OROVILLE, Calif. — The Thermalito Union Elementary School District sent out a notice Thursday warning parents that a substitute Butte County Office of Education Afterschool Program teacher has a confirmed case of measles, even though the teacher had been previously immunized.
According to the district, the substitute worked in the Afterschool Program room at Sierra Avenue School on March 19 from 2:30 p.m. to 6:00 p.m.
If your child attended the Afterschool Program on March 19 from 2:30 p.m. to 6:00 p.m., your child may be at risk for measles. If your child was not there during that time, there is no risk of measles to your child.
If you have any questions please call Butte County Public Health at 530-552-3929 or the Thermalito Union Elementary School District at 530-538-2900 to talk with Superintendent Greg Blake.
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**Comment**
I guess it wasn’t those horrible ANTI-VAXXERS after all….
To: Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee, House Energy and Commerce Committee
Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions
Re: Statement federal vaccine mandates
Feb. 26, 2019
The Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS) strongly opposes federal interference in medical decisions, including mandated vaccines. After being fully informed of the risks and benefits of a medical procedure, patients have the right to reject or accept that procedure. The regulation of medical practice is a state function, not a federal one. Governmental preemption of patients’ or parents’ decisions about accepting drugs or other medical interventions is a serious intrusion into individual liberty, autonomy, and parental decisions about child-rearing.
A public health threat is the rationale for the policy on mandatory vaccines. But how much of a threat is required to justify forcing people to accept government-imposed risks? Regulators may intervene to protect the public against a one-in-one million risk of a threat such as cancer from an involuntary exposure to a toxin, or-one-in 100,000 risk from a voluntary (e.g. occupational) exposure. What is the risk of death, cancer, or crippling complication from a vaccine? There are no rigorous safety studies of sufficient power to rule out a much higher risk of complications, even one in 10,000, for vaccines. Such studies would require an adequate number of subjects, a long duration (years, not days), an unvaccinated control group (“placebo” must be truly inactive such as saline, not the adjuvant or everything-but-the-intended-antigen), and consideration of all adverse health events (including neurodevelopment disorders).
Vaccines are necessarily risky, as recognized by the U.S. Supreme Court and by Congress. The Vaccine Injury Compensation Program has paid some $4 billion in damages, and high hurdles must be surmounted to collect compensation. The damage may be so devastating that most people would prefer restored function to a multimillion-dollar damage award.
The smallpox vaccine is so dangerous that you can’t get it now, despite the weaponization of smallpox. Rabies vaccine is given only after a suspected exposure or to high-risk persons such as veterinarians. The whole-cell pertussis vaccine was withdrawn from the U.S. market, a decade later than from the Japanese market, because of reports of severe permanent brain damage. The acellular vaccine that replaced it is evidently safer, though somewhat less effective.
The risk: benefit ratio varies with the frequency and severity of disease, vaccine safety, and individual patient factors. These must be evaluated by patient and physician, not imposed by a government agency.
Measles is the much-publicized threat used to push for mandates, and is probably the worst threat among the vaccine-preventable illnesses because it is so highly contagious. There are occasional outbreaks, generally starting with an infected individual coming from somewhere outside the U.S. The majority, but by no means all the people who catch the measles have not been vaccinated. Almost all make a full recovery, with robust, life-long immunity. The last measles death in the U.S. occurred in 2015, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Are potential measles complications including death in persons who cannot be vaccinated due to immune deficiency a justification for revoking the rights of all Americans and establishing a precedent for still greater restrictions on our right to give—or withhold—consent to medical interventions? Clearly not.
Many serious complications have followed MMR vaccination, and are listed in the manufacturers’ package insert, though a causal relationship may not have been proved. According to a 2012 report by the Cochrane Collaboration, “The design and reporting of safety outcomes in MMR vaccine studies, both pre- and post-marketing, are largely inadequate” (cited by the National Vaccine Information Center).
Mandate advocates often assert a need for a 95% immunization rate to achieve herd immunity. However, Mary Holland and Chase Zachary of NYU School of Law argue, in the Oregon Law Review, that because complete herd immunity and measles eradication are unachievable, the better goal is for herd effect and disease control. The best outcome would result, they argue, from informed consent, more open communication, and market-based approaches.
Even disregarding adverse vaccine effects, the results of near-universal vaccination have not been completely positive.Measles, when it does occur, is four to five times worse than in pre-vaccination times, according to Lancet Infectious Diseases, because of the changed age distribution: more adults, whose vaccine-based immunity waned, and more infants, who no longer receive passive immunity from their naturally immune mother to protect them during their most vulnerable period.
