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In 2015 Bill Gates advised on the need to prepare for a global pandemic

Posted in General, Health, Human Rights, Immunisation, Science by

In 2015 Bill Gates gave a TED Talk on the importance of preparedness for a global pandemic caused by “a highly infectious virus”.

An Ebola epidemic that began in December 2013, and continued until 2016, had by that time killed around 10,000 people in West Africa. Gates cites three reasons as to why there weren’t more deaths. 1.) The selfless work by front line health workers including locating infected persons and preventing further spread (see Contact Tracing below). 2.) Ebola is not an airborne virus and by the time those who are infected become contagious, most are so ill as to be bedridden. 3.) The virus did not reach many urban areas and this directly kept the number of cases lower than had Ebola spread throughout urban communities.

Yet he also refers to what he calls “a global failure”. Noting the slowness of response. The failure to study treatment approaches, diagnostics and the application of epidemiological and medical tools.

In what has been shown to be an uncomfortably prescient statement Gates notes;

So next time, we might not be so lucky. You can have a virus where people feel well enough while they’re infectious that they get on a plane or they go to a market.

Gates uses the Spanish Flu of 1918 to demonstrate how quickly an airborne virus can spread. He observes that the World Bank have estimated that a global flu epidemic will cause a drop in global wealth of “over three trillion dollars” and there would be “millions and millions of deaths”.

It’s important to note that the present reality with COVID-19 is not absolutely reflected in Gates’ TED Talk. Trends of global financial impact have not yet played out. Total fatalities will be disturbing and many may lose friends and loved ones, yet the prediction of “millions and millions” of deaths is not a current reality.

Nonetheless the reason that the capacity to reduce morbidity and mortality – to flatten the curve – is in our hands is indeed touched on by Gates. Just after the five minute mark he speaks of our ability to use certain tools to create an effective response system. Science and technology. The use of cell phones to inform the public. Satellite maps to inform on the movement of people. Advances in biology and research that will support rapid turnaround of drugs and vaccines to fit the pathogen responsible for the pandemic.

As I touched on above another factor discussed but not labelled as such by Gates, that is presently more robustly employed to reduce the spread of COVID-19 is Contact Tracing. Gates talks about locating infected persons and preventing further spread. In May 2017 African Health Sciences published a review of contact tracing in containing the 2014 Ebola outbreak. However with an airborne coronavirus this has proven, as expected, to be enormously more complicated.

At the time of writing there exists a spectrum of tactics in various countries, with some considered invasive to privacy. Israel has passed emergency laws to allow its security agency, Shin Bet to tap peoples phones without a warrant.

According to the Computational Privacy Group in the case of Singapore (using TraceTogether), Taiwan and South Korea this involves using cell phones and dedicated software in the;

…recording [of] close proximity between people using Bluetooth, WiFi, or GPS data, [which] could help efficiently notify people that they have earlier been in contact with someone now diagnosed with coronavirus and should self-isolate

The CPG have published Can we fight COVID-19 without resorting to mass surveillance? which looks at both location data and contact tracing in different regions, and the technology used.

Reports in Australia have suggested that tracking the public through their phones has been considered and that the federal government is “looking to Singapore” and the TraceTogether app. Victoria’s Department of Health and Human Services has expanded contact tracing to include use of the messaging platform Whispir.

IT News reports;

The department will begin using the cloud-based platform from Thursday to regularly interact with those that have come into close contact with someone who has contracted COVID-19.

The platform, which will automate interactions between the department and select individuals, will also be used to enforce self-isolation for Victorians who have confirmed cases of the virus.

Gates was more than reasonably accurate in predicting our response. Presented without exact figures from the epidemiology and pathology of the infectious agent Gates’ description of how we could and would respond deserves high marks.

Presently we are witnessing the application of the tools at our disposal to flatten the curve of morbidity and mortality. We know that only an effective vaccine can break the back of the pandemic as it now exists. Drugs that target specific symptoms and slow or prevent the impact on COVID-19 comorbidity are greatly needed. The use of cell phone apps to both inform and trace the public is well underway.

