thousands of cases of disease and 774 confirmed deaths. The MERS outbreak began in 2012 on the Arabian Peninsula and resulted in a 30-40% case fatality rate, which is staggeringly deadly, given modern supportive medical care. Other strains of coronavirus are less deadly, with a total of seven strains of coronavirus known to infect humans. The four strains other than the deadly MERS, SARS, and the Wuhan strain (now dubbed 2019-nCoV, for novel coronavirus 2019), basically cause generally mild upper respiratory tract infections. Coronaviruses can also cause a number of diseases in farm animals and domesticated pets, some of which can be serious, and it is suspected that 2019-nCoV might have originated in animals and “jumped species” to humans, mainly because the first infected individuals identified were workers at the Huanan Seafood Market.
Of course, this is not the first conspiracy theory that’s popped up in the wake of the Wuhan coronavirus outbreak (named after Wuhan, China, where the outbreak was first detected). China is having a hard time quashing rumors and conspiracy theories about the outbreak, such as that it’s biological warfare, that vinegar root can prevent infection, and more. Likely you’ve heard the conspiracy theory that Bill Gates created this strain of coronavirus. This conspiracy theory appears to have originated with a QAnon YouTuber named Jordan Sather:
The crux of Sather’s conspiracy hinges on a 2015 patent filed by the Pirbright Institute in Surrey, England, which covers the development of a weakened form of a coronavirus that could potentially be used as a vaccine to prevent respiratory diseases in birds and other animals. This is a standard way that vaccines are made, for everything from the flu vaccine to the polio vaccine.
“The assignee of this patent was the government-funded Pirbright Institute out of the UK,” Sather tweeted. “Was the release of this disease planned? Is the media being used to incite fear around it? Is the Cabal desperate for money, so they’re tapping their Big Pharma reserves?”
One of the many, many issues with Sather’s theory is that the Pirbright does not currently work with any strains of the coronavirus that affect humans — its patent covers the avian coronavirus, which only affects birds. (Scientists have suggested that snakes or mammals could be the source of the outbreak — not birds.)
Also, QAnon believers are advocating using Miracle Mineral Solution (a.k.a. MMS a.k.a. bleach) to prevent and treat coronavirus infection, because of course they are.
Meanwhile, the usual suspects (e.g., Mike Adams and others) are predicting the end of humanity, as Steve Novella notes. Other conspiracy theories include the claim that the coronavirus was released by shadowy forces in order to impose 5G on an unsuspecting populace. (Don’t ask me how.) Others claim that it’s a pretext for the “New World Order” to impose martial law and start filling the camps. You get the idea. Still others claim that it’s a manufactured bioweapon stolen by Chinese spies from Canada.
Let’s look at what the propagandists at AoA are claiming in an uncredited post. (I’d leave my name off dreck like this too, not that I’d ever write it in the first place.) As is frequently the case, antivaxxers have latched on to a real phenomenon that gives their claim a tiny grain of plausibility and then run with it. This idea appears to be inspired by a recent series of articles pointing out that, right now, influenza is a far greater threat to the US than 2019-nCoV, noting:
Although the CDC considers this coronavirus (whose scientific name is 2019-nCoV) to be a serious public-health concern, the agency said in a statement Friday that “the immediate health risk from 2019-nCoV to the general American public is considered low at this time.”
A graver health risk for Americans — not just right now, but every year — is the flu.
Since October, up to 20,000 people in the US have died of influenza. The coronavirus, meanwhile, has infected more than 4,600 people worldwide and killed 107.
“When we think about the relative danger of this new coronavirus and influenza, there’s just no comparison,” William Schaffner, a vaccine expert at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, told Kaiser Health News (KHN). “Coronavirus will be a blip on the horizon in comparison. The risk is trivial.”
There is merit to this argument. Even though the case fatality rate of influenza is much lower than that of the strain of coronavirus causing the current outbreak, millions of people in the US alone have already caught the flu, and the worst could be still to come for this season. Also, since there is as yet no vaccine for coronavirus but there is for influenza, there is more that can be done to prevent the flu than just washing one’s hands a lot and trying to stay away from people with signs of respiratory infection.
But where does the flu vaccine come in? It starts with this observation by the anonymous AoA scribe:
Honestly, just reading up on both influenza and coronavirus brings up some interesting reading. For starters, it appears in China, that this year, there were twice as many flu shots being given:China Daily | Updated: 2019-10-31
The supply of flu vaccines in China this year will be twice as large as last year to ensure demand is met, the top health authority said on Wednesday, adding it is well prepared for the arrival of flu season.More flu vaccines this year could be a clue?
Reading the rest of the article, I highly doubt it:
He Qinghua, deputy director of National Health Commission’s Disease Prevention and Control Bureau, said at a news conference that about 28 million doses of flu vaccines will enter the domestic market this winter and next spring, which is peak flu season in most parts of China－more than double the number available during the last flu season.
And:
As of Wednesday, about 860,000 doses of flu vaccine had been used, and it is expected 1.5 million doses will be given to residents in Beijing by the end of November, he said. “We will do our best in flu prevention and control between mid-December and early February, the peak season of the flu in Beijing,” he said.
This is China! Its population is 1.4 billion! The population of Beijing alone is over 21 million! If anything the supply of flu vaccine seems grossly inadequate for the need. Antivaxxers are nothing if not fantastic at confusing correlation with causation.
But how? you ask. How could increased uptake of the flu vaccine cause a coronavirus outbreak? Well, let’s follow antivaxxer “logic,” such as it is:
There does seems to be connections to flu shots and acute respiratory infections, like coronavirus:We investigated the incidence of acute upper respiratory tract infections (URTIs) associated with virologically confirmed respiratory virus infections in a randomized controlled trial of influenza vaccination.,,,TIV ( trivalent inactivated influenza vaccine ) recipients had higher risk of confirmed noninfluenza respiratory virus infection (RR, 3.46; 95% CI, 1.19–10.1)….c Including positive detections of coronavirus, human metapneumovirus, parainfluenza, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV)…we were able to observe a statistically significant increased risk of confirmed noninfluenza respiratory virus infection among TIV recipients..
May I say that this particular antivaxxer is very annoying in stringing together passages from the study in such a haphazard way, unable even to use ellipses properly? I thought of cleaning up the text for your benefit, but decided just to do a straight cut and paste, so that you could see the text in all its glory. (Also, I’m too lazy.)
In this study, investigators examined the risk of influenza and other acute respiratory illnesses in a randomized controlled trial of trivalent inactivated influenza vaccine (TIV) versus placebo and reported that TIV recipients had an increased risk of confirmed non-influenza viral upper respiratory infections. The relative risk was 4.40, but the 95% confidence interval was huge (1.3-14.8), which doesn’t give me a heck of a lot of confidence in the result of this study. At least whoever it is didn’t cherry pick this particular table from this paper, as another one did:
Yes, coronavirus strains were basically in a “wastebasket” category of assorted other upper respiratory viruses. I note that the difference was not statistically significant between placebo and TIV.
However, antivaxxers are nothing if not expert cherry pickers; so:
That was 2012. Six years later, this study came out:Assessment of temporally-related acute respiratory illness following influenza vaccination
Conclusion Among children, there was an increase in the hazard of ARI (acute respiratory infection) caused by non-influenza respiratory pathogens post-influenza vaccination compared to unvaccinated children during the same period. Potential mechanisms for this association warrant further investigation. Future research could investigate whether medical decision-making surrounding influenza vaccination may be improved by acknowledging patient experiences, counseling regarding different types of ARI, and correcting the misperception that all ARI occurring after vaccination are caused by influenza.The conclusion, after saying that indeed those who are vaccinated DO get more acute pathogen-creating illness, like CORONAVIRUS, that should make us all wonder if there are any connections here. The acknowledging that patients DO get ill after flu shots from these other viruses (VIRAL INTERFERENCE) is priceless yet disturbing. Basically patients have been made to feel like they were wrong for decades. I am sure deaths too, have been involved but to correctly blame it on the vaccine has been taboo. Mutating bacteria and viruses are possible for sure and vaccines can also be responsible for that
Um, no. Not exactly. Is viral interference a thing? The very study cited by this antivaxxer notes that the evidence is conflicting, with two large vaccine safety studies having failed to find an increased risk of non-influenza viral ARI after flu vaccination. The idea is that various viruses “interfere” with each other’s ability to cause infection, possibly through nonspecific immunity to one virus inhibiting other viruses, possibly by other mechanisms, meaning that if you eliminate one viral source of infection of ARI (e.g., the flu) then other viruses will fill in the gap to cause more infections.
I note that this was a cohort subanalysis of the community-based study, Mobile Surveillance of Acute Respiratory Infections and Influenza-Like Illness in the Community (MoSAIC), which follows 250 households a year for ARI (acute respiratory infection) surveillance. Cases of ARI were ascertained by twice-weekly text messages to household to identify members with ARI symptoms. Nasal swabs were obtained from ill participants and analyzed for respiratory pathogens using multiplex PCR. The primary outcome measure was the hazard ratio of laboratory-confirmed ARI in individuals post-vaccination compared to other time periods during three influenza seasons. And, yes, the investigators found an increased risk of ARI in those who had had the flu vaccine, with:
The hazard of non-influenza respiratory pathogens was higher during the same period (HR 1.65, 95% CI [1.14, 2.38]); when stratified by age the hazard remained higher for children (HR 1·71, 95% CI [1.16, 2.53]) but not for adults (HR 0.88, 95% CI [0.21, 3.69]).
First, one notes that that’s a much smaller hazard ratio than the first cited study, also with a fairly wide 95% confidence interval. Again, it might indicate something going on, but it’s hardly slam-dunk evidence. Again, the numbers are small, and it’s not clear that all confounding factors have been accounted for.
Not surprisingly, our AoA “scientist” gives it one more try:
We can end here, with a recent study, freshly out and pertinent:
Vaccine. 2020 Jan 10;38(2):350-354. doi: 10.1016/j.vaccine.2019.10.005. Epub 2019 Oct 10. Influenza vaccination and respiratory virus interference among Department of Defense personnel during the 2017-2018 influenza season.
Receiving influenza vaccination may increase the risk of other respiratory viruses, a phenomenon known as virus interference. … Vaccine derived virus interference was significantly associated with coronavirus and human metapneumovirus…..
We will read that this Coronavirus is from “bats, pigs and small mammals”, Biowarfare labs , yet you can bet vaccines will be dismissed in a heartbeat.
That’s some fine cherry picking and quote mining there, pardner! I’ll show you what i mean. Let’s look at a more full reading of the abstract:
We compared vaccination status of 2880 people with non-influenza respiratory viruses to 3240 people with pan-negative results. Comparing accinated to non-vaccinated patients, the adjusted odds ratio for non-flu viruses was 0.97 (95% confidence interval (CI): 0.86, 1.09; p = 0.60). Additionally, the vaccination status of 3349 cases of influenza were compared to three different control groups: all controls (N = 6120), non-influenza positive controls (N = 2880), and pan-negative controls (N = 3240). The adjusted ORs for the comparisons among the three control groups did not vary much (range: 0.46–0.51).
And:
Receipt of influenza vaccination was not associated with virus interference among our population. Examining virus interference by specific respiratory viruses showed mixed results. Vaccine derived virus interference was significantly associated with coronavirus and human metapneumovirus; however, significant protection with vaccination was associated not only with most influenza viruses, but also parainfluenza, RSV, and non-influenza virus coinfections.