Measles is a vexing problem, and more complete, forced vaccination will likely not solve it. Better public health measures—earlier detection, contact tracing, and isolation; a more effective, safer vaccine; or an effective treatment are all needed. Meanwhile, those who choose not to vaccinate now might do so in an outbreak, or they can be isolated. Immunosuppressed patients might choose isolation in any event because vaccinated people can also possibly transmit measles even if not sick themselves.
Issues that Congress must consider:
Manufacturers are virtually immune from product liability, so the incentive to develop safer products is much diminished. Manufacturers may even refuse to make available a product believed to be safer, such as monovalent measles vaccine in preference to MMR (measles-mumps-rubella). Consumer refusal is the only incentive to do better.
There are enormous conflicts of interest involving lucrative relationships with vaccine purveyors.
Research into possible vaccine adverse effects is being quashed, as is dissent by professionals.
There are many theoretical mechanisms for adverse effects from vaccines, especially in children with developing brains and immune systems. Note the devastating effects of Zika or rubella virus on developing humans, even though adults may have mild or asymptomatic infections. Many vaccines contain live viruses intended to cause a mild infection. Children’s brains are developing rapidly—any interference with the complex developmental symphony could be ruinous.
Vaccines are neither 100% safe nor 100% effective.Nor are they the only available means to control the spread of disease.
AAPS believes that liberty rights are unalienable. Patients and parents have the right to refuse vaccination, although potentially contagious persons can be restricted in their movements (e.g. as with Ebola), as needed to protect others against a clear and present danger. Unvaccinated persons with no exposure to a disease and no evidence of a disease are not a clear or present danger.
AAPS represents thousands of physicians in all specialties nationwide. It was founded in 1943 to protect private medicine and the patient-physician relationship.
Respectfully yours,
Jane M. Orient, M.D., Executive Director
Association of American Physicians and Surgeons
Approx. 10 Min. The Criminalization of Science Whistleblowers
Best 10 minutes you will ever spend to educate yourself. Please, please, watch this. This explains the sorry state of science at present. When scientists discover or even question anything contrary to the accepted narrative they are ostracized and typically their careers are destroyed.
In this particular video, Dr. Judy Mikovits explains how she was thrown in jail without a search warrant after she found retroviruses in vaccines. Mainstream news has all but ignored this important discovery that could be affecting 6% of the U.S. population, and before you disregard that as insignificant, that’s 20 million people infected by a retrovirus. A pretty big deal.
Are some vaccines contaminated? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bptNj4zPF_YDr. Garth Nicolson He discusses recent studies that show some forms of contamination in vaccines scheduled for children. He also discusses Gulf War Syndrome and how that could be tied to contamination of vaccines in the military.
Officials announced that beginning on Wednesday at 12 a.m., “anyone under 18 who has not yet been vaccinated will be barred from public places until they receive the MMR vaccine or until the emergency declaration expires in 30 days.”1
ALL OF THESE OUTBREAKS ARE TYPICAL OF THOSE THAT HAVE OCCURRED EVER SINCE THE VACCINE WAS INTRODUCED, AND OTHERS JUST LIKE THEM WILL UNDOUBTEDLY CONTINUE TO OCCUR EVEN IF THE DRUG INDUSTRY’S WELL-FUNDED CAMPAIGN SUCCEEDS IN VACCINATING EVERYBODY.
Unfortunately, what they’re being told is not only bad ethics, but also bad science, based on assumptions that are flatly contradicted by current research, and violate basic human rights and moral values that we still profess to hold dear.
Often assumed to be self-evident without even having to be stated, much less proved, their bottom-line assumptions are really two postulates that depend on each other to support them — namely,
that these small outbreaks of measles and other infectious diseases that we vaccinate against are initiated and propagated by unvaccinated individuals; and
that vaccines are not only miraculously safe, but also uniformly effective in rendering people immune to these diseases without having to contract them, so that only the unvaccinated are still susceptible and thus capable of transmitting them to others.
But you can’t have it both ways. For if these postulates were really true, if the immunity conferred by the measles vaccine were truly comparable to the absolute, lifelong immunity that results from coming down with and recovering from the actual disease, then the unvaccinated would pose no threat to anyone but themselves, based on a free choice of their own making, such that those taking the vaccine would have nothing to worry about.
