The United Nations (UN) held a meeting a few weeks ago, Friday, June 28, 2019, in New York to address social media distribution of vaccine misinformation, as well as determine the primary causes of vaccine hesitancy. The Executive Director of the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), Executive General of the World Health Organization (WHO), Director of Health Policy from Facebook, as well as a representative from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation were in attendance.
In light of the recent vaccine mandates being proposed/passed left and right in this country and policy makers sending letters to social platforms like Facebook and Google asking to censor anything other than pro-vaccine content, it’s no wonder a meeting like this was to take place.
There were very positive opening remarks from Dr. Tedros Adhanom, the Director General of the World Health Organization (WHO). He stated that although vaccine hesitancy captures headlines in developed countries, at the global level, the biggest barrier to vaccination remains lack of access, NOT misinformation. He further stated, “we must make sure people have reliable information, but we must also take the time to listen to people’s concerns and fears.” I’ll dig into his thoughts in a bit.
The meeting went downhill for a bit after opening comments. Comedian Jimmy Kimmel made a video appearance giving his spiel on “ignorant parents” not vaccinating *with laughter in the background*- content of this nature had no place in a serious meeting where death and disease were the forefront of discussion. Does the UN, CDC, and WHO expect parents to take them seriously when they bring the circus to town to parade his jokes during what they deem as a very serious matter, state of emergency, in fact??
Further, this was not the place for the 18 year old kid who has been parading around the country as a pro-vaccine poster child for going against his parents wishes and vaccinating himself (how in the world did this make national news, anyway?). I lost interest in him when he said, “anti-vaxxers say vaccines cause autism and brain damage, which has been disproven time and time again.” The misinformation in his comment is the very reason this meeting was to be held:
Brain damage is in FACT a side effect from vaccines in some children, or our tax dollars wouldn’t be used to compensate families for such.
Small Example of Vaccine Injury Payouts- Acute Disseminated Encephalomyelitis (plenty more examples here.)
And as an aside, this kid saying vaccines do not cause autism is not true either because only one of the 16 vaccines has been studied for causal relationship to autism, the MMR. The vaccine of concern is actually the DTaP. So until autism studies have been conducted on ALL of the vaccines – it is only “safe” to say, “A single vaccine, the MMR, does not cause autism.”
Further, if we take into consideration the affidavit dated September 7, 2018 from Dr. Andrew Zimmerman, a world-renowned pro-vaccine pediatric neurologist, who was an expert witness for the government defending vaccines, then there are in fact exceptions where vaccines, naming the MMR, could cause autism.
Getting back on track….
Jason Hirsch, Director of Health Policy at Facebook, was pretty awesome! He let it be known they are not health experts over at Facebook and that Facebook is only a platform for self expression. He gave two key aspects to Facebook’s approach to misinformation about vaccines:
- addressing the misinformation itself; and
- promotion of more authoritative information
Mr. Hirsch further gave a great example of information that Facebook will NOT take action on comments like the following:
“Today I vaccinated my child and she got a fever, and I’m concerned about that, you should be careful.”
Facebook is only taking down information that may cause imminent physical injury to others, such as the example Mr. Hirsch gave about an incident in the Philippines where someone posted about physically going after an official.
You could tell many in attendance were hoping Mr. Hirsch was going to speak of tighter restrictions because he was repeatedly asked what Facebook plans to do to censor vaccine expression, yet he DID. NOT. BUDGE.
Collectively, the meeting focused on vaccine hesitancy worldwide. The general consensus shed light on the major concerns being poverty, lack of availability to healthcare, children in conflict zones where health services have been destroyed, parents who don’t have enough information on the importance of vaccines, and then middle and high income countries who are delaying vaccines because of misinformation and mistrust.
Gillian SteelFisher, senior research scientist at Harvard, stated there was only one reason parents do not vaccinate- HESITANCY. She was asked to comment on survey findings “reasons behind people’s hesitancy towards vaccination,” and the biggest challenge she stated, was the infrastructure and getting access to vaccination. She followed with:
- rumors and misinformation.
- parents are rushed with 3 minute vaccine appointments with no time to ask questions.