Let me repeat that: Receipt of influenza vaccination was not associated with virus interference among our population. In other words, this is a negative study. The authors did not observe virus interference.
Then, in the conclusion:
The overall results of the study showed little to no evidence supporting the association of virus interference and influenza vaccination. Individual respiratory virus results were mixed, and some rebutted virus interference.
I also note that the odds ratio of having coronavirus in those vaccinated against the flu compared to those who were not was only 1.36 (95% confidence interval 1.14-1.63). That’s not very impressive at all.
Here’s what we’re probably seeing: Noise. With the odds ratio of influenza virus significantly decreased (the odds ratios range from 0.39 to 0.88, depending on the specific influenza strain), the rest of the various viruses detected fluctuated around an odds ratio of 1.0 (no difference). Indeed, most of the non-influenza viruses tested for (6/8) demonstrated odds ratios lower than 1.0 (range: 0.67-1.51). Only coronavirus and human metapneumovirus showed odds ratios of more than 1.0 (1.36 and 1.51, respectively), with the rest all lower than 1.0. Moreover, the odds ratio of having no pathogen detected in the group receiving the flu vaccine was 1.59 (95% CI 1.44-1.75), meaning that those who had the flu vaccine were 59% more likely not to have any respiratory virus detectable at all.
I love it when an antivaxxer cites a negative study to support a claim. It smells like…cluelessness.
I also love the inconsistency of this new trope. After all, what is it that antivaxxers keep claiming year after year? It’s that the flu vaccine doesn’t work. Yet removal of virus interference by the flu vaccine couldn’t cause increased susceptibility to other respiratory viruses unless the flu vaccine were effective and reduced the chance of infection with the influenza virus. (I know, I know. Consistency was never a thing among antivaxxers.)
But don’t take my word for it. Dr. Vincent Iannelli has also pointed out that most virus interference studies don’t support the conclusion that the influenza vaccine makes you more susceptible to other respiratory viruses, as has the CDC:
There was one study (published in 2012) that suggested that influenza vaccination might make people more susceptible to other respiratory infections. After that study was published, many experts looked into this issue further and conducted additional studies to see if the findings could be replicated. No other studies have found this effect. For example, this article [99 KB, 5 pages] in Clinical Infectious Diseases (published in 2013). It’s not clear why this finding was detected in the one study, but the preponderance of evidence suggests that this is not a common or regular occurrence and that influenza vaccination does not, in fact, make people more susceptible to other respiratory infections.
In the end, what we have here is a classic case of antivaccine “logic” applied to science. Take an observation that fits in with your preconceived beliefs (e.g., that China, which is the source of a large new coronavirus outbreak, ordered twice as many doses of flu vaccine for this season compared to last season). Look for a plausible-sounding phenomenon (virus interference) to link the observation (more flu vaccination in China) with the emergence of something awful (2019-nCoV), no matter how tenuous the link or how questionable the evidence is for the phenomenon. Then run with the conspiracy theory. Never mind how weak the links are in your chain of “logic.”
The problem is that this particular conspiracy theory will sound plausible to those without a lot of background in infectious disease, and it will take a lot of explaining to shoot it down, if we can even ever shoot it down. After all, if there’s one thing about antivaccine tropes, it’s that they never die. Ever. They always rise again.
164 replies on “Blaming the flu vaccine for the COVID-19 outbreak: The latest antivaccine misinformation”
The problem is that this particular conspiracy theory will sound plausible to those without a lot of background in infectious disease, and it will take a lot of explaining to shoot it down, if we can even ever shoot it down. – Hmm, just playing around with ideas here but when I go to buy something from Amazon I check the star rating and reviews for the product, or better with eBay the rating of the seller, so perhaps it could be with idea sellers. Idea sellers could be given a star rating based on their credibility. It could even be set to ensure that someone’s rating is only incremented or decremented in proportion to the credibility rating of the person awarding it. Nah; on second thoughts the Turkeys would still fight to push the button marked ‘Vote for Christmas’ if you put a grain of corn on it.
I’d be worried that they would mobilize to rig it too, as your last point said.
Orac is hilariously insecure and fervently dedicated to criticizing any great question, or compilation of factual data that could lead closer to the truth – a truth that he does not want discovered. You see, Orac is almost effortless at being defensive (I’m guessing there was serious Daddy and Mommy issues) while putting in very little work (he even says himself that he is “too lazy”). His insults, sarcasm and deception mixed with limited data are super effective at convincing similarly minded outcasts who want to be accepted, to reject real valuable information that prevents death… and excessive profits for Orac and his evil crew. Sorry Orac
You’re commenting on a lengthy and referenced post that addressed the data in detail, and you have pointed to no actual error or issues in the post.
I think that makes your comment ironic.
I’d say the odds of the system being gamed are 1 – epsilon. We know that rating systems routinely are gamed; witness such historical practices as “freeping” polls (named after the right-wing political site Free Republic, which was notorious for that sort of thing) and Google bombing (among the most famous examples of which was the successful conspiracy of some political bloggers to make then-President George W. Bush’s official White House biography the top hit on a search for the words “miserable failure”; Google have since modified their ranking algorithm to prevent that particular exploit, but similar exploits still exist). It’s not limited to anything political in nature, either: anything where a controversy can be manufactured, as is true of vaccines, will run a risk of this.
I guess my 44 day illness when I was exposed to someone who was sick from a flu shot is a conspiracy theory. You pompous pretentious know it all idiots deserve everything you get in your little stack and pack.
lmao totally agreed “gotohell” truth be told…I DO have all three of my kiddos up to date on vaccines, although each time I take my little guy (12 months old) for his shots he spends the following 2/3 days with a fever and immensely emotional/inconsolable. Great grandma, mom, dad have flu shots annually..2018 all three were in the ER within 10 days with the flu; 2019 all three were in the ER with the flu..my dad went to ICU then died March 04, 2019..which was super awesome.. no sarcasm whhhhhhatsoever. For the author of this piece to automatically assume there’s a defined dichotomy between those that vaxx and those that don’t shows a level of pure novice ignorance and clearly is completely out of touch with those that are looking at all sides with this thing called “critical thinking.” In psychology we look at an individual with this behavior as likely quite immature with inability to see a gray area…only seeing black or white/yes or no/is or is not. I appreciate this author wrote a lengthy, winded piece in which I was genuinely looking forward to reading in hopes of gaining another perspective only to be disappointed by the childish name calling and belittling. As one human to another, maybe put your big boy/girl/human pants on if you’d appreciate a larger audience to take you seriously or go write for Allure magazine.
Nope. Just the human fallacy of confusing correlation with causation. The flu shot uses dead virus. It is impossible for it to infect someone. Here, what is most likely is that the person got a flu shot but was already infected, and then infected you. The vaccine did not cause your illness.
@Alphonse, a wall of text and a bunch of assumptions do not make for a good argument.
44 day illness. Unlikely to have been influenza.
If they had the flu shot, that contains an inactivated, i.e. killed virus.
So I guess you were right, your arguments against vaccine are just conspiracy theories.
Thanks for collecting and writing all the details and links in a single post. It was educational.
Virus interference – now that’s a topic/hypothesis/line of research I didn’t know much about. I’m looking forward learning more about it, proven or disproven.
(and suffering from a persistent cold right now, I’m sort of feeling concerned about anything coronavirus/rhinovirus)
Re: CT about (virus outbreak) is caused by (biology lab/vaccine factory)
That’s not surprising, there are always some CT like this floating around. I remember an outbreak of flu in Europe and especially the UK back in the 80’s, pre-internet time, where this CT was also quite present. So I bet there were CT about SARS, too.
But yeah, usually the CT is about the same virus in the lab and in the outbreak. That a different virus is guilty – now that’s something new.
I actually chuckled when reading the screed from the AoA guy (bolding mine):
The CT about the virus coming out of a biowarfare lab is part of the conspiracy to cover vaccines! Now that’s a meta-conspiracy.
No matter that, it’s always the vaccines.
Of course they are. Crank magnetism at its finest.
Wow. Just had a look at QAnon’s 8chan board. Impressive nonsense.
A year back, PZ Myers (from the scientific/social blog Pharyngula) re-pasted a chart listing all their connected conspiracies, from Illuminati to aliens to, well, whatever you want. It was indeed an impressive condensé of nonsense, as you say.
Ah, here it is.
And industrial bleach is very cheap. Profit margin is very high.
As I read this I thought it was going to finish with …they’re compulsive liars. That may be due to my having spent a few hours pointing out the errors of Judith Harvey over at your other place. It would have done perfectly well here as well, I should add.
Anti-vaxxers have turned cherry-picking into an art form. More than once I have pointed out to them that their claims about a paper showing harms from vaccines do no such thing. This AoA piece is craftier than many, but as you point out a quick perusal of the actual papers, finds gaping holes.
I have given up on expecting internal consistency among anti-vaccine arguments. So yes if the flu vaccine is not effective as the anti-vaxxers claim, how could it lead to increased risk of coronavirus through removal of viral interference?
This AoA piece is craftier than many, but as you point out a quick perusal of the actual papers, finds gaping holes.
One of the things I have learned from reading secondary sources on historical cooking is that you should never trust a secondary source that does not include the primary, since you have no way of knowing what liberties the author may have taken in his “interpretation” of the recipe. David Friedman http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Medieval/To_Milk_an_Almond.pdf
It was totally off-topic, John, but thanks so much for sharing David Friedman’s book of recipes. What a treasure. Everybody go read.
It gets even funnier when antivaxxers do cite legitimate primary sources, where a five-second scan confirms the original says the absolute opposite to their own interpretation.
Of course, this slows them down not one jot.
It really is a pathological mindset. Time Cube by way of Eye of Argon indeed.
But you see, it’s the virus from the vaccine which is causing viral interference.
(adds the numbers, carries the one…)
No, wait, that’s not right either. Whether it’s the wild flu virus or the one injected with the vaccine, it’s the same.
(and with the IM vaccine, it’s a dead virus anyway. Zombie virus interference? It’s the Andromeda strain?)
Serious answer: they don’t understand the concept.
Antivaxers read interference, they fuzzily and willfully understand that the vaccine is disrupting something, and run away with it.
Or, more simply, they are schizophrenic and happily live with two realities in their head at the same time. Whenever convenient, the vaccines are ineffective, or they are effective but only to cause more issues.
As a slightly OT aside, virus interference is something that is not happening with the hepatitis viruses, AFAIK. Co-infections by multiples types of HepV and also with HIV are quite notorious, so I would think that the HepV are very happy to share.
Thus I would conclude that virus interference may exist, but it is not universal.
It’s the aluminium adjuvant.
“8chan, because 4chan just wasn’t racist enough…..”
“In this study, investigators examined the risk of influenza and other acute respiratory illnesses in a randomized controlled trial of trivalent inactivated influenza vaccine (TIV) versus placebo and reported that TIV recipients had an increased risk of confirmed non-influenza viral upper respiratory infections. The relative risk was 4.40, but the 95% confidence interval was huge (1.3-14.8), which doesn’t give me a heck of a lot of confidence in the result of this study. ”
Has this study looked at confounding? Because at first glance, people at an increased risk to catch the flu should also have a higher risk for catching other infections spreading via the same mechanism and are more likely to get vaccinated.
