Wednesday, April 15, 2015

Not a fan of Pan





At a recent hearing on SB277 State Senator Block asked if the CDC or AMA had data about the probability or likelihood of large or huge outbreaks occurring if a certain number of children remained unvaccinated. The answer, based on what history tells us, is that at current rates we are well protected: outbreaks are currently rare rare and huge ones are unheard of.

Measles was considered eradicated* nation-wide (eradicated meaning any small outbreaks that occurred over that time frame resulted from imported cases) with rates lower than or about equal to what we have in California today under current laws in place. 2015 MMR vaccination rate in California is 92.6%

2001-08 nation-wide vaccination rates for MMR from CDC Pink Book 12th edition

2001 - 91.4
2002 - 91.6
2003 - 93.0
2004 - 93.0
2005 - 91.5
2006 - 92.4
2007 - 92.3
2008 - 92.1

There were clusters of lower immunity throughout this period just as there have always been and are today

As to what would happen if this bill passed, there is no metric allowing us to foresee a future with a one or two percent increase in vaccination rates. Historically a 1-3% fluctuation in national rates has occurred randomly from year to year with no demonstrable effect on the number of cases.

One would need a well-funded, peer-reviewed study to even begin to try to measure the impact of  a small increase in vaccination rates. Anything Senator Pan could produce in a matter of days would be nothing more than a guess. I don’t think we want to pass a bad bill on a guess.

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Senator Pan keeps talking about things getting worse because we are not stopping the curve of increasing exemptions. But as he well knows, exemptions are no longer rising. Exemptions fell 20% last year and they fell even more dramatically in the clusters of under-vaccination he so often refers to. This is a result of his own bill - AB 2109 - which passed in 2012. The L.A Times reports:

“Statewide, the rate of vaccine waivers for kindergartners entering school in the fall declined to 2.5% in 2014 from 3.1% in 2013. Bigger declines were seen in districts with some of the larger vaccine exemption rates.

In the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District, the rate fell from 14.8% to 11.5%; Capistrano Unified in south Orange County declined from 9.5% to 8.6%; Beverly Hills Unified declined from 11.9% to 5%; and Laguna Beach Unified declined from 15.1% to 2%, according to The Times' analysis.”

The last two areas mentioned achieved astonishingly large drops in exemptions. With Beverly Hills exemptions falling 54% to and those in Laguna Beach falling 86%

Overall MMR vaccination rates are stable and at or near record highs

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Almost 7% of children are admitted to school without vaccines on a conditional basis. These children are far more numerous than those who have personal belief exemptions. This bill does not address those conditional exemptions

According to press reports:
"These students may lawfully enter kindergarten on a “conditional basis,” with some, but not all, of their required shots. The condition is that they’ll get up to date soon."

This is another reason eliminating the personal exemption will have almost no practical effect on measles risks

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Senators Marty Block and Loni Hancock asked:

Q: If my child is vaccinated and another is not, what are the chances my child will get the measles

A: Since there is a 90% chance transmission would occur if the child were not vaccinated, and the vaccine is 99% effective your  vaccinated child's odds of getting the measles would be less than 1%

Sources:

“Measles is so contagious that if one person has it, 90% of the people close to that person who are not immune will also become infected.”

http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/pubs/pinkbook/meas.html
“Studies indicate that, if the first dose is administered no earlier than the first birthday, greater than 99% of persons who receive two doses of measles vaccine develop serologic evidence of measles immunity”

Thursday, March 26, 2015

From Disneyland to Fantasyland: The Case against SB 277


A bill was recently introduced in the state legislature that would remove all philosophical exemptions to vaccination in the state of California

Currently vaccines are mandated for school attendance, however because these vaccine can in some cases be harmful and because many as a matter of conscience or religious conviction object to the practice of injecting their children with dozens of biological agents an exemption process was created

This policy has resulted in very high vaccination rates throughout the state.

Then in late December 2014 a small measles outbreak of about 100 cases began at Disneyland. This led to a hysterical response by the media. Outlets such as the LA Times, CNN and the Sacramento Bee labeled the occurrence a public health crisis.

The public health / pharma / medical establishment seized upon this manufactured crisis to introduce draconian legislation across the nation to end any type of exemption to vaccination laws

Numerous fabrications and distortions have been perpetuated by media, public health officials and politicians to create an environment in which this bill could pass. This piece will examine them in detail.   

Because this law is a fundamental violation of parental rights a broad coalition has emerged to fight these proposed laws

I have prepared this document to help you initiate discussions with legislators and to refute the common arguments used to support forced vaccination

Finally, this is not an issue about vaccines themselves but an issue of parental choice

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Why should you oppose this bill if you vaccinate your children?

Martin Luther King once said, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice anywhere.”

As more and more freedoms are removed (even the ones you don’t care about) freedom itself will be endangered. Let the process go too far and liberty will go from endangered to extinct. As John Adams once said, “Liberty, once lost, is lost forever."

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Specific fantasies being used to support SB 277

The Measles Delusion

This delusion says the small measles outbreak that originated at Disneyland was either the result of a plunge in vaccination rates or due to “clusters” of unvaccinated

Reality however says rates are at all-time highs and epidemic illnesses have always fluctuated i.e., some very active years, then quiet years then active years again

Nevertheless a “study” has been concocted to allow the media to claim the unvaccinated fueled the outbreak. 

