Antivaxxers have long opposed vaccine mandates of any kind, but in particularly they’ve always despised school vaccine mandates. During the pandemic, this opposition predictably resulted in spillover to opposition to vaccine mandates for health care workers or by any private company, whether mandated by government or decided upon by a private entity. What a lot of people who only started paying attention to the antivaccine movement since it became impossible to ignore during the pandemic often appear unaware of is that this opposition to vaccine mandates is nothing new, nor should the spillover have been unexpected. Indeed, being “anti-mandate” been a feature of the antivaccine movement since long before I ever started paying attention. The endgame of the antivaccine movement has always been the elimination of all vaccine mandates, including school vaccine mandates Indeed, going back to before the pandemic, I’ve warned for a long time that the endgame of the antivaccine movement is the elimination of all vaccine mandates of any kind, be the mandate for school or daycare, healthcare workers, or workers of any kind. They want all such mandates gone, so that their “freedom” is not impacted, and they don’t even have to go to the minor difficulty (in most states) of obtaining a personal belief exemption.
I was reminded of this history earlier this month, when, while doing what I’ve done for nearly two decades and perusing the dark underbelly of antivaccine social media in order to keep an eye on what the opposition is doing, I naturally happened upon Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Children’s Health Defense website. Given RFK Jr.’s prominence in the antivaccine movement since 2005, CHD is, of course, a mandatory stop on any tour of antivax websites. On Friday, CHD published an article under the byline of The Defender Staff (the news part of CHD is referred to as The Defender) titled “A COVID Silver Lining? More Parents Than Ever Questioning ‘Routine’ Childhood Vaccines“, rejoicing over the “spillover” of distrust from COVID-19 vaccines to all childhood vaccines, with a blurb that read:
Children and teen vaccination rates began plummeting with the onset of the pandemic, and as concerns surfaced around the safety of COVID-19 vaccines, some parents also began questioning the need for the long list of other vaccines recommended by public health officials.
As you might imagine, RFK Jr. and his band of antivaxxers think it’s a good thing that the suspicion of COVID-19 vaccines is metastasizing to long-used childhood vaccines, such as MMR, the polio vaccine, and all the other vaccines on the childhood vaccination schedule recommended by the CDC. I’ll discuss this more in a moment, but first, let’s look at the facts.
The price of spillover: Declining childhood vaccination rates endanger children
Declining childhood vaccination rates since the pandemic first hit are indeed a problem. Early on, this decline was due to closure of pediatrics and family practice clinics for routine medical care other than emergencies. As noted in Science last month:
In what UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell called a “red alert,” childhood vaccination rates in many countries worldwide have dropped to the lowest level since 2008, in part because of the COVID-19 pandemic. UNICEF and the World Health Organization together track inoculations against diphtheria, pertussis, and tetanus—which are administered as one vaccine—as a marker for vaccination coverage overall. In 2021, only 81% of children worldwide received the recommended three doses of the combined vaccine, down from 86% in 2019. As a result, some 25 million children remain insufficiently protected against the three dangerous diseases.
The majority of children who missed vaccines were in underdeveloped countries, but the US was not immune, its childhood vaccination rate having fallen as well, as the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) warned earlier this month in an article titled “How distrust of childhood vaccines could lead to more breakouts of preventable diseases“:
The latest data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) show that most of those children have since gotten their shots. However, the national childhood vaccination rate among kindergarteners declined by 1%, from 95% in 2019 to 94% in 2021.
“One percent may sound like nothing, but it’s not nothing … when you put it in terms of number of doses or kids,” says Kelly Whitener, JD, an associate professor at the Georgetown University McCourt School of Public Policy’s Center for Children and Families.
According to CDC data, approximately 211,000 kindergarteners did not have all required vaccines in 2021, compared with about 201,000 in 2019, even with 2021 enrollment down by 10%.
Before the pandemic, antivaxxers loved to point to numbers like a 94% childhood vaccination rate overall and ask why doctors were so concerned over a “minor” decline. I’d point out that community/herd immunity requires a high vaccination rate for very transmissible diseases (e.g., measles). More importantly, averaging out the vaccination rate for large areas (such as the whole country or individual states) can mask much larger declines clustered in communities where parents with a high degree of vaccine hesitancy tend to cluster. Those communities with much lower vaccination rates than the surrounding area can then serve as foci of outbreaks of vaccine-preventable diseases.
We saw this very dynamic at play the year before the pandemic, when measles outbreaks were reported in a number of places in the US. The most famous of these outbreaks, however, occurred in the Orthodox Jewish communities in New York, specifically in Brooklyn and Rockland County. The Brooklyn Orthodox Jewish community, it turns out, has been a hotbed of vaccine hesitancy for a long time, having suffered a rather large outbreak in 2013, when an unvaccinated adolescent returned from London and brought measles with them. In 2019, the Orthodox communities in Rockland County and Brooklyn suffered more outbreaks of measles as a result of low vaccine uptake promoted by antivaccine misinformation targeted at them from outsiders like Del Bigtree and an antivaccine rabbi named Hillel Handler. In 2019, much of the misinformation was being spread in a very “old school” manner, in the form of a 40-page handbook called “The Vaccine Safety Handbook” published by a group called Parents Educating and Advocating for Children’s Health, or PEACH. These days, the misinformation is spreading on Telegram and in WhatsApp groups.
Here’s a blast from that past, just to give you an idea:
As I wrote last November, the very same communities were being targeted with misinformation about COVID-19 and COVID-19 vaccines. I also hasten to add that the antivaccine activism in these particular Orthodox communities is not typical; in my state, for instance, Orthodox religious authorities have a history of working with public health officials to encourage vaccination in their communities.
My point is not so much to focus on this particular group—I could easily focus on a number of other communities targeted by antivaccine misinformation)—other than as a convenient example to illustrate that history matters, and when childhood vaccination rates fall slightly in the US overall there is a risk that they’ll fall a lot in areas like Rockland County and Brooklyn. For example, remember that case of polio in the US that made the news last month? Guess where it occurred? You guessed it: Rockland County, where an unvaccinated 20-year-old man was hospitalized in June for paralytic polio.
The story is complicated by the finding that the man had developed polio from the vaccine-derived strain used in the oral polio vaccine (OPV), which has not been used in the US in over 20 years because in rare cases the attenuated (weakened) polio virus used for the vaccine can recombine to become a disease-causing form. However, the risk is low (As Scott Gavura noted recently, in 10 years during which 10 billion doses of OPV were administered, fewer than 800 cases of vaccine-derived paralytic polio were reported, and the injected version of the polio vaccine protects against vaccine-derived polio.) and in impoverished areas the OPV has many advantages, including being much cheaper and easier to administer. Again, without getting lost in the weeds, the point is that if vaccine uptake declines as a result of increased distrust of childhood vaccines due to fear of COVID-19 vaccines, we’re likely to see the first outbreaks in communities that have historically had a low degree of confidence in childhood vaccines and health authorities.
That is, of course, a feature, not a bug, of antivaccine messaging; indeed, as I pointed out a couple of months ago, “new school” anti-COVID-19 vaccine antivaxxers are sounding more and more like “old school” antivaxxers when it comes to childhood vaccines, and that is not a good thing.
Spillover of vaccine distrust: “A silver lining”?
Unsurprisingly, where you and I (and anyone who supports science-based medicine) see an alarming trend, RFK Jr. and his antivax minions see a “silver lining”. In the article, The Defender Staff starts out by recounting how childhood vaccine uptake fell dramatically in 2020 all over the world and how, contrary to what was expected, it has not yet rebounded to prepandemic levels. Naturally, since I’m a native Michigander and have lived in Michigan since 2008 after having returned to my home state after a 20-year sojourn away for residency, PhD studies, fellowship, and my first academic job, this passage caught my attention more than any other in RFK Jr.’s recounting of “spillover” vaccine hesitancy from COVID-19 vaccines and is also part of the reason why, when I saw this article, I knew I had to write about it:
When Michigan compared its 2020 vaccination data against the 2016-2019 period, it found vaccination coverage had declined in “all milestone age cohorts, except for birth-dose hepatitis B coverage.”
At this juncture, state officials are openly speculating that COVID-19 shots — thus far rejected by the parents of 97% of under-5-year-olds — are the reason parents are increasingly ambivalent about childhood vaccination more generally.
Referring to this “spillover doubt,” a Michigander public health spokesperson said parents who once accepted childhood vaccination without question are now saying, “Wait a minute. Do I really need these vaccines?” and asking, “How are these vaccines made?”