- low income families wait for hours in clinics for vaccine appointments; and
- due to the success of vaccination, when there aren’t cases, parents don’t see the diseases and in turn do not make vaccination a priority.
This is total bologna. Where in the meeting is ANYONE going to mention VACCINE INJURY?
Not. Even. Mentioned. *crickets*
SteelFisher followed with what would end up being the take home message to all in attendance,
“The best immunization against vaccine hesitancy is actually TRUST.”
I am in TOTAL agreement. You’ve got the UN, the CDC, and the WHO sitting under one roof, and not even a mention of vaccine injury, the single most reason responsible for parents fearing vaccination- parents can’t trust because the risks of vaccination are NEVER discussed and when parents and health care providers mention the risks, they are deemed “anti-vax” and shunned.
Here in lies the problem. Parents are hesitant to vaccinate because they can’t trust.
Of course parents are not trusting:
????Highly educated parents are being made to feel ignorant and being kicked out of pediatric medical practices because they have questions about vaccines, whether about ingredients, side effects, or opting for an alternative schedule.
When parents feel respected, they will listen. As a family physician, I give each of my patients the following, prior to appointments that involve a vaccination consult-
- I expect my pediatrician to respect that I am the parent.
- I expect thoughtful conversations with my child’s pediatrician about vaccines, no matter how far fetched my questions may seem to them.
- I expect time with my pediatrician to go over the vaccine schedule; this includes the vaccine ingredients, the package inserts, the potential side effects. I have the right to know both the positive and the negative side effects of vaccination because vaccines are a pharmaceutical drug/biologic, and just like ALL drugs/biologics, vaccines come with a very long list of potential side effects.
- I expect my pediatrician to agree vaccines do not come without potential serious and sometimes life threatening side effects.
- I expect the opportunity to weigh on the side of caution and to follow an alternative vaccine schedule without getting kicked out of my pediatrician’s office.
- I expect when I question a vaccine for safety I am NOT deemed anti- vaccine or a conspiracy theorist by my pediatrician or the medical community.
- I expect when my child is not feeling well, I may choose to postpone vaccination without being frowned upon.
As physicians we are held to the Hippocratic Oath, to FIRST DO NO HARM. What kind of physician would I be if I did not give parents full disclosure of the risks with vaccination?
????You (CDC, WHO, UN) blame measles outbreaks on vaccine hesitant parents, yet there’s no mention that many of these cases are vaccine derived side effects of the MMR vaccine?
From The Journal of Clinical Microbiology:
During the measles outbreak in California in 2015, a large number of suspected cases occurred in recent vaccinees (3). Of the 194 measles virus sequences obtained in the United States in 2015, 73 were identified as vaccine sequences (R. J. McNall, unpublished data).
????You (CDC, WHO, UN) scare monger parents about polio making a comeback, yet more than 75% of last year’s worldwide polio cases were from Vaccine Derived Paralytic Polio, cVPDV. Yep, that’s right! Of the 136 cases of polio worldwide in 2018, 104 of those cases were due to the vaccine. The oral polio vaccine, which was banned in the USA in 2000, is the very same vaccine being shipped over to Africa RIGHT NOW.
From Science Magazine:
In Africa, the wild polio virus appears to be gone, but the vaccine-derived viruses circulating there are just as dangerous. These strains arise when the weakened live virus used in the oral polio vaccine (OPV) mutates and regains its virulence. In rare instances, where a population’s immunity is low, they can spread just like the wild virus. Last year, vaccine-derived viruses paralyzed 105 children worldwide; the wild virus just 33.
Website sponsored by the WHO: http://polioeradication.org/polio-today/polio-now/
????You (CDC, WHO, UN) risk the “few” to save the “many” and parents know this.
- Oral Polio vaccine causes polio, from the WHO:
“The weakened virus may paralyze the child or his or her contact, but does not spread to cause other cases of paralysis.”
- DTaP vaccine causes death, from the Pediacel® Package Insert (under general warnings and precautions):
“Sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) has occurred in infants following administration of DTaP vaccines. By chance alone, some cases of SIDS can be expected to follow receipt of PEDIACEL®.”