Here’s what the study would have us believe:

There are areas where almost no one is vaccinated. They are so large that when the measles arrives in those areas, it uses the large, vulnerable group it finds there as a springboard to attack the rest of the community/state.

This is fantasy. First, as we will see later, these communities are small, rare and still have high vaccination rates, Further the rest of the state is even better protected than are these small areas, so even if the measles left these clusters it would die out quickly – like it actually did.

These little clusters (often a cluster can be as small as a family) of under-vaccination didn't “fuel” the outbreak, they were simply affected, to a tiny degree, by an outbreak started when a foreign visitor came into the state. The fact that this outbreak petered out so quickly shows our current laws are working and that the type of extreme legislation now being considered is not necessary.

Also important to remember is the measles is a cyclical illness and has its natural ups and downs – cycles such as these can span anywhere from 3-5 years to 20 years.

For example German measles activity in the pre-vaccine era mirrors measles activity over the past twenty years. A peak in 1943, relative quiescence for twenty years and then another peak twenty years later in 1964.

In regards to the measles, 1994 saw some 900 cases then lessened activity with a spike of 644 some twenty years later in 2014

You cannot blame a cyclical rise in cases on a drop in vaccination rates when those vaccination rates are stable.

And you cannot blame a cyclical rise in cases on a cluster with fewer vaccinated people because these clusters have always existed. There has never been a time when vaccination rates were identical in each and every school or community

We have always had random importation of measles even when measles was “eradicated” This time it was able to spread a little farther than usual because people who go to Disneyland spread out across the state when they return home. This has nothing to do with imaginary low vaccination rates

Another factor in measles activity is activity in other parts of the world where measles is prevalent. 

The Philippines are often implicated For example, Vox.com reports:
The real story behind the 2014 outbreak isn't on the West Coast. It's in Ohio Amish country, where a missionary returning from the Philippines turned an otherwise unremarkable year for this virus into one of the worst in recent history.

And the Philippines have been implicated in regards to this year’s Disneyland measles outbreak
http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-disneyland-measles-under-vaccination-20150316-story.html#page=1

Interestingly immigration from the Philippines has doubled since 1990 going from 900,000 to 1.8 million with 45% of those immigrants living in California. Factors like this, randomness, cyclicality and the fact that this year’s outbreak started in a unique location and not a few vaccine exemptions in a few tiny schools is what explains this year’s measles activity

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Eradicated!

Another fantasy being used to drive SB 277 is the eradication fairy tale. We're told the measles was eradicated in 2000 and is back because of a fall in vaccination rates

Here are the problems with yarn. Rates never fell, they are higher today than when the measles was eradicated – measles was eradicated between 2001-08
Further saying an illness is “back” when there are only 150 cases as opposed to the 4 million that used to occur is absurd

Anyway measles was never really eradicated in the first place. Eradicated just refers to a special public health definition of eradicated which has to do with whether or not cases are home-grown or imported. During the time when the measles was considered “eradicated” there were 557 cases of measles in the USA

Medical news today explains:

"It is important to note that "elimination" does not mean that there are zero cases of the illnesses, as some cases occur when people are infected abroad and bring it back to the US, where it can then be transmitted locally.
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/269819.php

But even in years with home-grown measles activity, most cases are still traced to imported cases. For example in 2014 we had 644 cases – the most in two decades – yet:
“Most of the outbreaks reported in 2014 resulted from imported cases spreading in an unvaccinated population.”
http://www.cdc.gov/measles/downloads/matte-think-measles.pdf

So this is the fable they are trying to sell us:

Measles is eradicated with a 90% vaccination rate. Rates rise to 93% and measles returns because of falling rates which were actually rising rates.

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Measles is dangerous, severe, deadly or potentially deadly. 


No, measles is actually a mild illness

The measles, the illness behind this current vaccination hysteria, is mild and worried few parents in the pre-vaccine era

For most people who get measles, the illness is not serious. 

“In France, measles is usually considered a mild, rather trivial disease and is no longer dreaded by the general population, physicians, health workers, or health authorities

The measles is normally a mild illness

Finally from the Encyclopedia of Family Health
How does the vaccine establishment try to overcome this basic reality?

They use mortality numbers from third world countries so the illness looks serious. But the living conditions in the third world are what determine severity not the illnesses itself so comparing America with Pakistan is absurd

30% complications
They talk about a 30% “complication” rate but the majority of those complications are conditions few parents see as serious. Diarrhea and ear aches are the two most frequent complications

It is only in reported cases that we find 30% complications. Since the measles is mild many cases have historically been underreported. It may be that it is only in the more serious cases that these 30% rates of complications occur. In the milder, unreported cases they could be much lower

Encephalitis
The CDC reports:

“1-1,000 cases of measles results in swelling of the brain i.e., encephalitis.”

Sounds scary but most cases of encephalitis are mild: 

“Most cases of encephalitis are mild and don't last long.”
http://umm.edu/health/medical/altmed/condition/viral-encephalitis

Pneumonia

Again the CDC states:

1-20 cases of measles results in pneumonia

But again this complication is usually mild not serious:

“Most cases of viral pneumonia are mild and get better without treatment within 1 to 3 weeks.”