According to another Michigan official, “vaccination” — the “V-word” — has become a “trigger word” for irate parents who believe government not only overstepped its authority during COVID-19 but is fraudulently pushing unsafe vaccines on their little ones.
To expand on the issue of antivaccine misinformation spillover being celebrated by RFK Jr in Michigan, let’s look at one of its citations, a Bridge Michigan article from four weeks ago:
At the LMAS health department in the Upper Peninsula, a social media post about an “immunization” clinic prompted one resident to accuse the health department of sneaking COVID vaccines in among other routine childhood shots, said Kerry Ott, department spokesperson.
Vaccination opponents have “gained new members because of COVID,” she said.
Ott said “vaccination” is now considered a “trigger word” among those who feel the government overstepped its authority during COVID or who have doubts about vaccines developed to combat the virus.
“I wasn’t expecting to be accused of trying to vaccinate people with the COVID vaccine and telling them that it’s polio,” Ott said. “There is a solid wall of people that are not going to budge from believing these conspiracy theories, and I have not found a way to even open a conversation with folks on that side (and) behind that line.”
Again, antivaccine misinformation is always rooted in conspiracy theories, just like all science denial.
It’s not just Michigan, either. In April, POLITICO published a story describing how COVID-19 vaccine distrust is spilling over to childhood vaccines, with public health officials in ten states reporting that they are concerned about an increasing number of families. Also, consistent with what I’ve been writing here and elsewhere, the manner in which antivaxxers over the last decade have increasingly made their messages to the general public (as opposed to their social media messaging to hardcore antivaxxers) about “freedom” and “parental rights” more than specific claims of vaccine harms has paid off spectacularly since COVID-19 hit:
Parents who were hesitant to vaccinate their children before the pandemic have now been joined by people who think the government mishandled the crisis, see Covid-19 vaccine mandates as federal overreach, or are exposed to misinformation about childhood vaccinations, said Rupali Limaye, professor of International Health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
“You get a decline in trust towards your government, and people looking for other sources to inform their decision-making process,” she said. “So they go to social media, [where] misinformation is outpacing evidence-based information.”
Immunization advocates say it was easier to bat down spurious claims that drove pre-pandemic hesitancy, such as that vaccines cause autism. But it’s harder to push back against an argument about personal freedom from government mandates.
“I would have told you in April 2020 that that was going to actually be our moment to turn the anti-vaccine tide,” said Melissa Wervey Arnold, CEO of the Ohio Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics. “Unfortunately, instead, the freedom movement took over.”
I noted early in the pandemic how rapidly antivaxxers so quickly joined the more general reaction against public health interventions designed to slow the spread of COVID-19 and right wing conspiracy theorists (including QAnon). I even predicted that this confluence would spread to distrust of all childhood vaccines, having noted that a decade ago antivax ideology was shifting to become more and more tightly associated with far right wing politics, even as popular culture still mistakenly viewed antivax beliefs as more associated with the hippy-dippy crunchy left and the “progressive” RFK Jr. was openly cavorting with far right wing movements and outright fascist groups were more and more aligning themselves with antivaxxers. Basically, what was once an ideology that spanned right and left (and tended to be more associated with the left) long ago started becoming much more associated with right-wing antigovernment, anti-regulation ideologies. Obviously, I consider this a very dangerous development, while antivaxxers like RFK Jr. are rejoicing.
RFK Jr. and minions recount a number of antivax conspiracy theories as factual and, instead of being misinformation, as very much justifiable reasons for parents to be suspicious of vaccines. I won’t cite them all, other than to point out that they include the misuse of the Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS), a frequent topic on this blog recently and dating to back before the pandemic; the false claim that vaccines cause sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS), which they don’t; a related claim that there was a large drop in SIDS early in the pandemic because infants were missing routine vaccines (also not true); false claims that unvaccinated children are much healthier than vaccinated children (also definitely not true); and more.
Again, the point is not so much to refute each bit of misinformation being firehosed in this article, most of which has been discussed at one time or another on this very blog, but rather to point out that, as predicted, the antivaccine misinformation, disinformation, and conspiracy theories about COVID-19 vaccines are inevitably spilling over to all vaccines. Naturally, RFK Jr. is ecstatic, quoting an antivaccine doctor whose attention whoring apparently worked to get the attention of CHD’s staff:
Which is where the “silver lining” comes in, in which RFK Jr.’s crew pivots to “natural health”:
Sadly, whatever temporary or longer-lasting silver lining may have emerged from the COVID-19-induced lull in childhood vaccination, children and their parents still face many challenges.
According to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study, the weight status of children and adolescents who were already overweight or obese worsened significantly during 2020, and children’s food insecurity is rising both domestically and internationally.
In addition, the massive social and behavioral changes commanded through government restrictions have prompted dire headlines about young people’s mental health — although experts caution these could counterproductively lead to overdiagnosis and overmedication with black-box-warning drugs known to cause violence and suicide.
Rather than more vaccines or drugs that have never delivered on their hype or promises, what children and youth need to thrive are the slower-but-surer public health fundamentals— such as solid nutrition, safe housing and economic security — and the loving attention of their parents.
Does anyone want to guess what that last part about “health fundamentals” is about before clicking on the link? (No cheating if you’ve already clicked on the link!) The link goes to an article on CHD citing a low quality ecological analysis in India that concludes that sanitation and nutrition do more to prevent vaccine-preventable diseases than vaccines do. (Remember what I’ve written about how easily the ecological fallacy can mislead in epidemiology going back something like 14 years?) The study claims to find that a “one percentage point increase in households with toilets corresponds with 0.33 fewer measle cases per 1000” for children under five. Given that measles is a highly transmissible respiratory disease, it doesn’t even make sense that more toilets and better sanitation would have much of an effect on measles transmission, certainly not more than the MMR vaccine. Going along with that is something not mentioned by CHD, namely that no such association was observed for diphtheria, pertussis, or tetanus, given that diphtheria and pertussis are, like measles, both also diseases transmitted through respiration.
COVID-19 distrust metastasizes
Unfortunately, CHD is not incorrect about one thing, namely that distrust of COVID-19 vaccines is indeed spilling over to infect public attitudes about routine childhood vaccination. The AAMC notes, as I did above, that the first effects will likely be seen in areas with traditionally low uptake of vaccines, but, thanks to the fusion of right-wing messaging equating vaccine mandates with assaults on “freedom”, I fear that it likely won’t just be there for long.
According to AAMC:
In addition to pockets of vaccine hesitancy among likeminded communities, the U.S. has also seen an uptick in vaccine distrust in certain regions of the country. In Texas, for example, conscientious exemptions have increased from 0.45% of K-12 students in the 2010-2011 school year to 2.7% in the 2021-2022 school year, according to data from the Texas Department of State Health Services. For private schools, the vaccine exemption rate for the last school year was 4.23%, but some schools report even higher rates. One private school in Travis County, Texas, had 43% of its student population exempt from at least one vaccine, while nearly 50 schools recorded more than 10% of their student populations with exemptions.
Of course, Texas has a long history of resistance to vaccine mandates due to vaccine resistance being conflated with “freedom”. Indeed, in 2016 I observed that when the next big outbreaks of vaccine-preventable diseases happen, they’ll probably happen in Texas, a point I reiterated in 2019. (Also remember that a decade ago the Texas Republican Party included planks in its party platform opposing vaccine mandates and supporting the teaching of creationism in schools; again, the affinity between the far right and antivaccine beliefs is, contrary to what so many of the intelligentsia seem to think, not new.) If anything, events have made me think that I was correct, although I would also add Florida, Idaho, and a number of other states with high levels of COVID-19 conspiracism in the public discourse to that list.
I also fear that these predictions by Drs. Paul Offit and Rupali Lamaye are correct:
In many ways, he worries that there is little that scientists can do to reverse the trend of vaccine distrust.
“Academic institutions can answer scientific questions … [but] the majority aren’t [refusing vaccines] because there’s a specific scientific concern,” Offit says. “The data are there; the issue is this cultural issue” of distrusting the government and federal mandates.
Rupali Lamaye, PhD, MPH, deputy director of the International Vaccine Access Center at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, also believes that there will be repercussions down the road to continued resistance to vaccines.
“I think this is going to be our future for a bit. We’re going to continue to see outbreaks,” she says. “We’ve lost too much trust over the pandemic.”