I was wondering about that.
Although it was a controlled trial, people (115 children, to be precise) were recruited and assigned into one group or another, so the “more likely to get vaccinated” factor shouldn’t be at play.
Theoretically, people receiving the placebo were encountering the same risks as the people receiving the vaccine. If the randomization has been done correctly between the two groups, there should be no notable difference.
I have however no idea how far they went in the making the two groups. They did seem to account during the stat analysis for household size and other stuff like that.
But I’m wondering if they tried to assess the actual individual risk of exposure to airborne viruses (I don’t know, like the time spent by the patients in crowded area like public transportation). It could be there was some unwanted sample bias, purely by fluke. Or not.
I’m bit chagrined by the summary and title, tough. In both of them, the authors put forward the only statistically-relevant result, more non-flu virus infections into the vaccinated, but you have to carefully read the article to also note that there were no difference in term of the more serious illnesses, the cases they named “acute respiratory illness” and “febrile acute respiratory illness”. Just one more sentence about it would have made the abstract reflecting more accurately their findings.
From the 2020 paper in Vaccine: “Receipt of influenza vaccination was not associated with virus interference among our population. Examining virus interference by specific respiratory viruses showed mixed results. Vaccine derived virus interference was significantly associated with coronavirus and human metapneumovirus; however, significant protection with vaccination was associated not only with most influenza viruses, but also parainfluenza, RSV, and non-influenza virus coinfections.”
So if I’m understanding this correctly, the basis for saying that no viral interference was found in the study is that only weak correlations were found with coronavirus and human metapneumovirus, but negative correlations (protection) were found in relation to other viruses – so overall there was no interference.
Of course there are other gaping holes in the flu-vaccine-caused-the-coronavirus-outbreak theory, including a lack of resurgence of other coronaviruses, lack of evidence that the boost in Chinese orders for flu vaccine actually has translated into more doses given, lack of explanation for why the outbreak hit in Wuhan and not all over China etc. etc.
I like the Bill Gates theory better. Gates is behind virtually all of the nefariousness in the world. Excuse me, I have to go buy a ton of survival supplies at the NN store.
Agreed. In this specific use, there also seems to be an assumption that all coronavirus are the same. Almost by definition, the coronavirus in the U.S. study is not the new coronavirus in China. And yet, they jump from “there was a weak correlation with these known and mild coronavirus,” to “vaccines caused this new and more dangerous coronavirus” which wouldn’t be supported even if the studies did show what AoA wanted them too.
I thought it was Soros and Teh Joos in general.
Ever seen Soros and Gates together?
Peter Hotez guest article on the significance of the novel coronavirus outbreak:
https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/a-tale-of-3-nations-peter-hotez
This is nature people; viruses mutate, jump species and mutate some more. I don’t know why the majority of the population (or so it seems) think that pathogens are stable and anything new must be some vast conspiracy. I don’t understand why going full-tilt conspiracy theory is somehow less scary than nature is a bitch.
Control. If it’s “someone” doing it, you can, in theory, find that person and stop them. Same reason they want it to be vaccines and not just luck of the draw if their child isn’t what they hoped.
The postulation of an evil conspiracy is comforting in a way to these people, because it gives them the illusion that the bad things that happen to them are really the result of some evil agency pulling the strings, rather than being the mere agency of blind, thoughtless nature running its course, or (in certain cases, not this one in particular though) even their own bad decisions. It gives them somewhere to lay the blame, because one cannot lay blame on a force of nature, and laying blame on oneself in the cases when that’s the truth is harder still for them to swallow. If someone is, say, using “HAARP” to create hurricanes and other extreme weather events, then it’s comforting to think that in theory, someone can blow up the facility and stop the malign conspiracy from doing its evil work. Not so if they’re forced to face the awful truth that hurricanes are just nature doing its thing, even more so if it’s their own actions contributing to global warming that are helping make the hurricanes stronger and more frequent. People used to imagine gods and devils doing this, but those have been replaced by the “New World Order”.
“The postulation of an evil conspiracy is comforting in a way to these people”
Quoting myself:
The True Woo is a paranoid narcissist, ignorant and impotent, raging against a world they do not understand and cannot control.
As Bacon observed, Knowledge Itself is Power. He never said it had to be right.
“This is nature people”
And that makes the Purity Cult’s blind worship of everything “Natural” all the more funny. “Red in tooth and claw” is the sanitized version.
Were they ever to meet Nature for real, they would crawl up their own colons to hide.
As another aside:
(but then, antivaxers’ articles of faith are always target-rich environments for debunkers)
If you mean bugs mutating into more agressive forms, not really, no.
Procedures like antibiotics, antivirals, quarantines, etc. which shorten the time a bug can replicate in its current host and spread to other hosts will indeed tend to favor the emergence of more agressive and/or more contagious bugs.
Or simply favor the emergence of bugs resistant to antibiotics, antivirals, etc.
Procedures aiming at prevention, like vaccines, tend to favor the opposite. Vaccines are designed to fight the strains found the most aggressive or prevalent (see the HPV vaccine, the Flu vaccine… Heck, almost all of them). Less aggressive bugs are left to their own device, and without the competition of more agressive bugs, they don’t really have the need to change their strategy. To some extend, preventative measures actually encourage these bugs to stay low-key, under the radar. If we don’t know we have them, then we are more likely to drop these preventative measures.
There are some bugs – precisely, like the flu virus – which are good at evading the immune system, either by mutating or by having a large heterogeneous population.
But their capacity for change is independent from the existence of a vaccine. There is no working vaccine (yet) for HIV or malaria. The pressure from our immune system is all these bugs need as incitation to evolve.
In addition, emergence of vaccine resistant strains would mean that vaccines are efficient against current strains. Otherwise, there would be no selective pressure,
It seems that antivaccinationists often cherry pick sentences out of articles, even articles that contradict the one or two sentences they choose, e.g., intro paragraph discusses previous research and study shows it was wrong. What does that say about antivaccinationists? Either they are dishonest because they believe so much that they are right that they need to add more ammunition. Reminds me of cases where police and/or DA have good evidence against someone; but, just to be sure have added unnecessary falsified evidence or suborned perjury from a witness. However, one looks at it, it means that consciously or subconsciously antivaccinationists aren’t as certain as they tell themselves and others. Or, they are so psychologically disturbed that they literally only see on the page what they want to see.
As prime example is over and over citing one sentence from Paul Offit’s article in Pediatrics where he ends with that our immune systems could cope with “theoretically 10,000 vaccines at once.” The article explains just how robust our immune systems are, namely, 100 – 200 million or more B-cells, each designed to fit a small antigenic determinant, cruising around, more variation that microbes around. So, 10,000 compared to 100 – 200 million no challenge. Explain this to them. Explain that we currently only give 17 shots to kids. Explain that total vaccines available for different microbes around 300, and most would not be given in U.S., e.g. Japanese encephalitis, cholera, etc. Explain even if combined five in one shot would be impossible to give 2,000 shots to infant at once, besides finding somewhere to insert, infant would have oozing from all over fluid, etc. And the pain would be exquisite. Nothing sinks into them. They just keep citing “theoretically 10,000.”
So, when you point out their selective quoting, excellent job; but nothing new. And they will, of course, ignore what you wrote. They reject science in the same way that the Catholic Church rejected Galileo. The Church knew he was right at the time; but couldn’t accept it as it went against the then current doctrine and, of course, they were on the defensive with the Protestant Reformation, so they doubled down. At least, only a meager 400 years later they withdrew their condemnation of Galileo. I hope it won’t take as long for antivaccinationists to realize their errors.?
Joel A. Harrison, PhD, MPH writes,
So, 10,000 compared to 100 – 200 million no challenge.
MJD says,
Comparing numbers without units? Does the collision frequency of reaction rates between viable B-cell receptors and
10,000 dissimilar antigen variants present no challenge to the immune system and its metabolic homeostasis? There is so much uncertainty with respect to efficacy and safety, with respect to mega-valent antigen dosing, that a theoretical 10,000 vaccine “safe scenario” is misleading and ridiculous. Moving forward…
Echolalia. Antivaxxers have no sense of scale whatsoever. There are 30,000,000,000,000 cells in a human body, while they can’t count past One.
@ has,
More than half of our body is not human.
https://www.bbc.com/news/health-43674270
Q. Does Dr. Offit’s theoretical 10,000 vaccine “safety scenario” need to be re-assessed based on the affect it may have on our not-so human hosts.
https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=y2SnPHj2mhM&list=RDAMVMy2SnPHj2mhM
@ MJD
“More than half of our body is not human.”
It would have been nice to find the paper that is claiming that. I find the figures a bit surprising and I’m wondering how they do count.
But I must say that I’m more than annoyed by all these newspapers not making the effort of referencing their information source when it should be available… Then they go on spouting shit (at least in my country) on blogs who they claim all have a conspiratorial mindset, even if these blogs make more effort in correctly referencing their information. (Rant…)
But what really made me laugh was the claim that we are even more outnumbered by “bacteria” when it comes to genome. It really would be the opposite that would be surprising!
Anyhow, all this talk about microbiome will never be a replacement for epidemiological studies.
Never.
Never.
Never.
@MJD: “More than half of our body is not human.”
True. Your entire brain is corned beef.
@ Joel A. Harrison
Another factor in the Catholic church fight against Galileo (1) was that he had a spat with one of his sponsors/protectors, who also was a cardinal (or rather, the cardinal had a spat with him – and couldn’t accept that his protégé dared to tell him, his social superior, that he was wrong). There was more than a bit of pecking-order reassertion at play.
So you can add contrarianism, control freak and inflated sense of ego in the equation. And that makes the analogy hold all the better.
(1) and contrary to popular belief, the fight was not about the Earth being flat or round. That was already settled and accepted. The Church went against Galileo for his thesis about heliocentrism, the sun being at the center of the universe (or at least, of the solar system) instead of the Earth.
@ Athaic
In fact, Galileo failed to fully prove that the heliocentric model was correct. He proved the geocentric model was wrong. What he failed to fully prove was that the geoheliocentric model was wrong.
We had to wait for parallax measurements by Robert Hooke to get this fully straightened out.
Or we might as well have listened to Aristarchus of Samos, who was right all along, since the third century BCE…
@ Athaic
Where did I say it was about Earth being flat or round? I know it was about heliocentrism which had been already discovered century earlier by Copernicus.
And the main reason was that the Church was doubling down in response to the Reformation.
@ Joel Harrison
Copernicus did not provide empirical evidence able to discriminate between heliocentrism and geocentrism. He put forth another hypotheses that was a better candidate for Ockham’s razor. As science still holds to a conservative vision of long-held theories, as can be demonstrated nowadays by some type of misuse of p-values, there was no reason for things to be more progressive at the time of Galileo. So Ockham’s razor was too weak of an argument.
And yes, the backdrop of all this was the Reformation. But remember also that when Volta and Galvani had their feud over the nature of electricity in organisms (frogs…) the influence of the Church and its teachings had no need for the Reformation for it to be felt in Galvani’s viewpoint.
— sigh —
You did not. Come on, please don’t assume that everything I say in an answer to you is a criticism of what you said.
When I’m using footnotes instead of writing my ideas in the main text, it’s for a reason.
Well, the precise use of the Galileo gambit is a personal pet peeve.
I was preemptively adding a precision for any interested reader, because I know from experience, people got it wrong (that’s why I said “popular belief”).
