“Just because you need a third dose doesn’t mean the two dose schedule is having issues or anything”
Filed under: CDC Watch, News, Opinion, Parents' Pages, Vaccine/Disease Analysis
Because of continued spread, health authorities working with communities in Orange County are giving schoolchildren a third dose of the MMR vaccine. Gallagher says it will be two or three months before it’s known whether the effort succeeded.
Why do they need a third dose?
The infections happened despite high coverage with the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine. Among patients ages 7 to 18 — the age group that had the most cases — 85% of patients had received the two recommended MMR vaccine doses.
This doesn’t mean the MMR vaccine isn’t working, says epidemiologist Kathleen Gallagher, DSc, MPH, the CDC’s team leader for measles, mumps, and rubella.
“Two doses of mumps vaccine is believed to be 90% to 95% effective,” Gallagher tells WebMD. “But that means people can still get mumps. If the vaccine is 90% effective and 100 people are exposed to mumps, 10 will get the disease.”
If we imagine that mumps is being sprinkled from the sky and spread evenly throughout the population, then yes, one out of ten vaccinated people would catch mumps if the vaccine was, indeed, 90% effective, or one out of twenty if it were 95% effective. But if the vaccine creates “herd immunity” then the disease shouldn’t be able to jump from vaccinated person to vaccinated person to vaccinated person. Read more
Vaccine Myths, Round Two
Filed under: Parents' Pages, Vaccine Myths, Vaccine Science, Vaccine/Disease Analysis
Introduction: A while back, we explored some common anti-vax myths. Because in the great vaccine debates, the myths tend to outnumber the facts, we’ve decided to begin a multipart series dispelling some of the mythologies people argue over which preclude productive discussions over real issues. Below, you will find the facts behind two more common vaccine myths: herd immunity, and whether or not vaccines are profitable to pharmaceutical companies.
Myth: herd immunity isn’t real, and all the vaccine preventable diseases were declining in incidence prevaccine
Reality: vaccine induced herd immunity is a real phenomenon, and the incidences of the “diseases of childhood” (measles and mumps, for example) averaged out to be constant in the prevaccine era.
Here’s a chart showing the incidence of measles from 1912 till 1960.
Although the “death rate per cases” dropped an amazing amount, the same number of cases were happening per year on average. Read more
Where Do They Find These Scary Statistics III – Let’s Make a Few Assumptions – Hepatitis B
Filed under: CDC Watch, Vaccine Science, Vaccine/Disease Analysis
Parents have questions about the risk-benefit equation of the Hepatitis B vaccine. It is possible for a parent to be quite certain that their infant is not at risk of prenatal or birth exposure to this disease. The risk factors for exposure during infancy, early childhood, and the elementary school years can be reasonably well assessed on an individual basis. Read more
Health Marketing, Risk Communication, and the Media
Remember the Great Influenza Vaccine Shortage a few years back?
Panic swept the nation after the FDA rejected many European flu shots because of possible contamination during manufacturing. What was left was rationed according to age and risk factors, and the public could be seen every night on the news waiting in long lines to get the remaining doses.
Now, setting aside for the moment the ongoing questions regarding the usefulness of flu shots in any age group, especially the elderly, one might come to wonder what has changed in recent years to bring about this new terror regarding influenza.
The answer, as outlandish and implausible as it might sound, is that this fear has been manufactured and marketed by the people in public health. Read more
Where Do They Find These Scary Statistics?
Filed under: CDC Watch, News, Vaccine Science, Vaccine/Disease Analysis
Dr. Gerberding of the CDC
[Series Links: Part II, Part III]
Remember Hannah Poling? The head of the CDC, dressed in a very nice pink suit, appeared on TV and discussed Hannah’s case. In one of her appearances she said something like this: “Vaccines prevent 33,000 deaths a year in the United States.” Just to make sure I had the statement right, I searched for the phrase and found it again, from CNN, this time in print.
Today, through immunizations given in the first two years of life, we can protect children from 16 diseases, preventing 33,000 deaths and 14 million illnesses per year.
A few searches made it clear that this is a very popular statistic. A variety of news stories included the information that vaccines prevent 33,000 deaths a year in the United States. This is an interesting number to anyone who knows a bit about the history of infectious diseases. I decided to dig deeper.
