CHILDHOOD DEATHS FROM H1N1 IN ENGLAND SHOCKINGLY LOW. As I’ve said innumerable times before, it is heartbreaking to see the loss of a single child, but we always need to keep things in perspective. In England, during last year’s pandemic, devastating swine flu H1N1, the whole planet’s going to be wiped out season, 15 healthy children lost their lives to influenza. Think of the untold billions of dollars spent on vaccination, propaganda about getting vaccinated and antivirals (which, ironically enough, have never been proven to work against H1N1). What if this money went towards buying child car seats? Vit D, fruits and vegetables? Treadmills? Getting rid of soda in public schools (who argue that they need the revenue that the sales of soda brings in)? This continues to seem to me like a massive, massive waste of “healthcare” dollars. And, without fail, we’re doing it again this year, except NOW, you can get a flu vaccine on every corner. Read More…
Vaccination
Did You Know That The Flu Vaccine Contains Mercury?
MERCURY, THE MOST POTENT NEUROTOXIN ON THE PLANET, SHOULD NOT BE INJECTED DIRECTLY INTO THE BLOOD STREAM… Sounds like one of those stupid warnings like “for external use only” on a bottle of rat poison, right? Who on Earth would willingly inject MERCURY into their blood stream? Many of you know where this is going. The multidose flu vaccine (which is the vast majority of vaccinations given) contains mercury, among other known contaminants, detergents and suspected carcinogens. This is not hearsay, this is directly off of the FDA’s website. Seriously. The effectiveness in healthy kids and adults, after some 7 decades of use, has NEVER BEEN ESTABLISHED, and yet every single corner now offers flu vaccines. Heck…by next year when I gas up the flu vaccine guy will be in line right behind the windshield replacement guy. I have never, ever even remotely considered giving me or my son the flu shot, and never will. Read More…
You Don’t Need a Flu Vaccination
MAYBE IF WE REALLY STRETCH THINGS WE CAN SCARE THE PUBLIC ON THE FLU. The number of annual flu deaths in the US most often thrown around is 30,000. Wow. That’s a lot of deaths! (not nearly on the magnitude of smoking, obesity and prediabetes, however). 30,000 deaths should be scary enough to get everyone running out to get vaccinated at all costs. But what if we really look at the CDC’s own numbers. First, let’s look at what they mean when they say “flu deaths.” At the leanest definition, we take cases of people who died of pneumonia and sometimes had the presence of the virus confirmed (but not usually). Annual deaths here are 6309, with 90% of these over 65 years of age. But let’s fluff it up and throw respiratory and circulatory deaths into the mix and it looks like a much scarier 23,607. So, we are throwing all deaths for these reasons during flu season into “influenza related deaths” despite the fact that there are other viruses that cause these same deaths (most notably RSV). This means that even the 6309 may be stretching it quite a bit. THEN, look at how many people without underlying respiratory conditions like emphysema or asthma are affected and you’re going to need a microscope. So what does this all mean? It means that when you couple the real numbers of flu deaths with a very low effectiveness of flu vaccination one has to wonder exactly why we are inundated with ads everywhere we turn to get our flu vaccine. One wonders when you will be offered flu vaccination right after the “would you like a car wash today” prompt at the gas pump.
Pneumonia and Antibiotics? Surprisingly Bad Mix
It never ceases to amaze me how much mainstream medicine has moved away from understanding and supporting normal physiology.
There was just a commentary in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) on primary prevention of atherosclerotic coronary heart disease. (in English: the article was about how to prevent a first heart attack)
I went into the article thinking it was going to cover lifestyle and targeted supplementation that has been shown, in medical research over the course of decades, to strongly prevent heart disease. Nope. The ENTIRE commentary was about how to determine when doctors should medicate with statins.
Sad, sad, sad state of affairs.