- Hepatitis B vaccine causes autoimmunity:
“Common clinical characteristics were observed among 93 patients diagnosed with immune-mediated conditions post-HBVv, suggesting a common denominator in these diseases. In addition, risk factors such as history of autoimmune diseases and the appearance of adverse event(s) during immunization may serve to predict the risk of post-immunization diseases.”
- DTaP vaccine in relation to autism and SIDS, from the Tripedia® Package Insert (under adverse events):
“Adverse events reported during post-approval use of Tripedia vaccine include idiopathic thrombocytopenic purpura, SIDS, anaphylactic reaction, cellulitis, autism, convulsion/grand mal convulsion, encephalopathy, hypotonia, neuropathy, somnolence and apnea.”
- Merck is in current litigation over thousands injured from the shingles vaccine, causing shingles, neuropathic pain, chickenpox, etc:
“Merck knew and had reason to know that its Zostavax vaccine was inherently defective and unreasonably dangerous as designed” that “Merck downplayed the serious and dangerous side effects of its product to encourage sales of the product; consequently, Merck placed its profits above its customers’ safety.”
- The MMR vaccine isn’t exactly effective, Mumps outbreak in Arkansas, 2016:
A total of 2954 mumps cases were identified during this outbreak. The majority of cases (1676 (57%)) were school-aged children (5-17 years), 1536 (92%) of these children had completed the mumps vaccination schedule.
- And the Mumps outbreak aboard the Naval Ship earlier this year was quarantined 5 months at sea due to Mumps outbreak:
All seven hundred and three military personnel aboard the ship have received measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) booster vaccinations, according to the US Navy’s Fifth Fleet headquartered in Bahrain.
- The acellular pertussis portion of the DTaP vaccine sheds pertussis, from the FDA:
This research suggests that although individuals immunized with an acellular pertussis vaccine may be protected from disease, they may still become infected with the bacteria without always getting sick and are able to spread infection to others, including young infants who are susceptible to pertussis disease.
????Henrietta H. Fore, Executive Director of the UN Children’s Fund, gave opening comments at the UN meeting, and she said, “Vaccines work.” Well, Ms. Fore, maybe vaccines do work, but according to the few examples above, vaccines also don’t work. And this open, honest dialogue is exactly what parents want and need to hear because quite frankly the information is out there, and so long as you continue to ignore the risks of vaccinations, you are going to have vaccine hesitancy and mistrust (not to mention Ms. Fore sits on the boards of General Mills, Exxon Mobile, and Theravance Biopharma).
????Since I’ve mentioned conflict of interest, what about the FDA Commissioner, Scott Gottlieb, who left the FDA to sit on Pfizer’s board?
????GlaxoSmithKline pleaded guilty and paid $3 Billion to resolve fraud allegations and failure to report safety data, yet they run the control trials on their vaccines?
????The Informed Consent Action Network filed an appeal recently and obtained the following from the FDA:
Freedom of Information Act disclosure from the Federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has revealed that the MMR vaccine was licensed based on clinical trials which in total had less than 1,000 participants and far more adverse reactions than previously acknowledged.
????Our government has paid out over 4.1 Billion dollars to families of the vaccine injured, all the while the pharmaceutical companies who make the vaccines have government immunity to any injury caused by the vaccine.
????Finally (for now), YOU are mandating and forcing vaccination upon children, full knowing pharmaceutical drugs and biologics come with “unavoidable adverse side effects and warnings:”
(b)Unavoidable adverse side effects; warnings
No vaccine manufacturer shall be liable in a civil action for damages arising from a vaccine-related injury or death associated with the administration of a vaccine after October 1, 1988, if the injury or death resulted from side effects that were unavoidable even though the vaccine was properly prepared and was accompanied by proper directions and warnings.
I have no doubt in my mind why parents are “vaccine hesitant” and don’t trust YOU – Get your sh*t together, let’s talk about the real elephant(s) in the room. Parents don’t want their children to be a statistic. Didn’t you learn in grade school honesty is the best policy? ✌️
We (physicians) get parents to vaccinate their kids by having honest dialogue about the real benefits AND the very real risks of vaccination AND ultimately by giving parents the freedom to choose.
~Dr. Ashley Mayer