Hospitalization
They talk about hospitalizations but hospitalization says nothing about severity unless we know why it occurred

Hospitalization is very likely overdone today. In the pre-vaccine era there were 4 million cases and 48,000 hospitalizations
Today up to 20% of all cases are hospitalized. This is likely a result of over-cautiousness.

Regardless, if we don’t know why a child is hospitalized, it tells us nothing about the severity of the illness – for example many are hospitalized just to get IV fluids to treat diarrhea

Mental Retardation / brain damage
Numbers on these conditions are taken from data as far back as 1916 when substandard living conditions made children more vulnerable to the virus. As such these numbers are irrelevant to today’s discussion

Blindness and deafness
Both were extremely rare, if not virtually unheard of, in America

The media often erroneously reports Measles kills 1 or 2 per 1,000 infected

Director of the Risk Science Center at the University of Michigan School of Public Health debunks idea that measles kills 1-2 out of 1,000
http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/more/maynard20150205
He states

“Yet from the available evidence, claiming that one or two children out of every 1,000 infected in the current US outbreak will die seems far fetched.

Sadly, using this mortality rate to hammer home the importance of getting kids vaccinated could well backfire.  Like myself, many parents from my generation haven’t seen evidence for such a high chance of dying from the disease.  And to use data that not only feel wrong, but are not backed up with evidence, only serves to undermines trust in public health experts.”

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General Misinformation


Serious Diseases

The extremist group “Vaccinate California” claims on its website:
The diseases that vaccines prevent, however, are extremely serious. 

While I don’t have time to go through each illness to say such illnesses such as rotavirus, mumps, chickenpox and the flu are serious in children is just plain silly. But since most of the current discussion centers on pertussis and the measles. We have seen why the measles is far from serious and will learn the truth about pertussis shortly. We’ll also take a look at polio since no vaccine debate is can occur without mention of polio

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Exemptions are skyrocketing

By referring to a small numerical increase in statistical terms, data can be presented in such a way as to distort the true meaning of those numbers. For example if you are a car salesman and you sell one car one month then double your production and sell two cars the next month, you’re still not selling very many cars and will likely lose your job.

The same tactic is used when talking about vaccine exemptions: a small numerical rise looks large in statistical terms but because the starting point is so low even a large statistical increase is meaningless when considering how many children go to school in the state. For example today 13,000 children out of 500,000 get a personal belief exemption

A small numerical increase in exemptions does not mean that increase will continue
When increases in exemptions are discussed those increases have occurred over the last 10-15 years. The last 10-15 years have been unique in the sense that the internet came about offering people a less well-controlled image of vaccinations and numerous stories appeared postulating a connection between autism and vaccines – it is likely that those who were susceptible to these messages have been reached and exemptions will fall naturally or remain stable at low levels – in California AB2109 - a 2012 bill to force parents to hear a doctor lecture on the miracle of vaccination - has led to large statistical decreases in vaccine exemptions especially in the so-called clusters of low vaccine acceptance (more on clusters later). (Also important to remember is these areas of low vaccination are actually areas of high vaccination, for example Marin county has a 88% vaccination rate for MMR. Only an overwrought public health official would think and 88% vaccination rate is low. Calling such areas poorly vaccinated is just politically motivated spin.

Marin rates

http://www.cdph.ca.gov/programs/immunize/Documents/2014-15%20CA%20Kindergarten%20Immunization%20Assessment.pdf

Vaccination Rates Are Plummeting

More exemptions do not translate into “plummeting rates.” Exemptions are still tiny and are not large enough to overcome activity in the rest of the population. Increases in other areas or groups have more than made up for a few thousand more exemptions. 

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Clusters

Since vaccination rates ARE at all-time highs the establishment had to invent the idea that, because there are areas where rates are lower than in the rest of the state, germs can use these areas to return and ravage the nation. This is the unvaccinated cluster argument.

It was invented to make it seem as if there were a problem where there isn’t and to blame the blameless (those who don’t vaccinate) for random fluctuations of infectious illnesses

Little clusters
A “cluster” can be any size and for some prominent public health officials it is as small as one family

The media, when trying to hype this argument, finds the most dramatic statistic it can find but this means looking for tiny areas. For example they try to make us think one tiny school with only 13 kids making up the kindergarten class will determine fate of state of almost 40 million people

Here’s an example of the San Fran Chronicle and a public health official using tiny groups as “clusters”

“Those cases — often contained to a well-defined group, like a religious group or a single family —were relatively simple to track and control. Now, though, dozens of those clusters have been popping up all at once, in multiple counties, and often in people who have no obvious connection to Disneyland.
Forty people are known to have contracted measles at the Disney theme park in December. Then they all returned home, where many of them infected others in their family, school, church or day care.”
http://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Failure-to-vaccinate-fueled-state-s-measles-6121401.php

Finally a 2012 bill AB 2109 has led to a plunge in exemptions in so-called clusters – so there is no need for new legislation –

*See AB2109 is working for more on declining exemptions in “clusters”

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Vaccines only work if everyone is vaccinated

This is one of the more absurd claims floating around. It refers not to vaccination but a very high level of coverage that creates what is known as herd immunity. If everyone in a community is vaccinated, germs will have a hard time finding someone they can infect and will not be able to transmit themselves to those few who aren’t vaccinated. That’s herd immunity. 

Even without the 95% vaccination rate needed to generate this so-called herd immunity, there are still amazingly few cases of illnesses such as the measles because the vaccine is 99% effective and 99% of the population can get it.


