The sky is falling…the sky is falling! Make sure you and your children get vaccinated ASAP with the Whooping Cough vaccine in order to save lives! The recent California increase of whooping cough cases has renewed the call to vaccinate. And, the tactics used to scare and/or guilt you into getting this vaccine are in full swing. What you are hearing from the news and from your doctors is a mixture of partial information and down right untruths! Read on, if you want to find out the facts in order to make a truly informed decision instead of being coerced into injecting this vaccine into you and your child’s body.

I like to start my factual articles regarding any vaccine with the full disclosure that I am NOT completely anti-vaccine. If you read my other articles regarding this subject, this fact will become very clear to you. I am, however, strongly against the pro-vaccine misinformation campaigns meant to scare or guilt you into being injected with these substances for reasons of profit and ego preservation.

So, the reports of 6 infant deaths along with 1,500 cases of whooping cough in California seem to paint a compelling picture as to why everyone should get a whooping cough vaccine right away. Pro-vaccine zealots are using these numbers to claim that the rational debate is over and that those who do not vaccinate are actually “immoral”! The Today Show’s chief medical editor, Dr. Nancy Snyderman, stated that she found people who did not vaccinate to be “offensive and immoral”. This interview with Dr. Snyderman is the perfect example of how the pro-vaccine industry uses half-truths and untruths to pressure us into vaccinating. You can see the interview here: Dr. Nancy Snyderman Today Show Interview

To help illustrate how doctors and the news report only partial facts, look at the picture below:

Now, what conclusion would you come to if you only knew that a three hundred pound Bengal tiger was only two feet away from a young child and that numerous people die each year from tiger attacks? You would think that this child was in grave danger and would likely lose his life should nothing drastic be done right away. The information you got was not false information. This tiger is indeed two feet away from this little boy. And, tigers do kill numerous people each year. But, if you also knew that there was an impenetrable glass barrier between the tiger and the child and that those who die are attacked by wild tigers in India, your sense of urgency would be calmed by having gained the knowledge of all of the facts.

Let’s look at a more complete compilation of the facts, so you can get the full picture when it comes to the whooping cough story.

The claims made by pro-vaccination doctors and the news are that people (especially infants) are dying from whooping cough, that vaccination will protect from the disease, and that the disease epidemic is being driven by the non-vaccinated. If you watched the video of Dr. Snyderman, you saw where she was angered by the fact that 6 infants lost their lives who “frankly should not have died!” As a parent, I can tell you that this is gut wrenching to me. The thought of one of my children dying as an infant from whooping cough when a vaccine would have saved his or her life over-whelms me with guilt. The points emphatically insinuated by Dr. Snyderman in this interview are clear. If you get vaccinated you will be protected from this disease.  And anyone who does not get their children vaccinated has blood on their hands. This is a tactic meant to cause a palpable fear of not being able to bear the guilt if your child got this disease. It is very effective, even though it is inaccurate. Now for the rest of the story.

The first pro-vaccine claim is that infants are dying needlessly. Is this true? The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) state that you do not get full immunity from this disease until after you get 5 shots. Under the schedule of vaccination this means that your child will not get immunity until the age of at least 4 years. The CDC emphasizes that infants under 6 months of age are not yet protected by the whooping cough vaccine. ALL of the children who died in California were under 4 months of age! Thus, the CDC reveals that the whooping cough vaccine would not have been expected to have “saved” these infant’s lives in any case. Dr. Snyderman is either grossly misinformed regarding the facts of the Pertussis vaccine or she is willfully misrepresenting the facts to support her position. In the California whooping cough epidemic, the facts reveal that no lives have been lost due to lack of vaccination. The claims by the news media certainly do not accurately reflect this truth.

The second pro-vaccine claim is that the vaccine will protect you from the disease. This is an interesting one for me. There is no doubt that the whooping cough vaccine has some effectiveness. But, and this is a huge “But”, a very large portion of the people getting whooping cough in California are fully vaccinated. Now, you will hear them state that they “think” the epidemic is being driven by the non-vaccinated or under-vaccinated. This may or may not be true. We simply do not know. What cannot be denied, however, is that many of the people getting the disease are indeed fully vaccinated. This fact is completely glossed over because of the fear that the next logical question will be asked to which they have no answer. How effective is the vaccine if a lot of fully vaccinated people are getting the disease? The answer undermines the implied claim that if you get vaccinated you will be safe from the disease. The reality is that the vaccine does not provide full protection from the disease and is thus, not as good or effective as implied.

Later on in the interview, Dr. Snyderman gives a completely ridiculous illustration of how a selfish unvaccinated person puts cancer and Multiple Sclerosis victims at risk when they go grocery shopping. She says the unvaccinated are “offensive and immoral”. How in the world could an unvaccinated person put a vaccinated person at any risk? Again, if the other person was fully vaccinated they would be safe from contracting the disease; would they not? Her illustration was meant to cast aspersions upon the unvaccinated, but it actually undermines her own argument. How can she argue that a vaccinated person is completely protected against contracting a disease unless they come in contact with the disease? See how ridiculous that is? She is either being disingenuous or grossly ignorant. Personally, I am far from impressed.