Vaccination is another aspect of mainstream medicine that has gone way off the deep end. There are now strong recommendations to vaccinate all young children (girls and boys) with Gardasil for HPV. This is NOT a cervical cancer vaccine and it has NOT, as of the date of this writing, been shown to lower the rates of cervical cancer. Yes, this is correct. It has been shown to lower the rates of higher grade lesions of the cervix, but not actual cervical cancer. Medicine has taken a big leap here in saying that it protects against cervical cancer–this fallacy of using surrogate endpoints has fallen flat on its face many, many times before.
But wait! It gets worse…
What if one of the most common medical treatments actually derails something that is more effective than vaccination for a common condition. To twist this even further, what if the medical intervention is one that is the go-to treatment for the condition that a particular vaccine is designed for?
Regular readers already have an idea that I’m talking about the use of antibiotics wiping out normal, protective bacterial flora that does amazing things for your health.
Specifically, I’m talking about the use of antibiotics for pneumococcal pneumonia (Streptococcus pneumoniae). The type of pneumonia that medicine pushes the Prevnar vaccine throughout the entire lifespan, from infants to seniors.
This particular study puts all of this into perspective. In it, researchers looked at how the GUT bacteria could protect against LUNG infections. Here’s the specifics:
- It is well accepted that the gut microbiota supports BODYWIDE immune response.
- Researchers wiped out the gut microbiota of mice and then infected them with S. pneumoniae.
- When the gut microbiota was wiped out, there was more bacterial spread into the body, more, organ damage and higher death rates.
- When the bacteria was wiped out, the immune cells in the lung did not respond as strongly to bacterial debris (LPS and lipoteichoic acid) and the white blood cells had less ability to destroy the invading bacteria (phagocytosis).
- When a fecal transplant was done (yeah—sounds like something I’d sign up for…), bacterial counts in the lungs dropped back down to normal.
- After the fecal transplant, the immune system calmed down as well (TNF-α and IL-10).
In summary, the gut bacteria played a very, very strong role in fighting off Streptococcal pneumoniae infections in the lung.
Think about this. Having a healthy microbiome in your gut plays a role in fighting off bacterial infections in the lung. This means that the use of antibiotics for a bacterial pneumonia will PREDISPOSE YOU FOR FUTURE INFECTIONS by decimating your gut microbiome.
Staggering.
The mainstream medical approach to “preventing” pneumonia is to give the Prevnar vaccination (which I’ve written about how the potential pitfalls of this vaccination that can be read by clicking here). With the the same hand, your primary care doctor or pulmonologist will not hesitate to give you antibiotics to combat any number of infections, bacterial, viral or otherwise.
So what does this mean if you’re seemingly getting respiratory infections every time the wind changes direction? I would suggest you bombard your immune system with positive karma the second you’ve got the slightest indication of an infection. Vitamin C (at high doses—not 500 mg), vitamin D, vitamin A, no refined carbs and exercise (yes—exercise—raises your core body temp and helps your immune system fight off the infection better). And NO antibiotics unless you’re on your death bed with a fever of 104.
Over time (years, actually), your gut microbiome will recover to the point where it can help you fight infections in other areas of the body. If not, and you continue to use antibiotics at the drop of a dime, your immune system will NEVER stand on its own.
Never.
Whooping Cough — Is there REALLY an Epidemic?
Vaccine preventable diseases are all over social media and the news. Measles, the Flu, whooping cough. And you can’t discuss these without polarizing the vaccination crowds.
Both sides.
For me, the discussion is never balanced with the facts. Both sides rely more on emotions than facts when the answer usually lies somewhere in between. But when it comes to whooping cough, I think the entire medical community is missing the story. But, before we go into what the story really is, there are a few “housekeeping” things we need to get out of the way as it relates to Bordetella pertussis:
- Pertussis can be diagnosed by the presence of a cough (without any other known cause) of at least 2 weeks along with paroxysms of coughing, inspiratory “whoop,” posttussive vomiting, apnea (with or without cyanosis) in infants under one year of age, or a lab confirmation of Bordetella presence.