Conversely, if vaccinated individuals are indeed at risk of acquiring the disease from the unvaccinated, then the vaccine is clearly ineffective to that extent, and whatever it does offer cannot be a genuine or reliably effective immunity.
On a cold winter morning in November 2007, I watched hundreds of parents line up with their children in front of a Maryland county courthouse. The children had been kicked out of school by state officials and were truant. The mothers and fathers were holding letters threatening them with imprisonment or fines of $50 a day for failing to show proof their children had gotten a chickenpox or hepatitis B shot. 1
Confused, angry and frightened, but mostly resigned, they were working Moms and Dads trudging toward the courthouse on a Saturday morning to face a judge ordering them to vaccinate their children or go to jail.
Patrolling the scene was an armed SWAT team of policemen with dogs.
The U.S. media turned out that day, but they and other members of the public were kept behind barricades and denied access into the building. I was there with my son, who brought his camera. We were there to witness what was going on with parents whose children had been injured by vaccines.
There was no transparency, no public oversight on what was happening to the parents and children inside the building.
I spoke with several mothers leaving the building with their children and learned the sad truth. They were not being asked questions about their child’s medical history or whether the children had experienced health problems after previous vaccinations. No information was given about vaccine side effects or how to monitor their children for signs of vaccine reactions. 2They were not made aware of exemptions to vaccination.
Clearly, preventing vaccine reactions was not a priority for those in charge that day.
The children were being injected with not just the two new vaccines added to the state’s school requirement list – hepatitis B and chickenpox – but also with other required vaccines if the public school system could find no record. One mother told me her children were up-to-date on their shots but the school system lost the records. She agreed to have her children receive the required vaccines all over again on the spot to avoid being fined or, worse, being sent to jail.
This mother and I were talking hundreds of yards from the front of the Courthouse door. We were standing about 12 inches inside a row of large cement stones that had been put there as a barrier to prevent terrorist attacks.
Suddenly, out of the corner of my eye I saw an armed guard with a dog emerge from the Courthouse. He was walking straight toward us.
I got this sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. It was the surge of shock and dread that any citizen of any country in any century has felt when an armed guard with a dog starts advancing.
As if we were criminals or terrorists, he yelled and gestured to us to move behind the stones. I looked at the mother and my son, who was filming our conversation, and we moved without a word.
We were being shown the power of the State wielded by that guard armed with a dog and a gun, just as parents inside the courthouse were being shown the power of the State wielded by doctors with syringes.
U.S. Constitution Protects Freedom To Dissent
When a government policy is unjust and people resist, the last resort is always a show of force. Use of fear, intimidation, discrimination and punishment of dissenting minorities is the hallmark of authoritarian governments and so is censorship and propaganda.
None of these tactics have a place in America, where our Constitution protects civil liberties, including freedom of thought, speech, conscience, religious belief and the right to dissent and petition the government. 3 4 5
Twelve years after I watched a state health department flex its muscle at a county courthouse, this year the whole world is watching the multi-billion dollar vaccine industrial complex flex its muscle in America. 67 8 Declaring a “take no prisoners” war on parents who decline to give their children every dose of every government recommended vaccine, the vaccine industry has been emboldened by the lucrative public-private business partnerships that have been forged over the past four decades with governments and the World Health Organization. 9 10
Vaccine Industry Wants Forced Use of All Vaccines by All People
The win that industry is looking for is a complete shut down of the public conversation about health and vaccination followed by a mandate by every government to force every child and adult to use every vaccine that drug companies develop and sell.
