Despite High Child Vaccination Rates,
CDC Calls for Shaming Schools
Anne Schuchat, MD (RADM, USPHS). Not satisfied with one of the highest child vaccination rates in the world, CDC officials are using tax dollars to find new ways to isolate, publicly identify and bully every family—and the schools and communities they live in—if they do not conform to one-size-fits-all government vaccine policies.
BY BARBARA LOE FISHER
SEE: http://www.thevaccinereaction.org/2015/09/despite-high-child-vaccination-rates-cdc-calls-for-shaming-schools/; republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, and research purposes:
With military precision, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) announced at an Aug. 27, 2015 press conference that national vaccination rates among young children in the U.S. continue to be very high but that more must be done to tag and track down children without every government recommended vaccine and publicly shame schools that fail to maintain a 95% plus vaccine coverage rate. Assistant Surgeon General Anne Schuchat, MD (RADM, USPHS) made the siren call to all states to require public and private schools to publicly post vaccine coverage and exemption rates.1
At the same time, Dr. Schuchat, who is a Rear Admiral in the U.S. Public Health Service (USPHS) and Director of the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, confirmed that CDC data indicates that less than one percent of children aged 19 to 36 months are unvaccinated, while fewer than 1.7% of children attending kindergarten during 2014-2015 had medical, religious or conscientious belief vaccine exemptions.2 3
94% Plus Multiple Vaccine Coverage Rate for Young Children
As the CDC has reported for the past 30 years,4 there is a 94% national vaccine coverage rate for children entering kindergarten with five doses of pertussis containing vaccines (DTaP/DPT) and two doses of measles containing MMR vaccine. In addition to high uptake of measles, mumps, rubella, diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis vaccines, about 94% of kindergarten children have gotten two doses of varicella zoster (chickenpox) vaccine.
For children 19 to 36 months old, the estimate is nearly 95% for three doses of pertussis containing (DTaP/DPT) vaccines and over 91% for one dose of MMR vaccine, as well as at least 93% for three doses of polio and Hib (haemophilus influenza b) vaccines and about 92% for three doses of hepatitis B and pneumococcal vaccines.
Among the 16 states that have conscientious or philosophical belief vaccine exemptions for kindergarten children, six report vaccine coverage rates of 94-98% (Arizona, Louisiana, Michigan, Oregon, Texas and Utah). Of the 47 states that have a religious vaccine exemption, 20 report kindergarten vaccine coverage rates of 94-99%.
The Decimal Dust Numbers of “Unvaccinated” Children
At the press conference, Dr. Schuchat admitted that when a parent files a vaccine exemption for a child entering school, it “doesn’t necessarily mean that a child didn’t get vaccinated or was completely unvaccinated.” She said, “an exemption might be requested for all vaccines, even if a child only missed a single vaccine or a single vaccine dose. In some states, a parent or guardian might actually claim an exemption if they don’t have the child’s vaccination record available.”
So the miniscule numbers of completely unvaccinated young children in the U.S. might be even tinier than CDC estimates. And, yet, those numbers are not tiny enough for Admiral Schuchat and the USPHS.5 6
Not satisfied with one of the highest child vaccination rates in the world, CDC officials are using tax dollars to find new ways to isolate, publicly identify and bully every family—and the schools and communities they live in—if they do not conform to one-size-fits-all government vaccine policies. One way is to incentivize states to use electronic medical record and vaccine tracking systems to publicly shame schools and their students with lower vaccination rates and higher personal belief vaccine exemption rates. In fact, the CDC has created a new national website just for that purpose.7
Some families have chronically ill and disabled children for whom the risks of vaccination turned out to be 100%, but parents cannot find a pediatrician to write their children a medical exemption. Most doctors are taught to believe that vaccines never cause permanent harm even though that is not true,8 and 99.99% of children do not qualify for a medical vaccine exemption under strict federal guidelines.9 10 11
California School Vaccination Rates Online
The California Department of Public Health, which joined forces with the liability-free pharmaceutical and medical trade industries to lobby state legislators in 2015 to eliminate the personal belief vaccine exemption for school children,12 has followed the CDC’s directive and created a new state website featuring an interactive map using zip codes to post the following information about public and private kindergartens and middle schools (7th grade):13
- Name and address of the kindergarten or middle school;
- Numbers of children enrolled;
- PBE (personal belief exemption) rate;
- UTD (up to date) vaccination rate;
- Coverage rates for DPT, polio, MMR, hepatitis B, and varicella vaccines.
