Why I Am Not An Anti-Vaxxer
Ok, Hear Me Out… You don’t have to be gullible to believe the anti vax propaganda, you might just be uninformed.
So, before I get into the “boring data” and such, I’m going to start this off with just some down home common sense.
This article isn’t about the COVID Jab or the Flu Shot. This is about immunizations.
Thanks to modern medicine, life expectancy has gone up exponentially. Compare 65 years old in 1900 to 80 years old today. Many diseases have been practically eradicated, and we have treatments and cures for most of the rest. This is a fact. This cannot be disputed by anyone with a rational mind.
The child mortality rate in the United States, for children under the age of five, was 462.9 deaths per thousand births in 1800. This means that for every thousand babies born in 1800, over 46 percent did not make it to their fifth birthday. Over the course of the next 220 years, this number has dropped drastically, and the rate has dropped to its lowest point ever in 2020 where it is just seven deaths per thousand births.
Immunizations have essentially removed many deadly and debilitating viruses from North America. Small Pox, Polio, Measles, Mumps, and more are either extinct on American soil or so rare that when there’s a flare up of 3 or more cases, it usually makes headlines. This is a fact. This cannot be disputed by anyone with a rational mind.
Now that there is an anti vax movement in this country that’s gaining steam. Thanks to our governments blunder with COVID, some of these viruses have been making a bit of a comeback.
Throw in the fact that we have literally hundreds of thousands of people flowing across our border that don’t have those immunizations? That could be carrying a plethora of disease and viruses from whatever third world country they ran, flew, or swam from?
Yea, I wonder why viruses like Polio, Measles, and others are becoming a bit less rare.
Not really.
To be clear, I am a big fan of natural immunity to as many things as one can be. I’ve never gotten the COVID shot or a flu shot. Why? I’m reasonably young and healthy. I got COVID, it sucked, but I beat it with rest and fluids and haven’t gotten it again. I couldn’t tell you the last time I got the flu.
Just The Facts Jack
Alright, now let’s get into some raw numbers.
In 1900, 21,064 smallpox cases were reported, and 894 patients died. In 1920, 469,924 measles cases were reported, and 7575 patients died; 147,991 diphtheria cases were reported, and 13,170 patients died. In 1922, 107,473 pertussis cases were reported, and 5099 patients died.
The last case of smallpox in the United States was reported in 1949. The eradication of smallpox globally in was achieved in 1977… Thanks to immunization vaccines!
The polio vaccine was put into distribution in 1955. During 1951-1954, an average of 16,316 paralytic polio cases and 1879 deaths from polio were reported each year. The last documented domestic transmission of polio in the United States occurred in 1979 and as of 1991 polio was eradicated from the western hemisphere. Since then, every case has been imported, (until recently) thanks to immunization vaccines!
MMR
Measles, mumps, rubella? You probably don’t know what they really are do ya? Something LIKE chicken pox is about as much of an understanding most people in the western hemisphere have. Why is that?
Well, before the vaccine for mumps came out in 1963 there were about 50,000 hospitalizations, 1,000 cases with brain swelling, and over 500 deaths every single year. Measles was completely eradicated from the USA in 2000 thanks to vaccine immunization. Yet all of a sudden, it’s making a comeback. I wonder why?
Even though Rubella is the most mild of the infections, Up to 70% of women who get rubella may get arthritis, however this is rare in children and men. In rare cases, rubella can also cause serious other problems, including brain infections and bleeding problems. liver or spleen damage. Why not protect yourself just in case?
Hepatitis
What about the Hepatitis Vaccines which prevents the contraction of a horrifying virus that is so easily transmissible?
Hepatitis A is spread when someone ingests the virus (even in microscopic amounts too small to see) through close, personal contact with an infected person, or through eating contaminated food or drink.
Hepatitis B is can be spread through ANY bodily fluid when it enters the body of someone who is not infected through sex, blood, etc. It can even be transmitted to a child through childbirth or through a toothbrush or razor if someone cut themselves or made their gums bleed.
Hepatitis C is most easily spread through blood and sex.
Hepatitis A is really no big deal besides getting incredibly sick. Usually no lasting damage. There is a vaccine for this.
Hepatitis B however hits quick, and hard. Approximately 25% of people who become infected during childhood and 15% of those who become infected after childhood die from cirrhosis (liver scarring) or liver cancer. And the worst part? You don’t even show symptoms until it’s already too late. There is a vaccine for this!
Globally, hepatitis B and C causes 80% of all liver cancer, which is the second most common cause of cancer death. Technically the HepB vaccine is the first ever anti cancer vaccine. Something to think about!
Hepatitis C plays the long game. About half of adults who get infected with the hepatitis C virus develop a lasting infection. Approximately 5%-25% of people with chronic hepatitis C develop cirrhosis over 10–20 years. There is not a vaccine for this yet.
Tdap
Tetanus. The crazy scary boogie man we were told about as kids that would give us lock jaw if we stepped on a rusty nail. Fortunately, that’s all it was for most of us because our parents vaccinated us. But what about those who aren’t?