Now let me put a spot light on some facts that may cause you to become outraged. The topic of vaccine safety is completely glossed over by advocates like Dr. Snyderman. She simply states that the vaccine is safe under a completely unquestionable tone. The claim of vaccine safety inherently suggests that the benefits greatly outweigh any potential negatives. The facts I am about to share with you come from the CDC’s website. These are official government numbers. They are not taken from some anti-vaccine website. Decide for yourself if you think the whooping cough vaccine is equal in safety to drinking a glass of water, as is always implied.

The CDC states that in 2008 there were over 13,000 cases of Pertussis reported, including 18 deaths. Here is a sickening fact from the CDC: Pertussis containing vaccines caused 76 United States deaths, in children under 5 years of age, in 2008! Thus, the vaccine caused more than 4 times as many deaths as did the disease! Come on…this could not be true. How could our doctors even support this vaccine, let alone claim it to be safe, if this number is true? What a great question! The answer is that this fact illustrates just how influential the pharmaceutical industry is over your doctors. Prove it to yourself. Ask your doctor if more children die from the vaccine or the disease each year. I guarantee you will be told that the chances of your child dying from the vaccine are unbelievably low. If they really believe this, how could they then be worried about the actually disease? The vaccine kills four times as many children as does the disease. I am telling you that this information will be news to your doctor. How could this be? The answer is they only get information from the pharmaceutical industry, which has a very big interest in not letting doctors evaluate the complete facts.

To be fair in our analysis of the vaccine, we have to look at a couple of other facts. Let’s say that no one received the Pertussis vaccine. The number of cases of Pertussis would certainly be higher than 13,000 cases per year. Prior to vaccination there was an average of 175,000 cases of Pertussis per year. At the same rate of death of 18 per 13,000, we would expect to see around 240 deaths a year from Pertussis, if there was no vaccine. On the surface, this would be a savings of about 160 lives per year. However, as illustrated by the current California epidemic, NONE of the 6 deaths would have been prevented by the vaccines. On average, 24 percent of cases are in the under 6 month age group who would not receive protection from the vaccine. Thus, about 60 of the 240 deaths could not be saved by vaccination. This leaves about 180 potential deaths that the vaccine MIGHT save.

We are not done yet. Notice that I only gave you the CDC’s number for deaths caused by Pertussis containing vaccines in 2008 (76 deaths). In addition, 32 children were permanently disabled because of the vaccines and 457 were hospitalized! Over-all there were 4,352 adverse reactions reported to the CDC because of Pertussis containing vaccines in 2008! In total, 108 children are killed or permanently disabled each year because of this vaccine. Thus, the total lives that could be impacted by this vaccine is only around 72 (180 potential deaths minus 108 killed/disabled by vaccine equals 72). The problem is that we know for sure that people who are fully vaccinated are still getting the disease. Thus, some number less than 180 deaths would be potentially saved by the vaccine for a net benefit of less than 72 lives.

Why in the world would your doctor, who so strongly advocates for vaccination, not know this information? How is it that I am the one who is giving you this information instead of the person ordering the injection of vaccine? How many people would actually decide to get the injection if they got all of the information? How much money would then be lost?

Now that you have more complete information, ask yourself this question: Is the cure worse than the disease?

The Bottom Line

There is no doubt the Pertussis vaccine can be effective. The amount of cases per year has been drastically reduced because of the vaccine. There is also no doubt that the vaccine now kills and permanently disables way more children than does the disease each year. In 2008, the vaccine killed and disabled six times as many children as did the disease.

As a parent, you have to make the decision as to whether you think the risk of your child getting this disease is worth the risk of injecting them with the vaccine. I would be willing to bet that the parents of the 4,352 children who had adverse reactions to the injection would strongly disagree with Dr. Snyderman’s characterization of the vaccine as unquestionably safe. I know that the parents of those killed and disabled by the vaccine would more than disagree.

You have to consider the fact that at this point in time your child is six times more likely to have their lives ruined from the injected vaccine than from the disease itself. I fully understand the argument that if no one vaccinates the disease with increase and this ratio will change. But today, your child is WAY more likely to die from the vaccine. Could you live with yourself if your child was permanently damaged or killed by the vaccine when the risk of dying from the disease was lower than the risk of dying from being injected by the vaccine? See how that scare tactic can be utilized both ways? My recommendation is if the risk changes, due to lack of vaccination and increased disease, you can always choose to vaccinate at that time.

Dr. Snyderman states that she is unapologetically pro-vaccine. Maybe she should consider working on an apology.