No reason to not vaccinate but anti-vaxxers continue to resist sound health policy

Posted in Anti-Vaccination Lobby, AVN, Big Placebo, Denialism, General, Health, Human Rights, Immunisation, Legal, Meryl Dorey by Paul Gallagher

On April 17th last year Paul Offit was interviewed by Christiane Amanpour of CNN on the fact that there is “no legitimate reason” for not vaccinating.

This video very recently accompanied a February 21st article by U.S. pediatrician Dr. Edith Brancho-Sanchez, entitled Several vaccines at once might be too much for parents, but kids are just fine. The article reinforced the fact that the misinformation regarding the safety and efficacy of vaccines causes variations of anxiety in parents who take their children to be vaccinated.

It was reported that a 2014 USA National Immunization Surveillance Survey indicated that;

… over a third of parents of children ages 19 to 35 months followed delayed immunization schedules. Of the parents surveyed, 23% followed an alternate schedule that either limited the number of shots per visit or skipped at least one vaccine series altogether. Another 14% followed an unknown or unclassifiable schedule that did not follow a pattern and was not in line with national recommendations. Children who followed an alternate pattern were four times as likely not to be up to date on their vaccines and those who followed an unclassifiable pattern were over twice as likely not to be up to date.

Regrettably pediatricians are in a Catch 22 situation. They need to build parental trust. A 2015 study published in Pediatrics indicated that 93% of 534 pediatricians had been asked by parents of children under 2 to spread out vaccines. 82% believed complying with the parent’s request would build trust, whilst 80% thought if they declined, this may lead to parents leaving their practice.

In Connecticut, USA state lawmakers “narrowly advanced a bill” this week that seeks to ban religious vaccine exemptions for children. Despite reports of a 25% increase in religious exemptions from last year anti-vaccine opposition to the bill was fierce including protests in Connecticut’s Legislative Office Building. One Democrat representative, who seemed to have abandoned any pretense of basing his decision on evidence, referred to vaccination as “injecting a witches brew of chemicals”.

Here in Australia the leading anti-vaccine disinformation group The Australian Vaccination-risks Network has called on members and fellow anti-vaxxers to heed another infamous Action Alert. They are targetting Victoria and South Australia. In Victoria the Health Services Amendment Bill 2020 seeks to provide for mandatory vaccination of healthcare and ambulance workers with specific immunisations. Ten days ago the Victorian Minister for Health published this media release outlining the logic behind the decision.

The vaccines included are the flu vaccine, whooping cough, measles, chicken pox and hepatitis B. It is astonishing, as we witness the evolving impact of COVID-19 in the absence of a vaccine, that groups such as the AVN seek to multiply these negative effects. They have teamed up with the anti-science, anti-medicine group, Health Freedom Victoria helping to disseminate their “generic letter” for anti-vaxxers to mail to “all Victorian politicians including your local member”. Of course one may pen ones own. Be sure to stress you “vehemently oppose this draconian overreach of the Andrews’ government”.

They also advise to follow up with phone calls. Following that, they basically suggest harassing Martin Foley who is Minister for Mental Health, Minister for Equality and Minister for Creative Industries. Martin Foley’s mental health portfolio sees him quite active in reducing discrimination for Victorians living with mental health challenges. Health Freedom Victoria want anti-vaxxers working in the health sector to email and call Mr. Foley to;

Tell him you are appalled that he would change the Discrimination Act to get away with forcing you to take an untested and unwanted medical procedure in order to keep your job

In the material they have disseminated to encourage targetting Martin Foley, Health Freedom Victoria refer to him as, “the Minister for amongst other things, Mental Health and Discrimination”.

South Australia introduced No Jab No Play legislation on September 30th 2019. Again there is a “generic letter” ready to go. In both cases the AVN seek to motivate loyal anti-vaccine followers to engage in pestering letter and/or email writing campaigns, asking those involved to follow up with a phone call, in this case “within half an hour but at least by the end of the day”. This is to confirm they have received your email and will be sending a Decision Regulatory Impact Statement (RIS). Of course one should inform the person you’ll call back in two weeks to chase up that RIS. And why?