Tetanus is a BACTERIAL infection. The reason I put that in caps is because there is NO CURE for bacterial infections. Once you got it, you got it for good. The only way to stop you from getting it besides living in a bubble and never playing in dirty areas outside; is with preventable measures like immunization.
This bacteria when it enters the body, produces a toxin that attacks the nervous system and causes muscle spasms. The main target is the jaw and neck which causes lock jaw, making it almost impossible to open your mouth or swallow.
But it’s not just the neck and jaw that can be affected! It can also affect your chest, neck, back, and abdominal muscles. Back muscle spasms often cause arching, and even muscles that help you breath can be affected.
The Tetanus vaccine came out in the 1940s and there were about 50,000 people who died from it in America. Now for the last decade or so, the number averages below 30 a year of people who get infected, and less than 1 for people who die from it. Thanks in part to the vaccines, but also due to advances in wound care and treatments.
Diphtheria is another bacterial infection. But unlike tetanus which is usually spread through fecal bacteria on soiled surfaces, Diphtheria can be spread through the air with sneezing or coughing, or exposure to an open sore or wound from an infected person.
This bacteria makes a toxin that kills healthy tissues in the respiratory system. Within two to three days, the dead tissue forms a thick, gray coating that can build up in your nose, tonsils, voice box, and throat, making it very hard to breathe and swallow. If the toxin gets into the blood stream, it can cause heart, nerve, and kidney damage.
In the 1920s, there were an estimated 200,000 cases of diphtheria yearly in the US with up to about 15,000 deaths. These cases plummeted very quickly after the vaccine came out to the point of no cases whatsoever reported over an 11-year period from 2003–2013. Yet for some reason, it’s starting to make a comeback, though small. I wonder why? (Not really.)
Now for the final part of this vaccine cocktail. Pertussis, also known as whooping cough, is probably the most important one for our children.
Whooping cough is very serious, especially for babies and young kids. Whooping cough can cause pneumonia, seizures, brain damage, and death. Babies younger than one year of age who get whooping cough are most likely to be hospitalized or even die, no matter the treatment.
This bacteria is the one of the easiest transmissible bacteria in existence. You can get it from airborne droplets from coughing and sneezing, saliva from sharing drinks or utensils, and even skin contact via hugging or handshakes.
When the whooping cough vaccine was first licensed in 1914, the USA averaged about 200,000 cases a year. In 2020, we had less than 5,000.
Knowing how potentially fatal this can be for infants and how extremely easily spread it can be, why would you not give this to your child?
The Autism Lie
For many years now, people have claimed that vaccines give children autism. This is absolutely ridiculous.
First of all, autism is something you are BORN WITH. Giving a baby a vaccine has no bearing on whether or not they will be autistic since it is given AFTER they are BORN.
Secondly, there are many different THEORIES as to the cause of autism, genetics being the most common reason.
Research from 2021 found that autism is about 4.2 times more prevalent in boys than girls. This means that for every girl with autism, there are 4 boys with autism. Girls aren’t getting vaccinated less than boys now are they?
Another theory that holds a lot of weight is that age has a lot to do with the uptick in autism. Ya know, because people are living longer thanks to modern medicine, older people are having kids now instead of just 16-25 year olds.
The first major study of this type, published in 2006, focused on medical records of 132,000 Israeli adolescents. It showed that men in their 30s are 1.6 times as likely to have a child with autism as men under 30; men in their 40s have a 6x increase.
Since then, scientists have conducted similar analyses of data on children born in California, Denmark and Sweden, as well as of an international dataset on 5.7 million children. Nearly all of this research has shown an increased prevalence of autism among the children of older fathers.
A large 2014 study based on Swedish medical records hinted that the odds of autism among children born to fathers older than 45 are about 75 percent higher than for children born to fathers in their early 20s.
Something that can’t be avoided these days is the media. If you listen to the radio or watch network television, I’m sure you’ve seen the new ads saying that Tylenol taken by mothers might have given your kid autism along with a long list of other “settlements” out there accusing other products of the same.
There is absolutely nothing that points to vaccines of any kind “giving” kids autism. The most common side effect that could be considered harmful is a fever. If a fever gets out of hand then neurological complications can take place. But not autism.
The Heavy Metals Poisoning Lie
Many anti vaxxers will try to tell you that there is a lot of heavy metals and such in vaccines causing children to get sick and sometimes die. Whereas there is metals found in vaccines, there is a reason, and they’re normal.
Yep! There’s aluminum in your vaccines! You’ve probably heard how silver has natural healing properties right? Well so does the third most common element found on this planet behind oxygen and silicon.
Aluminum is found in numerous foods and beverages including fruits and vegetables, beer and wine, seasonings, flour, cereals, nuts, dairy products, baby formulas, and honey. Typically, adults ingest 7 to 9 milligrams of aluminum per day.
Aluminum is used in vaccines as an adjuvant. An adjuvant is a vaccine component that boosts the immune response to the vaccine. Adjuvants allow for lesser quantities of the vaccine and fewer doses.