In California about 93% are vaccinated against measles making it very hard for the illness to transmit itself

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Pertussis Outbreaks are the fault of the unvaccinated

One senator expressed her position on SB 277 in a letter to a constituent this way:

“In 2012, the U.S. had its biggest whooping cough epidemic since 1955. Nearly 50,000 Americans contracted the disease, which caused 20 deaths – mostly infants under three months. These increases coincided with plunging vaccination rates.”

Likely a disingenuous public health official gave her this info, but it is wrong because first as we said earlier, rates have not “plunged”

Second correlation does not equal causation. In other words because one thing happens then something else happens does not mean the first thing caused the second thing. For example the iPhone 6 was released right before oil prices fell but the iPhone’s release did not cause oil prices to fall

It is widely known in the scientific community that the reason for an increase in pertussis cases is a bad vaccine and more aggressive reporting. Reports of it having to do with low vaccination rates are erroneous, irresponsible and agenda-driven

BOSTON – The acellular pertussis vaccine’s failure to deliver durable infection protection to children aged 7-10 years led to the 2010 California pertussis epidemic, and prompted infectious diseases experts to question the current schedule of childhood pertussis vaccination.

The Sacramento Bee reported:
“In Elk Grove, for example, a high rate of school children are vaccinated, yet whooping cough ripped through the Sacramento suburb last year, an analysis by The Sacramento Bee found. Doctors said the reason is that the whooping cough vaccine now in use is often wearing off after two to three years. An older whooping cough vaccine worked better but is no longer used because, in a very small percentage of children, it caused extreme reactions, including high fever and seizures.”
http://www.sacbee.com/news/local/health-and-medicine/article9528275.html

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Recent Pertussis Outbreaks are the fault of the unvaccinated II

One study was manufactured by a member of the vaccine establishment to try to connect vaccination rates to a return of pertussis to provide cover for the vaccine agenda but the results of the study do not say what its adherents claim they do.
http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/early/2013/09/24/peds.2013-0878.abstract

In a nutshell the study says that a few small areas with slightly lower vaccination rates have more pertussis and therefore the pertussis from these small areas drove recent state-wide epidemics.

The problem is the study confuses cause and effect – The communities did not cause the outbreak, the communities were affected by the outbreak caused by a bad vaccine

Because the overwhelming majority of Californians are vaccinated and in recent outbreaks over 80% of those diagnosed with pertussis were fully vaccinated, it is preposterous to say these small areas with slightly lower vaccination rates drove statewide activity when so many in the state are vaccinated
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/04/03/us-whoopingcough-idUSBRE8320TM20120403

Finally, in adults and older children the disease is less often diagnosed so there are 100s of thousands of additional cases in the nation each year drowning out whatever small activity occurs in small areas described in the study we’re discussing

“These data suggest that there are between 800 000 and 3.3 million cases per year in the United States.”

In other words
As result of a poor vaccine an outbreak resulted and this outbreak impacted a few small areas with slightly lower vaccination rates


So many more people are vaccinated that a little more activity coming from a small pocket unlikely to do much on a state-wide basis

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More on Pertussis

Vaccine prevention may lead to infection at an inopportune time due to the short term protection it provides in relation to natural infection

Preventing a mild infection with a vaccine that does not last long during childhood may result in an infection at a time where the organism may use a new mother to transmit itself to a newborn

Expert Rev Clin Pharmacol. 2011 Nov;4(6):705-11. doi: 10.1586/ecp.11.55.
Is adolescent pertussis vaccination preferable to natural booster infections?
It is an open question as to what extent boosters should be offered to older age groups or if natural infections would be preferable. On the one hand, circulating B. pertussis may be hazardous to the youngest unvaccinated infants. On the other hand, subclinical natural boosters might be beneficial to population immunity. As the duration of immunity is shorter after vaccination than after natural infections, an unwanted consequence of adolescent boosters might shift the infection peak to older child-bearing adults. 

More problems with the vaccine

*“The research suggests that while the vaccine may keep people from getting sick, it doesn’t prevent them from spreading
  
*Whooping cough is also caused by para pertussis. The pertussis vaccine may increase susceptibility to parapertussis
Thus, we conclude that aP vaccination interferes with the optimal clearance of B. parapertussis and enhances the performance of this pathogen. Our data raise the possibility that widespread aP vaccination can create hosts more susceptible to B. parapertussis infection.
http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/277/1690/2017.short

Pertussis Is Generally Mild

http://www.bmj.com/content/310/6975/299
Most cases of whooping cough are relatively mild. Such cases are difficult to diagnose without a high index of suspicion because doctors are unlikely to hear the characteristic cough, which may be the only symptom printed

Tozzi A, Ravà L, Ciofi degli Atti M, Salmaso S. Clinical presentation of pertussis in unvaccinated and vaccinated children in the first six years of life. Pediatrics [serial online]. November 2003;112(5):1069-1075.
Besides the typical symptoms, complications and hospitalizations were rare in our cohort. A study conducted in the United Kingdom also suggests that the disease is much less severe than suggested by textbook descriptions or parents’ fears.

Sweden gave up on pertussis vaccination for 17 years and deaths were almost unheard of


In infants pertussis can be very serious but cases in that group are quite rare. Only about 2,000 infants out of 4 million births contract pertussis in an average year.