For children born in America in 1983, the federal government recommended 23 doses of seven vaccines given between two months and six years old. 11Today, the child vaccination schedule is 69 doses of 16 vaccines given between the day of birth and age 18, with 50 doses administered before age six, at a current price tag of more than $3,000 per child. 12 13
Child Vaccine Schedule Could Double or Triple in Future
For children born in America in the years to come, that vaccine list and cost could double or triple. The World Health Organization is encouraging drug companies to fast track more than a dozen new “priority” vaccines to market for children, pregnant women and adults – and you can be sure industry will lobby governments to mandate all of them – respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), streptococcus A & B, HIV, herpes simplex virus, gonorrhea, e-coli, shigella, salmonella, tuberculosis, malaria and more. 14
Where is the scientific evidence to support the assumption that forcing everyone to use more and more vaccines to atypically manipulate our immune systems and repeatedly provoke inflammatory responses in our bodies throughout life will produce better health for all? 15 16 17 18 19 20
The Real Public Health Emergency Is Not About Measles
The signs are everywhere that people are trying to throw off the chains binding them to failed medical and public health policies that cost Americans more than three trillion dollars a year in health care costs. 21Americans are beginning to understand that trusting blindly and saluting doctors smartly for the past 40 years has not prevented 1 child in 6 from becoming learning disabled, 22 23 or 1 in 9 from suffering with asthma, 24 or 1 in 10 from struggling with mental and behavior disorders 25 or 1 in 40 from developing autism. 26
America now has the worst infant mortality rates, 27 28 and worst maternal mortality rates, 29 30 and worst life expectancy 31 32 of all developed nations. Highly vaccinated and medicated Americans are very sick, with millions of children and adults suffering with immune and brain dysfunction marked by chronic inflammation in their brains and bodies 33 34 that confines too many of them to special education classrooms and frequent trips to doctors’ offices to try to deal with a lifetime of chronic illness and disability. 35 36
No public health official, professor or legislator in America can explain why millions and millions of children and more than 1 in 2 adults are chronically ill or disabled. 37
This is the real public health emergency that mothers and fathers want to talk about, but Congress and medical trade groups do not want to talk about. This is the elephant in the room at every public hearing on bills proposing to take away or expand vaccine informed consent rights being held in state legislatures today.
No Exception Vaccine Laws Guarantee Denial of Vaccine Casualties
The pharmaceutical industry, which was handed a partial liability shield from vaccine injury lawsuits by the U.S. Congress in 1986 38 that was turned into a total liability shield by the Supreme Court in 2011,39 40 41 is fighting to keep an economic stranglehold on a crumbling U.S. health care system. 42 43 44 45 With the government having paid vaccine victims more than $4 billion dollars in federal vaccine injury compensation since 1988 under the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act, 46 47 pharmaceutical corporations do not want to give up the no-risk, stable income stream they get from selling mandated vaccines. 48
“No exception” vaccine laws guarantee that the good vaccine science will never be done so vaccine casualties can continue to be swept under the rug by denying they exist,49 50 51 52 53 and nobody has to care about the crippled and dead bodies lying on the ground except the mothers and fathers grieving endlessly for what could have been. 54
Today, everybody knows somebody who was healthy, got vaccinated and was never healthy again. 55 56 This inconvenient truth is why the vaccine industry must find a way to shut down all public conversation about vaccination and eliminate all vaccine exemptions – and do it now.
Vaccine Risks Not Being Shared Equally By All
In January 2019, the World Health Organization announced that “vaccine hesitant” people, especially parents, are one of the top 10 threats to global health. 57 This ominous warning was quickly followed by the declaration of a state of emergency in Washington after a handful of measles cases were confirmed in primarily unvaccinated children. 58 Immediately, the media shifted into overdrive just like in January 2015 when measles cases were reported in Disneyland and the California legislature quickly removed the personal belief vaccine exemption for school children, 59 60 61 despite the biggest public protests the state Capitol had seen since the Viet Nam War.
In the first two months of 2019, we have watched thousands of brave parents and health care professionals travel to state Capitols and line up with their children at public hearings in Washington, 62 63 Arizona, 64 Nevada, 65 Oregon 66 and on Capitol Hill. 67 They are taking time off their jobs and spending their own money to make the journey to beg lawmakers to protect the legal right for children to get a school education and for parents to exercise voluntary informed consent to vaccine risk taking for their minor children. 68
With almost no vaccine contraindications today that qualify for a medical exemption under narrow CDC guidelines, 69 70 vaccine risks are not being shared equally by all. One-size-fits-all vaccine laws place an unequal risk burden on, and discriminate against, a vulnerable minority of children, who have genetic, biological and environmental susceptibility to suffering vaccine reactions.71 72 73 74
Why are the lives of vaccine vulnerable children, who public health officials do not want to acknowledge, valued less than the lives of immune compromised children they will acknowledge?