- While antibiotics are ALWAYS given, they actually don’t alter the course of the disease, but of course go a long way towards wiping out the microbiome.
- Beginning in 1991, the acellular version of the vaccine was used because the side effects of the prior vaccination were too great. This vaccine, however, does not reduce the spread of the disease and may actually INCREASE the likelihood of spreading the disease.
- Whooping cough vaccine MASSIVELY increases the risk of pertussis being caused by a cousin in the same family, B. parapertussis.
- It has become increasingly clear that the vaccine, in general, pretty much sucks at preventing whooping cough.
- And, if it is effective, the protection is far, far shorter than we ever envisioned
All in all, the news is not exactly sparkling when it comes to the prevention of whooping cough through vaccination. And, more importantly, these findings noted above are not any different today then they were when the acellular version was introduced 25 years ago.
This means that, for the entire 2 1/2 decades that this vaccination has been in use, society has not been nearly as protected as medicine thought it was. And this means that whooping cough has been present among us for this entire time. There is no reason to think that, all of a sudden, for no particular reason, the vaccination has lost efficacy in the past few years, leading to an epidemic of pertussis–this thought process just doesn’t make sense.
And yet we still consider identified groups of pertussis infections as “outbreaks.” In a recent research study on the effectiveness of pertussis vaccination, researchers concluded that, since the vaccine performed so poorly, “…the data clearly indicates that the acellular vaccines (both DTaP and Tdap) are not working for as long as previously hoped, and that new vaccines may be necessary.”
Yes. That’s going to be the answer. More vaccinations to pile on top of the already-ineffective vaccine. Someone’s going to make a LOT more money off of these findings.
Rather then throw more vaccinations at the problem, maybe we should spend more time on how to boost the immune system to combat whooping cough more effectively with things like vitamins D, C and A as well as locally grown honey in hot tea to help combat the cough (although, once it kicks off, not much is going to help control the cough, natural or otherwise).
After all, we’ve been fighting it off for 25 years without any help and doing pretty well-imagine how much better things could be with some nutritional support.
When it Comes to Vaccination, Mother Nature Always Wins
In some cases, the vaccination game is like a giant “wac-a-mole” game. You smash down one infectious disease only to have another, more powerful bug rise up in it’s place.
The Prevnar vaccination against the Streptococcus pneumoniae bacteria was originally designed against just 6 of the types of this bacteria that can cause ear infections, pneumonia and meningitis.
Sounds great, right?
But, as I mentioned in the title, Mother Nature doesn’t appreciate us trying to best her.
In this particular article, research looked at what happened to the type 19A, a type of this bacteria that is harder to kill with antibiotics, when the Prevnar 7 vaccine was introduced. Here’s what they found when they looked at the bacteria hiding in 948 infants given different Prevnar vaccinatin schedules (2 doses of Prevnar-7 at age 2 and and again at 4 months; 3 doses at 2, 4, and 11 months; or no vaccinating as the control group) :
- In those who received the 3-dose vaccination schedule, there was a 75% higher risk of having the more dangerous 19A present (16.2% vs 9.2% in the unvaccinated).
- In the 2-dose schedule, these infants were 43% more likely to harbor 19A (13.2% vs 9.2%).
Luckily, after this was realized, on a white horse rode Prevnar 13, which now included the 19A. But then everyone who had been vaccinated to get vaccinated again.
Wow. I really wish I had a financial machine like this. Make billions on the first product that creates a bigger problem, than make MORE money fixing the problem they solved! And everyone thinks BP Petrolum is the evil corporate giant…
Whooping Cough Vaccination; Mother Nature Always Wins
Now that it’s back to school time, the subject of vaccination is on everyone’s mind. Especially since California decided to remove your rights as a parent to make decisions for your child.
