Re: Vaccine - Autism link
Posted: Mon Apr 22, 2019 3:52 pm
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/201 ... -next.html
“There are a couple of reasons for this,” Hogan says. “This is a very tight-knit community. And so even with a small percentage of unvaccinated children, there’s just a lot more insularity, so it’s spreading. And to be clear, it appears that the outbreak began from travelers who in some cases were from Europe, several from those who went to Israel and caught the measles and brought it back. So it’s not just like one person brought it. And now we’re seeing this whole evolving situation.”
In her reporting, Hogan is trying to understand why this community has continually had trouble with measles. Which brought her to the Vaccine Safety Handbook.
“[It’s] a project of PEACH, which stands for Parents Educating and Advocating for Children’s Health,” she says. “This pamphlet has been out for several years, but when the outbreak began last October, it was sent to some Orthodox homes and neighborhoods.”
The pamphlet just appeared in people’s mailboxes. In New York and New Jersey, it was passed between friends and family members and circulated through the community. I’ve seen this pamphlet—it looks professional. It resembles something you might find in a doctor’s office. But it is different.
“It’s full of all these big questions, like Why are autism rates going up?” Hogan says. “It posits all these questions, and then it says all this information about vaccines—it sort of puts vaccines in parallel to all these, every possible ailment. So it asks these questions and gives you this information about vaccines, sowing these kind of seeds of fear. Well, maybe it’s vaccines, you know—the reader jumps to that conclusion.”
In the pamphlet, one thing that stood out to me was a cartoon of a doctor with a needle telling a mother that vaccines are totally safe. And then in the next panel, the doctor drops the vaccine and it spills on the floor and he says to the nurse, It’s biohazard. Call the EPA! Everything here we can’t touch! It sets up this conflict and pushes the reader to ask, Is this vaccine good? Is what was in the vial safe?
Hmmm. Are those mercury fillings in your mouth safe?
Knowing about the history of this community, the way information moves through it, I asked Hogan how public health officials have responded to this outbreak. They took drastic steps. Back in December, the city barred unvaccinated children from attending yeshivas in Brooklyn. And then, just in the past couple of weeks, we’ve seen even more steps in Rockland County, New York, which is another place where there’s a significant Orthodox Jewish population.
“The Rockland County executive declared a state of emergency for a period of 30 days, which he could potentially extend, [and now] unvaccinated children are banned from public places,” Hogan says.
She continues: “They say they’re not planning on enforcing this. To be clear, they’re banned from public indoor spaces. They can go to parks and they can be on the streets, but restaurants, malls, that kind of thing, they’re not allowed there. They’re saying they’re not going to be patrolling, they’re not gonna have a list of immunization records, you don’t have to have an ID card that says you’ve been vaccinated. But it seems that there could be enforcement retroactively.”
If the measles spreads and an unvaccinated child was in a public place, then the parents could be held liable.
...
“I’m not gonna argue that there’s anything good about people getting measles—of course it’s terrible,” he says. “But if you look at vaccination numbers across the country, 91.5 percent of 3-year-olds have received their first MMR [measles, mumps, and rubella] vaccination in the U.S. That’s the same rate that you saw five years ago and 10 years ago, and I think 15 years ago. The rate is not changing.”
He continues: “The national rate is incredibly stable. I mean, doing a lot of health reporting, it’s surprising to see something so stable. The norm for vaccination in the U.S. is very strong and unchanging. And so there’s this media narrative that the anti-vaxxer menace is growing, is spreading through social media. It’s just not borne out by the facts. You asked what’s the danger. Well, I think the danger, when you start amplifying the message and reach of very fringe groups, is that you’re perhaps eroding that norm. That’s one danger.”
Engber has also argued that anti-vaccine stories take up a lot of oxygen in the health and science space—that the media spend a lot of time talking about anti-vaxxers. National headlines have touted that the number of unvaccinated kids has quadrupled in the United States in recent years.
“That sounds terrible,” he says. “[But] to be clear, it’s quadrupling from a very small number to something that’s still a small number. But the CDC report at that time made it very clear that the source of that quadrupling was not anti-vaxxer propaganda, but social inequality—it’s kids who don’t have health insurance, kids who don’t have access to good health care, and the racial disparities in who is getting vaccinated in the U.S.”
...
“What’s relevant there is what people think in that county in Washington state and maybe Washington as a whole. I just don’t think what you and I say in New York City matters to those local vaccination rules,” he says. “I have two objections to the coverage. One is factual, and one is tone. The factual part is, there’s just no evidence that the anti-vaxxer movement is stronger today than it was 20 years ago. So as a journalist, as a science journalist, it’s just wrong—that kind of coverage that paints this as a growing menace.”
He continues: “I do have a problem with the tone. It’s not that it’s fearmongering—I think in local communities, fearmongering is very effective. That’s why there have been 17,000 vaccinations in Rockland County. That’s why there was a 500 percent increase in Washington state around the area of that outbreak. Parents are scared and they’re getting vaccinated, and that is just a self-correction of this silliness of parents not getting vaccinated and not thinking it’s important. The tone problem, as far as I see it, is that there’s this outrage around it. Since 91.5 percent of kids are vaccinated and that is unchanging, we can say that almost all parents are on the right side of this issue. But I mean people are really, really furious, and that bothers me ’cause I think it is just like a useless outrage at our fellow citizens.”
Oh, so people are actually still getting vaccinated at the same rates as always except when they cannot afford vaccinations! Hmmm. And nobody is dying of the measles. So all of the antisemitic hatred and fascist mandates against free speech and informed consent are actually potentially authoritarian overreactions aimed at demonizing anyone who questions any authoricratic pronouncement of our authoricrats?
