One of the problems in discussing the "vaccine issue" with most people is that it is not a discussion about science or medicine or even a discussion about some product, it has become a discussion about a religion.
The belief, and that is what it is, that vaccines have been a "miracle" of modern medicine is accepted as an indisputable article of faith. When arguing against such a dogma, which must be done, many will take it as a personal attack on their entire belief system. Cutting through that is the greater challenge in my experience.
If you can get someone to honestly engage it is rather easy to expose the myth that vaccines have been some "miracle cure" for anything.
I like to use the measles example. As your chart indicates death mortality rates from the measles had pretty much evaporated to zero by 1960.
Great article, simple and to the point. Like many others I have been "red pilled" due to the Pandemic. Germ vs Terrain is paramount. I have read other articles and comments on this topic and I believe the conversation or debate is lost when either side entrench themselves to one side. I have read one opinion suggesting that perhaps it is both at play. I have even read that Louis Pasteur (germ scientist) supposedly said he got it wrong. I am not a scientist. A good starting point for me is simple observation. Here I would like to reference Dr Paul Thomas, a Pediatrician, and his "observational" study. I realize the article specifically reference folks presenting links, articles abstracts etc... But I believe this study supports the charts that are displayed. All Dr Thomas did was compare visits to his office of 3k+ plus kids and recorded the purpose of their visit, illnesses, conditions etc... and whether that were vaxxed and unvaxxed. There was a peer reviewed abstract on file and "passed" but was interestingly later "retracted" (a discussion for another day). I have concluded that the immune system is a closed evolutionary marvel. Closed, meaning an intricate complex system, and should be meddle with at absolute minimum, if at all. Because the health outcomes are not trending well. And I invite everyone to visit a graveyard and observe the age of death. My office is in Plymouth MA and there is a burial, with pilgrims buried (Plymouth Burial Hill) near my office. There are many of whom died at ages 80+ going back to the early 1800's. Ben Franklin, died age 84, Thomas Jefferson died at age 83. Western medicine is subsidizing poor health, and the survivability of children under age 10 has greatly improved compared to the past, and therefore the "reported" longevity number is higher.
The vaccine debate is remarkable for its perennial character. It goes back to the development of the smallpox/cowpox vaccine (from which the word 'vaccine' derives) in the 19th century. On the one side are those who see the promise of eliminating dangerous communicable diseases via innoculation. On the other are those who don't trust it. Achieving disease eradication via population-level immunity requires universal inoculation. However, for many people there's a big difference between taking a medication when you're sick (in which case, it's easy to argue that whatever side effects you risk are worth it to cure the illness), and taking a medication prophylactically when you're perfectly healthy (in which case, possible side effects become far more pertinent).
It seems that the pro-vaccination side of things has largely adopted a tactic of simply claiming that all vaccines are perfectly safe, with no side effects worth worrying about whatsoever. The anti-vaccination side tends to emphasize the side effect profile. It doesn't help that the pro-vaccine side has also used coercive measures such as e.g. requiring shots to attend school or cross national frontiers; people generally get suspicious when coercion gets involved. A lot of those tactics can probably be ascribed to frustration from the pro-vaxx side: "Why won't they just listen to us!? Ah screw it let's just force them."
As an aside, I recently heard a story about an ancestor of mine who, when immigrating to Canada, was stopped at the port of entry by an officious little twerp who attempted to refuse them entry because neither my ancestor nor his large family had received their smallpox vaccines. This was for the simple reason that my ancestor didn't trust them. Being the age of the steam-ship, going back to the Old World wasn't all the straightforward. So, my ancestor - a large and rather forceful man - simply used sheer force of personality and raw volume to bully the immigration official into letting them in.
If nothing else good comes out of this whole scam, at least we now are more openly discussing the efficacy of germ theory and discovering the virtues of terrain theory. Germ theory has so captivated medicine that we really have almost no idea what really makes people sick. Reliance on germ theory, and the stranglehold on funding for alternative theories, has prevented us from trying to discover if there is something other than viruses/germs that are the culprit.
Very illuminating post. Love it. I'm an older guy, and I've found in my life that arguments about certain subjects end up being nothing but distractions that steer us far away from what most people want: Solutions. Those with an agenda just *love* when we begin bickering. It gives them cover while they keep pushing their agenda in the background. It's hard not to get pulled into some of these "debates" when tensions and emotions are high. It sounds a bit cliche, but sometimes we really do need to take a deep breath, shake our heads, shrug our shoulders and move on to solving the issue at hand... oftentimes without those we've been trying to convince. And, sometimes, we just let the other person/party be "right" because it's not worth the energy to keep beating our head against the wall and accomplishing nothing.