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The fundamental argument against SB 277: 
Our Children, Our Choice

Will you or the politicians and bureaucrats raise your child? This bill will force parents to allow unwanted medical treatments to be performed on their children 

Excuses for allowing them to do this:

Affecting, endangering and spreading

From the San Fran board of supervisors
On Tuesday, the Board of Supervisors unanimously passed my resolution putting San Francisco on record in support of the state legislation (SB 277) eliminating the "personal belief" exemption to the vaccine requirement for children.
While we all respect personal choice when it comes to raising children, that choice hits a boundary when it impacts the health of other people. Not vaccinating a child puts other people at risk. Some children are too young to be vaccinated, others have health problems that make vaccination impossible, and vaccination isn't 100% effective (for example, the measles vaccine is 95% effective). It's important for children to be vaccinated and to develop "herd immunity."

Our reply
Not vaccinating is a non-action and therefore impacts no one - you have to do something to impact something.

After making this argument you may hear:

“What about not feeding a baby, doesn’t that affect the baby?

No, when you don’t feed your baby you fail to affect/take care of it when you have a responsibility to take care of it because you brought it into the world. In regards to vaccination, you have assumed no obligation to vaccinate for the benefit of others.

Here is the same argument phrased a little differently with a similar response:

“However, when it comes to vaccines, the impact of one’s decision to not vaccinate is not confined to that person – it affects the greater community by putting neighbors, including children, at risk of being infected with preventable diseases.”

-Not vaccinating is a non-action. In other words you don’t do anything when you don’t vaccinate. If you don’t do anything, you can’t impact or affect anything. Additionally doing nothing puts no one at risk. The risk already exists or there would be nothing to vaccinate against

As to the second argument from the San Fran board of supervisors that not-vaccinating puts people at risk:

People don’t put other people in danger by doing nothing
After all if the risk were not already there, there would be nothing to vaccinate against.


There would also be nothing from which to protect those few who can't  get vaccinated

But you don’t have the right to spread illnesses

Being unvaccinated isn’t spreading an illness. I did not get a flu shot this year yet I am not spreading the flu”

Choices for others

You can make a choice not to vaccinate but that is making a choice for others – like I’m choosing that you become ill when I don’t vaccinate. This is absurd. The only choice I am making is to not risk my child’s health so you don’t get sick – I am choosing to not protect you from that which is already in the world

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You don’t have a right to endanger the public health

Public health is not the public’s health
In the context of this debate, public health simply means a state bureaucrat uses your child as an object to protect someone else. Because using innocent people is never right, the public health argument in regards to forced vaccination fails 

As such not vaccinating cannot endanger public health because “public heath” emerges from the participation of people and not participating in an effort isn’t hurting that effort


And as we covered before, not vaccinating does not put anyone’s health at risk so endangering the public health and public’s health arguments both fail

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It’s Just for School

No, it is forcing medical treatments on innocent people – school is just a mechanism to hide that fact

If you force kids to go to school [compulsory education laws] and you force them to get vaccinated to go to school [mandatory vaccination laws] you are forcing kids to get vaccinated


Additional arguments against SB 277

No cost benefit analysis
We have been given no idea of what impact this law will have on cases and serious cases in the immunocompromised. All we hear are vague platitudes about protecting the public health
There is no data, independent or otherwise, on serious cases that will be averted

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Other Western democracies do not force medical treatments on their citizens

Western democracies such as Canada, Australia, Japan and Western Europe have no vaccine-related school laws and all those who do provide philosophical exemptions


When compulsory vaccination was raised in England the British Medical Association had this to say:

"The doctor-patient relationship is based on trust, choice and openness and we think introducing compulsory vaccination may be harmful to this."
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-186604/Doctors-say-compulsory-vaccines.html

Now there are some countries that do have laws similar to SB 277. For example Pakistan arrests parents who don’t vaccinate their children. They only difference between us and them is they don’t use school to hide their rejection of basic human rights

SB 277 incompatible with western values

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A race to the bottom

If this bill passes, California will join Mississippi and West Virginia as the only other two states with such extreme vaccination laws in place

Interestingly West Virginia and Mississippi are 2 of the 5 unhealthiest states in the nation and the 2 states with the lowest income and education levels in America



http://www.foxbusiness.com/personal-finance/2012/10/15/americas-best-and-worst-educated-states/

When I moved from NY to California 25 years ago it was known as the Mecca of healthy living – now, if this law passed it will be seen as a bastion of backwardness and totalitarianism


On the other hand, progressive blue states such as Washington and Oregon have recently rejected legislation similar to SB 277

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AB2109 is working – there is no need for more extreme legislation
Statewide, the rate of vaccine waivers for kindergartners entering school in the fall declined to 2.5% in 2014 from 3.1% in 2013. Bigger declines were seen in districts with some of the larger vaccine exemption rates.

In the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District, the rate fell from 14.8% to 11.5%; Capistrano Unified in south Orange County declined from 9.5% to 8.6%; Beverly Hills Unified declined from 11.9% to 5%; and Laguna Beach Unified declined from 15.1% to 2%, according to The Times' analysis.

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The hypocritical doctors supporting this bill believe in exemptions for themselves, 
not our children

These are the people around the immunocompromised

physicians have an obligation to:  (a) Accept immunization absent a recognized medical, religious, or philosophic reason to not be immunized.