“There are a couple of reasons for this,” Hogan says. “This is a very tight-knit community. And so even with a small percentage of unvaccinated children, there’s just a lot more insularity, so it’s spreading. And to be clear, it appears that the outbreak began from travelers who in some cases were from Europe, several from those who went to Israel and caught the measles and brought it back. So it’s not just like one person brought it. And now we’re seeing this whole evolving situation.”
In her reporting, Hogan is trying to understand why this community has continually had trouble with measles. Which brought her to the Vaccine Safety Handbook.
“[It’s] a project of PEACH, which stands for Parents Educating and Advocating for Children’s Health,” she says. “This pamphlet has been out for several years, but when the outbreak began last October, it was sent to some Orthodox homes and neighborhoods.”
The pamphlet just appeared in people’s mailboxes. In New York and New Jersey, it was passed between friends and family members and circulated through the community. I’ve seen this pamphlet—it looks professional. It resembles something you might find in a doctor’s office. But it is different.
“It’s full of all these big questions, like Why are autism rates going up?” Hogan says. “It posits all these questions, and then it says all this information about vaccines—it sort of puts vaccines in parallel to all these, every possible ailment. So it asks these questions and gives you this information about vaccines, sowing these kind of seeds of fear. Well, maybe it’s vaccines, you know—the reader jumps to that conclusion.”
In the pamphlet, one thing that stood out to me was a cartoon of a doctor with a needle telling a mother that vaccines are totally safe. And then in the next panel, the doctor drops the vaccine and it spills on the floor and he says to the nurse, It’s biohazard. Call the EPA! Everything here we can’t touch! It sets up this conflict and pushes the reader to ask, Is this vaccine good? Is what was in the vial safe?
Hmmm. Are those mercury fillings in your mouth safe?
Knowing about the history of this community, the way information moves through it, I asked Hogan how public health officials have responded to this outbreak. They took drastic steps. Back in December, the city barred unvaccinated children from attending yeshivas in Brooklyn. And then, just in the past couple of weeks, we’ve seen even more steps in Rockland County, New York, which is another place where there’s a significant Orthodox Jewish population.
“The Rockland County executive declared a state of emergency for a period of 30 days, which he could potentially extend, [and now] unvaccinated children are banned from public places,” Hogan says.
She continues: “They say they’re not planning on enforcing this. To be clear, they’re banned from public indoor spaces. They can go to parks and they can be on the streets, but restaurants, malls, that kind of thing, they’re not allowed there. They’re saying they’re not going to be patrolling, they’re not gonna have a list of immunization records, you don’t have to have an ID card that says you’ve been vaccinated. But it seems that there could be enforcement retroactively.”
If the measles spreads and an unvaccinated child was in a public place, then the parents could be held liable.
...
“I’m not gonna argue that there’s anything good about people getting measles—of course it’s terrible,” he says. “But if you look at vaccination numbers across the country, 91.5 percent of 3-year-olds have received their first MMR [measles, mumps, and rubella] vaccination in the U.S. That’s the same rate that you saw five years ago and 10 years ago, and I think 15 years ago. The rate is not changing.”
He continues: “The national rate is incredibly stable. I mean, doing a lot of health reporting, it’s surprising to see something so stable. The norm for vaccination in the U.S. is very strong and unchanging. And so there’s this media narrative that the anti-vaxxer menace is growing, is spreading through social media. It’s just not borne out by the facts. You asked what’s the danger. Well, I think the danger, when you start amplifying the message and reach of very fringe groups, is that you’re perhaps eroding that norm. That’s one danger.”
Engber has also argued that anti-vaccine stories take up a lot of oxygen in the health and science space—that the media spend a lot of time talking about anti-vaxxers. National headlines have touted that the number of unvaccinated kids has quadrupled in the United States in recent years.
“That sounds terrible,” he says. “[But] to be clear, it’s quadrupling from a very small number to something that’s still a small number. But the CDC report at that time made it very clear that the source of that quadrupling was not anti-vaxxer propaganda, but social inequality—it’s kids who don’t have health insurance, kids who don’t have access to good health care, and the racial disparities in who is getting vaccinated in the U.S.”
...
“What’s relevant there is what people think in that county in Washington state and maybe Washington as a whole. I just don’t think what you and I say in New York City matters to those local vaccination rules,” he says. “I have two objections to the coverage. One is factual, and one is tone. The factual part is, there’s just no evidence that the anti-vaxxer movement is stronger today than it was 20 years ago. So as a journalist, as a science journalist, it’s just wrong—that kind of coverage that paints this as a growing menace.”
He continues: “I do have a problem with the tone. It’s not that it’s fearmongering—I think in local communities, fearmongering is very effective. That’s why there have been 17,000 vaccinations in Rockland County. That’s why there was a 500 percent increase in Washington state around the area of that outbreak. Parents are scared and they’re getting vaccinated, and that is just a self-correction of this silliness of parents not getting vaccinated and not thinking it’s important. The tone problem, as far as I see it, is that there’s this outrage around it. Since 91.5 percent of kids are vaccinated and that is unchanging, we can say that almost all parents are on the right side of this issue. But I mean people are really, really furious, and that bothers me ’cause I think it is just like a useless outrage at our fellow citizens.”
Oh, so people are actually still getting vaccinated at the same rates as always except when they cannot afford vaccinations! Hmmm. And nobody is dying of the measles. So all of the antisemitic hatred and fascist mandates against free speech and informed consent are actually potentially authoritarian overreactions aimed at demonizing anyone who questions any authoricratic pronouncement of our authoricrats?