Most importantly we have accepted that staying at home, social distancing and increasingly reducing the number of people together in public, together with effective hand washing and smothering of coughs or sneezes are vitally effective measures. Some of these measures should be employed every flu season and it’s hoped we will continue to do just that.

One imagines we will be better prepared in future for the emergence of another pandemic. Gates was right in that we needed to prepare. We see that clearly now in the need for hospital beds, ventilators and other medical equipment. He also noted the necessity of strong health systems in poor countries and presently the need for increased funding in developing nations is a reality. [AlJazeera news video]

To finish off perhaps we should focus on what Gates observed at the end of his talk;

So I think this should absolutely be a priority. There’s no need to panic. We don’t have to hoard cans of spaghetti or go down into the basement. But we need to get going, because time is not on our side.

In fact, if there’s one positive thing that can come out of the Ebola epidemic, it’s that it can serve as an early warning, a wake-up call, to get ready. If we start now, we can be ready for the next epidemic.

Of course we were not utterly unprepared for a pandemic. Far from it. There are global and national agencies throughout the world that focus on both the risk of a viral pandemic and how we can best prepare. Developing nations are closely monitored by organisations such as the WHO and the UN. Still the lack of any treatment or vaccine to prevent COVID-19 has proven to be an enormous hurdle.

Developed nations are in a better position to fund and respond to recommendations. Australia has a Health Management Plan for Pandemic Influenza, last updated in August 2019. The UK has its Pandemic Contingency/Major Infectious Diseases Outbreak Plan. Similar plans exist around the world.

An interesting dynamic in the USA at present is whilst President Trump has criticised the CDC for its response to coronavirus, he had from 2018 cut their budget for global disease management and closed government units dedicated to preventing pandemics.

Trump’s administration has also cut similar funding for the National Security Council (NSC), Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and Health and Human Services (HHS). Other cuts to CDC funding used to manage chronic disease are scheduled for 2021 and as yet have not been approved by Congress. Perhaps justifiably Trump has come under scorn for his approach to the coronavirus outbreak.

Funding for the prevention of pandemics is an essential part of a solid public health budget. Without a doubt these budgets should be designed with input from scientists. By shirking reason and evidence in their pursuit of “alternative facts” and a post truth world, the Trump administration had maneuvered itself into an increasingly perilous position.

One hopes that as we move toward the future and find ourselves past the COVID-19 pandemic that we aim to listen to the evidence, learn from the past and prepare for pandemics we cannot yet predict.

 

————————————

 

TRANSCRIPT

00:17
When I was a kid, the disaster we worried about most was a nuclear war. That’s why we had a barrel like this down in our basement, filled with cans of food and water. When the nuclear attack came, we were supposed to go downstairs, hunker down, and eat out of that barrel.

00:37
Today the greatest risk of global catastrophe doesn’t look like this. Instead, it looks like this. If anything kills over 10 million people in the next few decades, it’s most likely to be a highly infectious virus rather than a war. Not missiles, but microbes. Now, part of the reason for this is that we’ve invested a huge amount in nuclear deterrents. But we’ve actually invested very little in a system to stop an epidemic. We’re not ready for the next epidemic.

01:20
Let’s look at Ebola. I’m sure all of you read about it in the newspaper, lots of tough challenges. I followed it carefully through the case analysis tools we use to track polio eradication. And as you look at what went on, the problem wasn’t that there was a system that didn’t work well enough, the problem was that we didn’t have a system at all. In fact, there’s some pretty obvious key missing pieces.

01:51
We didn’t have a group of epidemiologists ready to go, who would have gone, seen what the disease was, seen how far it had spread. The case reports came in on paper. It was very delayed before they were put online and they were extremely inaccurate. We didn’t have a medical team ready to go. We didn’t have a way of preparing people. Now, Médecins Sans Frontières did a great job orchestrating volunteers. But even so, we were far slower than we should have been getting the thousands of workers into these countries. And a large epidemic would require us to have hundreds of thousands of workers. There was no one there to look at treatment approaches. No one to look at the diagnostics. No one to figure out what tools should be used. As an example, we could have taken the blood of survivors, processed it, and put that plasma back in people to protect them. But that was never tried.