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The price
Getting that last 1% requires the most draconian measures, undermines our values and provides the least benefit

If this misguided law passes, thousands of innocent families will be hurt.

Creating an absolutely sterile world has high costs

How will a mother of a vaccine injured child feel knowing she cannot protect younger siblings from the procedure that injured her older child

13,000 kids getting unwanted vaccines for 20 years 

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Slippery Slope

Senator Pan got his bill (AB 2109)  forcing parent to listen to a doctor’s lecture before getting an exemption. This bill worked very well cutting exemptions dramatically especially in the so-called pockets of under-vaccination. Was senator Pan happy? Of course not, now he’s pushing an even more extreme piece of legislation. One can only imagine what happens if this misguided law goes through

The next logical step will be to mandate yearly flu shots, adding as many as 22 new shots to the schedule. (This year the flu shot had an effectiveness of 12%.) 

Additionally each and every one of the dozens of vaccines in development will be quietly added to the current schedule


Before you know it kids will be getting 100-150 doses of vaccine to feed the insatiable desires of the public health establishment

Sound crazy? – We’re already up to around 69 doses by 18 – add in flu shots from daycare to college and we get to 91


SB 277 addresses a problem that does not exist

Only 2.5% of kindergarteners have personal belief exemptions.
A PBE only means a child has opted out of as few as one vaccine - not all the vaccines. For example a parent may be skeptical of a birth dose of hepatitis b vaccine – an injection for a sexual transmitted disease a child has little chance of contracting and opt out of that particular vaccine but get all the rest.

Almost 7% of children are admitted to school without vaccines on a conditional basis. These children are far more numerous than those who have personal belief exemptions. This bill does not address those conditional exemptions

According to press reports:
"These students may lawfully enter kindergarten on a “conditional basis,” with some, but not all, of their required shots. The condition is that they’ll get up to date soon."

So this is another reason eliminating the personal exemption will have almost no practical effect


Lessons from the "outbreak"
Is this outbreak a Harbinger of things to come or worst that can happen?

We just did an experiment – a foreign traveler came to Disneyland with a case of the measles. Because Disneyland is a hub that brings people from all over the state together, one would expect that an infection there could travel all over the state as people went back to their neighborhoods – that is if vaccination protection had been eroded to the degree the vaccine alarmists would have us believe

Not surprisingly the high vaccination rates and the current vaccination laws we have in place stopped this small outbreak quickly? 

The measles did not run wild through so-called clusters of under-vaccination

Very high rates made it virtually impossible for the highly contagious, but generally mild, illness to spread. Within a few months the tiny outbreak had exhausted itself

A highly contagious illness in the perfect location were the perfect condition for such a highly contagious virus but due to current laws in place the illness died out quickly 

The non-problem is solving itself

From news reports:

“Receptionists at Kaiser Permanente now ask families about measles symptoms when they make appointments, says physician Nam Lam, assistant chief of pediatrics at Kaiser Permanente Orange County.”


“At the Westchester Medical Center in Los Angeles, receptionists tell patients with measles symptoms to meet staff at the office's back entrance, to avoid infecting others, pediatrician Amy Shapiro says.”

“In the past, Shapiro had to work to persuade some parents to vaccinate their children on time. Now, so many parents are asking for the measles vaccine that she nearly ran out of shots.”

Hearing of just a 100 cases, many parents ran to their doctor to vaccinate. Because of self-regulating mechanisms such as this we will never see the number of measles cases the doomsayers fear and any small outbreak will end long before serious consequences can emerge. 


Safety Concerns

You can’t force medical treatments on people – there are risks involved – you can’t impose risks on other people’s children

Vaccines have always had problems. The only questions are what will the next problem be and how will you feel having forced vaccines on the unwilling when that problem occurs?

These incidents all occurred as vaccines were being declared safe by the scientific community

In the 1940’s the yellow fever vaccine was contaminated with hepatitis B. It was given to US servicemen. The result was 300,000 became infected and 60 were killed
Vaccinated by Dr. Paul Offit / Smithsonian Books / Page 40

In the 1950s a vaccine made with a supposedly killed polio virus contained live polio. According to Wikipedia, “40,000 developed abortive poliomyelitis (a form of the disease that does not involve the central nervous system), 56 developed paralytic poliomyelitis—and of these, five children died from polio”

In the 1960’s contamination of the polio vaccine with a possibly carcinogenic simian virus was discovered

In the late 60s’ / 1970s many children developed a more serious form of the measles when exposed to the virus. This was a result of their being vaccinated with an early version of a measles vaccine. Because of this the vaccine had to be taken off the market

In 1976 the CDC orchestrated the vaccination of some 50 million Americans on the pretext that a swine flu epidemic was at hand. The epidemic never emerged and, because of those vaccinations, 500 people are believed to have contracted Guillain-Barre syndrome.

In the 1990s it was discovered that the vaccine schedule was exposing children to excess levels of mercury. Soon thereafter mercury was removed from most vaccines

In 2001 it was reported
Sunday Express April 1, 2001
“UP to two million children were knowingly put at risk by the former Government with a vaccine which causes meningitis. The MMR jab, known as the Urabe strain, was still approved by Tory ministers for two years after some children developed a form of meningitis after receiving it.”


With the 100’s of new vaccines in the pipeline, can we really expect another one of these incidents will not occur?