There was a time years ago when I naïvely believed that a major outbreak of a vaccine-preventable disease would bring the vaccine-hesitant and antivaxxers back to seeing the value of vaccination and the misinformation that claimed that they caused so much harm and didn’t work. I had learned long before the pandemic how naïve I had been, as I witnessed outbreak after outbreak leading antivaxxers to double down. Then came COVID-19, killing over a million people in the US alone and likely tens of millions worldwide, which not only didn’t dampen antivaccine misinformation but rather turbocharged it beyond anything I had ever seen before in my nearly quarter of a century paying attention to the antivaccine movement.
If there’s one thing that the pandemic has shown about antivaccine beliefs and science denial, it’s that the information deficit model of distrust of science, which posits that science denial can be reversed by providing accurate information (i.e., that good information is enough to chase away bad information) is very much lacking. When a belief becomes embedded in an ideology that is core to a person’s self-identity, as distrust of vaccines has for so many, it is incredibly difficult to combat. Indeed, I’ve likened it to changing a person’s politics or religion, because, when you come right down to it, it’s a lot like that. That’s not to say that debunking can’t work. It can and does. It’s just that providing “good information” to counter “bad information” is in most cases not enough. Think of it this way: Does just providing accurate information about evolution affect the beliefs of creationists, whose beliefs are nearly always based on their religious beliefs? Usually not. Promoting good science is important, but it is not enough.
Unfortunately, there is a reason why antivaxxers are rejoicing.
149 replies on “Antivaxxers rejoice over the spillover of distrust of COVID-19 vaccines to all vaccines”
Outstanding article!
The way this works, giving an example of a mom who previously was disinterested in vaccines and thought of them as “scheduled shots”, is something like this
The mom was hesitant about the newfangled “Covid vaccine” and the way it was presented and developed
She has an uncle who is a conspiracy theorist and says that Sars-Cov-2 is lab made and was released to force Covid vaccine on everyone
She does not want the vaccine
She is forced to take it due to “mandate” to avoid losing her job
She experiences months of headaches/messed up periods/heart problems/circulation problems/etc
Then she gets Covid, then another Covid, then another, develops long Covid problems and blames the vaccine
Her unvaxxed conspiracy theorist uncle, meanwhile, had Covid only once and no long Covid
At this point the ignorant mom thinks that she got scammed with the “Covid vaccine”.
She thinks, purely due to ignorance and shattered faith in science, that Covid vaccine promoters are charlatans.
Her next realization is that the “charlatans” who forced her to take the Covid vaccine, are the same people who are promoting other vaccines for her kids.
At this point this mother becomes a foaming at the mouth antivaxxer! Shares everything she can on Facebook and Twitter.
Then this ignorant mommy has her Facebook and Twitter accounts deleted for misinformation.
This only hardens her misguided resolve, she opens more accounts, and continues spreading antiscience and antivaccine propaganda online and to all her friends.
As a result, childhood vaccination rate falls.
Excellent reply. I was going to point out some of the absurd inconsistencies permeating Orac’s lamentation here and was having a hard time choosing. Now I don’t have to. Blatant fraud masquerading as “science” engenders mistrust. It’s that simple. The first step to restoring trust would be to stop lying.
You still think that if somebody get COVID, everybody will. Consider the probability of geting COVID.
There are some anomalies I’ve observed concerning Covid vaccination in areas that I’m familiar with and have tracked for Covid rates and vaccination rates throughout the pandemic- often using Mayo’s site ( although their vaccine tracker section on current vaccination is no longer attached. I can find other sites)
— Rockland, bordering Bergen and Brooklyn have had very high rates of vaccination for Covid and usually few vaccine exemptions for school children. Orthodox communities- who frequently have their own schools- are an exception and they are a target for anti-vaxxers. RFK jr also targets Black communities in NYC.
— Marin and Sonoma have also had very high rates for Covid vaccines but have a history of vaccine hesitancy / refusal for children.
Covid rates have improved over time for all of these areas and even when infection rates surge as they did during the past winter, hospital rates were fine.
But now Covid vaccines for children are approved and it seems that parents are not automatically vaccinating the youngest group. I haven’t seen good data on this yet only news reports. I’m not sure about Covid vaccine requirements for school children in these states.
re Texas and Florida:
They are foci of anti-vax:
alties tell followers to move there because they are “free” unlike the places I describe above; a few actually moved there- Adams to Texas, Del to Texas, Null to Texas/ owns an estate in Florida; Mercola and Erin Elizabeth to Florida. Anti-vaxxers who currently live in police states ( RFK jr in CA; Katie Wright in NY, Kim Rossi in Connecticut; that comedian, JP, in CA) complain endlessly. Do we see a pattern here?
I like that photo illustrating Orac’s article which shows RFK Jr. with a sign sprouting out of his head. But it should read “Robert F. Kennedy Jr. – Du Bist Ein Scheissekopf”.
C’mon, Orac! How can you blame ‘antivaxxers’ for getting people to quit vaccination when even Fauci is quitting vaccination. Seriously– how much of the nosedive in faith in vaccination post Covid can be blamed on the shenanigans of the ‘fiendish antivaxxers’ rather than on the simply fact that the damned Covid vaccines just didn’t deliver what was hoped for them?
PS: Orac, what happened to the monkeypox thread? Seems like comments there are caught in a censorship warp.
https://r.search.yahoo.com/_ylt=AwrEr8SgCwRjmO0xYcU5ByI5;_ylu=Y29sbwNiZjEEcG9zAzEEdnRpZAMEc2VjA3Nj/RV=2/RE=1661238304/RO=10/RU=https%3a%2f%2fnationalpost.com%2fnews%2ffauci-face-of-u-s-covid-response-to-step-down-from-government-posts/RK=2/RS=6jbKhfVIafo7PWK3oPXjU56Ky.k-
That literally is the worst attempt at providing a link that I’ve ever seen in my life. Way past past anything that emerged from alt.fan.warlord.
It is not that bad; It shows how he got there. Showing and telling is a good thing. That is an informative URL. H8tr.
Hey Ralph, why are you here? Are you actually interested in science or are you just a troll like Greg?
My bet is that you don’t know why you’re here.
It was good. All the sites to show what ‘greg’ went through to post that link is contantained in the link.
As an aside, an uncle called. He was on death’s door and marginmetallurgy recoverd fr-om death’s door. He was only single vaxxed. It wears out.
I am ‘triple’ (two and one booster) but right on the margin of ‘that age’.
Should I get it now or wait for the maderna one specific to the new variants which also covers all the old ones?
@jjay fuck scientificicistist
“He was only single vaxxed”
My bad. I tralked to him today and he had the same 3 as I (two shots and one ‘booster’). He sounded awful diggity plus ungood.
I’m pretty sure I’ve never been exposed because of the nature of my respirator (HEPA). So, again, should I get boosted or wait for the new one?? The shots really knock me out for a couple days and I feel bad.
@Greg
The Consortium considers your perfumance subpar and suggest that you come into the office or take a pay cut for stayin in the closet.
It got you to respond, didn’t it? Thus feeding the Gerg its sought-after narc food. That’s all it wants, just a little attention.
Don’t start up with me — over a year’s worth of back pain has left me short tempered, and the last time you wandered around scolding people, it accomplished nothing.
Fauci is a 81 year old man. Time to call it a day.
Singapore Health ministry still publishes data about ICU addmissions per vaccination status:
https://www.moh.gov.sg/
Check the data.
Aarno, I suppose the key word is ‘still’. Seems like a lot of places are having a change of heart where that is concerned.
https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/vaccinated-higher-risk-dying-covid-vaccine-canadian-province-manitoba/
Boosters helped, though. Robert Kennedy Jr did not mention theee.
Why do you constantly refer to the covid shot as a “vaccine”? It clearly is notaccine, since it confers zero protection from infection….your cult leaders fauci and Biden have proven that fact….both fully “vaccinated”, yet both got covid. That’s not how “vaccines” work. I have little doubt you will respond with a pithy, sarcastic, put down about how “vaccines” help the immune system fight an infectious invader, and not getting infected isn’t the main objective of a vaccine.
Save yer breath. Such response is hogwash. Vaccines, if they work, halt infection. The covid “vaccines” don’t do that, and thus, are not vaccines, period. So all the BS about “anti Vaxers” is moot. The static is about the fact it is a poorly tested big pharma prep, that is not a vaccine, and, is of dubious benefit when it comes to one being infected by covid .
