Vaccine sleight of hand
Every Child by Two proclaims that vaccines save money! Lots and lots of money!
Childhood Vaccines Save Lives and Money
- Routine childhood immunization
- 33,000 deaths prevented
- $43 billion saved
But then, on the side of their web-page, is a link to a graphic illustration of the rising costs of childhood vaccination.
Looks like they want it both ways: “vaccines save billions” by reducing health care costs, preventing hospitalizations and doctor visits; BUT “the newer vaccines are more expensive and we need to put a lot more tax dollars into vaccination programs.”
If the numbers with respect to “dollars saved” were solid and existed across the entire vaccine program, the argument would be a good one. Upon further scrutiny, it looks like they are pulling a bait and switch. They put forward some old numbers based on the less expensive vaccines combined with some inflated statistics for predicted epidemics (see the “33,000 deaths prevented” link above for our detailed analysis of these numbers), then slide right past the huge increase in the number and cost of vaccines in the current U.S. schedule.
On top of this, some of the newer vaccines are aimed at illnesses which are of low incidence or fairly mild in most children. For example, Hepatitis B is very severe, but it isn’t common among infants born in the U.S. On the other side, chickenpox is usually a minor illness, although common. The chickenpox vaccine cost benefit justification actually depended on a monetary estimate of the cost of parental time lost from work. Some convoluted bookkeeping methods would be needed to demonstrate that universal vaccination with ALL of the vaccines on the current schedule results in overall health care savings. There is certainly no sign of these savings in the escalating cost of health insurance in the U.S. Read more
VAERS: What we really know about the reporting of adverse events.
The Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) is currently the only method of post-licensure surveillance for adverse reactions to vaccines in the United States. VAERS is a passive reporting system that allows physicians and parents to submit reports of potential adverse events post-vaccination. Unlike the mandatory reporting system for vaccine preventable diseases, there is no mandated system for the reporting of adverse events following vaccination. The FDA and CDC utilize VAERS for identifying adverse events associated with licensed vaccines (Chen, Rastogi, & Mullen, et al., 1994). Rosenthal and Chen (1995) note that vaccine trials “have sample sizes that are insufficient to detect rare adverse events” and “are usually carried out in well-defined, homogeneous populations with relatively short follow-up periods which may limit their generalizability (p.1706)”. Therefore, it can be assumed that accurate reporting of adverse events to VAERS is a critical issue in indentifying adverse events that occur in the general population. Unfortunately, current literature suggests that VAERS is, at best, poorly utilized (Rosenthal & Chen, 1995).