From some recent discussions about controversial topics in the last few years I got the general impression that it is not so much the believe in certain scientific/technological achievements in the modern world as it is a great unease to cast any serious doubt on the pricipal functioning of the Western industrial society as a whole.
E.g. when talking about the shortcomings of the notorious RT-PCR test that Drosten gave to the world, nobody was willing to accept, that such a flawed artefact would even be possible to be used world wide, as of course in their ideological view there would be myriads of scientists eager to validate it and any serious flaw would undoubtedly be eradicated as soon as possible by some responsible and vigilant experts somewhere in this gigantic venture where corruption would only ever be exceptional, singular cases.
Most people without first hand experience of the medical/scientific profession like to believe, that it is mostly and generally doing the right thing as a discipline that will help people in the end. There would just be too many checks and balances to compromise it.
And so the widespread believe results, that we can, that we even must trust experts and there is no reason to question a scientific consensus.
Mentioning widespread lobbying and corruption within the pharmaceutical-medical industrial complex to confront the trust in this system usually provokes generic, deathblow arguments, that corruption would be a problem in any social system - which of course is merely an argument for not trusting any expert groups, there results or products just by their authority.
So I think, it is the angst to loose confidence in the whole technological society when such ubiquitous and supposedly safe artefacts like vaccines, drugs, therapies etc. are suddenly being questioned categorically - there might be consequences without end destroying much of the illusionary comfort of a virtual world that most people inhabit since their birth. What would be left of this society, of this world, if you could not trust any experts anymore, after trusting them your whole life?
A bit off topic Monica...but very stressed out men all either had, or were diagnosed with ulcers, decades ago. Then, ulcers went away! And heavily stressed men with high pressure jobs all got bad backs. Why the change?
Biology is not my territory, so I’d like my comment to zoom out for a second and admit the fact that we, as a species, tend to look at solutions limited through the lens of control and domination. We’re always at war with something or other: War on Drugs, War on Terror, War on Pests, War on Viruses... some of the things we war with aren’t even real things. They’re abstract concepts. By that rationale, any solution we come up with seeks to eradicate (even that word itself is an aggressive word) a problem by controlling it instead of taking into consideration how to best achieve harmony and balance and preventative measures for out-of-balance problems. Both the germ and terrain theories can be quite reductionist. There’s truth in column a and column b.
As far as medical interventions, I think insulin has helped diabetics out. It’s nice to be able to prevent premature deaths. Although insulin isn’t out to kill some kind of intruder, so maybe that’s why?
Strep — scarlet fever, strep throat, etc. — antibiotics - 1946DOB, because I presumably (adopting parents' thought) had strep throat @ 4 years old and then rheumatic fever until age 11. 1st med treatment yucky tasting iron-tonic because 1st GP doc via blood tests found I was anemic. 2nd doc (because my mom realized iron-tonic or tablets weren't doing anything and she could feel my temp was a little elevated) had treated solders during WW2 who had rheumatic fever with the new wonder drug penicillin knew via phone conversation with my mom that I had rheumatic fever symptoms after hearing my mom's descriptions.
Not to derail the conversation, I will share a personal story to illustrate a point, Several years ago we had a spring drought, around five months in rural NZ without rain + my nephew was born and we had the MMR vaccine to appease my family. Since that spring, I have had a long term skin issue - sometime a rash, sometimes not - but severe itching especially after bathing. Its been 5 years+... There could be any number of causes, but any question whether my skin issue could be a vaccine reaction is to be guaranteed to treated like a crazy - Long before the covid, including a vaccine in a list of exposures was unacceptable.
The illustration is helpful Monica, but when minds are so closed that one cannot even introduce the old school vaccines as being safe, always for everyone, I am unsure how to get a mind full of certainty to begin to question.
For me, until liability for vaccine manufacturing corporations + their leadership, is restored they have no incentive to ensure the safety of their product, while it is hard to prove - like glyphosate issue + every other environmental toxin. It is all about profit and this becomes worse with government protection( of public private partnerships). Such as 1080 use here in NZ, something becomes entrenched, some people profit and government and industry cover up the science and the harms - anyone who disagrees is vilified and an insecticide + brutal poison is poured over conservation land for 50years- all to save the birds, while you poison their food source.
I haven't drawn any conclusions yet but it appears in every case that rates had fallen dramatically long before the supposed interventions were prevalent.
One of the problems in discussing the "vaccine issue" with most people is that it is not a discussion about science or medicine or even a discussion about some product, it has become a discussion about a religion.
The belief, and that is what it is, that vaccines have been a "miracle" of modern medicine is accepted as an indisputable article of faith. When arguing against such a dogma, which must be done, many will take it as a personal attack on their entire belief system. Cutting through that is the greater challenge in my experience.