Um, no. Vaccines are intended to keep you from getting sick from an infection, and COVID-19 vaccines are still very good at that, even if their ability to prevent infection has declined because of the appearance of the Delta and Omicron variants. Just because you don’t understand what a vaccine is (and is not) does not mean that COVID-19 vaccines don’t work.
As I am recovering from Covid, I’m very glad I got vaccinated and boosted. Considering my age and several risk factors (including asthma) for severe disease, it’s highly likely that vaccination enabled me to have a mild course rather than ending up in the hospital.
I consider it a success. I like to continue breathing.
Technically, you are correct…vaccines don’t mean it is impossible to get the target disease. But, given the success rate of many common vaccines in preventing the target disease…e.g. mumps, rubella, tetnus, rabies, etc, etc, etc, it is mighty hard to say the covid vax is similar.
The entire narrative about the covid vax assumes it prevents serious illness…but, my experience tells me such absolute pronouncements are quite dubious. I have yet to see a single, clear, peer reviewed study that shows infection outcomes, based on vaccination status, and demographic and pre-existing condition characteristics. If you have links to any such studies, I would be most interested. I am talking about a study that would consider a population that had as near identical characteristics, and, based on vax status, indicate the trajectory of illness….and, clearly show unvaxed, faired worse. All we hear from the propaganda is the automatic line that vax prevents serious illness, but, where is the proof?
As I said, my experience of others navigating covid paints a much more nuanced picture. I am in 60s, had 2 doses of Pfizer. No boosters. 15 months after I got vaccine, I got covid…and was reasonably uncomfortable for 12 days….not seriously so….was that due to vax? Who knows. Daughter in unvaxed, has had covid 2x, and was mildly ill for less than 4 days..her first illness was the original covid. I have many friends my age that are unvaxed…we live.in NYC, btw, and none of take precautions…none, literally none, of my unvaxed friends over 60 have had symptomatic covid. The list goes on….I see nearly everyone I know getting mild cases, vaxed or not. Wife had covid during original outbreak…she has serious health issues…still had a mild case, recovered in 2 weeks. So, from where I sit, the propaganda doesn’t seem to add up.
People are fed up with the propaganda because it has been unrelentingly confused, wrong, and, ultimately rests on a “believe or you are an idiot” as one of your minions commented to me with characteristic insight and balance as is typical of the minions that “believe” on this site.
People that think and ask real questions are not antivax….I am one. I would never say not to get vaccines that clearly work. The covid shot is not among those vaccines, unless one can point to the evidence…so, please provide if you have any such evidence.
If you are “not antivax,” why, then, are you repeating common antivax tropes about COVID-19 vaccines? No, seriously. Your “nuance” consists largely of anecdotes over data, claims that it’s all “propaganda,” appeals to personal incredulity based on an unfamiliarity with the data and scientific literature even as synthesized through the lay press, and claims of “persecution” (at least in the form of being called an “idiot”). I mean, how many studies would you like that demonstrate that COVID-19 vaccines prevent hospitalization and death? (They do prevent transmission, too, just not nearly as well as they did before the rise of the Delta and Omicron variants.) You’ve even given the game away with the conditions you insist on for the studies you will consider. You’re not interested in carefully considering them. You’re looking in advance for reasons to discount them.
This is not my first rodeo.
You replied with pronouncements, but no evidence. Anecdotes may not be proof, but if first-hand experience contradicts your unsupported claims, why would you expect anyone to blindly accept them? The validity of a “scientific theory” rests in its predictive capability. If your “science” fails to predict real-world outcomes, it can and should be questioned.
You give yourself away every time you deride demands for credible support. Particularly telling is the persistent knee-jerk denial of the relevance of safety concerns. (a) Long-term safety data can’t exist by definition (is it even being collected?), so any concern on that basis is 100% valid. (b) Short- to medium-term safety signals are routinely dismissed as invalid by fiat. That isn’t how “science” works, and the use of these tactics exposes your claim to be “evidence-based” as a sham. “Faith-based” would be more accurate.
I sense that it’s not worth investigating what “scientific theory” is supposed in play. Here, lazybones.
I know from your history that you are clueless, intentionally or naturally, but: if there is no verification of a “first hand experience” it is an anecdote.
And Anecdotes may not be proof is pure crap: anecdotes are not data and are not proof.
@Chaos Infusion Long term safety data about vaccines generally do exist, if vaccine has been used long time,like measles vaccine.
Your only proof that vaccines do not work is that you yourself did get COVID ? Do you understand procents ? Vaccines are not 100 % effective. That does not mean that they are 0% effective.
Do Google Scholar search for papers you asked for, with terms COVID vaccine efficacy.
No paper, of course, claimed 100% efficacy, but numbers were quite good.
What pseudonym were you using then?
I offer Zeek full encouragement as he ventures down the road of ‘anticcinationism’. Yet, does this not prove that he still has a long way to go?
Zeek, how much of that is true, or can be explained by cloudy vision — and a great deal of it assisted– in that we were just not paying as much attention as we are now with Covid vaccination.
Congenital rubella synome has gone. No amount of attention change this fact.
Tetanus vaccine does nothing to put down an infection. The vaccine elicits antibodies against the toxin produced by Clostridium tetani. Because C. tetani is an obligate anaerobe and establishing anerobic conditions at the site of infection takes some time, there is typically good opportunity for memory B cells to crank out antibodies before the production of toxin gets to dangerous levels. This is also why a tetanus booster is useful after exposure.
Vaccine, primes your immune system to fight infection. So in order for the immune system to fight infection, it needs an infection to fight. That’s it’s job. The ultimate goal is prevent serious illness and/or death. As you point out, Fauci and Biden contracted covid…but they aren’t seriously ill, nor are they dead….looks like a good result. I am not a medical professional, but even I understand that.
For Orac, am I right in saying there are very few vaccines that prevent infection, ie sterilising immunity?
“That’s not how “vaccines” work.”
Tell us you have no clue about vaccines using different words — oh, wait, you just did. Idiot.
We have exactly one vaccine for a human viral disease that is considered to elicit long lasting immunity considered to be sufficient to prevent infection. Even then no one is entirely certain that it does because it is an exceedingly difficult thing to evaluate. It’s the HPV vaccine.
It used to be thought that the measles vaccine resulting in long term protection against infection. But it has been shown that vaccinated people exposed to measles often produces spikes of antibodies which wouldn’t happen without infection.
Neither of the polio vaccines results in long lasting protection against infection. But the vast majority of polio infections are asymptomatic even in the unvaccinated, so a vaccinated person who got infected likely wouldn’t even notice. Both vaccines result in long lasting good protection against severe disease – neuroinvasion by the virus.
That’s because they’re in children. What do you suppose is the reason that adults with likely exposure are limited to one lifetime IPV dose?
For polio vaccine, this paper:
Böttiger M. Polio immunity to killed vaccine: an 18-year follow-up. Vaccine. 1990 Oct;8(5):443-5. doi: 10.1016/0264-410x(90)90244-g. PMID: 2251870.
Hint:immunity has still there
For measles,there is this one:
Francesco Paolo Bianchi, Pasquale Stefanizzi, Sara De Nitto, Angela Maria Vittoria Larocca, Cinzia Germinario, Silvio Tafuri, Long-term Immunogenicity of Measles Vaccine: An Italian Retrospective Cohort Study, The Journal of Infectious Diseases, Volume 221, Issue 5, 1 March 2020, Pages 721–728, https://doi.org/10.1093/infdis/jiz508
Long term studies are avaiable,if you look.
As you may have noticed, it’s been quiet around here since the trolls departed for their summer vacation last week (although I see that some are now returning to work). No, not the same vacation since they do don’t get along with each other, or anyone else for that matter. I’ll take this opportunity to use you as a focus group for a movie script I’ve been working on. It’s on topic to this article. Once the script is written there should have no trouble getting a studio to sign up.
Short Alphabetic Sequence Entertainment (ltd) presents: Junior Park
Background: In the distant future, the anti-vaxx battles of the early 21st century have long passed. As a result of great advances in the biological sciences and a science-literate population, all VPDs have been eliminated worldwide and on our colony worlds. Many diseases have been completely eradicated, and those with non-human reservoirs have universally effective vaccines. Vaccines for the inevitable newly emergent microbes can be developed by artificial intelligence almost overnight and globally distributed within days. VPD are in no one’s living memory and that’s with modern life extension technology.