The aluminum contained in vaccines is similar to that found in a liter (about 1 quart or 32 fluid ounces) of infant formula. While infants receive about 4.4 milligrams of aluminum in the first six months of life from vaccines, they receive more than that in their diet. Breast-fed infants ingest about 7 milligrams, formula-fed infants ingest about 38 milligrams, and infants who are fed soy formula ingest almost 117 milligrams of aluminum during the first six months of life.
No, they’re not pumping your kid full of mercury. Thimerosal is a compound that contains mercury, and is the ingredient that they put in SOME vaccines. But why you ask? Pretty darn important reason actually: Because it prevents the growth of dangerous microbes! Thimerosal is used as a preservative in multi-dose vials of flu vaccines, and in only two childhood vaccines: TDaP and TDaP-HIB. The rest? Mercury free entirely!
The Propaganda
Now, anti vax movements have been going on since the invention of the first one, smallpox. It was first administered by taking a bit of cowpox and scraping it on a child. Parents didn’t like that because it gave their baby a boo boo, and Christian’s didn’t like it because it came from an animal. Thanks to the persistence of science, smallpox is no more.
Of course, there was a lot of resistance in 1853 when the government passed a law requiring people to get vaccinated, and even more in 1867 when penalties were introduced. Not because of the science or some conspiracy theory, but because of the erosion to our personal liberties.
This opposition was great because it led to the first agency to study and monitor vaccines and led to The Vaccination Act of 1898 which removed penalties and included the “conscientious objector” clause.
The thing a lot of people forget is that the media has a job to do: get people to watch or read whatever stories they get. The more sensational, the more people are goin to view it.
So when ONE British doctor named Andrew Wakefield suggested the POSSIBILITY of a link between vaccines and autism, the media took it and ran with it. It was headline news for the majority of 1998. The Lancet, the paper that originally published his theory later said in 2004 that they never should have given him a platform. Wakefield was completely discredited and banished from the medical field entirely.
In January 2011, the BMJ (British Medical Journal) published a series of reports by journalist Brian Deer outlining evidence Wakefield committed scientific fraud by falsifying data, and also that Wakefield hoped to financially profit from his investigations in several ways.
Now let’s talk about today. Did you know that more than 80% of the anti vax stuff you see today comes from just 12 people? You bet. Some of the top names include Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Joseph Mercola, and Ty and Charlene Bollinger.
Throw on the Russian troll farm campaign that was put into place with the sole purpose of weakening our nations health back when they thought COVID was going to be a lot more dangerous than it actually was; and you’ve just added fuel to the grifter fire.
All of a sudden being anti vax wasn’t just a hippy leftist movement, it became a movement to some on the right as well thanks to the government mandates.
Look at this picture below and tell me if you can find the logical fallacy within it.
Can you see it? Prior to the latter portion of the 20th century; children were DYING at alarming rates due to 8+ distinct diseases. Now, thanks to vaccinations, THEY AREN’T!
People ask “what’s in it for them” when they are spreading this misinformation. The answer is simple: money. People have been capitalizing on the grift for centuries.
Victor Lustig sold the Eiffel Tower twice and sold people a money box that would “print $100s” for $30,000 a piece. It didn’t. But he sold a few of them!
You can’t forget about George Parker either. He sold the Statue of Liberty, Grant’s Tomb, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Madison Square Garden. But he’s most well known for being the inspiration for the saying “if you believe that, I have a bridge to sell you” because he conned people into buying the Brooklyn Bridge on multiple occasions.
The reason I bring these two men from the 1800s up is because, there are gullible people out there. There will always be those who will capitalize on them.
But you don’t have to be gullible to believe the anti vax stuff, you might just be uninformed. Hopefully this article helps fix that.
Just Some Common Sense
Here’s the raw numbers regarding how many people are immunized in America by 24 months.
Diphtheria, Tetanus, Pertussis (4+ doses DTP, DT, or DTaP): 80.4%
Polio (3+ doses): 92.5%
Measles, Mumps, Rubella (MMR) (1+ doses): 90.8%
Haemophilus influenzae type b (Hib) (primary series + booster dose): 80.0%
Hepatitis B (Hep B) (3+ doses): 91.4%
Chickenpox (Varicella) (1+ doses): 90.3%
Pneumococcal conjugate vaccine (PCV) (4+ doses): 81.4%
Combined 7-vaccine series: 69.7%
The population of the United States is 331 million people.
If 70% of the population is immunized, that’s about 231 million people.
Less than 1% of Americans have Autism. How does that work out? 70+ kids are immunized but less than 1% get autism?
The largest study ever done that included unvaccinated children proved that kids get autism with, or without the vaccines.
In all, the researchers analyzed the health records of 95,727 children, including more than 15,000 children unvaccinated at age 2 and more than 8,000 still unvaccinated at age 5. Nearly 2,000 of these children were considered at risk for autism because they were born into families that already had a child with the disorder.
The moral of this entire story is that, well, shit happens. Sometimes bad things happen to good people. It’s life. But the numbers don’t lie. Common sense isn’t so common but hopefully this article brings some back to this country that so desperately needs it.