If you can get someone to honestly engage it is rather easy to expose the myth that vaccines have been some "miracle cure" for anything.
I like to use the measles example. As your chart indicates death mortality rates from the measles had pretty much evaporated to zero by 1960.
The first measles vaccine was liscensed in 1963.
Great article, simple and to the point. Like many others I have been "red pilled" due to the Pandemic. Germ vs Terrain is paramount. I have read other articles and comments on this topic and I believe the conversation or debate is lost when either side entrench themselves to one side. I have read one opinion suggesting that perhaps it is both at play. I have even read that Louis Pasteur (germ scientist) supposedly said he got it wrong. I am not a scientist. A good starting point for me is simple observation. Here I would like to reference Dr Paul Thomas, a Pediatrician, and his "observational" study. I realize the article specifically reference folks presenting links, articles abstracts etc... But I believe this study supports the charts that are displayed. All Dr Thomas did was compare visits to his office of 3k+ plus kids and recorded the purpose of their visit, illnesses, conditions etc... and whether that were vaxxed and unvaxxed. There was a peer reviewed abstract on file and "passed" but was interestingly later "retracted" (a discussion for another day). I have concluded that the immune system is a closed evolutionary marvel. Closed, meaning an intricate complex system, and should be meddle with at absolute minimum, if at all. Because the health outcomes are not trending well. And I invite everyone to visit a graveyard and observe the age of death. My office is in Plymouth MA and there is a burial, with pilgrims buried (Plymouth Burial Hill) near my office. There are many of whom died at ages 80+ going back to the early 1800's. Ben Franklin, died age 84, Thomas Jefferson died at age 83. Western medicine is subsidizing poor health, and the survivability of children under age 10 has greatly improved compared to the past, and therefore the "reported" longevity number is higher.
Dr Thomas abstract: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7709050/
Dr Paul Thomas interview: https://rokfin.com/post/81669/VAXXED-VS-UNVAXXED-Dr-Paul-Thomas--Dr-James-LyonsWeiler-Put-CDC-Vaccine-Schedule-To-The-Test
The vaccine debate is remarkable for its perennial character. It goes back to the development of the smallpox/cowpox vaccine (from which the word 'vaccine' derives) in the 19th century. On the one side are those who see the promise of eliminating dangerous communicable diseases via innoculation. On the other are those who don't trust it. Achieving disease eradication via population-level immunity requires universal inoculation. However, for many people there's a big difference between taking a medication when you're sick (in which case, it's easy to argue that whatever side effects you risk are worth it to cure the illness), and taking a medication prophylactically when you're perfectly healthy (in which case, possible side effects become far more pertinent).
It seems that the pro-vaccination side of things has largely adopted a tactic of simply claiming that all vaccines are perfectly safe, with no side effects worth worrying about whatsoever. The anti-vaccination side tends to emphasize the side effect profile. It doesn't help that the pro-vaccine side has also used coercive measures such as e.g. requiring shots to attend school or cross national frontiers; people generally get suspicious when coercion gets involved. A lot of those tactics can probably be ascribed to frustration from the pro-vaxx side: "Why won't they just listen to us!? Ah screw it let's just force them."
As an aside, I recently heard a story about an ancestor of mine who, when immigrating to Canada, was stopped at the port of entry by an officious little twerp who attempted to refuse them entry because neither my ancestor nor his large family had received their smallpox vaccines. This was for the simple reason that my ancestor didn't trust them. Being the age of the steam-ship, going back to the Old World wasn't all the straightforward. So, my ancestor - a large and rather forceful man - simply used sheer force of personality and raw volume to bully the immigration official into letting them in.
Ah, those were the days.
This is a good exercise. I would have pushed back a few years ago, but then I read Dissolving Illusions and my mind was blown.
Anybody try Polio for extra credit?
If nothing else good comes out of this whole scam, at least we now are more openly discussing the efficacy of germ theory and discovering the virtues of terrain theory. Germ theory has so captivated medicine that we really have almost no idea what really makes people sick. Reliance on germ theory, and the stranglehold on funding for alternative theories, has prevented us from trying to discover if there is something other than viruses/germs that are the culprit.
Very illuminating post. Love it. I'm an older guy, and I've found in my life that arguments about certain subjects end up being nothing but distractions that steer us far away from what most people want: Solutions. Those with an agenda just *love* when we begin bickering. It gives them cover while they keep pushing their agenda in the background. It's hard not to get pulled into some of these "debates" when tensions and emotions are high. It sounds a bit cliche, but sometimes we really do need to take a deep breath, shake our heads, shrug our shoulders and move on to solving the issue at hand... oftentimes without those we've been trying to convince. And, sometimes, we just let the other person/party be "right" because it's not worth the energy to keep beating our head against the wall and accomplishing nothing.