The dimly-understood history of disease and vaccines proves to be a weakness among our descendants. Nostalgia, curiosity and naivete, combined with extraordinary science and technology, proves fatal.
Plot synopsis: Several biologists and geneticists who really ought to know better and have come to possess an obsolete and seemingly worthless library of DNA samples notice that within it are the DNA sequences of notable characters from the distant past. A few dozen of them are names from deceased anti-vaxx activists. Curiosity getting the better of them, they propose and receive funding to clone several of them for behavioral and psychological study, despite no expertise in those fields. There was broad curiosity at what these peculiar people were really like and what drove them to do what they did.
To ensure safety, they used a portion of the funds to build a secure compound within which to clone and house the study’s subjects. In honor of their first cloned celebrity they jokingly named it Junior Park.
At first the experiment proved to be a success. RFKjr proved to an interesting subject and they were entertained and enthralled by the wild claims and rhetoric he expounded. Since the project was publicly funded and there was a clamor to learn what was going on, once they finished their main set of interviews they built a secure public gallery at the compound’s boundary. There interested members of the public could hear him speak and even ask questions, all without risking contact and spoiling the experiment.
To cover their expenses they charged a nominal admittance fee and soon were making so much profit that the experiment paid for itself. The government, quite naturally, encouraged this development since it filled the treasury with an unexpected windfall. While this went on, more luminaries were cloned, interviewed and transitioned to the public stage. Soon they were the #1 hit in the Metaverse(β).
Then disaster struck. While RFKjr was mostly harmless, garnering more laughs than anything else, subject AJW proved more troublesome. His winsome charm and historical accent won him countless fans. The scientists and politicians were slow to realize that he was winning converts, not laughs. People began to believe. The naturalist fallacy meme spread like lighting.
Within a few weeks, many began to refuse vaccines. Within a month there were outbreaks of diseases unknown to modern doctors. They didn’t even realize what they were dealing with. Both contagions spread, the meme and the diseases. A medical system long since rightsized to the low incidence of disease was rapidly overwhelmed. Without the vaccines they were helpless since there was no extant knowledge of cures or symptom management. Then the dying began.
Who will save humanity from this scientific debacle? Can it be saved?
Stay tuned for the sequel: Junior Strikes Back!
(β) Yes, we will be accepting product placements in our production.
@rs
“………………….AJW proved more troublesome. His winsome charm and historical accent won him countless fans. The scientists and politicians were slow to realize that he was winning converts, not laughs. People began to believe. The naturalist fallacy meme spread like lighting”
Remember the saying “lightening never strikes twice”?
Readers may be interested in this article (with link to paper).
“Incorporating a coronavirus antigen into MMR vaccine to produce COVID-19 immunity in kids” Reviewed by Emily Henderson, B.Sc.
https://www.news-medical.net/news/20220727/Incorporating-a-coronavirus-antigen-into-MMR-vaccine-to-produce-COVID-19-immunity-in-kids.aspx
The vaccine hasn’t even reached marketing yet and Andrew Wakefield is saying “it is going to be a disaster”. At least last time around the onslaught occurred in the post marketing phase!
https://twitter.com/ChildrensHD/status/1557050329233072130
What is your point, Wendy? Do you even have one?
@ Jay
The point is that a new MMR vaccine is the pipeline with the C19 antigen incorporated with the Jeryl Lynn strain of mumps. Clearly this is still very much in it’s infancy but Andrew Wakefield is already influencing how it might be viewed by saying it’s going to be a “disaster”. What’s more he relies on what he says were inadequate safety studies and viral interference in respect of the original M,M,R vaccine (s), to support his stance.
What interference? Inadequate safety studies according to whom?
Over twenty years on and it’s a new vaccine but the script remains the same. It’s not even marketed yet, not licensed, not administered as part of an immunisation schedule, ergo no negative feedback, no ADR reports, no negative data but based on a unsubstantiated reference to viral interference and inadequate safety studies with the MMR vaccine, according to Andrew Wakefield “it’s going to be a disaster”!
“rs” got it absolutely right when he said “The scientists and politicians were slow to realize that he was winning converts, not laughs.”
My point is that by refusing to endorse any vaccine other than the MMR (while spreading antivaccine memes), Wendy isn’t all that different from Andrew Wakefield.
Do you recommend vaccinating children with current Covid-19 vaccines? Or adults, for that matter?
@Dangerous Bacon
“while spreading antivaccine memes”………….everyone on here (quite rightly) insists on references so please supply references/examples to support your allegation. (You might want to confer with Joel Harrison on this one as he’s searched for years and failed)
“Wendy isn’t all that different from Andrew Wakefield”…………………….
Given that Joel Harrison has previously advised everyone on here that “Even Wakefield wasn’t really anti-vax” I’m thinking you are either paying me a veiled compliment or you’re becoming a little confused!
RS, your script lost me here as too far-fetched. It’s calling for an impossible amount of suspension of disbelief.
Hmm. Okay, I’ll change “science-literate population” to “mostly science-literate population”.
“As you may have noticed, it’s been quiet around here since the trolls departed for their summer vacation last week (although I see that some are now returning to work).”
Re vaccines, industry trolls are paid to defend and hawk vaccines, not attack them.
Maybe this is just a definitional difference–what do you call the particular people/bots I described, that are paid to defend and hawk vaccines online?
Pharma shill gambit.
Boring.
It might be even more boring to have the antivax trolls around than not to.
So you call them “pharma shills”–close enough, I can live with that label. I thought shill was technically someone who pretends to be a satisfied customer, online or otherwise, but most vax trolls do that I guess.
The pharma shill gambit is one of the oldest, boringest, and least imaginative antivax attacks. I’ve been writing about it since 2005 and might even have been the one to coin the term “pharma shill gambit.”
https://oracknows.blogspot.com/2005/08/pharma-shill-gambit.html
Antivaxxers really aren’t very creative or original.
So, you’re saying that hiring online trolls–one the cheapest and most effective means of persuasion known to man–is not something the pharma industry would ever do? Why–because, although at least arguably legal, it just wouldn’t be ethical?
LOLOLOL.
You’re saying that pharma would bother to hire such trolls for the comments section of a blog with modest traffic where relatively few people actually read the comments, much less contribute to them? That would be a serious waste of money, even for pharma.😂
You think everyone who disagrees with you is paid by pharma ? That would be awful lot of money. Better explanation here is that all your claims are obviously false,
“You think everyone who disagrees with you is paid by pharma ?”
I know for a fact that most vaccine zealots are not paid by anyone–they are suffering from a lifetime of vaccine indoctrination. They just parrot the industry trolls–that’s why the trolls are there.
OK, got it. To Ms. Stoner, everyone who is provaccine must either be a paid-off pharma shill, brainwashed by pharma, or both. How convenient.
@Ginny Stoner Perhaps people who think that vaccines have read actual papers, not a 19th century antivaxxer who thought that most syphilis cases are caused by smallpox vaccination ? He at least had an excuse that the causal agent was not isolated when he wrote.
K, I’ll confess something here; I suspect that the comment section on these blogs are actually more popular than the blogs themselves.
For me, Orac’s propaganda is so predictable that often I can tell what’s coming from the title of his blogs. I just skim through the blogs and immediately jump to the comment section. Seriously, who here is like me and does the same?
You would be wrong. The number of people who comment regularly in the comment section is only a small percentage of the total traffic for any individual article. Of course, you would know this if you ran your own blog. It’s been true as long as I’ve been blogging that only a small percentage of readers actually comment (or even read much of) the comment section. Indeed, the commenters are generally the most engaged readers and, unlike you, the ones most likely to have actually read the whole post.
The relatively small number of readers who are active commenters compared to total blog traffic is also why I find it hilarious when antivaxxers claim that pharma trolls have been paid to promote vaccines in the comments section here, as it would be an extraordinarily inefficient use of propaganda cash given the small size of the audience in the comments.
No, far more people read the posts than engage with the comments. I know because WordPress and Google Analytics tell me so.
“I find it hilarious when antivaxxers claim that pharma trolls have been paid to promote vaccines in the comments section here, as it would be an extraordinarily inefficient use of propaganda cash given the small size of the audience in the comments.”
I find it hilarious that you think there is some kind of significant cost involved, and that the comments of industry trolls here would have little effect.
Just talk to virtually any true vaccine believer–they literally parrot the standard pro-vax propaganda, using the same language, and the same smug condescension toward vaccine heresy seen routinely on this blog, in both the post and comments.