Heck, a few decades ago, I was among those who got it wrong, too.
But thanks for pointing to me that my contributions are not needed. I suspected as much.
Reading over conspiracy theories, is it possible that I have thought up a new one?
woo-ists like to imagine that viruses are created for specific purposes to target particular people ( e.g. hiv was “built” to kill black people, gay people) so suppose an evil SBM lab decided to eliminate natural health purveyors, their business rivals ( listen up, Erin Elizabeth) with a virus that selectively harms very healthy people.
We know that younger people with more responsive immune systems suffered and died more in the 1918 influenza pandemic and young healthy people were more likely to get sick from the most recent H1N1 outbreak.
SO….they engineer a virus that no one has been exposed to and set it free amongst the populace where it will selectively do more damage to healthy living advocates because their immune systems are so damned effective, thus creating a cytokine storm that does them in. Whilst regular people with their groddy, slow poke immune systems, soldier on.
Thus, alties are culled from the herd.
I AM joking but you never know with these people
@ Denice
My reference for stories of mad scientists creating a highly-specialized virus is Frank Herbert and his novel The White Plague.
The protagonist is a biologist who lost his wife and children to some terrorist attack (in a country across the Channel from my country), and decides that if the world doesn’t care for his wife, then he will make sure that no-one else has a wife. And goes on creating a virus killing only women.
More technobabbling than a full season of Star Trek, but it was a good sci-fi read.
An antivaxxer in comments on the CoV disease outbreak on the CBC site posted a link to a prepub paper on receptor sites for 2019-nCoV in lung cells. This was an attempt to claim that the virus clearly came from a lab and was targeted specifically at Asian males because the specimens from “Asian male one” were found to have a substantially higher number of one of the receptor cells than the rest of the samples. ONE Asian male among a grand total of EIGHT specimens (tissue from lung donors). The author of the paper speculated that this may be why coronavirus diseases like SARS seemed to be more prevalent in Asian men. I presume that if the paper ever makes it to peer review the reviewers will stomp all over the authors for using an n of 1 tidbit to make such a remark.
Lyons-Weiler over on his website ( https://bitDOTly/318znho) is promoting (because it’s always the vaccines) that the nCoV2019 arose from a botched coronavirus vaccine that escaped from a Chinese lab. I guess he thinks he knows virology at the genetic level as he waves his hands furiously over his genetic analysis–after first telling readership that he’s pretty certain nCoV2019 was not a biowarfare agent that escaped a military lab. I do think anti-vax leaders need even more negative connotations attached to their names if they are not only going to oppose vaccines but also work to obstruct public health efforts for those infections for which we don’t have vaccines.
And Lyons-Weiler wants to be thought of as a Scientist?
@ Christopher Hickie
While Lyons-Weiler’s current credibility is null, once-upon-a-time he was a legitimate genetic researcher with a number of peer-reviewed articles. What caused him to go off the deep end???
A question is how did he determine his claim? Did he get hold of a sample of the virus? I doubt it. Does he even have a fully equipped lab to do the genetic sequencing? Nope
So, just his warped antivaccinationists fantasy world.
Joel A. Harrison, PhD, MPH writes,
“Paul Offit’s article in Pediatrics where he ends with that our immune systems could cope with ‘theoretically 10,000 vaccines at once.'”
@ Joel,
This analogy is very confusing?
Q. When Dr. Offit says 10,000 vaccines, does he mean 10,000 dissimilar antigens in a vaccine.
“Vaccine safety advocates,” like myself, question 10,000 simultaneous vaccines based on the cumulative dosage-effect of immunologic adjuvants and preservatives in said number of vaccines. If Dr. Offit made a disclaimer that the 10,000 vaccines are free of immunologic adjuvants and preservatives, the “theoretical” safety aspect again fails based on total dermal insult and inflammation therefrom.
In summary, Dr. Offit is a great scientist who is not immune to making poor analogies.
Why don’t you and other
anti-vaxxersoops “vaccine safety advocates” read what Dr. Offit wrote, you know the primary literature. He raised the theoretical immune response to the antigens in 10K vaccines, that’s it. You’re arguing a strawman.Science Mom writes,
Why don’t you and other anti-vaxxers oops “vaccine safety advocates”…
MJD says,
The most difficult aspect of being a “vaccine safety advocate,” as it relates to exclusion of a potentially harmful element, is the development of a economic impact statement that “does no harm.”
@ Orac’s minions,
Is the attempt to improve vaccine safety by a layperson an “anti-vaccine” tactic and trope?
@ MJD – Perhaps Dr. Offit would volunteer to be the test subject….although 10,000 does seem to be a bit much…maybe 1-2 in each appendage as suggested by the CDC? What is the maximum allowed for a child on a catch-up schedule? 8 in a day? Dr. Hickie how many vaccines can/does a child get in one visit?
@ Natalie White.
Ah, the moron speaks: “although 10,000 does seem to be a bit much.” Really, “a bit much.” Read what I wrote dimwit. Did you know that the average child is exposed to around 3,000 potentially dangerous microbes daily? Yet, most kids do quite fine.
And many of the vaccines are attenuated which don’t include adjuvants.
I second the “moron,” comment – since that’s not what Dr. Offit said at all.
Since you can’t even get the original quote right, just leave, you stupid troll.
@Joel: I’m guessing you mean 3000 different types of microbes. Not 3000 microbes in total, which is probably what antivaxxers think they’re exposed to daily.
If only they could see the total number of microbes living on just their own skin alone, they would dive into bleach and stay there.
White, just so we don’t think that — you know — you’re lying or anything, do you mind posting a direct link to where Dr. Offit said this? Like, the link to the book or an audio clip. You know, something that we can look at an analyze critically. I know your reputation here is at such a high level that you would never…
Oh, who am I kidding. You’re lying or misrepresenting that quote and that number. Be honest for once and post the full quote.
@ MJD
You write: “Vaccine safety advocates,” like myself, question 10,000 simultaneous vaccines based on the cumulative dosage-effect of immunologic adjuvants and preservatives in said number of vaccines.”
You apparently missed the entire point, that is, the “THEORETICAL 10,000” was end of paper explaining how the immune system works. And it really doesn’t matter if it is 10,000 antigens or microbes, the immune system is designed to deal with far more. Try reading what I wrote, that is, the total number of current vaccines given and even all 17 aren’t given at once. Offit could have written “The immune system can easily handle the theoretical equivalent of 10,000 vaccines” or whatever. The point is, anyone reading the paper would understand this, if NOT like you and others who focus on one sentence.
You question “10,000 simultaneous vaccines”. Yikes. As I wrote, there are less than 300 current vaccines, etc. You are as idiotic as several others on the blog.
Not that it’s ever going to happen, but I’d volunteer to get all of them in one day.
My mom had polio, and she also gave it to my grandfather.
I had the usual—mumps, rubella, chicken pox and had complications from mumps.
Measles vaccine probably saved my life.
Last time I had flu—REAL flu, not a cold is the last time I skipped my flu shot. My exercise abilities were impaired for months.
Also, I’m on a waiting list for shingles, and this sounds like a great way to get it.
I came across this (https://www.bbc.com/news/health-51299735) about a laboratory hoping to create a vaccine against this new virus (nCoV2019) in a fairly quick time. I thought that would be very good, followed by the notion that the anti-vaxxers would have this incorporated into their religion in short order as being part of a plot to sell vaccines.
If they do develop a vaccine against coronavirus, I’ll bet that the antivaxxers will trample everyone else underfoot to be first in line for it.
@ TBruce,
Not a snowball’s chance in Hell.
@TBruce: No they won’t, as Ms Kincaid illustrates.
They’ll probably have pox parties instead. For their kids.
Is it just me, or are the antivaccine conspiracy theories getting waaaay too complicated? Stealing patents from Bill Gates via a British proxy company? Paying good money bio-weaponizing corona-beer-virions when you can substitute something that costs nothing?
Sheeesh, do we have to do everything for antivaxxers? Just keep conspiracies simple! OK, OK let me show you a good example.
The real culprit is hiding in plain site: the Chinese equivalent of so-called public health authorities. If the reporting is correct, having only 28,000,000 of 1,400,000,000 people vaccinated (2%) looks a lot like Mr Ping is attempting to depopulate China without the help of Bill Gates. How? By depriving 98% of folks in China from a vaccine, simply enabling the good old influenza virus to do the depopulating work (for free no less!).
KISS!
Every conspiracy theory has to get more and more complicated, as different aspects of it are refuted with actual facts…so conspiracy theorists will be forced to add more details and extend the conspiracy to cover more contingencies.
Lawerence, you could be on to something.
If you can come up with an algorithm to determine the CT ratio of convolutions to refutations you may become the father of…let’s call it the Orac Scale. Envision a scale of CT wackiness to truth score, with 0 at one end and Bigtree-RFK Jr at the other…
I mean, if we wanted to go really simple and old-fashioned with a CT, how about that old standby “wrath of god”? Though I doubt the AV crew would be very excited about the Black Death approach to appeasing an angry god – self flagellation.
I think a lot of the appeal of a CT is the apparent complexity, the twists and turns are what makes them interesting (if ridiculous).
How could I forget the early days of what we then called HTLV III (aka HIV): wrath of god! The not-so-good old days were simpler…
Anti-vaxxers imagined that feminists might wholeheartedly support their campaign because “mothers should be believed” but:
( I watched all of Joshua Coleman’s video- 22 minutes- at AoA- so you didn’t have to)
protestors were not at all pleased with his group who brandished their signature signs like weaponry. The women’s march in LA had many thousands of participants and Coleman’s group was basically lost in it ( lost otherwise as well) but they worked their way to the front so they could wave their signs at media, In the video, a few people argued science ( one guy was particularly well informed about placebo trials) with them and others told them to “Get out” in no uncertain terms. If protestors had met them with open arms, I’m sure that he would have filmed that.
The best part – other than the SB pushback -was three little girls holding signs and saying, “Fuck Trump”.
Do I understand this viral interference thing correctly? If you do not get the flu you are more likely to get a cold?
It’s not actually the vaccine at all, it’s any theoretical step you could take to prevent flu (but not to prevent any other virus)?
@ Christine Rose
Viral interference basically means that when you experience one “assault” your immune system mobilizes for it more than necessary. So, if it applied to the flu, it would mean if you got the flu or flu vaccine, the likelihood of being protected against a cold would be temporarily reduced. However, in most cases, the immune system is still quite capable of addressing additional assaults, i.e., microbes. In a few cases, certain microbes may elicit a response of the immune system such that too many immune cells that need not get involved with a particular microbe to some extent do. However, despite the studies quoted, actually misquoted by Age of Autism, the overwhelming evidence is that the flu vaccine or flu DO NOT ELICIT VIRAL INTERFERENCE.
@ Joel,
To be clear …The flu causes viral interference but the studies show that the flu vaccine does not?
“To be clear…” I had to laugh at that one. Like she’s ever been clear about anything while posting here.
You seem confused about what ‘clear’ means. This helps everyone else to realize that your comprehension on anything else could be considered questionable, at the very least. Thank you for making it so transparent.
Presumably, actually getting the flu would also cause this viral interference………….
As an aside, I doubt “warrior moms” like Kim Rossi, Jenny McCarthy and Polly Tommey will take kindly to this:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2020/01/31/parents-online-sharing-can-be-particularly-problematic-autistic-kids-heres-why/#comments-wrapper
@Science Mom, I don’t have a subscription. Quick summary?