02:53
So there was a lot that was missing. And these things are really a global failure. The WHO is funded to monitor epidemics, but not to do these things I talked about. Now, in the movies it’s quite different. There’s a group of handsome epidemiologists ready to go, they move in, they save the day, but that’s just pure Hollywood.

03:22
The failure to prepare could allow the next epidemic to be dramatically more devastating than Ebola. Let’s look at the progression of Ebola over this year. About 10,000 people died, and nearly all were in the three West African countries. There’s three reasons why it didn’t spread more. The first is that there was a lot of heroic work by the health workers. They found the people and they prevented more infections. The second is the nature of the virus. Ebola does not spread through the air. And by the time you’re contagious, most people are so sick that they’re bedridden. Third, it didn’t get into many urban areas. And that was just luck. If it had gotten into a lot more urban areas, the case numbers would have been much larger.

04:17
So next time, we might not be so lucky. You can have a virus where people feel well enough while they’re infectious that they get on a plane or they go to a market. The source of the virus could be a natural epidemic like Ebola, or it could be bioterrorism. So there are things that would literally make things a thousand times worse.

04:39
In fact, let’s look at a model of a virus spread through the air, like the Spanish Flu back in 1918. So here’s what would happen: It would spread throughout the world very, very quickly. And you can see over 30 million people died from that epidemic. So this is a serious problem. We should be concerned.

05:04
But in fact, we can build a really good response system. We have the benefits of all the science and technology that we talk about here. We’ve got cell phones to get information from the public and get information out to them. We have satellite maps where we can see where people are and where they’re moving. We have advances in biology that should dramatically change the turnaround time to look at a pathogen and be able to make drugs and vaccines that fit for that pathogen. So we can have tools, but those tools need to be put into an overall global health system. And we need preparedness.

05:41

The best lessons, I think, on how to get prepared are again, what we do for war. For soldiers, we have full-time, waiting to go. We have reserves that can scale us up to large numbers. NATO has a mobile unit that can deploy very rapidly. NATO does a lot of war games to check, are people well trained? Do they understand about fuel and logistics and the same radio frequencies? So they are absolutely ready to go. So those are the kinds of things we need to deal with an epidemic.

06:13
What are the key pieces? First, we need strong health systems in poor countries. That’s where mothers can give birth safely, kids can get all their vaccines. But, also where we’ll see the outbreak very early on. We need a medical reserve corps: lots of people who’ve got the training and background who are ready to go, with the expertise. And then we need to pair those medical people with the military. Taking advantage of the military’s ability to move fast, do logistics and secure areas. We need to do simulations, germ games, not war games, so that we see where the holes are. The last time a germ game was done in the United States was back in 2001, and it didn’t go so well. So far the score is germs: 1, people: 0. Finally, we need lots of advanced R&D in areas of vaccines and diagnostics. There are some big breakthroughs, like the Adeno-associated virus, that could work very, very quickly.

07:21
Now I don’t have an exact budget for what this would cost, but I’m quite sure it’s very modest compared to the potential harm. The World Bank estimates that if we have a worldwide flu epidemic, global wealth will go down by over three trillion dollars and we’d have millions and millions of deaths. These investments offer significant benefits beyond just being ready for the epidemic. The primary healthcare, the R&D, those things would reduce global health equity and make the world more just as well as more safe.

07:55
So I think this should absolutely be a priority. There’s no need to panic. We don’t have to hoard cans of spaghetti or go down into the basement. But we need to get going, because time is not on our side.

08:09
In fact, if there’s one positive thing that can come out of the Ebola epidemic, it’s that it can serve as an early warning, a wake-up call, to get ready. If we start now, we can be ready for the next epidemic.

08:26
Thank you.

Measles in Samoa: Thank the anti-vaccination lobby

Posted in Alternative "medicine" scams, AVN, General, Health, Human Rights, Immunisation, Meryl Dorey, Scam, Science, Vaxxed by

The manner in which members of the anti-vaccination lobby have leapt upon the measles tragedy in Samoa identifies their awful, predatory cult quite well.