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A Broken System

Part of the argument used to justify compulsory vaccination is that if a child is required to take a vaccine, a system will be in place to compensate that child should a resultant injury occur.

Today the system that is supposed to do that is broken

Let’s look at the system we have. The basic premise is parents can’t sue vaccine makers if something goes wrong because the government wants to protect them from being sued out of business

As a result a special vaccine court shielding drug companies from potential suits was established in 1986. This system is not working.

According to the New York Times:

“Lawmakers designed vaccine court to favor payouts, but the government fights legitimate claims and fails its obligation to publicize the court, worried that if they concede a vaccine caused harm, the public will react by skipping shots.” 

Yet despite government efforts to hide this compensation program, the Sacramento Bee reports, “Last year, the trust fund paid out more than $202 million to people who claimed they or their children were injured or killed by a vaccine covered by the program. A government table lists the kinds of injuries for which people can seek compensation: anaphylactic shock, brain disorders, paralysis, chronic arthritis.

We can only imagine how much more would be paid out if the system was working as designed.

Finally Justices Sotomayor and Bader-Ginsburg recently weighed in on the issue opining that our current system does not ensure vaccine safety

In a recent decision shielding pharmaceutical companies from vaccine-related lawsuits, Justice Sandra Sotomayor, joined by Ruth Bader Ginsburg, wrote in the dissent that the ruling created, “a regulatory vacuum in which no one ensures that vaccine manufacturers adequately take account of scientific and technological advancements when designing or distributing their products.

With children being denied the ability to get fair compensation, the idea of passing a law to force vaccines on them becomes even more distasteful

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Vaccine injuries are real

Ask your legislator how he or she would you feel if you were the one that forced these kids to get the vaccines that led to these injuries?





More bad arguments for SB 277


We force people to wear seat belts

Responses can either be:

Let’s stick to merits of law at hand

Or

22 years (this includes college mandated vaccines) of being injected with biological agents is very different from buckling a seatbelt for a few years

Same approach can be taken to similar arguments such as we make people pay taxes, buy car insurance etc. 

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Vaccines have saved millions of lives

Regardless the “vaccines save millions of lives” argument has nothing to do with this bill

We will have vaccines without this bill. Only 2.5% of children have an exemption to as few as one vaccine. Less than 1% of children have received no vaccines

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Parents should not have to worry when they go in public
They have no reason to worry. Almost all of them can vaccinate and there are almost no cases of the measles with current laws in place.

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These diseases are not gone
Correct, in some countries there are many cases of the measles. However with current laws in place, they are rare in America. Since illnesses such as the measles are incredibly well-controlled based on the laws we have in place, SB 277 is unnecessary and talk of diseases “not being gone” is irrelevant to this conversation

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The science says…

You may hear a quote like this used to excuse forced vaccination: “Science shows that vaccines are the best and safest way to protect everyone from potentially deadly diseases.”

First, this bill isn’t about the merits of vaccination rather it is about a parent’s right to decide on what medical treatments their children will receive.

Before I go one I’d like to point out another tactic used in this “science” argument.

Those pushing vaccines talk about one issue: science showing this or that, but in the process smuggle in a false concept to support the vaccination argument. In this case notice how “potentially deadly diseases” is smuggled into the conversation when the illnesses they are alluding to are generally mild or problematic largely as a result of poor living conditions.

As to science, science does not override a parent’s decision on raising their children unless an extreme situation arises such as withholding life-saving treatments from a child ill with cancer. The vaccination of healthy children in no way compares to that

One example of what life would be like in a science dictatorship: forced breastfeeding. After all there are scientific studies saying it’s better for the baby, so we’d have to do what science thinks best.

“The science is indeed clear that vaccinations have dramatically reduced diseases that were once widely feared.”

Irrelevant.

Do you want to live in a world where the government can force you to do whatever science says?

In America, you’re free not to obey “the science.”

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We have to protect the public health / safety

The public is very well protected right now

This really means we have to use some children to protect other children who are already incredibly well-protected. You have no right to use other people’s children as objects to satisfy your goals or desires

Government protects rights as well. This bill not only fails to protect those rights; it blatantly violates them

Total security comes at a high price. As President Eisenhower
Said, “If you want total security, go to prison. There you're fed, clothed, given medical care and so on. The only thing lacking... is freedom.”

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We have to protect the babies and the immunocompromised because they depend on us

We all want to help vulnerable people when we can, but that help must be voluntary. As much as we feel for someone with a poor immune system their health issues do not place obligations on others 

Fortunately with the laws in place the immune-compromised are incredibly well protected. This year’s 100 or so measles cases in California were the highest number in decades. It is likely we will not see this many cases for years to come

There are few people who cannot get vaccinated due to immune issues – the most widely cited group are children getting chemotherapy but they are few in number – additionally they are often not in school while undergoing treatment and can resume vaccination shortly after treatment

As to those permanently unable to vaccine there are only about 900 kindergarteners each year qualify for a permanent medical exemption

California has 58 counties and 915 exemptions which equals 15 medical exemptions per county

The immunocompromised have tremendous protection right now

*The same rates and laws that “eradicated” the measles is in place today

*Children without vaccines are asked to leave school if there is even one case of a mild illness – this gives the compromised children tremendous protection

*Doctors who treat the immunocompromised a quitting on their non-vaccinating patients in greater numbers so there is one less opportunity for an encounter in a waiting room or doctor’s office

Measles Babies
Before vaccination maternal antibodies protected babies for 6 months to a year – now due to compulsory vaccination the antibodies mothers pass along last a far shorter period of time. In essence vaccination has made babies more vulnerable to measles but it also has made measles very rare so babies are still at a very tiny risk of catching measles. Concerned parents can of course keep these children at home where they are not exposed to as many germs as they would be in daycare

Pertussis babies
Richard Pan uses this excuse
“A pregnant woman catches whooping cough from an unimmunized child, then transmits it to her newborn child after delivery.”