The author is on the spectrum and rightly criticises parents who plaster their children’s intimate personal details on social media, especially for monetary gains.
And
Oh and this:
With a hyper link to:
https://voices.clickhole.com/i-was-never-able-to-accept-my-son-s-autism-until-i-mone-1825124114
Which is sarcasm in case it wasn’t evident and very well-done sarcasm.
@Science Mom, thanks. It’s very consistent with my own view. And of course, if you point out these people are violating their child’s privacy, they hide behind the idea that we’re trying to cover up the “reality” of autism and make their children a dirty secret. No, I just think that sharing your child’s identifying information with the entire fricking world makes you a shitty parent. It’s another way they treat their kids like property and not human beings.
@ Terry
“I just think that sharing your child’s identifying information with the entire fricking world makes you a shitty parent.”
I confirm that this can be a problem.
There’s a specific webpage out there on the Internet that I resent very very very much. Rather nominative… But at least, Google turned out to be a fantastic help to objectify the content of the muddled mind of my “doctor”. It gave me access to her mind, her rants, and the “scientific” papers she managed to get published… Very “informative”.
I should light votive candles in prayer for Google’s stock valuation.
@SM: “The author is on the spectrum and rightly criticises parents who plaster their children’s intimate personal details on social media, especially for monetary gains.”
IANAP, but don’t such behaviors much more commonly manifest in self-gratifying NPD and MbP types than in loving caring parents which Ms Kincaid assures us all antivaxxers are?
@ has
“IANAP, but don’t such behaviors much more commonly manifest in self-gratifying NPD and MbP types than in loving caring parents which Ms Kincaid assures us all antivaxxers are?”
NPD is not a crime (and I believe NPD should be removed or refined or redefined in both DSM and cluster B classifications). MbP is… oh well… a quantum superposition of crime and irresponsible stupidity… tough to tell really on which side things will boil down to when decoherence kicks in…
I would be very careful in making the backward inference from this behaviour to NPD/BPD/HPD or MbP. The forward inference is valid, though not all attention-seeking behaviour manifests itself through Internet message boards. That would be too simple.
For sure, that behaviour is IMO problematic, but you cannot stop, nor should you stop, moms of kids with autism to seek solutions outside of purely medical help. Some tasks are indeed daunting and people need to vent. Now, there are ways and ways to vent… I can tell…
Yes, when I see that type of behaviour, I have red lights flashing all over my head. But you really need to take a much closer look before coming up with these kinds of assertions, as some kind of attention-seeking behaviours can be very very subtle.
@ has
Moreover, this issue is far from being a joke. You should refrain from making MbP accusations easily in the case of autism. This mom seemingly has had it way way too rough. Psychiatric expertises on suspected MbP cases should NEVER be done in this off-handed manner.
https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=auto&tl=en&u=https%3A%2F%2Ffr.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FAffaire_Rachel
Moreover this is NOT an isolated incident. It shows that something is really wrong in these sort of procedures.
@ has**
@ F68.10:
Although IAAP, I try to avoid dx because it is not ethical for me to do so and also, on the net, who knows if others are being truthful or realistic, so much of what we read is exaggeration/ confabulation/ stories.
BUT I can see why other people might want to use it: ***
it consolidates a set of characteristics that enables others to make predictions and understand how people think, feel and behave. And perhaps these dx tend to actually be clusters of qualities that exist together. So while I wouldn’t necessarily use the labels, I can understand why others would, sometimes at least.
Here’s what I tend to do instead- in RL and on the net-
I list what I am seeing/ reading., i.e. exactly what the person is doing/ saying and how it relates to me/ others as far as I can tell so I can navigate the minefield they create. A few examples: ALL TRUE
— a person communicates exclusively to brag about her life situation, there are thinly veiled insults as well (RL)
— someone writes about her difficult life ( AoA) and her near-daily- triumphs over adversity showing her value
— a mother discourages her son from interactions that might take him out into the world and keeps him to herself at home although he is an adult and not terribly disabled ( RL) Truly a shame.
— people argue with commenters about issues WAY over their heads and declare victory repeatedly ( RI)
— a woo-meister relates how he has won hundreds of debates/ arguments with experts ( despite having no real education) and
how this proves him a superior source of information ( PRN, NN, Del)
In all of the above cases, there is an element of trying to control what others think or do; there is also a tendency to seek out approval or show one’s superiority in some way.
This tells me that they’re not getting much of that in reality. In other words, it is an attempt to gain self-esteem or belief in oneself despite what (most of) the world feeds back to them. A few of these examples are attempts to make money as an expert when one isn’t.
** -btw- thanks for the nice compliment
*** many news people/ politicos/ experts have speculated on whether Mr Trump has an NPD or serious issues with cognition. I have no real problem with them doing so as long as they show evidence ( e.g. comparing his speech now and 15 years ago ) and explain the limits of dx by video.
@ Denice Walter
“many news people/ politicos/ experts have speculated on whether Mr Trump has an NPD or serious issues with cognition. I have no real problem with them doing so as long as they show evidence ( e.g. comparing his speech now and 15 years ago ) and explain the limits of dx by video.”
I have a problem with using psychiatric labels in the realm of politics. (Except when done by qualified doctors in a trial if it really matters). It’s too easy to use for political games.
Here’s a psychoanalyst, Jean-Pierre Winter, accusing Melechon, a french left-wing politician, of being a scatophile. Unacceptable.
Here’s another example of wild psychiatric diagnosis of Macron by an Italian psychiatrist. Basically claiming that he had been sexually assaulted at age 15 by the woman who is now his long-time wife, which made him to into a psychopath. Unacceptable.
And these videos are used in petty arguments all over the Internet. Doctors who engage in these sort of behaviours should be physically punished. Iranian style.
@ Denice Walter
If you want translated transcripts into English in order to expose to you how egregious these conversations are, I’d be more than happy to comply to your awaited request. More than happy. Much more than happy: Exhilarated!
@ F68.10:
Those sound pretty bad.
Interestingly, in the current impeachment trial of Mr Trump, the issue of mental health or cognitive problems doesn’t seem to have been brought up by the opposition: they are sticking to actions, papers, e-mails, testimony which is the right way ( although NO live witnesses permitted). He’ll be acquitted.
The US does have a way to remove a president with serious problems – the 25th Amendment- BUT it involves Cabinet members/ the vice president- I’m not sure if professional opinions or the Congress would be called for. I doubt that that will happen because of his protective secretaries/ VP.
As a historical note, it has been speculated that when President Wilson had a stroke, his wife ran things in his place .I don’t know many details about this but I’m sure someone else here does.
About the speech, videos DO show a difference in how he expresses himself compared with 15 years ago but that doesn’t necessarily mean dementia; he is being treated for Cardiovascular issues with meds,
Although I don’t like him at all, I prefer the Old Donald . At least his problems were restricted to the realms of real estate marketing and casino operations.
@ Science Mom:
I am very much in agreement.
There are at least two ways to profit off of a child’s autism:
— actually making money by selling products, selling ads, writing books, running a “charity”
— gaining other types of “currency” such as sympathy, applause, acknowledgement as an expert, rebel leader or Truth Teller.
We see this all of the time.
While Orac and others ( The Real Truther) have figures about how much Del, AJW and RFK jr earn through their activism, I am
more interested in how much Mommy bloggers/ activists earn. Kim Rossi runs AoA, a charity; Katie Wright is on the board of RFK jr’s charity and SafeMinds. Zoey O’Toole runs TMR IIRC. Barbara Loe Fisher has written books and run NVIC for decades. It would be easy to find figures. Do some make a decent- but dishonest-living off of this?
@Denise: ???
That was bang on the nose. For those not in it solely for the greenbacks, I’ll wager the constant adulation of peers is worth even more than the ad clicks at the end of the month. I may not be the best at reading other people, but even I smell something in antivax’s influencers that is consistently “off”.
As a follow up: see Wikipedia
25th Amendment
Edith Bolling Wilson
In a timely but, reddit.com/r/AmItheAsshole/comments/evqd98/aita_my_mom_is_an_influencer_i_am_sick_of_being_a/
I’m sure the “Warrior moms” will jump in claiming that it’s different, because their child won’t ever apply for a job or date or whatever, but the reality is that they’re arguing their child has less rights than a neurotypical, able-bodied child. It’s not okay to violate the privacy of any child, ever, and if you do so, you’re a shitty parent.
This is rich.
The Indian government, in addition to recommending common-sense hygiene precautions to avoid spread of the new coronavirus, is promoting homeopathy and Ayurvedic medicines:
https://pib.gov.in/PressReleasePage.aspx?PRID=1600895#
Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) is also getting official recognition:
http://china.org.cn/china/2020-01/28/content_75654186.htm
While we’re exploring conspiracy theories about the outbreak, maybe we should wonder if alt med purveyors are behind it – encouraging spread of infection and pumping up coronavirus fears in order to sell their remedies and services. Ooooh.
And the homeopathic remedy is arsenicum album, the poison. Some homeopathic remedies actually contain the original chemical, so this is even more dangerous than it sounds.
@ Christine Kincaid
You write: “To be clear …The flu causes viral interference but the studies show that the flu vaccine does not?”
Once more the moron chimes in. As Orac’s article made clear, corona virus was not a result of flu vaccine as claimed on Age of Autism. However, just to explain more clearly, one medical dictionary defines viral interference as “The inhibition of the multiplication of one type of virus by the presence of another virus in the same cell.” However, what is claimed by Age of Autism is that somehow the vaccine affects the immune system so that a later exposure to another virus is less protected against.
I won’t bother listing all the studies I have; but, the overwhelming number found that either the flu or the flu vaccine did NOT increase the risk of other diseases. In fact, in some studies the flu decreased the risk of other respiratory diseases. However, as in all science, a few studies found minimal increases in other diseases after flu or flu vaccine, minimal, and one can question their methodology. As someone who goes with the science, I understand that even well done studies can find results caused by unmeasured, uncontrolled variables; but when numerous studies, done by different researchers, on different populations, etc. find similar results, I rely on them, not the few.
So, once more, most studies have found that both flu and flu vaccine do not increase the risk of other diseases; but can sometimes even lessen such risks. However, I don’t doubt if one has a severe episode of flu that being run down anything is possible. So, it wouldn’t be flu per se; but anything that “wears one down”, any disease, etc.
Do yourself a favor and crawl back under your rock. Don’t you have anything better to do than continue to make a fool of yourself?????
Feel free to find the few studies that confirm your cherry picked position.
@ Joel,
“Feel free to find the few studies that confirm your cherry picked position.”
What ‘position’ would that be?
Did I state my position?
@ christine kincaid
You write: “Did I state my position?”
Yep, dozens of times. Your position is to find fault with vaccines. How friggin dense are you?
And just to clarify. A bad case of the flu means one hasn’t eaten much, nausea, possibly vomiting, etc. So, overall one is worn out. Could mean even more easily tripping, etc. The point is that the actual flu doesn’t, according to majority of studies, specifically open door to other infections, it is the overall affect it causes, not its antigens. But one could say the same thing about results of car accident, resulting surgery, etc. also wears one out and opens one to higher risk from microbes.
Please, crawl back under your rock and stop making a fool of yourself, even stating you haven’t taken a position.