To completely understand why anti-vaccine activists promote such intellectually vicious lies and indeed hatred regarding an epidemic that Samoa has labelled a state of emergency I’d argue we need to first look back. Back to July last year when headlines reported the deaths of two infants following the MMR vaccination. Or rather, what we now know was thought to be MMR vaccine. We need to look back dear reader because antivaccinationists reacted in an “I told ya so” manner that was almost glee.

Despite there never being a recorded death due to vaccination or a vaccine in Australia, anti-vax profiteers who have peddled lies for years contend that death and disability after vaccination not only happens but are widespread. A vaccinologist was quoted in evidence to the No Jab No Pay Bill hearing that in Australian injuries serious enough to require compensation range between zero and five per year. I do apologise for referring to that occasion yet again. I also recommend the government publication Questions About Vaccination.

We must look back because regrettably it was the bogus causation peddled by anti-vax identities that gave them the confidence to begin commenting on this measles outbreak that hit Samoa in October this year (2019). As for facts, genuine health professionals and epidemiologists would be familiar with adulterated, out of date and counterfeit medications and vaccines causing harm in nations with health systems and infrastructure less developed than in New Zealand or Australia. Yet these events occur far less today due to safety procedures instigated across the globe.

Following investigations into the infant deaths in Samoa evidence was collated concluding “a tragic outcome from error preparing MMR vaccine”. The Immunisation Advisory Centre of New Zealand reports;

On 4 June 2019, both nurses pleaded guilty to negligence causing manslaughter. On 2 August, both nurses were sentenced to five years in prison. During the sentencing hearing, it was confirmed that one of the nurses mixed the MMR vaccine powder with expired muscle relaxant anaesthetic instead of water for injection supplied in a vial with the vaccine. Eight Samoan speaking New Zealand nurses visited Samoa in June to provide training for vaccinating nurses at district hospitals.

The same reference informs us there has never been a death associated with this vaccine in N.Z. It also has a helpful timeline and includes under August 3rd;

Report on RNZ website: The two nurses, who pleaded guilty to negligence causing the manslaughter of two infants, have been sentenced to five years in prison.

The Samoa Observer published a detailed account of the sentencing hearing, where it was confirmed that one of the nurses mixed the MMR vaccine powder with expired muscle relaxant anaesthetic instead of water for injection supplied in a vial with the vaccine.

The entire event effected parent confidence in immunisation. These doubts were magnified by antivaccinationists resulting in a further realisation of their aim: a reduction in vaccination. The Guardian recently reported that the WHO blames the “anti-vaccine scare” for the rise in cases and of course deaths. Kate O’Brien, director of the WHO immunisation department stressed that the rapid spread of measles in Samoa was due to the “very low coverage” of immunisation.

This resulted in the temporary suspension of the country’s immunisation programme and dented parents’ trust in the vaccine, even though it later turned out the deaths were caused by other medicines that were incorrectly administered.

O’Brien said that an anti-vaccine group had been stoking these fears further with a social media campaign, lamenting that “this is now being measured in the lives of children who have died in the course of this outbreak”.

Misinformation about the safety of vaccines, she said, “has had a very remarkable impact on the immunisation programme” in Samoa.

At least 42 fatalities can be attributed to this measles epidemic at time of writing. In the video below anti-vaxxer identity Taylor Winterstein is mentioned as having visited Samoa in June with diehard anti-vaxxer Robert Kennedy Jnr. Winterstein described herself as “pro-science” the narrator tells us. Oh, my.

Please spend some time reading up on this woman who is presently making a living scamming Wellness devotees and the ill out of their money.

Given the harrowing situation in Samoa and the speed at which measles morbidity and mortality is increasing the government has made the measles vaccine compulsory and warned those preventing community members from being vaccinated to stop.

Such as Fritz Alaiasa Neufelt, the oh-so-savvy businessman selling filtered tap water as the measles fighting “Kangen Water”. Lying as he plays with the lives of ill Samoans he claims that after a spray of his magic water;

“They’re feeling good,” he said. “The measles are already … not cured, but it’s already back to normal”.

The ABC recently reported that the “pro-science” Winterstein was a tad concerned about the governments position. No, not the position of vile Fritz spraying measles sufferers like office plants but the government.