Calls for Forced Vaccination and Censorship
Since 2015, no state legislature has removed a vaccine exemption. 75 76 This year, while 11 states are proposing to restrict or eliminate vaccine exemptions, NVIC is supporting 61 bills that expand exemptions or protect vaccine informed consent rights (as of Mar.1, 2019), the largest number of bills we have ever supported in a legislative session. 77
This pushback against forced vaccination is being met with fury by doctors and lawyers inside and outside of government and by multi-media corporations demanding that parental rights and vaccine exemptions be stripped from state laws and that all information criticizing government vaccine policy be removed from the web. 7879 80
In the past few weeks, high ranking federal health officials have made false statements in Congress in an effort to mislead lawmakers into believing childhood vaccines like MMR do not carry serious risks. 81
The FDA Commissioner has threatened state legislators with federal government intervention if they do not eliminate vaccine exemptions. 82 83 84
The Chair of the U.S. House Intelligence Committee has pressured Facebook to block conversations about vaccination and Amazon to censor books and videos containing information about vaccine risks and failures.85 86 87
Amazon immediately bowed to that government pressure and removed the movie Vaxxed from Amazon Prime and similar videos critical of vaccine safety. 88 However, CNN is urging Amazon to go further and burn all the books, too. 89 90
A Washington DC lawmaker reacted to the hype by asking, “What if you take parents out of the equation?” and introduced a bill to allow minor children of any age to get vaccines in the city without a parent’s knowledge or consent after a doctor says the child is “mature” enough to make the decision. 91
What is the justification for burning the books and clearing the way for doctors to persuade very young children to get vaccinated without their parents’ knowledge or consent?
The media would have you believe that calls for censorship and the elimination of state vaccine exemptions and parental rights is based on 206 reported cases of measles identified in 11 states between January and March in our population of 328 million people. According to the CDC, “three or more cases” of measles is considered to be an “outbreak.”92
All the blame for measles outbreaks is being put on parents of the less than two percent of unvaccinated children attending U.S. schools, where nearly 95 percent of children nationwide have received two doses of measles containing MMR vaccine. 93
Aside from the illogical premise that children only catch measles or other infections in school buildings, is the call for censorship and “no exceptions” vaccine laws only about a few hundred cases of measles?
I don’t think so.
The Human Right to Autonomy Limits the Power of the State
The demonization of parents and enlightened doctors, who criticize vaccine science and government policy, is the tip of the spear in a larger culture war going on in this and other countries where economically stable, well educated populations are beginning to understand they are being exploited by corporations that have made business deals with governments. 94 95 96 97 98
The culture wars in the 21st century are about whether the first human right, individual autonomy, 99 will survive or an authoritarian State will own our children and have the power to eliminate civil liberties and sacrifice the lives of certain people for what those in control of the State consider the greater good of society. 100
The human right to autonomy protects individuals and vulnerable minorities from being discriminated against and exploited by the State. Who has the moral right, or should have the legal authority, to demand that mothers and fathers violate their conscience and risk their children’s lives or face punishment for refusing to do it?
What kind of government policy demands that kind of involuntary sacrifice?
And what kind of government demands that information about the risks and failures of a liability free pharmaceutical product be censored and withheld from the people being forced to use it?
There is no more important freedom than the freedom to decide when and for what reason you are willing to risk your life or your child’s life. We give up the human right to autonomy at our peril, no matter where or in what century we live.
The outcome of the Vaccine Culture War will determine what it means to be free. 101 Because if the State can tag, track down and force individuals against their will to be injected with biologicals of known and unknown toxicity today, then there will be no limit on which individual freedoms the State can take away in the name of the greater good tomorrow.
Martin Niemoller prophetically warned that incremental oppression by those in control of an authoritarian State is facilitated by denial, apathy and fear. He said,
“In Germany, they came first for the Communists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn’t speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time no one was left to speak up.” 102
Americans, this is our moment to help determine the outcome of a very real culture war that threatens to destroy long held values and beliefs that are embodied in the Bill of Rights of the U.S. Constitution to protect us from tyranny. The Bill of Rights affirms that we have God given natural rights, known today as civil liberties or human rights, which belong to each one of us and should never be taken away for any reason.
You Will Make the Choice
You and you alone will make the choice to live free or die as a slave. Do not let anyone take away your freedom to think and speak and obey the certain judgment of your conscience.
Use the NVIC Advocacy Portal to contact your state and federal legislators. Defend freedom and educate your family, friends and leaders in your community. Go to NVIC.org and sign up for our newsletter, so that no matter what happens in the weeks and months to come, you will not lose contact with us.
Be the one who never has to regret that you did not do today what you could have done to change tomorrow.
It’s your health. Your family. Your choice.
And our mission continues: No forced vaccination. Not in America.
Note: This commentary provides referenced information and perspective on a topic related to vaccine science, policy, law or ethics being discussed in public forums and by U.S. lawmakers. The websites of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) provide information and perspective of federal agencies responsible for vaccine research, development, regulation and policymaking.