If the vaccination topic was cut and dry, it wouldn’t be a big deal. Mandate teeth brushing and flossing? Ok. Mandate more broccoli? Great.
But what if the government decided to mandate that everyone needs to have chemotherapy once a month. This way we can beat cancer before it ever starts, right? Wrong–it would be a completely asinine idea and lives would be destroyed. Are there a few lucky souls who would benefit from chemotherapy? It’s probable, but hardly outweighed by the damage done and cost.
I’m not saying that vaccination is as devastating to the human body as chemotherapy is, but where do we draw the line between benefits and harm? And here’s the problem with vaccination–it’s not a single intervention we are talking about here. Rather, it is at least 12 separate disease vaccinations given over the course of some 30+ episodes by the time your child is in first grade. These numbers can go up depending upon how many diseases we think we can prevent with vaccination.
Even worse, these vaccines are truly loaded with chemicals that are INJECTED into the bloodstream (while you may hear all types of crazy accusations on this point, you can check out the CDC’s website that includes when these ingredients were updated by the manufacturer).
None of this gets into the argument about the effectiveness of each individual vaccination or whether or not it’s even a good idea to try to outsmart Mother Nature by wiping out communicable diseases.
In other words, mandating something that is so rife with controversy is NEVER a good idea, especially when each side of the debate thinks they have all the answers and use fear and emotions to achieve goals rather than facts.
(Just in case you were wondering…yes, this rant is leading somewhere)
The idea that when you suppress one type of infection or one form of an infection another comes in to take its place is called antigenic shift. We have seen this happen with many vaccines–HPV (Gardasil) and pneumoccocal (Prevnar) are just two solid examples. In other words, a vaccination is designed to protect against only a small sample of a certain family of infectious agents. With time, the types of infection that the vaccine protects against does indeed go down in the population. But, unfortunately, other related “cousins” of these infectious agents begin to rear their ugly heads, all too often leading to strong, more deadly infections that are harder to kill.
This little tidbit you don’t hear about much. Instead of promoting the problem, there is just a quiet push by medicine to get your children “updated” with the new vaccine. Prevnar is the perfect example that you can read about more in a previous article by clicking here.
In this particular article, researchers looked at the effect of the pertussis / whooping cough vaccination on the growth of a related microbe, Bordetella parapertussis (as opposed to Bordetalla pertussis, which causes whooping cough). You see, the current vaccinations (the “aP” part of the DTaP shot) does nothing to protect against the parapertussis bacteria, so researchers looked at the results of the current pertussis vaccination on parapetussis infection in rodents.
The results should raise some very strong concerns for parents in the state of California:
- The current vaccination does nothing to protect against B. parapertussis infection.
- While the vaccination helped clear B. pertussis infection, there was a FORTY-FOLD increase in B. parapertussis infections (as CFUs).
- This increase was the result of a DECREASE in the immune response (lung inflammatory and neutrophil responses) against B. parapertussis.
Yes, this was “just” an animal study, but it raises the very real possibility that the use of the pertussis / whooping cough vaccination is wreaking havoc on our children’s immune ability to fight of similar competitive infections.
So, the next time your pediatrician pressures you to vaccinate your child (in this case, for whooping cough) and tries to guilt you or shame you in caving in, ask him or her how much he or she knows about antigenic shifts and the rise of competitive infections with the vaccination. If you get a blank stare, it’s time to turn and run.
And hopefully, you’re not living in California.
The Disneyland Measles Scare – What are the REAL Numbers?
Things have since settled down, but there is no doubt that fear and misinformation reigned supreme for the first part of 2015 in regards to the measles.
I can’t possibly see how you didn’t hear about it, but just in case you’ve been living in a cave for 2015, here’s the rundown. In December, a yet-to-be-identified person was in Disneyland who was contagious with the measles. Testing has determined that this particular person may likely have been infected with the same strain that caused a large outbreak in the Philippines last year.