In fact her rational, objective, pro-science mind has applied Godwin’s Law. The ABC cite her calm demeanor;

… Australian-Samoan influencer Taylor Winterstein made recent posts on Facebook and Instagram comparing Samoa’s compulsory vaccination program as akin to “Nazi Germany”.

“Forcing a medical procedure on an entire country, especially one that is proving to be ineffective, dangerous and making the virus more deadly, is straight up barbaric,” she wrote on Facebook.

So um, check it out, right. A “pro-science”, so-called “influencer” who peddles herself as a health guru has a tantrum claiming that the only known safe and effective preventative for measles is “proving to be ineffective, dangerous and making the virus more deadly”. And yeah, Nazi Germany. Pfft. Oh I’m influenced Tay. Trust me.

I’d say you can’t make this stuff up but that’s exactly what they do. Consider the increase in cases below and the time frame it covers.

© Source: virologydownunder.com

Data: Samoan Government Facebook and Ministry of Health websites and media comments. Last update 27/11/19

Preparation: Ian M. Mackay, PhD

Immunisation rates were previously far higher in Samoa. Four years ago MMR coverage was 84%. By 2017 it had already dropped to 60%. Last year (2018) it had fallen to 31%.

There is no doubt. A drop in MMR vaccination has brought Samoa to a tragedy of shocking proportions. Two doses of MMR is the recommended, clearly life saving, dose.

But still, Meryl Dorey of The Australian Vaccination Risks Network tweeted this dishonest evidence free nonsense (left) just recently. Just as Winterstein pushes the piffle that the vaccine makes the virus more deadly, Dorey tries to convince her cult that malpractice is the cause.

I would urge Meryl Dorey to have another look above at the facts and follow some of the links. Revisit what is known about these deaths. Understand that it was not the expected MMR vaccine they received before dying.

Accept two nurses are now serving five years in prison for negligence. Know it was a negligent error in preparing the adulterated mixture that led to the deaths, then an eight month suspension of MMR. Admit the facts, admit the reality. Stop your lies.

Stop your negligence.

Scott Morrison and Greta Thunberg’s climate action speech

Posted in Atheism, climate change, Denialism, General, Human Rights, Science by

One week ago today Greta Thunburg spoke to world leaders at the UN Climate Action Summit. The video and full text are below.

Australian P.M. Scott Morrison, was re-elected as Prime Minister on May 18th this year. At the time he announced, “I have always believed in miracles”. This claim was no throw away semantic. Morrison is a hand waving, loud singing Pentecostal who believes in the saved and the damned. Miracles – a divine power interceding directly in our physical world in a manner consistent with gospel and divine will – are genuine events according to our PM. What I remember with a heavy stomach is his reference to Romans 12:11 (Never let the fire in your heart go out), as he pointed into the crowd proclaiming, “I’ll burn for you and you and you…”.

Aussies have heard Morrison talk about his view of an Australia in which “if you have a go, you get a go”. Very few Aussies realise this is Morrison shoving one of the key beliefs of Pentecostal theology down our throats. That belief is prosperity theology. Quite simply, belief in god leads to material wealth.

Along with other key Pentecostal beliefs, exclusivism and divine providence we can begin to understand why Morrison has physically and verbally distanced himself from manning up to the more than justified scalding Thunberg delivered to world leaders. Instead, during a recent press conference at the UN Morrison insisted Australia’s climate stance was being misrepresented.

In fact reports were “completely false and misleading” he said, and “prejudiced” views were being expressed. He stressed that there would be no increase in Australia’s 2030 target emission reductions as per the Paris agreement. And why?

We are keeping to the commitments we have set and do you know why? That’s what I put to the Australian people.

During a speech to world leaders at the UN he rolled out the creaky cart of how small Australia’s contribution to global emission was;

Australia’s internal and global critics on climate change willingly overlook or ignore our achievements, as the facts simply don’t fit the narrative they wish to project about our contribution. Australia is responsible for just 1.3% of global emissions. Australia is doing our bit on climate change and we reject any suggestion to the contrary.

Morrison also told reporters last week;

I do understand that people feel strongly about this, but I think we also have to take stock, we have to ensure we get a proper context and perspective.

I want children growing up in Australia to feel positive about their future, and I think it is important we give them that confidence that they will not only have a wonderful country and pristine environment to live in, that they will also have an economy to live in as well.