Propaganda is very predictable for the most part, because you can’t reinvent the wheel constantly.
Just talk to virtually any antivax true believer–they literally parrot the standard antivax propaganda, using the same language, and the same smug condescension toward vaccine science discussed routinely on this blog, in both the post and comments.
Propaganda is very predictable for the most part, because you can’t reinvent the wheel constantly.
“Just talk to virtually any antivax true believer–they literally parrot the standard antivax propaganda…”
I agree to some extent. In fact, a lot of the so-called vaccine opposition is really supporting the vaccine industry by controlling the opposition in one way or another. They get all the media attention of course.
@Ginny Stoner Actually an antivaxxer repeat same things. Everything you say has been said before by another antivaxxer…
Actually, Orac, that hypothesis is a testable one. For those interested, please review how far the comments went for the last few threads that myself, Ginny or Labarge did not participate on I believe the evidence will point to a pharma echo chamber as being far more boring.
Be careful what you ask for…seriously.
@ Orac
I assume Greg’s “evidence” is the number of replies tallied at the top of the comments section. I can almost always tell when Ginny/Greg/John have shown up by the size of this number, as many minions seem addicted to playing whack-a-troll, even though they may know these folks are attention hounds and push-back only encourages them. Well, I for one, find these exchanges very boring indeed. I might also question whether the minions actually find countering the BS interesting, as opposed to an onerous (and possibly, yes, kinda boring) duty.
It varies. Sometimes it’s boring but necessary. Sometimes it’s fun.
@ Orac,
I tend to skip the posts of our regular trolls, who often seem to flood some subjects with multiple replies. So they are partly responsible for the higher number of posts. And of course people might love to feed them, because one can’t let them get away with their lies.
re pharma shill gambit, industry trolls
Why would massive, wealthy corporations piddle around paying nearly random, possibly unreliable commenters on websites to hawk products when advertising can reach many more consumers and can be tailored to various audiences of television, radio, websites, social media? And be easily repeated at different places.
A case in point:
Over the past months, I looked up travel related products/ services ( hotels, flights, car rentals, specific locales, parks, restaurants, venues) and am bombarded with loads of adverts for them AND related material. ENDLESSLY.
I know that airlines and hotel chains have money BUT some of the ads are for much smaller companies- both at my destination and home area.
Hmmm. I suspect you would be hard pressed to name a member of the anti-vax public clique who isn’t making money out of being anti-vax. Rather obviously too. So, more of a Shetland pony than a moral high horse.
Orac writes,
“Here’s a blast from that past, just to give you an idea”
MJD accommodates,
Latex in Vaccine Packaging (Appendix B). “Immediate-type allergic reactions due to latex allergy have been described after vaccination, but such reactions are rare. If a person reports a severe anaphylactic allergy to latex, vaccines supplied in vials or syringes that contain natural rubber latex should be avoided if possible. If not, if the decision is made to vaccinate, providers should be prepared to treat immediate allergic reactions due to latex, including anaphylaxis”.
Dry natural rubber latex, a component in some vaccine packaging and delivery systems, contains H brasiliensis allergens that can leach into the vaccine solution causing adverse allergic reactions and possibly behavioral regression in immune-sensitive children. If a parent is concerned about the natural rubber latex allergens in vaccines, safety precautions need to be implemented e.g., request vaccines that state, “Not manufactured with natural rubber latex”.
@ Orac’s minions,
Why does there continue to be dry natural rubber latex in some childhood vaccine delivery systems? Is it profit? Is it apathy?
Here’s an abstract that will be published henceforth:
In immune-sensitive children, repeated exposure to natural rubber latex (hevea brasiliensis proteins) can cause severe allergic manifestations of atopy, increased expression of neurotrophins, increased immunometabolism, hypoxia, cytokine overexpression, anaphylactic shock, and atypical behavioral/cognitive development. Infant products manufactured with natural rubber latex include pacifiers, bottle nipples, teething toys, and vaccines. This review presents FDA and CDC natural rubber latex guidelines and suggests exclusionary measures to decrease the incidence of maladaptive immunity and allergy-induced regressive autism.
Here’s the FDA’s response to a citizen petition I filed in 2007, it took 13 years to get a response:
Citizen Petition Docket No. FDA-2007-P-0243 states that infant products including bottle nipples and pacifiers made from Hevea brasiliensis (Hev-b) natural rubber latex are not required to disclose the protein content of those products. The FDA denied the Petition on July 14, 2020 stating, “The available data indicate that the risk for latex allergy is directly linked to high latex exposures in latex-rich environments like hospitals. Although some studies suggest that atopic infants or children may develop latex sensitization without a history of significant environmental exposure, there is a lack of evidence that this sensitization occurs from lower exposure scenarios, such as the use of latex-contact substances such as bottle nipples. We will continue to monitor this issue to determine what actions if any, should be taken in the future”
MJD’s thoughts,
Dry natural rubber latex, a component in some bottle nipples and pacifiers contains H brasiliensis allergens that may cause adverse allergic reactions and possibly behavioral regression in immune-sensitive children. If a parent is concerned about the natural rubber latex allergens in children’s products, safety precautions need to be implemented e.g., The only way to avoid latex allergy is to prevent any contact with natural rubber latex products.
Stop it with the latex. Just stop it now.
Compromise – Release MJD from auto moderation.
No. In fact, I’m now looking at a number of other antivaxxers who should be in automoderation but, oddly enough, are not. 😉
This lot doesn’t advance the conversation and provides few teaching moments: a little of them goes a long way.
New trolls sometimes do contribute new BS or old BS in new ways. Once or twice.
Also, many of the regulars present anti-vax/ alt med leaders’ and followers’ ideas from their own sites.
“antivaxxers who should be in automoderation”
Please. It’s like the orgy scene from Society in here.
@ Orac,
It took 13 years for the FDA to respond to my citizen petition (Docket No. FDA-2007-P-0243). The response was embarrassing.
@ Orac’s minions,
Let’s take a no confidence vote for the FDA. My hand is raised.
You really have a latex fetish.
To bad I’ve thrown away my latex skirt, I got from a friend a long time ago. Otherwise I could have send it.
There’s an oxymoron.
The COVID19 vaccine discussion turned to the fraud underlying its marketing–so naturally the conversation turned to the fraud underlying the marketing of all vaccination. The premise that vaccines saved humanity from deadly diseases is a fraudulent premise, and its falsity is provable with evidence–no insults or derision required.
How quickly we forget when the pharma industry and it’s captured government regulators are driving the information stream. Remember the flu shots given to millions from 1880-1930–during the 50 years in which the industry claimed Pfeiffer’s bacillus bacteria caused the flu, and their miracle vaccines would prevent it? Neither does 99% of the population.
Ginny Stoned.
Quote ‘ and its falsity is provable with evidence’
Go on then, give us a list of citations, studies etc etc, peer reviewed, not pre print. A few hundred will do (give yourself something to do), especially about your flu shot claim (of which I have had every year, for ten years…..not had bad flu symptoms since)
If you really want the info you claim to want, then click my name, and it will take you to my blog, where I have written extensively about vaccine-related fraud, and everything is fully referenced with citations, most of them clickable for easy use.
If you were hoping for a 100-word summary of the centuries-long fraud of vaccination, and the deep indoctrination from cradle to grave that goes along with it, I’m sorry to disappoint you.
“and everything is fully referenced with citations, most of them clickable for easy use.”
And just like every other anti-science clown, you misrepresent them. Just like you misrepresent VAERS at every opportunity.
I do love how cranks think that lots of references make their arguments great.😂
Right. They brag about how many references/ pages of ” peer review” ( sic) research they have but it you look closely, you’ll discover that
most are:
— misquoted
— from obscure, odd or alt med sources
— they include opinion pieces and vaguely relevant/ unrelated material.
It’s easy to make up lists but if most of the items don’t apply, does it really matter whether you have 6 or 60?
-btw- where are Dr Joel and Monsieur F?
You’ve demonstrated repeatedly you have no effing idea of the meaning of the word “evidence”, but go ahead: try to supply some for this. My money is on more shifting of message and flat out lies from you. By the way, we’re still waiting for your “proof” of the existence of millions of people killed by covid vaccines.
I strongly disagree. You deserve all the derision you’ve been served and much more for your fact-free, substance-free, lip-spittle rants.
“You deserve all the derision you’ve been served and much more for your fact-free, substance-free, lip-spittle rants.”
All my “rants” are fully referenced in my blog somewhere. You know–the blog you won’t deign to read.