While this is rare [2,000 cases 4million births .0005%] there is a chance

Luckily soon-to-be mothers have the option of vaccinating during pregnancy: a process the medical profession says will protect the baby during infancy.

Parents of the immune compromised
A few parents have called for the elimination of vaccine exemptions so their child’s level of protection will be increased.

I’m not sure this is something all parents who have immunocompromised children would do.

I certainly could not bring myself to force other people to get vaccine after vaccine just for my own child’s benefit

Parental trust
Parents don’t own their children; they have a trust over those children based on the fact that they brought them into the world. Most parents feel part of that trust means doing what is best for their children.

If parents feel vaccines are not in the best interests of their child, those parent will not in good conscience, no matter how much they would like to help a less fortunate child, be able to allow her child to be used as an object for the benefit of others.

Those parents can sacrifice themselves but are not in a position to sacrifice their child

No data
There is no metric as to how many people must be vaccinated with how many vaccines to make an impact on the safety of a single immunocompromised child. We are being asked to sacrifice but no information exists as to what real impact that sacrifice will have

I were a parent, I’d accept the tiny risk of a world that rejects forced vaccination so my immune-compromised children will be able to raise their children as they see fit when they become adults 


General points of interest



Pan’s petition

Senator Richard Pan is claiming he has a petition signed by 20,000 Californians supporting his misguided bill. This is a fraudulent claim since anyone, real or fake, from anywhere could have signed this moveon.org online petition. I myself had my signature accepted as Ed Muffin from Muffinwood NY.

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The Magical Herd

NPR reports
“the vaccination rate in the community has to be very high to guard against measles — 96 percent or greater

What NPR is talking about is herd immunity. Wikipedia describe it this way:

 “Herd immunity … describes a form of indirect immunity that occurs when large percentages of a population have become immune to an infectious disease, thereby providing a measure of protection for individuals who are not immune. In a population in which a large number of individuals are immune, chains of infection are likely to be disrupted, stopping or slowing the spread of disease.[2] The greater the proportion of individuals in a community who are immune, the smaller the probability that those who are not immune will come into contact with an infectious individual”

It is false that rates need to be 96% or higher for people to be guarded against measles. People are still guarded and incredibly well protected with today’s vaccination rates. When we eliminated measles the vaccination rate was only 90% and today’s 93% vaccination rate stopped the Disneyland outbreak in its tracks – there were only a little over 100 cases in a state of 38 million 


Herd immunity vs parental rights


In America we take rights very seriously. We can all take great pride in our nation's progress in recognizing the rights of women, minorities and workers. History shows California has been in the forefront of this progress, yet SB 277 is a huge step backwards. That's why it is so puzzling to hear that this bill is even being considered: it is an assault on the very concept of rights we hold so dear.

Look at it this way: You must violate a parent's rights to get a 96% vaccination rate: achieving rates that high requires state force. On the other hand my not vaccinating violates no one's rights. So naturally, in a system valuing rights, the rights violator would have to give way to the innocent person, yet this bill does is the opposite: it gives precedence to the right violator at the expense of the innocent parent.
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Diane Feinstein

Diane Feinstein wrote this to a constituent defending her support of SB 277. She tries to make it seem without this new law the world would be as it was in 1900 ignoring the current, incredibly safe world we live in in 2015 with the current laws in place

Diane writes
“Before vaccination became widespread in the United States, tens of thousands of children were seriously disabled or died each year as a result of diseases such as smallpox”

Whatever went on before widespread vaccination has absolutely no bearing on the current debate. Here's why:

Feinstein’s scenario is not even close to going on now, with the laws we currently have in place the world is almost sterile in regards to the old, mild childhood illnesses. Using a world of 60 years ago to justify attacking parental rights is absurd. The choice is not between these laws and thousands of disabled and death. The choice is between preventing maybe a few dozen cases of generally mild illnesses and a totalitarian system that uses the almost limitless power of the state to force potentially dangerous, unwanted medical treatments on thousands of California children. Feinstein's letter reveals the intellectual bankruptcy and dishonesty of the vaccine extremists and their contemptible agenda

They act as if we have no laws today – as a result of the laws we have we have a 93% vaccination rate with only 2.5 percent opting out of even a single vaccine

This bill does not invent vaccination

It does not take us from 1900 to the present

It does not stop everyone from stopping vaccination because without the bill almost no one is stopping vaccination

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Take action today. Contact your legislators and let them know that this bill is:


Anti-choice
Anti-parent
Pro-discrimination
Totalitarian
Extreme
Out of touch with American values 

And don't forget, this bill is so extreme it does not even allow for religious exemptions and it forces vaccines on home-schoolers 
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Coming Soon: What about polio?

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