73 Institute of Medicine Committee on the Assessment of Studies of Health Outcomes Related to the Recommended Childhood Immunization Schedule. Summary: Health Outcomes (p. 5-6) and Conclusions About Scientific Findings (p. 11) and Review of Scientific Findings (p. 75-98). The Childhood Immunization Schedule and Safety Stakeholder Concerns, Scientific Evidence and Future Studies; Washington, D.C. The National Academies Press 2013.
The annual numbers of reported measles cases since 2000 have ranged from a low of 37 in 2004 to a high of 667 in 2014. By March 7, 2019, a total of 228 measles cases had been reported across the U.S.
The last recorded measles-associated death in the U.S. occurred in 2015. Before the measles vaccine was developed, the annual death toll from reported measles cases in the U.S. was between 450 and 500
In 2016, 20,360 children aged 1 to 19 died. Motor vehicle crashes, firearm-related injuries, cancer, suffocation, drowning, drug overdoses, heart disease and chronic respiratory disease are the major causes of child deaths
Recent research shows that when measles infection is delayed, negative outcomes are 4.5 times worse than would be expected in a prevaccine era in which the average age at infection would have been lower
A March 5, 2019, U.S. Senate hearing on measles outbreaks and vaccine exemptions centered around the testimony of five witnesses in favor of vaccine mandates.Hundreds of people, a majority mothers of vaccine injured children, remained unheard, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was prevented from speaking on the grounds that the hearing was full
The following referenced information contains opinion and perspective on a health topic related to vaccine science, policy, law or ethics that is being discussed in public forums, including in medical, law and other professional journals; newspapers, magazines and other print; broadcast and online media outlets; state legislatures and the U.S. Congress.
Readers are encouraged to go to the websites of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) for the perspective of federal agencies responsible for vaccine research, development, regulation and policymaking, including the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) for information on vaccine policymaking; to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for information on regulating vaccines for safety and effectiveness; and to National Institutes of Health’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) for information on research and the development of new vaccines.
The World Health Organization has stated that “vaccine hesitancy” is one of the top 10 global public health threats.
Mandatory use of the first vaccine — the smallpox vaccine — became common in the 19th century because that infection had a mortality rate of 30 percent.1Measles is not and was never as deadly as smallpox. In 1962, a year before the measles vaccine was licensed in the U.S., the measles death rate was reported to be 1 in 1,000 cases.2
However, that 20th century death rate has been challenged by Physicians for Informed Consent arguing that the case fatality figures are based on reported cases and most cases of measles are benign and go unreported.3
Recovery from measles confers lifelong naturally acquired immunity. There is evidence that whatever immunity the measles vaccine provides can wane over time and wear off completely within a decade4 or two.5,6
The answer, we’re told, is booster shots, and making sure every single individual is vaccinated in order to ensure “herd immunity” — a concept that historically applies to naturally-acquired immunity following the recovery from the disease.
Measles infection in developed countries like the U.S. very rarely involves complications that lead to injury or death. If you’re over 50, you might recall a time when measles was a common childhood illness, and most children experienced it and were immune by age 15.7
Parents were not extremely fearful of measles before the vaccine was widely used because, like chickenpox, it was accepted as a childhood rite of passage and complications were rare.
However, measles does have more serious complications for older children and adults, which is why parents in the past wanted their children to get the disease when they were young. Authors of a recent study8 in The Lancet Infectious Diseases reported that when measles infection is delayed, negative outcomes are 4.5 times worse “than would be expected in a prevaccine era in which the average age at infection would have been lower.”
Measles Statistics
According to U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) data9 published in 2018, the annual number of reported measles cases since 2000 has ranged from a low of 37 in 2004 to a high of 667 in 2014. As of March 7, 2019, a total of 228 measles cases have been reported across the U.S.10
You can see a graph of the exact number of measles cases for each year going back to 2010 on the CDC’s website.11 The National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC) also has a page detailing the history of measles in the U.S. and other countries with accompanying statistics and references.12
According to the CDC, the last recorded measles-associated death in the U.S. occurred in 2015.13 But even before the measles vaccine was introduced and given to children in the early 1960s, the annual death toll from measles in the U.S. was between 450 and 500,14 and never approached the high death rate of smallpox, which was a far more deadly disease, and which prompted calls for states to pass mandatory smallpox vaccination laws for children.15
While any death, for any reason, is tragic, it is reasonable to ask whether it makes sense to mandate that children receive vaccines for diseases with low mortality rates when there are many other causes of death that are not only easier to prevent but would save far more lives.