You don’t have to state your position. They will divine it psychically and then call you a liar if you dare disagree with their assumptions about your opinion.
No Beth, it’s obvious by what you and Christine write.
@ Christine – Science Mom has conveniently demonstrated the truth of my statement. If your opinion is obvious from your posts, then they can’t possibly be wrong in their assumptions about your opinion. Therefore, you are a liar if you claim their assumptions about your opinion are incorrect.
@Beth Clarkson: It is embarrassingly easy to infer your true motives. You aren’t nearly as good sophists and dissemblers as you think yourselves to be.
If only you knew fallibility and humility half as well; you’d be far better people for it.
If it’s so easy and obvious, why are your assumptions about my motives and opinions so consistently wrong?
But they’re not as evidenced by your brain-droppings all over the place.
@ Joel,
No Joel. I was asking: 1.Does the flu cause “viral interference” And 2. “Did the studies show that the flu vaccine does not?”
All that blathering on & on because you think answering that with a simple yes or no means you have contributed to me “finding fault” with vaccines?
I know vaccines are dangerous. I was asking if the flu vaccine caused viral interference.
Actually, Christine, far be it from us to put words in your mouth. I suggest you make a clear statement of one of your claims and provide objective evidence to support it. Then perhaps we can have a real discussion.
For instance, you said “I know vaccines are dangerous.” That is only your opinion unless backed up by evidence. So please quantify how dangerous they are in terms of risk per so many doses of what serious effect from the vaccine. Then provide a published study that supports that conclusion.
Or state your one in a million objection similarly.
FWIW, from 2006 through 2017, there were 3,454,269,356 doses of various vaccines administered. 4525 claims were compensated out of 6571 filed. That’s a 69.5% chance of being compensated if you actually file a claim. So the risk of a serious injury meriting compensation is about 1 in 763 thousand doses.
And 2/3 of those compensations were for the influenza vaccine (3112 claims for 1,518,400,000 doses). That works out to 1 in 488 thousand. But that protects against a disease that has killed 15 people in Dallas county alone out of a population of 2,637,772 in this flu season already.
https://www.fox4news.com/news/dallas-county-reports-its-15th-flu-related-death-this-season
There have been 13,411 confirmed cases so far this season for a death risk of about 1 in a thousand. And 1076 people were hospitalized with 150 going to the ICU.
I’ll take a 1 in 500 thousand risk of injury probably not fatal over a 1 in a thousand risk of death any day.
@ christine kincaid
You wrote: “You write: “To be clear …The flu causes viral interference but the studies show that the flu vaccine does not?”
Now you write: “I was asking: 1.Does the flu cause “viral interference” And 2. “Did the studies show that the flu vaccine does not?”
So, first you wrote: “To be clear …The flu causes viral interference.” It sounds to me like the first half of your first statement was a statement, not a question, especially separating them with “but”. As for the flu vaccine, did you read Orac’s article. That alone should answer your question; but, to repeat, most of the studies I’ve found say NO, flu vaccine doesn’t cause viral interference.
And, as usual, you seem to not understand when I say “your position is to find fault with vaccines” and what do you write: “I know vaccines are dangerous.” So, sounds like finding fault. Again, ignoring how many times I and others have shown that vaccines confer exponentially greater benefit than the rare serious adverse risks. However, I could say I know that being alive is a risk. When walking my dog a drunk driver could run up on the sidewalk. When eating at a restaurant I could get e-coli or salmonella, etc. However, the odds are minuscule. The risks from the actual diseases are real and serious.
As for anything I or others on this blog write contributing to your “finding fault” with vaccines, the fact is that you have decided vaccines are dangerous, blow the rare serious risks way out of proportion, ignore all the ongoing research, and ignore that we can’t test, at least in the foreseeable future, for every possible genetic predisposition to react to a vaccine, and that even in most cases someone with the predisposition will do fine.
You are someone who doesn’t bother to learn the sciences underlying vaccines, including immunology, microbiology, epidemiology, etc.; but knows you are right.
Maybe great for a religion; but not public health.
@ Christine
You claimed in another comment that the Vaccine Court had guidelines to pay out about 1 in 1,000,000 doses of vaccine. I asked what you based this on. No reply from you.
Well, there exists about a dozen law firms advertising to represent people in vaccine court. A normal lawsuit is quite iffy and can drag on for years and lose; but a lawyer representing a claimant in vaccine court gets a good hourly wage paid by the court, which also pays for any witnesses. What this means is that lawyers are willing to take up cases with less certainty of winning. On the Courts website are guidelines for pursuing a claim. There is a list of adverse conditions which automatically lead to the court ruling in plaintiffs favor. Doesn’t mean each case was caused by vaccine. And one can file and pursue a claim on an adverse condition not part of the list. I won’t bother giving the link; but the Court publishes statistics on how many cases were filed, how many won, going back to 1988. Not cases per 1 million does of vaccine; but actual number of cases filed. And, guess what, the majority won. So, it isn’t payoffs per million doses; but cases filed and it is easy to file a case and get lawyers willing to represent one.
As usual, you just make up things or find on some idiotic antivaxx website.
You also claimed no research on HLA types and vaccines. Again WRONG.
And on and on you go.
@ Joel writes – ” “although 10,000 does seem to be a bit much.” Really, “a bit much.” ‘
Ah silly, I was joking. My bad.. I didn’t include the snark signal. <<< Need to remember this next time.
But seriously, what is the maximum count on how many vaccines can be given to a child in one visit? Most likely depends on the combo? Dr. Hickie? You are a subject matter expert. What is the maximum number of vaccines given in one visit?
@ Nathalie White
“But seriously, what is the maximum count on how many vaccines can be given to a child in one visit?”
1 mahaugha. Experts are unanimous.
I’d like to ask you two questions for clarification.
You had stated that the latest Hviid study on the MMR and vaccines in general didn’t apply to the U.S. because the Danish vaccine schedule is different. Does that mean that you accept the results of that study as valid for the Danish schedule and population? i.e. the vaccines on the Danish schedule do not increase the risk of (i.e., “cause”) autism?
You had also stated or implied that when you referred to vaccine injuries, you did not necessarily mean autism. What do you think is the most common vaccine injury besides autism? (just your opinion, but do you know any studies that support it?)
@ Natalie
You write: “@ Joel writes – ” “although 10,000 does seem to be a bit much.” Really, “a bit much.” ‘
Ah silly, I was joking.”
You have said so many stupid things on this blog that it is impossible to know when you are joking.
Because no one is “chiming in” you take that as no limit? We can only say that there is a large safety threshold between what children are given and what would possibly “be too many”. It’s not exactly a study that could be ethically undertaken in humans. I’m sure an anti-vaxxer like you will have a ball with that statement.
So since none of the RI subject matter experts are chiming in, evidently there is NO limit to the amount of vaccinations that can be given to a child or anyone in one visit. I only read the CDC referenced studies from 2015. A couple studies were duplicates and all were lacking. If there is a reaction, good luck trying to figure out which one….negligent and bad medicine. Now this is a joke>>>>https://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/concerns/multiple-vaccines-immunity.html
@ Natalie White
You are the joke. First, you have NEVER indicated even a basic knowledge of immunology, etc. So, how do you know any of the studies were “lacking?”
As I’ve explained before, our immune system, specifically B-cells and T-cells have over 100 million different slightly different “keys” waiting to fit the “lock” of an invading microbe, the “lock” being an antigenic determinant. The immune cells circulate through the entire lymph system in about two hours, so if they meet their match, they then begin to produce either antibodies or T-kiiler of T- helper cells. And, on average, we are exposed to up to 3,000 different potentially dangerous microbes on a daily basis, exposed through the air we breath, the drinks and food we imbibe, and minor scratches. In addition, aluminum, for instance, in trace amounts in vaccines, it the third most abundant metal on the planet, infants get far more from breast milk and formula.
First, are you referring to number of injections or number of microbes/toxins protected against?
From birth to 15 months, the total number of vaccinations given to infants is 14, not counting the flu vaccine which can be given after 6 months of age. However, only five are given before 12 months. Of course, 1st, 2nd, and 3rd doses not given at same time.
(Available at: https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/schedules/hcp/imz/child-adolescent.html )
However, if not given at appropriate times, the CDC gives a “Catchup Schedule” (Available at: https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/schedules/hcp/imz/catchup.html )
If you notice, for first dose catchup, 5 are listed at 6 weeks, etc.
The total number of vaccinations can be reduced by using combination vaccines. (Available at: https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/schedules/hcp/imz/child-adolescent.html#vaccines-schedule )
So, possible that infant gets up to five vaccinations; but if combination vaccines given, only three. If you mean total different microbes and/or toxins vaccinated against, the total up to 12 months is 8 or 9 if meningococcal included. Compare this with the up to 3,000 full strength microbes exposed to on a DAILY BASIS.
Apparently you missed at the bottom of the CDC page reference to Institute of Medicine’s “Immunization Safety Review: Multiple Immunizations and Immune Dysfunction” (2002 Feb 20). Available at: http://nationalacademies.org/hmd/reports/2002/immunization-safety-review-multiple-immunizations-and-immune-dysfunction.aspx It includes an extensive reference list.
“By two years of age, healthy infants in the United States can receive up to 20 vaccinations to protect against 11 diseases. Although most people know that vaccines effectively protect against serious infectious diseases, many parents question: Can too many immunizations overwhelm an infant’s immune system? Reasonable theories exist for how vaccines could cause these effects.
The Immunization Safety Review committee reviewed the evidence regarding the hypothesis that multiple immunizations increase the risk for immune dysfunction, with a focus on evidence related to risk for infections, the autoimmune disease type I diabetes, and allergic disorders.
The committee found that evidence favors rejection of a causal relationship between multiple immunizations and increased risk for infections and for type I diabetes. They also found that epidemiological evidence regarding risk for allergic disease, particularly asthma, was inadequate to accept or reject a causal relationship. The committee recommended continued attention in the form of policy analysis, research, and communication strategy development to inform those concerned about these issues and to encourage parents to vaccinate their children.”
So, a comprehensive review rejected everything, except possibly allergic diseases, because the evidence was inadequate to accept or reject a causal relationship.
A more recent update states: “Thus, although there is no evidence that routine childhood immunization increases the risk of allergy development, such risks need to be discussed.” [Nilsson (2017 Nov). Vaccination and allergy: EAACI position paper, practical aspects. Pediatric allergy and immunology; 28(7): 628-640.
See also: Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (2017 Oct 10). Do vaccines cause asthma or allergies? (Available at: https://www.chop.edu/centers-programs/vaccine-education-center/vaccines-and-other-conditions/vaccines-asthma-allergies)
Instead of wasting people’s time showing your ignorance, why don’t you take a break from posting comments and read the following carefully:
Lauren Sompayrac. “How the Immune System Works (6th edition)
Ben Goldacre. “Bad Science”
David J. Hand. “The Improbability Principle: Why Coincidences, Miracles, and Rate Events Happen Daily.”
(explains how two events occurring close in time often happens even when not related, e.g., vaccine and onset of some problem. He doesn’t discuss vaccines; but the math applies.)