From some recent discussions about controversial topics in the last few years I got the general impression that it is not so much the believe in certain scientific/technological achievements in the modern world as it is a great unease to cast any serious doubt on the pricipal functioning of the Western industrial society as a whole.
E.g. when talking about the shortcomings of the notorious RT-PCR test that Drosten gave to the world, nobody was willing to accept, that such a flawed artefact would even be possible to be used world wide, as of course in their ideological view there would be myriads of scientists eager to validate it and any serious flaw would undoubtedly be eradicated as soon as possible by some responsible and vigilant experts somewhere in this gigantic venture where corruption would only ever be exceptional, singular cases.
Most people without first hand experience of the medical/scientific profession like to believe, that it is mostly and generally doing the right thing as a discipline that will help people in the end. There would just be too many checks and balances to compromise it.
And so the widespread believe results, that we can, that we even must trust experts and there is no reason to question a scientific consensus.
Mentioning widespread lobbying and corruption within the pharmaceutical-medical industrial complex to confront the trust in this system usually provokes generic, deathblow arguments, that corruption would be a problem in any social system - which of course is merely an argument for not trusting any expert groups, there results or products just by their authority.
So I think, it is the angst to loose confidence in the whole technological society when such ubiquitous and supposedly safe artefacts like vaccines, drugs, therapies etc. are suddenly being questioned categorically - there might be consequences without end destroying much of the illusionary comfort of a virtual world that most people inhabit since their birth. What would be left of this society, of this world, if you could not trust any experts anymore, after trusting them your whole life?
Measles, polio and diphtheria were all well under control before the respective vaccines came into play.
Recommend ' disappearing illusions' , amazing book a real epiphany for me, especially smallpox history
A bit off topic Monica...but very stressed out men all either had, or were diagnosed with ulcers, decades ago. Then, ulcers went away! And heavily stressed men with high pressure jobs all got bad backs. Why the change?
Biology is not my territory, so I’d like my comment to zoom out for a second and admit the fact that we, as a species, tend to look at solutions limited through the lens of control and domination. We’re always at war with something or other: War on Drugs, War on Terror, War on Pests, War on Viruses... some of the things we war with aren’t even real things. They’re abstract concepts. By that rationale, any solution we come up with seeks to eradicate (even that word itself is an aggressive word) a problem by controlling it instead of taking into consideration how to best achieve harmony and balance and preventative measures for out-of-balance problems. Both the germ and terrain theories can be quite reductionist. There’s truth in column a and column b.
As far as medical interventions, I think insulin has helped diabetics out. It’s nice to be able to prevent premature deaths. Although insulin isn’t out to kill some kind of intruder, so maybe that’s why?
Strep — scarlet fever, strep throat, etc. — antibiotics - 1946DOB, because I presumably (adopting parents' thought) had strep throat @ 4 years old and then rheumatic fever until age 11. 1st med treatment yucky tasting iron-tonic because 1st GP doc via blood tests found I was anemic. 2nd doc (because my mom realized iron-tonic or tablets weren't doing anything and she could feel my temp was a little elevated) had treated solders during WW2 who had rheumatic fever with the new wonder drug penicillin knew via phone conversation with my mom that I had rheumatic fever symptoms after hearing my mom's descriptions.
My conclusion> germs > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rheumatic_fever
They all went through a very similar fading off.
What is the Y-axis scale? I thought it was percent of cases, but tuberculosis exceeds 100; so it must be something else.
Not to derail the conversation, I will share a personal story to illustrate a point, Several years ago we had a spring drought, around five months in rural NZ without rain + my nephew was born and we had the MMR vaccine to appease my family. Since that spring, I have had a long term skin issue - sometime a rash, sometimes not - but severe itching especially after bathing. Its been 5 years+... There could be any number of causes, but any question whether my skin issue could be a vaccine reaction is to be guaranteed to treated like a crazy - Long before the covid, including a vaccine in a list of exposures was unacceptable.
The illustration is helpful Monica, but when minds are so closed that one cannot even introduce the old school vaccines as being safe, always for everyone, I am unsure how to get a mind full of certainty to begin to question.
For me, until liability for vaccine manufacturing corporations + their leadership, is restored they have no incentive to ensure the safety of their product, while it is hard to prove - like glyphosate issue + every other environmental toxin. It is all about profit and this becomes worse with government protection( of public private partnerships). Such as 1080 use here in NZ, something becomes entrenched, some people profit and government and industry cover up the science and the harms - anyone who disagrees is vilified and an insecticide + brutal poison is poured over conservation land for 50years- all to save the birds, while you poison their food source.
I haven't drawn any conclusions yet but it appears in every case that rates had fallen dramatically long before the supposed interventions were prevalent.