I don’t want our children to have anxieties about these issues.

So, anxiety be gone! And what better way to ensure that for “our children” than to take his own young daughters, 10 and 12 along to weekly hand waving, sing song, worshiping of the almighty who, thanks to divine providence, has the past, present and future unfolding to his specific plan.

But, what of the millions of climate refugees predicted to suffer an intolerable existence in the decades to come? Of economies to struggle and crumble? Climate driven destruction of ecosystems? Why, thanks to Pentecostal exclusivism the haves and have-nots are just where they should be. The saved and the damned, the godly and the evil are simply part of god’s divine providence plan.

Morrison as good as admitted that he encouraged his daughters to form a view void of evidence based climate science. After all, to the practicing Pentecostal the bible – god’s word – is absolute. Science and ethics must conform to this book.

We don’t have deep conversations about emissions reduction targets and what’s happening with the Kyoto protocol and Paris, but we talk about fossil fuels and we talk about what they learn at school, and I encourage them to have a passionate independent view about how they see the world, but I also give them a lot of context.

I don’t allow them to be basically contorted into one particular view. I like them to make up their own mind but I also like to give them reassurance because the worst thing I would impose on any child is needless anxiety. They’ve got enough things to be anxious about.

We’ve got to let kids be kids. We can’t have them growing up as mushrooms, but we’ve got to get a bit of context into this.

Progressive policy based on a greater scientific understanding of our universe and of our species such as gender diversity, abortion, women’s rights, LGBTQI rights and the dire need to care for our environment are just not the Pentecostal way. For Scott Morrison being born again and accepting the damnation of those who are not is absolute.

Salvation is what matters to Scott Morrison the pentecostal. Combined with his belief that his creator has an all-powerful, perfect blueprint for our planet, it is unlikely we will see any promising change in climate policy under his direction.

Yes indeed. Greta has many, many reasons to be furious with certain world leaders.

Greta Thunberg speaks to the UN Climate Action Summit
Full Text

This is all wrong. I shouldn’t be standing here. I should be back in school on the other side of the ocean. Yet you all come to me for hope? How dare you!

You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words. And yet I’m one of the lucky ones. People are suffering. People are dying. Entire ecosystems are collapsing.

We are in the beginning of a mass extinction. And all you can talk about is money and fairytales of eternal economic growth. How dare you!

For more than 30 years the science has been crystal clear. How dare you continue to look away, and come here saying that you are doing enough, when the politics and solutions needed are still nowhere in sight.

With today’s emissions levels, our remaining CO2 budget will be gone in less than 8.5 years.

You say you “hear” us and that you understand the urgency. But no matter how sad and angry I am, I don’t want to believe that. Because if you fully understood the situation and still kept on failing to act, then you would be evil. And I refuse to believe that.

The popular idea of cutting our emissions in half in 10 years only gives us a 50 per cent chance of staying below 1.5C degrees, and the risk of setting off irreversible chain reactions beyond human control.

Maybe 50 per cent is acceptable to you. But those numbers don’t include tipping points, most feedback loops, additional warming hidden by toxic air pollution or the aspects of justice and equity.

They also rely on my and my children’s generation sucking hundreds of billions of tonnes of your CO2 out of the air with technologies that barely exist. So a 50 per cent risk is simply not acceptable to us – we who have to live with the consequences.

To have a 67 per cent chance of staying below a 1.5C global temperature rise – the best odds given by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change – the world had 420 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide left to emit back on 1 January 2018. Today that figure is already down to less than 350 gigatonnes.

How dare you pretend that this can be solved with business-as-usual and some technical solutions. With today’s emissions levels, that remaining CO2 budget will be entirely gone in less than eight and a half years.

There will not be any solutions or plans presented in line with these figures today. Because these numbers are too uncomfortable. And you are still not mature enough to tell it like it is.

You are failing us. But the young people are starting to understand your betrayal. The eyes of all future generations are upon you. And if you choose to fail us I say we will never forgive you.

We will not let you get away with this. Right here, right now is where we draw the line. The world is waking up.

And change is coming, whether you like it or not.

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

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

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.