And I repeat for the umpteenth time: The benefit of vaccines (for anyone who has taken the time to learn about the history of vaccine-preventable diseases, how serious they can be, and the current status of these diseases in the world, only a plane-flight away) compared with the risk of rare but serious adverse events, clearly any sane person would opt for the vaccine. And, if such a serious adverse event were to occur due to a genetic predisposition then the likelihood that if that child was exposed to the actual disease, the outcome would be the same. In addition, we have the Vaccine Court that helps families where a child was suspected of having a vaccine-caused serious adverse events. Prior to vaccines, most families were up-the-creek without a paddle. Even the March of Dimes was not able to help everyone, though they tried, and experiencing rival calls for contributions.
ADDENDUM
First, I should have pointed out that all I had to do to find the total number of vaccines and catchup was to use Google with search words: “Children Vaccine Schedule” a number of sites popped up and I chose the CDCs. So, why couldn’t you have done the same ???
You write: “I only read the CDC referenced studies from 2015. A couple studies were duplicates and all were lacking.”
“Lacking”, based on what? Typical stupid antivaccinationist comment. Says absolutely nothing. Back it up with an explanation. Oh, I forgot, you don’t understand immunology, epidemiology, research methods, so what you mean by “lacking” is you don’t want to accept anything that doesn’t confirm your ignorant position.
You write: “evidently there is NO limit to the amount of vaccinations that can be given to a child or anyone in one visit.”
Yep, what I quoted from the CDC is just lying propaganda. How did you figure it out? How did you know about the secret personality test given to work at the CDC, WHO, and to become a member of the American Academy of Pediatrics? You know the test I’m talking about, The Sadism Scale. Only those who test high get accepted. Yep, we love torturing people, especially kids. And you probably learned about the secret organization we all belong to, The Marquis de Sade Fellowship. In fact, we love to torture people so much that we make sure our parents, siblings, and children all get as many shots at one time as possible. Sometimes, just for fun, adding a couple with just sterile water, just to make sure the kids cry and scream.
You moron. Of course there is a “limit to the amount of vaccinations that can be given to a child or anyone in one visit.” The limit based on both immunology, epidemiology, and plain old compassion and caring. But, of course, genius that you are with NO understanding of immunology, epidemiology, and believing the worst of people at CDC, WHO, and American Academy of Pediatrics, make such asinine statements.
In Psychology there is a defense mechanism called PROJECTION where someone project onto others personality characteristics they have and don’t want to admit. So, I assume that it is you who hate people, especially children, and would love to STICK IT TO THEM, LITERALLY; but can’t admit, so believe that the 10s of thousands of public health workers and pediatricians are the ones doing it. Yep, that’s why we devoted years to getting educations and training, just to fulfill our sadistic natures.
GO TO HELL!
Joel, what do you think of Undergraduate Immunology by Clett Erridge?
https://www.amazon.com/Undergraduate-Immunology-textbook-tablets-devices-ebook/dp/B00E7YTJBQ/ref=sr_1_3?keywords=immunology&qid=1580753153&s=digital-text&sr=1-3
I’d like to read Sompayrac’s book some time, but costs $32 and this one is only $7.
It’s much longer though (548 pages vs. 171)/
So how many diseases can a child safely get? So where is it shown that it is safer to get HIb or measles instead of the vaccine? What about tetanus? Or a pneumococcal infection? The latter has a nasty habit of taking advantage of the suppressed immune system due to a measles infection.
And yes, you are a joke.
This. Antivaxxers always talk about the assault on the immune system from vaccines in isolation. They do not ask how it compares to the assault on the immune system coming from diseases—and they never will ask it either, because they’re deathly scared of what the answer could be. It would destroy everything they are and believe themselves to be.
What do these people think?
That the real world with viruses is something simular to a walk in the park, where you occasionally meet someone else (a virus)?
I think it is more like walking in a crowded city, where you can’t avoid other people (coming in contact with viruses).
@Renate, a few years ago we had an antivaxxer named Th1Th2. That is EXACTLY what he believed.
I remember Th1Th2, the person who thought children naturally avoided all dirt.
I don’t think he ever had anything to do with children, otherwise he would have known better.
Ah, yes, I remember Thingy. She claimed a toddler would know to stay on the clean sidewalk and never go play in dirt. Unfortunately that classic comment was wiped out when ScienceBasedMedicine switched to Disqus.
Narad had first encountered that person on the sMothering forum. She claimed to be a mother. I was not surprised because I have met some rather delusional mothers when my son was very very young at a local community college. One actually pulled out an unwrapped peeled hard boiled egg from her bag, waved a little blue light and gave it to her son to eat. She also insisted on calling her son a feminine name, and when the dad came he said that the kid’s name was actually Skyler (which goes both ways).
I also remember a couple of mothers who thought their kids were perfect, except they did not speak at age three. They refused to believe their perfect child could benefit from from an evaluation like mine did. Then both of those kids were identified by the school district as needing speech therapy. The one who told how the private school their oldest went was so much better than the public school my kid went had to change her tune when the private school refused to enroll her kid with speech issues. Yeah, I saw her bringing that kid to see my son’s speech therapist at that public school. (the other one I found out about from the preschool teacher who also told that mom to get the kid evaluated).
@Chris
Thingy a woman? Who could have thought.
A boy named Sue?
It really doesn’t matter. Thingy was clearly delusional or just a troll. The thing that I found more outrageous than the woman who really just wanted a daughter was her bizarre ideas about medical issues, which were really a danger to her kid. They were both similar to each other, and equally dangerous to any child.
How many slices of pizza can a person safely eat in one sitting? Clearly Big Pizza is covering up the danger.
”If there is a reaction, good luck trying to figure out which one”
Not a problem, since all vaccines are jam-packed with Toxins (“filthy, nasty vials of toxic sludge” according to Lyons-Weiler).
So antivaxers can blame any potential reaction or ill the child suffers at any future time on any vaccine given during one visit, delayed effects from a previous vaccine, cumulative effects of all vaccines, vaccines received by the mother at any time during pregnancy or beforehand, or vaccines given to previous generations.
The thing is, the question “how do you tell which vaccine caused a reaction when multiple vaccines are given” is a legitimate one – but the anti-vaccine activist’s approach makes it clear she’s not sincerely asking, and not seeking an answer.
But for those who may be,. I asked this question of Dr. Offit in 2015, and he gave me the following answer, and gave me permission to share or post the answer publicly.
“It depends on the reaction. If a child develops hives, for example, the most likely culprit is gelatin, which is contained in the nasal spray flu vaccine, varicella vaccine, and MMR. If the child received more than one of those vaccines on the same day, then you wouldn’t know which one. But the child would be tested later by an allergist for gelatin allergy, and if they were allergic, then they shouldn’t get any of those vaccines again.
If the child develops a low platelet count, manifested as petechiae on the skin, the most likely culprit is measles containing vaccine.
If the child develops the vaguer, less specific symptoms that may or may not be associated with vaccines, it’s hard to tell which if any of the vaccines are the problem. So they would be introduced separately in the future to try to sort it out. ”
It’s important to remember that not all vaccines cause all reactions, so in many cases, you can tell because only one or few vaccines cause the reaction. In other cases, it’s harder.
@ Dorit
I think it also important to point out that most of the above are self-limiting and rare compared to the exponentially greater risks from the wild-type microbe. In addition, as research continues we are able to adjust whether to give a vaccine or its timing based on various conditions, e.g., autoimmune disorders. So the above will become even rarer.
@ squirrelelite
I own and have read three 800+ page undergraduate textbooks. I’m sure the one e-book contains ALL the relevant information; but Sompayrac’s books allows one to see the forest for the trees, to concentrate on the important points, not get bogged down in too many details. So, it depends on your willingness to devote the time to the much longer book and whether you really need such detail.
Based on your own statistics, flu vaccination is an epic failure. If all these people are still dying every year, why are we doing it? To call everyone who believes that the virus likely originated from an incorrectly manufactured vaccine an “anti-vaxxer” is dogmatic, zero tolerance, black & white thinking. These people who believe that vaccines cause autism are ridiculous. That’s like saying I got borderline personality disorder from my tetanus shot. They have nothing to do with each other. The reason the incidence of autism is so high is b/c it’s overdiagnosed due to the fact that it’s a condition that medicaid pays for prescriptions for. Typically the kid gets an SSRI, ADHD med & a tranquilizer (anti-psychotic.) So if the kid doesn’t actually have autism, when they’re on all these drugs they sure will appear to be abnormal. New cases have emerged since you wrote this, in isolated populations like nursing homes. Do you have any information on the first person to contract it in each isolated location, like if they had been in contact with an outsider who had it or if they had a flu shot this year? Find out where each batch of flu shot was sent & see if there’s a connection with the cases of the coronavirus. If there’s no connection then you’re right. We don’t want to lump people who don’t believe in getting shot up with everything under he sun with people who don’t believe in proven traditional vaccines for deadly diseases like Polio, Measles, etc. People should be able to decide if they want vaccinations or not for diseases that are not typically deadly, like HPV, flu, etc. We shouldn’t be forced to get all medications for everything. If my kid cries too much should she be forced to take SSRI’s? If nine out of ten people think I’m ugly, should I be forced to get cosmetic surgery? Where do we draw the line?
Um, to reduce the morbidity and mortality?
What on G-d’s green earth are you jabbering about?
The coherence of your prose stylings is duly noted.
And who is forcing you to get “vaccinations or not” for “etc.”?
I’m starting to smell socks.
Whoops, missed this one. No great loss.
[…] are flowing freely about COVID-19 coronavirus, including the bogus claim that the flu vaccine makes people more susceptible to COVID-19 and, that perennial favorite during every outbreak of a new disease, the conspiracy […]
Flu Vaccine Increases Coronavirus Risk 36% Says Military Study
The study, published in the scientific journal Vaccine January 2020, was conducted by the Armed Forces Health Surveillance Branch Air Force Satellite at Wright-Patterson AFB, OH.
https://www.disabledveterans.org/2020/03/11/flu-vaccine-increases-coronavirus-risk/
No, it doesn’t. I wrote about this over a month ago and specifically looked at that study, among others, in examining this antivaccine myth. https://www.respectfulinsolence.com/2020/01/30/coronavirus-flu-vaccine/
Do you know why people are becoming antivax? It has -everything- to do with mistrust in the government. Some people will say it is for religious belief, but that is generally because they can not be forced by the government to get the vaccine with this claim. When your government has lied repeatedly throughout your lifetime, then you start to not trust said government. Well who in the world will willingly take into their body an injection when they DO NOT TRUST the source? The US government has lied about many many things, and created an air of division among its citizens simply by classifying one group as crazy. The U.S. Government has said for many years that Cannabis is bad and causes brain damage and other terrible things. Yet this is totally false and has been proven otherwise with plenty of studies. There are a myriad of other issues that are not as easy to uncover, at least not without sounding like a crazy person – exactly what is intended.