According to a special report16,17 on child mortality published 2018 in The New England Journal of Medicine, 20,360 children aged 1 to 19 died in 2016; it goes on to list the top 10 causes of death in this age group.
Twenty percent of deaths (4,074 children) were caused by motor vehicle crashes, which came in at No. 1, followed by firearm-related injuries at 15 percent (3,143 deaths). In terms of disease, cancer was the primary cause of death (1,853 deaths), followed by suffocation (1,430 deaths) and drowning (995 deaths). A total of 982 children died from drug overdoses. Heart disease killed 599 children and chronic lower respiratory disease took the lives of 274.
Where is the evidence that measles is a catastrophic public health concern comparable to smallpox that warrants forcing all children to get vaccinated or be barred from getting a school education?
Senators Paid by Big Pharma Lead Fight for Mandatory Vaccinations
The U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions held a hearing March 5, 2019 titled “Vaccines Save Lives: What Is Driving Preventable Disease Outbreaks?” 18The entire hearing centered around the testimony of five witnesses, all of whom were in favor of vaccines.
Meanwhile, more than 500 people, a majority of them mothers of vaccine-injured children, remained unheard in a crowded hallway or overflow rooms, unable to enter the small hearing room.19 According to The Washington Post, Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., was the only senator or witness who made a statement questioning vaccine mandates and the threat they pose to autonomy and liberty.20
It’s worth noting that two of the most impassioned senators advocating for mandatory vaccinationsand the elimination of vaccine exemptions, Sens. Bill Cassidy, R-La., and Bob Casey, D-Pa., have also received the largest payments from the drug industry.21 Cassidy received $156,000 from the pharmaceutical industry in 2018, and Casey received $532,859 that year.
Fourteen other Republicans and 12 Democrats also received tens of thousands of dollars apiece from Big Pharma last year. For a complete listing of each member and the exact amount, see Matt Novak’s February 26, 2019, article in Gizmodo.22Many other members of Congress have received hundreds of thousands of dollars from Big Pharma.23
How can we expect impartiality from lawmakers advocating that everyone should be forced to buy and use vaccines when so many members of Congress have financial conflicts of interest with Big Pharma?
Ironically, while defending the absolute safety of vaccines, Casey and Cassidy are cosponsors of the Vaccine Access Improvement Act (S.3253), introduced in 2018-2018.
This legislation aimed to streamline the taxation for new vaccines eligible for coverage under the federal Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP), which was created by Congress in the 1986 National Childhood Vaccine Injury and expanded under the 21st Century Cures Act enacted in 2016. Cosponsor senator Johnny Isakson, R-Ga., commented on the bill in July 2018:24
“The Vaccine Access Improvement Act offers a commonsense solution to get vaccines to patients more quickly, helping to protect Americans against life-threatening diseases while ensuring that the small number of patients who experience side effects get the care they need.”
The Acts passed by Congress in 1986 and 2016, as well as the Vaccine Access Improvement Act (which died in committee in July 2018),25 acknowledge that damage occurs from FDA licensed and CDC recommended vaccines and that injured children and adults should receive financial aid.
So why were no individuals who have been personally affected by vaccine injuries and deaths allowed to speak at the hearing?
Healthy Eighteen-Year-Old Complains About Mother’s Decision to Not Vaccinate Him
One of the five witnesses was 18-year-old Ethan Lindenberger, whose mother made an informed decision and did not vaccinate him as a child. After doing his own online research, when he turned 18 he made the choice to get vaccinated. In his testimony, a transcript26 of which can be found on the U.S. Senate website, he talks about his mother’s views, saying:
“These beliefs were met with strong criticism, and over the course of my life seeds of doubt were planted and questions arose because of the backlash my mother received when sharing her views on vaccines. These questions and doubts were minor and never led to a serious realization of how misinformed my mother was.”
Repeating identical talking points offered by all of the invited witnesses and all but one senator on the committee, Ethan also stated confidently, “In its essence, there is no debate. Vaccinations are proven to be a medical miracle, stopping the spread of numerous diseases and therefore saving countless lives.”
“There is no debate?” Typically, only talking heads paid by industry take a denialist position like that. A rationally thinking person who has taken the time to look at all of the evidence quickly realizes that
the debate is far from over and vaccine science is nowhere near settled.