In the words of the AVN themselves;

Phone calls increase their workload, so they’re more likely to do their job to avoid getting repeat calls.

Yep, you read that right. Wasting the time of your local members already busy and hard working staff is ensuring they “do their job”.

Now, it’s over to Paul Offit…

30Jul2019

Immunisation: Why we do it and how ‘herd immunity’ works

Posted in Anti-Vaccination Lobby, AVN, General, Immunisation, Judy Wilyman, Meryl Dorey, Science by Paul Gallagher

Denial of community immunity or herd immunity is a common feature of antivaccinationists.

In fact groups that spread harmful disinformation, such as the Australian based Australian Vaccination-risks Network (AVN), have for years been refining the denial of this evidence based fact. Notably they misrepresent what herd immunity is, primarily by referencing an aspect of herd immunity or an expected result of herd immunity.

The Australian Government Department of Health offer this definition;

If enough people in a community are immunised against an infectious disease, there is less of the disease in the community, which makes it harder for the disease to spread.

Immunisation protects both people who are vaccinated and also helps the entire community. It helps protect those who are too young to be vaccinated and those who can’t be vaccinated for medical reasons. This is known as community (herd) immunity.

Claiming that the “laws” of No Jab No Pay and No Jab No Play “are based on herd immunity”, Meryl Dorey of the AVN contends;

The theory claims that the unvaccinated are more likely to contract and transmit diseases than their vaccinated peers.

Travel to a largely unvaccinated country, get shots and you’re apparently in a protected bubble. Back home and they’d have us believe we need a 95 per cent plus vaccination rate to be protected and that a lone unvaccinated individual can be responsible for an epidemic.

Indeed rather than “claim” that unvaccinated community members will contract and transmit disease, herd immunity provides greater protection for the unvaccinated. Nonetheless herd immunity cannot protect any particular unvaccinated individual and is very important with respect to protection from measles infection.

This is why individuals who cannot be vaccinated for specific reasons or those with weakened immune systems will be better protected in a community that has a vaccination level of 95% or above. In certain communities where vaccination levels are low, herd immunity and the cluster of immune individuals doesn’t exist. In this instance measles can easily spread from an infected individual to unvaccinated individuals.

If not for herd immunity providing protection to those who refuse vaccination and deny their children the protection of vaccine induced immunity, many of the false beliefs held by antivaccinationists could not persist. The success of so-called natural remedies, homeoprophylaxis and so on persist simply due to the protection of herd immunity.

The video below was produced by the BBC and provides an accurate summary of vaccination and herd immunity.

Immunisation: Why we do it and how ‘herd immunity’ works – © BBC News

Discredited anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist Judy Wilyman has even used denial of herd immunity in her ongoing attacks on Australia’s successful vaccination policy. Wilyman wrongly contends that only public health reforms such as sanitation led to the control of vaccine preventable diseases.

Vaccines did not create herd immunity to control infectious diseases, is an open letter on her website. The monumental flaw in her fallacious claim begins with her use of only mortality, and no morbidity data.

Also, Wilyman refers to changes in public health occurring before 1950. This ignores more modern vaccines such as that for Haemophilus influenzae type b (Hib) used in Australia from 1993 and later in Kenya from 1999.

Only vaccination can explain the control of Hib and the emerging success of the HPV vaccine.

29Apr2019

Measles outbreaks are due to low vaccination rates and antivaccinationists

Posted in Anti-Vaccination Lobby, AVN, General, Health, Immunisation, Judy Wilyman, Science by Paul Gallagher

The video below is from the USA. The reasons it lists for the increase in measles cases there however, apply directly to Australia.

First however I want to draw attention to the screenshot from the video. Note the high number of fatalities. In the USA measles killed around 500 children per year during the 1950’s. Also pay attention to the drop in measles cases after the 1963 introduction of the measles vaccine.

In Australia a live attenuated measles vaccine was first licenced in 1968. Since then according to the Department of Health, “the burden of measles has substantially fallen in Australia”.

Measles cases USA – Source: CDC

You may be thinking, “But… I’ve seen graphs showing a huge decline in vaccine preventable diseases before vaccines were even introduced”. Yes, yes you have… kind of. What the anti-vaccine lobbyists did to create those misleading graphs is to firstly plot mortality rate (fatalities), and not morbidity (cases). Their argument is that diet, personal and public sanitation alone controlled vaccine-preventable disease and that vaccination had no effect.