You have also dismissed a statement from Dwireyn and have a link right back to this same page, instead of the article you “wrote over a month ago”. See I have been looking at info from Sciencedriect and it indeed has some information that shows negative effects of getting some vaccines. Including the Flu shot, I personally do not like the fact that our Healthcare system claims there is no issue taking multiple vaccines at the same time, because there IS. Anyone with intelligence WILL understand that dumping an array of crap in your body to strengthen your immune system is counter productive. It should be one at a time. But you can not even request such a schedule in the U.S. (I tried). Now why does our country even do this? Simply because it has been observed that parents will stop bringing in their children for shots over and over again, so they condense it into as few actual shots as possible. It is because the statistics show it is better to have many vaccines all at once than to have it spread out, and subsequently (possibly) missing a few to several. This completely dismisses anyone who will have negative side effects due to the increased strain, as expendable for “the greater good”. If you really want “Anti-vaxers” to hear what you have to say you should stop dismissing them as crazy. Perhaps you should try to understand where the majority of sane people who are against vaccines are coming from? Nothing will change until both sides can agree that the current situation with our health care system LYING to us is what needs to change. But both sides will never agree for as long as your side straight up calls anti-vaxers crazy. (I will give you the fact that the most vocal anti-vaxers are indeed crazy) But you have to dig deeper to find the real reasons so many people are “ignoring” science and choosing to not get the shots. It really has to do with lack of trust.
If you really want “Anti-vaxers” to hear what you have to say you should stop dismissing them as crazy
No-one gives two tugs on a dead dingo’s dick whether the antivaxxer dipsticks hear what we have to say, because they’re lying cockwombles who prefer delusions to reality.
I’m a doctor and actually investigated MMS to stop friends using it and well it isn’t household bleach and let’s say I tried it on myself and my dog and it indeed works. I’ve seen that the Red Cross used it to eradicate malaria in trials and then we’re ordered to retract and deny even running trials. Of course a documentary team followed the Red Cross and videoed everything so it seems that some big powerful people were not happy but were caught covering up. As for the flu vaccine (which contains pneumonia and corona viruses) well I’ve read 5 peer reviewed journals that confirm cytokine storms occurring when antibodies from the vaccine compromise immunity and have a negative overreaction when people catch the flu or any corona type viruses. I have also studied some research done on such negative effects on soldiers conducted in 2018 and other research showing many elderly dying from cytokine storms caused by the flu vaccine after catching mild flus.
In all my research on vaccines over the years as a hobby as my professional capacity doesn’t allow me to speak out officially, I’ve found vaccines to be useless and cause great harm (not just autism, they’d the least of the negative side effects) and they cause death and cancer.
I’m almost retired and once I am, I will expose this as I’m very well connected and regarding the coronavirus, research scientists I have know for 30 years have confirmed they have analysed it and it is a chimera crested in a laboratory, combining SARS, MERS, and HIV with prevotella bacteria which causes pneumonia. They have been told To keep this classified as it could cause an international incident or panic since they aren’t sure if it was deliberately released by a rogue state or group or if it was Chinese incompetence. But they’ve said the strains in Taiwan, Italy and Iran have different genomes as they’re different mutations, each deadlier than the other respectively.
They said they traced the outbreaks as early as November in Italy and China and Taiwan at the same time, so there appears to be several vectors of infection independently of each other so it’s suspicious.
I know this board is full of trolls and arrogant deniers as is Dr. Gorski but be smug all you like but in this battle those with knowledge will overcome.
You lose, “Doctor.”
^ More.
Liar.
If you are a doctor it is most like in naturopathy, divinity or just bought off of the internet.
I’m almost retired and once I am, I will expose this as I’m very well connected
And you have a girlfriend in Canada.
a chimera crested in a laboratory
What language is this?
Maybe he was talking about syndactyly.
Like these geniuses? (They deleted my comment about Montagnier.)
Never write a sentence with the payload’s depending on a comma.
Anyway, I assume this has been making the crank rounds.
oops
https://archive.is/1Txsm
“Our analyses reveal that infection of influenza A, RSV or influenza vaccines greatly increased ACE2 expression, suggesting that influenza viral infection could represent a high risk factor for developing COVID-19. We also found that the regulatory effect of influenza A virus on ACE2 expression is associated with activation of the interferon beta-induced pathway and viral RNA-activated host response.”
Could the sock mallet please be wielded?
Turns out that interstitial lung disease, including fever + ground glass opacities (coronavirus symptoms), is linked to the flu shot….please someone tell me how to distinguish the “real” coronavirus” from cases like below, where people develop the symptoms of ground glass opacities, fever, etc, on the heals of a flu shot….
“A 75-yr-old female was referred to our hospital (Komatsu Municipal Hospital, Komatsu, Japan) for evaluation of fever and chest radiograph abnormalities in November 2011. 2 weeks previously she had received the influenza vaccine (trivalent inactivated vaccine: A/California/7/2009 [H1N1]-like, A/Victoria/210/2009 [H3N2]-like, and B/Brisbane/60/2008-like antigens). She had developed a fever 1 week before admission, and a chest radiograph revealed patchy airspace infiltrates in both lungs….
…..Chest computed tomography (CT) revealed bilateral ground-glass opacities and patchy infiltration in a predominantly peribronchial and sub pleural distribution” https://erj.ersjournals.com/content/41/2/474?fbclid=IwAR3a64MMnwQpjthWfpDs7AsmMRBAo_obZIy6xnKuv6gixmgvGx1tJLz2yr0
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“A 39-year-old woman received a seasonal influenza vaccine in November 2015 and subsequently experienced malaise, low-grade fever, and chest discomfort. A chest X-ray performed 2 weeks after vaccination showed multiple nodular shadows in both lungs and ground-glass shadows in both lower lung fields. Her bronchoalveolar lavage fluid contained an unusually high number of lymphocytes, and a drug-induced lymphocyte stimulation test for seasonal influenza vaccine was positive. Transbronchial lung biopsy revealed the presence of granulomatous inflammation. Thereafter her abnormal chest shadow spontaneously improved. Based on these findings, the patient was diagnosed with drug-induced pneumonitis due to an influenza vaccine.” https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5874344/
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“Abstract
We report a 58-year-old man who developed respiratory distress and interstitial shadowing on chest X-ray 10 days after receiving the influenza vaccine. He failed to respond to intravenous antibiotics but his clinical condition, hypoxia and chest X-ray changes improved dramatically on oral steroids. The clinical diagnosis was pneumonitis secondary to recent influenza vaccination.” https://pmj.bmj.com/content/74/875/541…
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“Acute respiratory failure with diffuse pulmonary opacities is an unusual manifestation following influenza vaccination. We report herein a patient with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease who developed fever with worsening of respiratory symptoms and severe hypoxemia requiring ventilatory support shortly after influenza vaccination. Bronchoalveolar lavage was compatible with acute eosinophilic pneumonia. Rapid clinical improvement was observed 2 weeks after systemic corticosteroid treatment, followed by radiographic improvement at 4 weeks. No disease recurrence was observed at the 6-month follow-up.” https://www.sciencedirect.com/…/artic…/pii/S120197121401515X
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“A 74-year-old man who received seasonal influenza vaccination at a clinic developed fever and cough the following morning. He was referred to our hospital on the 5th day after vaccination because of bilateral pulmonary infiltration shadows on a chest X-ray film. Despite the administration of sulbactam/ampicillin and roxithromycin after admission, his symptoms did not improve. His bronchoalveolar lavage fluid (BALF) obtained by bronchoscopy on the 8th hospital day revealed a CD4/CD8 ratio of 6.8, 109 x 10(4)/ml, and 39% and 16% increases in lymphocyte fractions and eosinophil levels, respectively. Transbronchial lung biopsy showed organizing pneumonia. A drug-induced lymphocyte stimulation test (DLST) for seasonal influenza vaccine with BALF showed 210% of seasonal influenza (S.I). These results indicate that this vaccine caused pneumonitis with a hypersensitive reaction, according to drug-induced lung injury criteria.” https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21066861?dopt=Abstract
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“Our findings suggest that clinicians should be aware of the possibility of interstitial pneumonia as a complication of the influenza vaccine, ask closed questions about vaccination in medical interviews, and educate patients about this com- plication, as these will facilitate early detection and treat- ment. Although the safety of this vaccine has been con- firmed, relatively newer drugs warrant further investigation to confirm their association with interstitial pneumonia.” https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/…/56/2/56_56.7239/_pdf/-char/en
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Heart problems and ground glass opacities after flu shot: https://www.accjournal.org/upload/pdf/acc-2017-00045.pdf
Y’know, Giblertimmitzidupree, it would be a lot fucking better it you could stick to one pseudonym.
[…] Narad on Blaming the flu vaccine for the COVID-19 outbreak: The latest antivaccine misinformation […]
Is anyone anywhere doing any research about virus sufferers, mortality rates and flu vaccine recipients?
When H1N1 blew through our area, our whole family got it but we had a shorter duration and milder symptoms than many others were having despite several of us having asthma and other immune issues. We had received our flu vaccines a few months before that H1N1 flu came through our area.
If healthcare officials were to document each positive tested person as to whether they got the flu vaccine for this year or not, we might be able to see if it confers any/enough cross immunity to make symptoms be milder and not likely to be deadly. It would maybe answer the question as to why some seemingly low risk, younger, healthy people are getting this virus and dying and others are not; many younger people eschew getting the flu vaccine.
If we found that it did confer that kind of life-saving cross immunity, we could start vaccinating everyone that has not been vaccinated. And vaccinating people this fall could also help when the covid-19 comes back then.
Surely it would be worth asking that simple question of every person that tests positive.
Is anyone anywhere doing any research about virus sufferers, mortality rates and flu vaccine recipients?
When H1N1 blew through our area, our whole family got it but we had a shorter duration and milder symptoms than many others were having despite several of us having asthma and other immune issues. We had received our flu vaccines a few months before that H1N1 flu came through our area.
If healthcare officials were to document each positive tested person as to whether they got the flu vaccine for this year or not, we might be able to see if it confers any/enough cross immunity to make symptoms be milder and not likely to be deadly. It would maybe answer the question as to why some seemingly low risk, younger, healthy people are getting this virus and dying and others are not; young people tend to eschew getting flu vaccines.
If we found that it did confer that kind of life-saving cross immunity, we could start vaccinating everyone that has not been vaccinated. And vaccinating people this fall could also help when the covid-19 comes back then.
Surely it would be worth asking that simple question of every person that tests positive.
Wow. You FAR LEFT WOKIES are amazing……..so brainwashed. As soon as I read the word “anti-vaxx and conspiracy” I knew I was on a site full of fact less FAR LEFT brainwashed nutbars……..
Go get educated. Dr Fauci is a Gates controlled criminal thug…….yeah yeah “look at this douchebag. He must be a Trump supporter” Right? Fine….stay brainwashed and stupid then…..
http://plaguethebook.com/
Your time might be better spent telling Heckenlively and Mikovits that their site is broken.
Curious about thoughts on this Canadian study…https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.1000258
Aside from its being very old news and apropos of nothing? No, not really.
[…] that the influenza vaccine increases the risk of contracting COVID-19 (a conspiracy theory that appeared very early in the pandemic, as did the false claim that SARS-CoV-2 arose as a result of a failed SARS vaccine or as a failed […]
[…] Blaming the flu vaccine for the COVID-19 outbreak: The latest antivaccine misinformation […]
[…] a laboratory, that 5G made people susceptible to the virus, that those who get the flu vaccine are more likely to become seriously ill from coronavirus, or even that glyphosate and e-cigs are to blame for […]
[…] designed to provide a pretext for authoritarian control, or that the flu vaccine predisposes people to COVID-19. Basically, COVID-19 has been a magnet for medical conspiracy theories, which is why antivaxxers […]
[…] designed to provide a pretext for authoritarian control, or that the flu vaccine predisposes people to COVID-19. Basically, COVID-19 has been a magnet for medical conspiracy theories, which is why antivaxxers […]