My next find was this chart, which is on a the web-site of an organization called Every Child by Two. The chart provides morbidity (incidence) and mortality (deaths) for each disease. How in the world would someone be able to calculate (for example) the exact number of cases of diphtheria which would occur and the exact number of deaths which would follow? Amazing! There must be some truly extraordinary scientific research underlying these numbers, don’t you think? Read more
For the Good of the Herd
Filed under: CDC Watch, Parents' Pages, Vaccine/Disease Analysis
In an era where CDC experts are saying, “Just line up for Gardasil, and you’ll have a 70% reduced chance of getting cancer”, are parents asking any critical questions about the crystal ball gazing abilities of these experts now and in the past? Why is there talk of adding a third MMR vaccine into the childhood schedule, and also putting it into adult vaccination programs as regular boosters?
Will most people just roll up their sleeve, assuming the new ideas will have the good outcome the CDC will predict?
Most of those people won’t know, that in 1967, the CDC said: *
For centuries the measles virus has maintained a remarkably stable ecological relationship with man. The clinical disease is a characteristic syndrome of notable constancy and only moderate severity. Complications are infrequent, and, with adequate medical care, fatality is rare.
Effective use of these vaccines during the coming winter and spring should insure the eradication of measles from the United States in 1967. Read more
Where to start?
Parenthood is tough! Decisions, decisions, decisions. And here in “The Information Age”, many parents feel that there is no room for poorly informed choices for The Big Decisions. For many parents, the issue of vaccines was at one time a “no brainer”. Children were “completely” vaccinated. Everyone believed that vaccines were necessary to save your baby’s life. For the majority, vaccines were completely beyond debate. Today, many parents are questioning the safety and necessity of the large numbers of vaccines on the schedule, particularly for obscure or milder diseases. Vaccine necessity, which used to be taken for granted, has suddenly become an uncertain, debatable matter that has to be researched in depth.
What are the issues which require consideration as one steps outside the “Just do whatever your doctor tells you to do!” mindset?
- 1) the ethics of vaccine decisions in light of herd immunity
- 2) the immediate risk to the baby or child from both the diseases and the vaccines
- 3) the social stigma of possibly going against the flow and not following the recommended schedule
- 4) and the confusing, often conflicting ocean of scientific literature on the topic.
So where should a parent start? Read more
MRSA and Child Flu Deaths
Recent news stories about a link between MRSA and flu deaths in children raise some interesting questions in light of our Sisyphus series (Part I, Part II and Part III).
“Being a carrier of MRSA has increased a lot, especially among school-aged kids,” said Lyn Finelli, chief of influenza surveillance at the CDC. “And being colonized may put them at risk for a severe staph aureus infection when they get the flu.”
This particular news story blames the problem on antibiotic overuse, and, of course, recommends the flu vaccine to save children from this dangerous situation. Read more
Vaccine Information Statements For Dummies
Before any doctor gives your baby vaccines, you should be given Vaccination Information Sheets (VISs) to read.
Developed by the CDC, they inform vaccine recipients, their parents or legal representative, about the benefits and risks of vaccines. (1) Federal Law requires their use. This is a result of the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986, 42 U.S.C. 300aa-26. (1) Before 1986, parents didn’t have any right to printed information about vaccines.
VISs sound like a good system. Parents get concise and easy to understand information on a vaccine’s risks and benefits so they can make an informed decision.
Is that really how it works? Let’s examine the nuts and bolts of VISs.
Read more
Sisyphus and the Conjugate Vaccines III
Part III of a three part series. Parts one and two can be found here and here.
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The big question with these conjugate vaccines is “What is the overall effect?”
How many fewer cases of invasive bacterial disease are happening after replacement is accounted for?
The more narrowly you look, the better these conjugate vaccines look. The more broadly you look, the more the apparent effects melt away to nothing. With Hib and “replacement disease”, if you just compare h influenza serotype B to serotype A, it would appear that killing off Hib via mass vaccination was extremely successful in the grand scheme of things. When you look at nontypeable (also known as “non capsulated”) h influenzae plus Hia and Hif, that’s when you start seeing that we’re not really any better off now than we were before the Hib conjugate vaccine. Read more