Your factual, evidence-based comments throughout history here can be counted on 1 hand. Your comments free of derision, ridicule and/or hate can be counted on no hands. I’ve got to give you credit for monumental hypocrisy, at least.
The problem is emphasized: if you had any real evidence you’d post it everywhere you comment instead of hiding it in a blog written at the 2nd grade level so the folks you pander to, people who are illiterate when it comes to basic science, can read them.
Your count of my material is off but irrelevant: it isn’t hypocritical to call out repeated lies, and repeated lies are all you post.
You can’t name a single lie I’ve ever written, liar. You’re another lying liar, who relies on false and defamatory allegations instead of rational arguments about the evidence. Hey, I understand–that’s all you have. Here’s a link for you. https://www.virginiastoner.com/writing/2022/8/1/vaccine-trolls-true-believers-and-other-lying-liars
I often post links to my work here. People like you refuse to read them. Then you make ridiculous arguments I’ve already refuted in the link you didn’t read. Genius.
I don’t “refuse” to read your links. I just don’t bother anymore. Having read some of your previous “analyses,” I just now realize that it’s not worth my time to bother, as I’ve yet to see a single post on your blog that wasn’t a total waste of my time, even as blog fodder for some Insolence.
Unfortunately for Gindo, there is simply no audience for her wholly derivative routine (with the possible exception of Rappaport’s frozen head). That’s why she keeps coming back: Engagement at any cost.
Ginny: “You can’t name a single lie I’ve ever written, liar.”
It’s virtually impossible to find anything you’ve ever posted that’s not a lie, starting with “no vaccine has any benefit”.
Another example (of many): recently you posted the following claim, regarding:
“the recent deaths of several young, healthy doctors in Canada, 3 at the same hospital, within the span of a few weeks. This reportedly followed a new wave of required boosters.”
It was pointed out to you that these were not “healthy doctors” and that they had serious pre-existing conditions – two had long been dealing with advanced stage cancers, of the lung and stomach. And they were mostly middle-aged or elderly.
And yet you went right back to repeating the bogus story that you lifted from nutty Internet sources.
Ginny: “There comes a point when brainwashing crosses the line into corruption.”
You crossed that line a very long time ago.
More of the usual Bacon BS. A vaccine troll “pointing out” that the 6 dead doctors, 3 at the same medical facility, and all working doctors, were ostensibly “all seriously ill,” is not evidence of anything. It’s also false.
But hey, let’s play a game. What are the odds of 6 “seriously ill” doctors, 3 at the same medical facility, and all still working as doctors, dying within the span of 2 weeks?
I’d wager it’s never happened, or even come close to happening, in the entire history of modern medicine. You?
@Ginny Stoner As I hav said multiple times you claimed that only vaccine providers report adverse effects and even they only during first 30 minutes. Either you do not know anything or you lie..
The information came from families and the hospitals, specifying they had advanced cancers (which, in your low IQ mind = conspiracy, but that fact needs to be mentioned for the first time readers).
You were asked for evidence of that the first time you posted it — you never provided any. You’re being asked again — and I will wager you will not respond again — because your comment is, as with essentially everything you post, a bald-faced lie.
Apparently, the game “Ginny Shoots Herself in the Foot” only has one move.
“All my “rants” are fully referenced in my blog somewhere.”
No one cares, your blog is stupid and you’re not a scientist, so your screeds are nonsensical biased BS.
All your rants have been proven false. Did you not even notice that ?
“The premise that vaccines saved humanity from deadly diseases is a fraudulent premise”
Another strawman argument from Ginny’s fetid bag of antivax tricks.
No one argues that vaccines “saved humanity”, rather that vaccines have saved many millions of lives and prevented a vast amount of human suffering. Widespread implementation of measles vaccination alone has had an enormous impact.
http://who.int/news/item/12-11-2015-measles-vaccination-has-saved-an-estimated-17-1-million-lives-since-2000
Ginny’s attitude fits in nicely with that of her fellow antivaxers who argue that pandemics are no big deal, since humanity survives.*
*this has included antivaxers dismissing the Great Plague of medieval times, since “only” a third of the world’s population is estimated to have perished. For people who relentlessly hype (and mischaracterize) rare vaccine reactions, their casual acceptance of mass death is…bizarre.
Okay, we can agree on the description: The premise that vaccines have “saved many millions of lives and prevented a vast amount of human suffering” is a fraudulent premise. And we can also agree that the measles vaccine “has had an enormous impact.”
The measles vaccine has caused widespread destruction of lives with no benefit. And not just from the immediate damage to body and mind, but from cancers that could have been prevented in adulthood years later with a mild case of childhood measles.
The lucky ones are probably the ones who developed a mild case of measles in spite of vaccination–which their pediatrician probably diagnosed as a rash of unknown etiology, or some such nonsense.
Ginny, are you stoned again. Your blatant plugging of your blog is a bit boring, your blog does not put forward hard evidence, only claims, misrepresentation of data and downright lies. Please, we need peer reviewed studies supplied with data, not ‘a hundred words’ do what researchers do, sift through page upon page upon page of study data. A pretty boring but necessary part of the job.
Your blog is page upon page of lies, recently you claim over the Spanish flu in 1918, that was actually caused by a flu vaccine, they were not available till the 30s of the last century. Stop reading crap by the likes of RFK Jr.
Give it a rest.
Right–that’s why you can’t copy and paste a single example of your false and defamatory allegations. You’re another lying liar, hawking vaccines. Yawn.
And why should we bother with a blog by a babbling antivaxer who couldn’t even get her stuff published in the South Sumatran Journal of Bug-Eyed Lunacy?
“And why should we bother with a blog by a babbling antivaxer…”
Because it’s a lot better than blog comments by a dangerous porker who hides behinds a fake name to spread dangerous disinformation. Duh.
I remember very clearly that you claimed that only vaccine providers report adverse effects and even they only during first 30 minutes. Do you noe claim that you did not say that ?
Interestingly enough, there was a program on the radio today about the 1918 flu epidemic. One of the facts it mentioned was that Samoa had a death rate of 20 odd percent. Can’t remember if that was of the population or a CFR.
However, nearby American Samoa prevented anybody from landing on the island without being isolated and checked. The flu didn’t get a chance to spread. No a single death due to flu.
So quarantine and isolation work. Vaccination for flu didnt cause the 1918 pandemic.
Another assertion not supported by fact, actually contradicted by history — more lies from you.
@Orac: Why does this anti-vax liar get to use your page as an ad for her conspiracy theory blog? She’s obviously NOT qualified to attempt her lame analysis and she knows no one here accepts her nonsense. She’s profiting from you not banning her.
I tolerate her because her unending stream of ridiculous antivax tropes provides many teachable moments. My decision could change, though.
Is it Dualist Memorial Day? I totally forgot to shine my pineal gland.
Measles vaccines almost eradicated measles, and sufferingn it caused , For untold suffering caused by measles vaccine,can you b more specific? Untold references do not help.
Gindo, quoting herself second hand:
Coupled with all the “you’re lying, lying liar” ejaculations, I’m thinking neurocognitive deficit.
It’s not Lupus.
Ginny may be the most virulently nutty Stoner since J.B. Stoner.*
*he was a white supremacist so extreme that even his fellow white supremacists shunned him, figuring that someone that far out had to be an F.B.I. plant.
@ Dangerous Bacon
Well, I just read the Wikipedia piece on J.B. Stoner and I have to say, that is really some nutcase.
Ginny, your Death in Life pitch really isn’t selling. Have you considered a lemonade stand?
You return to your old story. No flu shots were given, there were Hib shots., and they actually helped somewhat. Cause of COVID is actually known.
If vaccines are fraud, were did smallpox and polio go ? Or rubella and congenital rublla syndrome ? One can continue.
Or, if you’re tired of talking about humans, let’s talk about the decline in incidence and prevalence of rabies in the US with the requirement that pet dogs and cats be vaccinated, and compare incidence of human rabies in countries that do and do not have efforts to vaccinate domestic dogs.
Goodness knows improved diet and sanitation didn’t fix rabies!
Whereas non-cranks who make cogent arguments prefer references over no references.
Hilarious that on this blog that purports to value science, actually providing references is somehow still cause for criticism, if you’re a vaccine heretic.
Silly antivaxxer, it’s not the use of references that’s the problem. It’s what those references actually say and how they are used.