Health professionals agree that sanitation and nutrition is vital to health. Cleaner cities, homes, personal hygeine and a varied diet play a large role in keeping us healthy, aiding in recovery and in fighting off the effects of disease. Including mortality caused by disease. But the incidence, or morbidity of disease is not reduced anywhere near as dramatically. So to discredit vaccines antivaccinationists would plot mortality and not morbidity of disease.

More so, they crammed many years horizontally and a comparatively small number of fatalities vertically. This had the effect of squeezing data in so tightly that individual bars vanished and were replaced with a single contoured shape that seemed to hit zero well before vaccines were introduced. With an accompanying narrative or explanatory text the listener or reader was easily fooled into “seeing” diseases dwindle away long before vaccines were introduced.

And the best trick was to emphasize, in the true Viera Scheibner and Judy Wilyman fashion, that it’s all government data to begin with. So it must be true. But it never was. It was and is a lie. A dangerous lie that hides the truth of how dangerous vaccine-preventable diseases are and how permanent are the injuries and disabilities for many of those who contract them.

The rumour that Donald Trump would be supporting the anti-vaccine lobby and financing vaccine conspiracy theorist, Robert F. Kennedy, is all but dust. Just three days ago when asked about the measles outbreak he replied, “They have to get the shot. The vaccinations are so important. This is really going around now, they have to get their shot”.

The Australian Department of Health has a page dedicated to the current measles outbreak, Measles Outbreak 2019. It was updated two weeks ago and includes;

Anyone who is not fully vaccinated against measles is at risk of becoming infected when traveling overseas. You may also risk exposing others to this highly infectious, serious illness either while travelling, or when you return to Australia.

Measles is a very contagious viral illness that causes a skin rash and fever in some cases. Measles can cause serious, sometimes fatal, complications including pneumonia and encephalitis (swelling of the brain). Measles spreads when an infected person coughs or sneezes and another person breathes in the droplets from the air, or touches the droplets and then touches their nose or mouth.

Measles remains a common disease in many parts of the world, including areas of Europe, Asia, the Pacific, and Africa, with outbreaks often occurring.

In Australia, the majority of measles cases are due to unvaccinated individuals becoming infected while travelling to countries in which measles is either common or there are outbreaks occurring. As measles is highly contagious, these people can then spread the disease to others, causing outbreaks, often before they are aware that they have the virus.

Why Measles Is Back In The US

Don’t be fooled by claims that antivaccinationists are not to blame. That we must accept socioeconomic and language hurdles are placing a considerable downward pressure on vaccination numbers. The increased use of social media has been a boon to antivaccinationists. From spreading misinformation, to organising events to raising money and making their entire gig easier we must accept they continue to ruin lives and public health strategy.

No doubt there are socioeconomic problems that play a role. But not the role. That argument is partial evidence denial at best. In fact social media should be used more skillfully to address problems faced by members of our community who are struggling to meet vaccination schedule requirements due to genuine hurdles.

Social scientists interested in vaccination and/or resistance to vaccination may have much to offer in addressing socioeconomic hurdles to vaccination via social media.

30Jan2019

Facts about meningococcal disease

Posted in General, Health, Immunisation, Science by Paul Gallagher

The Melbourne Vaccine Education Centre has an excellent page on meningococcal disease and vaccines which includes comprehensive resources and the video below from the Australian Academy of Science.

Meningococcal disease is a bacterial infection which can kill in hours. It is caused by the bacteria Neisseria meningitidis. Risk groups include children under 5, teens and young adults aged between 15 – 24, smokers, those with a suppressed immune system and anyone living in crowded accommodation. Of the 13 known sub-types of meningococcal bacteria, five are vaccine preventable.

These are B and A, C, W, Y.

