In the early 19th Century, after Edward Jenner’s smallpox vaccine came into wide use, the first anti-vaccination movement sprung up. Its adherents’ warnings ranged from the legitimate (vaccination could, as they claimed, lead to serious infections, due to the unsanitary conditions under which it was performed) to the downright nutty (the vaccine, which was derived from cowpox, would cause patients to sprout cow-like appendages).
Today the swine flu vaccination campaign has brought the anti-vaccination wackos out of the woodwork again – and thanks to the power of the Internet, they can spread their nonsense more quickly and broadly than ever before.
The claims about the H1N1 vaccine run the gamut from simply weird – it contains toxic chemicals like Agent Orange, anti-freeze (ethylene glycol) and squalene (a substance linked, erroneously, to Gulf War syndrome) – to sheer tinfoil-hat-brigade lunacy – the government is going to compel everyone to get the vaccine and herd those who don’t into camps; the government will take away your children if you don’t get them vaccinated; the vaccination campaign is designed to GIVE people swine flu as part of an “evil depopulation campaign.” (Why the government wants to depopulate the country isn’t clear; presumably it’s to make the coming socialist-communist-fascist takeover easier.)
Anybody interested in a detailed rundown and rebuttal of these and other claims should check out a report by Jess Henig on factcheck.org, who writes: “The claims are nearly pure bunk, with only trace amounts of fact.”
Henig continues: “We’ll say it straight out: There are some real risks to the H1N1 vaccine. There’s nothing shady or secretive about them, though – they’re exactly the same as the risks of the seasonal flu vaccines. … In fact, everything about the vaccine is just like the seasonal flu shot, which has been administered to hundreds of millions of people. ‘It’s a new virus, but the vaccine is made the exact same way,’ Dr. Bruce Gellin, director of the National Vaccine Program Office at HHS, told us.”
Personally, I couldn’t care less if the anti-vaccination idiots choose to refuse the vaccine and risk a severe and potentially fatal disease (292 known deaths in the US as of yesterday). But their propaganda, which is all over the Web, is discouraging parents from getting their children vaccinated. And that, as I see it, is little short of criminal.
This article appears in Oct 22-28, 2009.
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292 deaths?
the seasonal flu kills 35,000 a year
so why get the shot
theres really no point.
you wanna talk about propaganda
change the channel 2 CNN
and is it really that hard 2 come 2 terms with the U.S.
is going into a facsist state
believe it
they dont care about you
they care about your money
“believe it they dont care about you they care about your money”
Hell, I’ve known that for a long time. But to believe the swine flu vaccine is part of an “evil depopulation plan” is just nuts.
What if it isn’t?
I don’t think most of the parents think it is some evil scheme to depopulate the earth. That sounds like something Farrakhan said recently.
However, no vaccine is totally safe. Even the CDC admits that 10 to 30 children out of one million receiving the vaccine will have negative results. So, parents are rightly concerned as to whether their children will be one of those 10 to 30.
“However, no vaccine is totally safe.”
No medical treatment is totally safe. Penicillin can send you into anaphylactic shock if you’re allergic to it. You can destroy your liver by taking too much Tylenol. The question is, does the benefit outweigh the risk? The odds of being killed by the vaccine are infinitesimal compared to the odds of being killed by the flu.
“The question is, does the benefit outweigh the risk?”
And is that not a question each parent has to answer for themselves, and if they decide against it does that make them “criminal”?
As one expert on the H1N1 virus stated, there are many good antivirals available to fight off the H1N1 virus.
IMO, it is a hard decision for a parent to make. If their child happens to be one of those 10-30 children then what do they do?
“And is that not a question each parent has to answer for themselves, and if they decide against it does that make them “criminal”?”
Of course not — the “criminal” term applies to those who spread misinformation and unconfirmed rumors and thereby discourage parents from having their kids vaccinated. Maybe I didn’t state it clearly enough.
“As one expert on the H1N1 virus stated, there are many good antivirals available to fight off the H1N1 virus.”
Relenza and Tamiflu are the only ones I’m aware of. They’re in short supply and far from completely effective. And they have to be administered soon after the onset of the disease to work.
But the whole vaccine controversy might be moot anyway because the drug companies seem to be unable to make enough swine flu vaccine in time for it to do any good (cf. front-page story in today’s Bulletin).
Footnote: Ted Rall the cartoonist had the swine flu a couple of weeks ago and wrote a column about it. He said it was by far the worst flu he has ever had. That’s only one bit of anecdotal evidence, but a lot more people seem to be landing in hospitals than we see during a normal flu season.
Also my earlier statement about the death toll put it far too low — it’s over 1,000 so far. As of Oct. 17, there have been 3,556 hospitalizations and 233 deaths in California alone. (See http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2009/10/24/MNG51AA1FI.DTL#ixzz0Us7MRk9H)
Despite assurances to the contrary, I have a feeling this disease is more virulent than the ordinary seasonal flu. And it’s especially hard on kids, young people and pregnant women.
Re anti-viral medications:
“LONDON – Children should not routinely be given flu drugs like Tamiflu since there is no clear evidence they prevent complications and potentially harmful side effects may outweigh any benefits, British researchers said on Monday.” — Reuters
More: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32357531/ns/health-cold_and_flu/?ns=health-swine_flu
Has anyone considered the possibility of this whole thing being some government zombie conspiracy? I’m not talking the Glenn Beck follower/tae bagger type, I’m talking full-blown non-partisan George Romero zombie. Think about it.
“Think about it.”
I think I’d rather not.
BTW Greg Walden’s office announced that he’s recovered from an apparent case of swine flu and is back at work. He was out of action for only four days, so at least in his case the disease wasn’t very virulent. I’ve had worse flus than that myself.
I find it somewhat odd that all of the flu cases being reported are H1N1, and the seasonal flu seems to have disappeared.