Despite the mainstream press and pretty much every pro-vaccine person out there stating that the “outbreak” started because of bad, evil parents not vaccinating their kids, without knowing who the first case was, we really have NO IDEA whether or not this person was vaccinated.
Disneyland/California Adventure gets some 24 million visitors per year (estimates), which, broken down daily, would be almost 66,000 per day. And of course, even though December is the busy season, you can still get the idea: it’s a LOT of people.
And the measles virus can survive up to two hours just hanging out in the air. Do the rough math. It is likely that several thousand people may have been exposed. Or, at the very, very least, hundreds.
I have read many media reports and medical opinions stating that all unvaccinated people exposed to the measles virus will contract the measles, although not a single one of these opinions were backed up by any research that I was able to find.
So how many thousands were infected at Disney? Was it more like hundreds? While the exact number of primary cases that came out of Disneyland is hard to find, it seems like the actual number was 51.
Fifty-one out of potentially thousands exposed.
This reminds me of the fear spread on 2009 of the swine flu “pandemic” in Mexico City. When the dust settled there were 103 deaths from H1N1. This number may initially sound scary until you realize that the greater Mexico City area has a population of over 21 million (equal to 4.9 X 10-4 percent). To put this number into perspective, 650 children die each year in the US alone from car accidents (with 48.8 million children, this is 1.33 X 10-3 percent, a full magnitude more–ANNUALLY) . Yet there has never been an uproar over this statistic.
The number of deaths associated with the Disneyland outbreak? A big fat zero. The total number infected that were directly related to Disney? 131.
It’s funny, but writing this blog article now, almost 2 months after the news media frenzy, it is difficult to find any new news of the “epidemic.” This includes new information from the CDC or MMWR. The topic pretty much dropped off the face of the country.
What has not died off, however, is the strong push across the states for a tighter and more difficult to obtain immunization exemptions. Personal liberty be damned–after the near extinction of all life on this planet after the Disneyland epidemic, we NEED everyone to get immunized, regardless of the individual risks. The herd is all that is important.
What has stumped me the most about the entire “vaccinate your child or else you’re being a stupid, selfish parents and community member” attitude is how much it has been fueled by the constant repetition that this outbreak was spread by unvaccinated kids. But, according the CDC in their own review, these numbers are more consistent with fuzzy math than truth:
- Among the 110 California patients, 49 (45%) were unvaccinated.
- 47 (43%) had unknown or undocumented vaccination status (but, statistically, were more likely to have been vaccinated).
- Among the unvaccinated, 12 were infants too young to be vaccinated.
- Among the 37 remaining vaccine-eligible patients, 28 (25% of the entire group) were intentionally unvaccinated because of personal beliefs.
- Among these 28 intentionally unvaccinated patients, 18 were children (aged <18 years), and 10 were adults.
So, to sum it up (since the entire scare debate was about vaccinating kids and very few adults who are pushing legislatively to get kids vaccinated are not, themselves, vaccinated), there were 18 out of 110 patients who were unvaccinated children. That’s 16% for the math wizzes out there claiming that this outbreak was directly the fault of unvaccinated children.
I am aware that, working with Keegan’s 3rd grade homework, Common Core math is really screwed up, but I do still believe that 16% is not greater than 50% (a number past which you could MAYBE argue that this whole debacle was due to the unvaccinated heathens).
One last little tidbit that seems to have been glossed over by those with a near-rapid determination to label anti-vaccinating parents as evil has to do with the safety of the MMR vaccination. The Cochrane Collaboration did a review of the current available research data on the safety of the MMR vaccine. Their summary?
“The design and reporting of safety outcomes in MMR vaccine studies, both pre- and post-marketing, are largely inadequate. The evidence of adverse events following immunisation with the MMR vaccine cannot be separated from its role in preventing the target diseases.”
So what does this mean? Despite all the studies done on the MMR vaccination, we really cannot say with a high degree of confidence, that the vaccination is safe.