Joe Mercola, for instance, uses tons of references and claims his articles are “fact checked” and “evidence-based.” If you look at the actual references, you’ll find that most of them are misinterpreted or unrelated to the claim that he is trying to make, and in some cases actually contradict the point he is trying to make. Mercola knows that few actually check his references carefully or even have the background to see through his misuse of scientific studies. He also knows that most people think that the quantity of references is an indication of strength of argument and accuracy of claims.
Again, it always amuses me when cranks point to the number of references in one of their blog posts or articles as if that were a defense against its being misinformation.
Wow, it’s a big day for antivaxers pushing a “Nuremberg”-style prosecution of people in government, science, the news media etc. who’ve recommended Covid-19 vaccines. Natural News, Age of Autism and Children’s Health Defense are all on board with this meme today.
CHD’s is authored by Mary Holland, who has a book on how HPV vaccination has “betrayed” America’s youth. Holland also wrote the foreword to an anonymously-authored book out of Israel attacking Covid-19 vaccines with a subtext of denigrating vaccines in general. Holland gloats openly about distrust of Covid-19 vaccination spreading to parents who she thinks will refuse en masse to have their kids protected from vaccine-preventable diseases.
Yehuda Shoenfeld also gave Turtles All the Way Down a positive review. This seems to have been widely criticized at the time, in 2019. Why on earth it’s foamed back up three years later is anyone’s guess.
After reading trolls here, I “treated” myself to The Real Deal- and you can, too.
Go to prn.live, Shows, Progressive Commentary Hour, 08-16-22 and hear the masters discuss Covid, vaccines and public health. Gary Null interviews RFK jr- 55 minutes of highly condensed anti-vax BS.
SRSLY: this should immunise you against whatever Orac’s scoffers present.
Listen and learn. There is nothing new under the sun.
RE the PRN podcast, the scattershot always impresses me and crossing the proton streams like this cancels out arguments more often than strengthening them.
[…] something I try to keep in mind. But anti-vaxxers … I won’t. This movement is pure luddite trash that revels in increased human suffering and death. I guess we should just be glad that burning […]
In fairness, Orac didn’t come out explicitly and state whether the spillover distrust is somewhat deserved; let me ask him. Orac, do you think the distrust is somewhat understandable with Covid vaccination not entirely living up to expectations?
PS: Orac and I mainly have a rocky relationship but from time to time we reach each other. Ok, ok, that never happens — but, who says it can’t?
Great antivaccine campaign did spead distust,too.
For some reason, I haven’t been able to comment with here or elsewhere ( it must be an altie plot)
A California congressman’s wife, Lori McClintock, apparently died from ingesting white mulberry leaves, a weight loss/ diabetes remedy: according to the coroner, she died of dehydration and enteritis.
The Guardian; CBS Bay Area
This explains why I got an email from a reporter about white mulberry leaves, which I’d never heard of before as a weight loss remedy. I was totally scratching my head.
Well, white mulberry is good for lots of skin complaints, including dry and sensitive skin, plus acting as an anti-inflammatory, so it should relieve that itching.
Oh, snap.People don’t usually die from those. Those leaves are eaten by silkworms and not much else because they contain a form of LATEX*.
Shit. I guess I’ll get banned and commisurate with that MJD for awhile.
disclaimer: am alergic to latex and my mouth and lips always burned after a dentist visit from the age of 4.
“I haven’t been able to comment with here or elsewhere”
CloudFlair is currently having a BGP issue.Again.
Is it? I do use Cloudflare because a plan to support the traffic this site garners would be a lot more expensive than just adding Cloudflare, but I hadn’t heard of this problem recently.
No.
I intercoursed a shark on that one. I guessed. I was having issues a couple days back where a site was accessible from one address but not another. Both of those were behind CF and when that behavior is seen, well… I just assumed my packets got to bounce around in Borneo until TTL ran out.
I get the screen: you up, CF up, big red X site down wherein I usually interpret that as CF misplaced it. Sorry.
Rant:
CF has a killer free DNS 1.1.1.1 which I use. But it doesn’t feel like the www anymore. It routes around damage? Ha. take away CF, AWS, Akamai, and ANS and there is no web anymore for most. Crap I’m supposed to call ATT to get a port opened. CGNAT or some such.
I miss being able to put in my friend’s address and FTP stuff.
@ Orac:
A few times, on this post and on another one or two about 2 (?) weeks ago, I wrote something of note which was refused – each a few times.
I tried again because I thought that what I wrote was timely.
I can’t recall exactly what it said ( contact site owner?) but the other group’s were “nonce”.
Walk out your front door, across the street, and kick the wardriver in the Subaru in the nuts for leeching your wifi (I would have used Reaver… don’t know that was still a thing). And then give him a taste of your primo bud because respect.
{less dramatic, just clear your cookies}
https://www.techtarget.com/searchsecurity/definition/nonce
It’s a < a href=”https://wordpress.org/support/topic/nonce-is-invalid/”>server-side problem.
“It’s a server-side problem”
Not to be the argumentative 0’that guy’ (though I totally am doing that) but I predict that the advice after ‘server side’ fix is to clear cookies. It wouldn’t be a problem in the first place if her clock hadn’t glitched a few milliseconds.
Your CF link is for the origins to follow. They are advised to wait upto a day. For a cookie to get set right.
Idk what I’m talking about. I don’t know how these network guys do it but, again, they gonna be asked to reset a cookie.
Comparative, is it not?? 5050 if her clock glitches again with a new cookie. Yjsy is the easier short-term fix.
You don’t say.
“You don’t say.”
Not usually out loud. Have you tried unplugging it and plugging it back in again?
“You don’t say.”
Not usually out loud. Have you tried unplugging it and plugging it in back again?
“Daniel Fabricant*, chief executive and president of the Natural Products Association, told KHN connecting McClintock’s death to white mulberry leaf was “completely speculative”.
“People unfortunately pass from dehydration every day, and there’s a lot of different reasons and a lot of different causes,” Fabricant told KHN.”
http://theguardian.com/us-news/2022/aug/25/lori-mcclintock-death-white-mulberry-leaf-congressman-wife
*an aptly named individual?
To make matters even worse, it seems that they found a partially intact leaf in her stomach. So I guess she didn’t take a capsule filled with powder or a tea.
-btw- she was rather thin.
My main point is that immunity sufficient to protect against serious disease can persist long, long after immunity sufficient to prevent any infection is gone. This is a function of the way the immune system works, and no vaccine can make the immune system do things it just doesn’t do. Neither can any infection.
In general, to prevent viral infection you need lots of neutralizing antibodies immediately available at the site where inoculum is introduced. But the immune system doesn’t constantly crank out large amounts of antibodies after the eliciting antigens are gone. That’s a good thing, because antibodies are proteins. If we constantly made gobs of antibodies for every antigen to which we’d ever been exposed our blood would be like molasses.
Once the immune response has contracted (“waned”), protection against disease depends heavily on memory B cells, which will make fresh antibodies, and memory T cells. Memory cells take a bit of time to get into action, and in the meantime infection can occur and you might even get sick. But usually the response comes quickly and strongly enough to put down the infection before the infection progresses to serious disease.
The immune system’s job is to keep its owner alive long enough to participate in reproduction. That doesn’t mean the owner should expect not to get sick.
while I’m on the topic of tetanus from another thread, and against nitwit ordure reporter’s BS about vaccines not saving lives
In relative recent years in some developing countries there has been a push for vaccination to prevent neonatal tetanus. It has saved lots of lives. From Wikipedia article “Neonatal tetanus:”
The antivaccine conspiracy theories about this are long-standing. What I didn’t know until today is that Wakefraud has done a another propaganda piece about it.
Following up on the McClintock case: white mulberry leaf’s known toxicity (gastrointestinal and otherwise) is thought to be related to its latex component.
But don’t tell you-know-who.
Another possibility in the McClintock case which I haven’t seen mentioned in news reports, is that the white mulberry supplement product(s) she took might have been adulterated with something else not mentioned on the label (a common industry problem) The coroner’s report doesn’t mention specifically what she took and whether the product had been analyzed.
The coroner’s report is available online via Kaiser Health News if anyone wants to view it.
[…] activist and leader turned general purpose COVID-19 antimasker, anti-“lockdowner”, and antivaxxer, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., on his podcast to promote the new “documentary film” […]
[…] spread what sounds like convincing disinformation about them has been the aim all along, which is why antivaxxers rejoice when surveys have shown that trust in childhood vaccines has declined. It’s an intentional […]