House Hearing on Measles Outbreak
The week before the senate’s hearing on vaccines, the U.S. House Energy and Commerce Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee held a hearing on the measles outbreak and response efforts.27 This hearing can be viewed in its entirety on C-SPAN’s website.28
As expected, the witnesses and members of the committee denied there are serious vaccine risks — or if there are, they are almost nonexistent — and pointed the finger at parents with unvaccinated children attending school as the reason for measles outbreaks.
However, according to the CDC, over 94 percent of kindergarten children nationwide have received two doses of measles-containing MMR vaccine and only about 2 percent of children attend school with vaccine exemptions.29
The herd immunity threshold for vaccine-acquired artificial immunity is thought to be between 80 and 95 percent,30 depending on the disease in question. For measles, it’s between 90 and 95 percent. Yet, the high vaccination rate in the U.S. isn’t enough to thwart outbreaks, and evidence suggest they would probably continue to occur even if vaccine coverage was at 100 percent.
Measles Outbreaks Repeatedly Occur in Highly Vaccinated Populations
One of the problems is that measles outbreaks occur even in highly-vaccinated populations.31,32,33,34,35,36A 1994 study37 looking at measles incidence in Cape Town, Africa, indicated that as vaccination rates increased, measles became a disease in populations where the majority of children had been vaccinated. The immunization coverage was 91 percent and vaccine efficacy was estimated to be 79 percent.
According to the authors,
“The epidemiology of measles in Cape Town has thus changed as evinced in this epidemic, with an increase in the number of cases occurring in older, previously vaccinated children. The possible reasons for this include both primary and secondary vaccine failure.”
By the early 1980s, about 95 percent of children entering kindergarten in the U.S. had received a dose of measles-containing vaccine but, in 1989-1990, there were outbreaks of measles among school-age children and college students.
Public health officials responded by recommending a second dose of MMR vaccine for all children. In an article published in Clinical Microbiology Reviews in 1995, researchers stated:38
“Measles, which was targeted for elimination from the United States in 1979, persisted at low incidence until 1989, when an epidemic swept the country. Cases occurred among appropriately vaccinated school-age populations and among unimmunized, inner-city preschool children.
In response to the epidemic, measles immunization recommendations have been modified. To prevent spread among school-age populations, a second dose of MMR vaccine is recommended at 5 to 6 or 11 to 12 years of age.”
Today, measles outbreaks are occurring even in populations that have received two or more doses of measles vaccine, and/or where vaccination rates are above the “herd immunity” threshold. Examples include:
• A 2017 measles outbreak in a highly vaccinated military population in Israel, ranging in age from 19 to 37. The first two patients identified had both received two doses of measles vaccine. Patient zero, a 21-year-old soldier, had documentation of having received three doses.39
• A 2014 study40 conducted in the Zhejiang province in China found that populations that have achieved a measles vaccination rate of 99 percent through mandatory vaccination programs are still experiencing consistent outbreaks far beyond what the World Health Organization expects.
What’s more, 93.6 percent of the 1,015 participants in this study tested seropositive for measles antibodies, which theoretically means they should have been protected against the disease.
Ignoring Vaccine Injuries Is What Causes Mounting Public Distrust
Parents who have experienced the pain of watching a perfectly healthy child decline shortly following vaccination, or who die or are left with disabilities and chronic poor health, are legitimately crying foul for being left out of congressional hearings that called for stricter mandatory vaccination laws, and which criticized parents of unvaccinated children while suggesting vaccine conversations about vaccine risks should be censored on social media.
Public concern about the safety of vaccines is indeed growing. There is a growing distrust of federal health agencies responsible for regulating the safety of vaccines and making vaccine policy, and it’s because Big Pharma and the government are trying to bury the evidence.
Where are the scientifically sound studies comparing the health outcomes of vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals?
When government officials flat-out deny the obvious, the seeds of public mistrust are planted. Today, many of us know someone who has been injured by a vaccine, and more and more people are sharing their stories in an effort to prevent others from having to live through the same pain. It is a reality that simply cannot be denied any longer. To learn more about vaccine injury reports, visit:
The NVIC International Memorial for Vaccine Victims,41 where you can search for vaccine injury reports by state and by vaccine or post a vaccine injury report yourself. You can also record your own video reporting a vaccine injury or death and post.
Vaccine Injury Stories on Vaxxed.com.42 Here, you can find nearly 7,000 written and recorded stories detailing people’s vaccine injuries, sorted by state or by vaccine. To submit your own story, use this online submission form.43
MedAlerts is a searchable database of vaccine injury reports made to the federal Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS) and can be accessed through the website of the National Vaccine Information Center at NVIC.org
Madison Area Lyme Support Group 