Over 2018 the main serotypes causing disease in Australia were B, W and Y. Variations in serotype infection were specific to Australian states. On the information page the Melbourne Vaccine Education Centre (MVEC) notes;

People with meningococcal disease can become extremely unwell very quickly. Invasive meningococcal disease (IMD) can cause meningitis (inflammation of the membrane covering the brain and spinal cord), septicaemia (infection in the blood) as well as other infections like pneumonia (lung infection), arthritis (inflammation of the joints) and conjunctivitis (eye infection). Mortality (death) can be as high as 5-10% and permanent lifelong complications can occur in 10-20% of those who survive. Disease is transmitted via respiratory droplets (sneezing and coughing etc).

Prevention is via vaccination. Three quadrivalent vaccines are available for the A, C, W and Y meningococcal serogroups. One, Nimenrix® is freely available from 12 months of age as part of the National Immunisation Program.

In September last year it was announced that the federal government will fund the addition of meningococcal A, C, W and Y vaccine for 14 to 19 year olds. From April 2019 teens aged 14 to 16 years will have free access via school based programs as part of the National Immunisation Program. Teenagers aged 15 to 19 years who do not receive the vaccine at school can be vaccinated for free via “an ongoing GP based catch up program”.

The details of access to the vaccines are clearly explained on the MVEC information page. Private scripts are available and required to purchase the meningococcal A, C, W, Y vaccine for those who don’t meet NIP criteria.

Meningococcal B vaccines are available although not yet part of the National Immunisation Program. Bexsero^® is suited for use from 6 weeks of age. Trumenba^® is suited for use from 10 years onward.

There is additional information in this post from September last year. Access the Department of Health immunisation information here.

Facts About Meningococcal Disease – Australian Academy of Science

30Nov2018

Vatican position on vaccines derived from the descendent cells of fetal material

Posted in General, Human Rights, Immunisation, Legal, Religion, Science by Paul Gallagher

Despite very clear facts on the issue of fetal material used in the production of some vaccines, there is ample misinformation in circulation.

The anti-vaccine lobby aim to benefit from any confusion that can be created by misrepresenting the fact that human diploid cells derived from fetal cells are used in the production of some vaccines. During production the vaccines themselves are purified so that no cells remain in the final product.

In January 2014 I published Vaccines contain no aborted fetal cells and the piece is still relevant today. It’s important to remember that the diploid cellular material used to grow viral material in vaccine production are descendent cells.

Descendent cells are the medium in which these vaccines are prepared. The cell lines under consideration were begun using cells taken from one or more fetuses aborted almost 40 years ago. Since that time the cell lines have grown independently. It is important to note that descendent cells are not the cells of the aborted child. They never, themselves, formed a part of the victim’s body.

Source – National Catholic Bioetics Center

I see. One must be sure to observe “that descendent cells are not the cells of the aborted child. They never, themselves, formed a part of the victim’s body.”

A very clear source of information specific to the morality of this issue is the Vatican Statement on Vaccines Derived From Aborted Human Fetuses.

The article includes;

The matter in question regards the lawfulness of production, distribution and use of certain vaccines whose production is connected with acts of procured abortion. It concerns vaccines containing live viruses which have been prepared from human cell lines of foetal origin, using tissues from aborted human foetuses as a source of such cells. The best known, and perhaps the most important due to its vast distribution and its use on an almost universal level, is the vaccine against Rubella (German measles).

[…]

To summarize, it must be confirmed that:

there is a grave responsibility to use alternative vaccines and to make a conscientious objection with regard to those which have moral problems;

as regards the vaccines without an alternative, the need to contest so that others may be prepared must be reaffirmed, as should be the lawfulness of using the former in the meantime insomuch as is necessary in order to avoid a serious risk not only for one’s own children but also, and perhaps more specifically, for the health conditions of the population as a whole – especially for pregnant women;

the lawfulness of the use of these vaccines should not be misinterpreted as a declaration of the lawfulness of their production, marketing and use, but is to be understood as being a passive material cooperation and, in its mildest and remotest sense, also active, morally justified as an extrema ratio due to the necessity to provide for the good of one’s children and of the people who come in contact with the children (pregnant women);

such cooperation occurs in a context of moral coercion of the conscience of parents, who are forced to choose to act against their conscience or otherwise, to put the health of their children and of the population as a whole at risk. This is an unjust alternative choice, which must be eliminated as soon as possible.