- Whether or not the school reported vaccine coverage and exemption information to the state health department (for schools that did not report, there is little or no information posted)
But state health officials go one step further: they also “rate” the schools from “safest” to “most vulnerable” with the follow color coded rating system:
Green Star: Safest (95-100% of students fully vaccinated)
Yellow Star: Moderately vulnerable (90-94% of students fully vaccinated)
Orange Star: More Vulnerable (80-89% of students fully vaccinated)
Red Star: Most Vulnerable (less than 79.9% of students fully vaccinated)
Blue Star: Did Not Report in 2014-2015
Yellow Star: Moderately vulnerable (90-94% of students fully vaccinated)
Orange Star: More Vulnerable (80-89% of students fully vaccinated)
Red Star: Most Vulnerable (less than 79.9% of students fully vaccinated)
Blue Star: Did Not Report in 2014-2015
Now, the public blaming and shunning of those schools with red stars and the children in them can begin.
How About School Sick Day Data?
If government health officials are going to violate the medical privacy of children and post detailed vaccination and exemption rates for schools, then parents should also have access to information about the total number of sick days reported in each school during the 2015-2016 school year due to illness.
With long standing vaccine safety research gaps and no credible studies comparing health outcome differences between highly vaccinated children and those receiving fewer or no vaccines,14 15 16 at least parents would have a way to identify which schools and student populations are actually healthier, not simply highly vaccinated.
The Assault on Values and Beliefs
In the question and answer period during the Aug. 27 CDC press conference, Admiral Schuchat made it clear to reporters that U.S. public health officials are going to do whatever it takes to make it “more difficult” for parents to exercise religious and conscientious belief vaccine exemptions. She said, “We know that the more difficult it is to obtain an exemption, the more—the fewer people will exempt their children from vaccines and we certainly think it should be easier to get a vaccine than to get an exemption from a required vaccination. So these policy decisions are made at the state level and we think that’s helpful because it will reflect the community or local values.”17
Apparently, government health officials are determined to impose their values and beliefs on anyone who does not share them, even if it means using fear and coercion to pit parents and schools and communities against each other in order to accomplish that goal. But the culture war on values and beliefs is being fought on an uneven battlefield, as the expanding financial partnership between government and the liability-free pharmaceutical industry carries with it the political clout and money to roll out national advertising and media campaigns targeting the unbelievers for demonization and discrimination.18
Annually, DHHS officials are given nearly one TRILLION taxpayer dollars by Congress, which is nearly twice the amount of money appropriated to the Department of Defense,19but Congress provides little oversight on how public health officials spend that money or if they use it to violate the human and civil rights of citizens.
Militarization of Public Health Programs
Government health officials partnering with industry have declared war on citizens exercising freedom of thought, speech and conscience, who question the safety and effectiveness of government vaccine policies and defend the human right to informed consent to medical risk taking.
Military strategies employed to win wars view casualties as necessary losses. Unfortunately, it appears that those waging the “take no prisoners” culture war view both the vaccine injured and human and civil rights as necessary losses.
It should not be illegal in America to have values and beliefs that differ from government health officials. Uniformed officials of the U.S. Public Health Service serve a vital role in protecting the public health and safety of our nation during real emergencies, but they have no business treating citizens who disagree with them like the enemy and persons of interest to be hunted down, isolated, publicly identified, discriminated against and punished.
This is a war that the American people cannot afford to lose. Even if you and your children use every government licensed and recommended vaccine today, you may change your mind tomorrow. You will not be free to do that if flexible medical, religious and conscientious belief vaccine exemptions are not secured in state and federal laws guaranteeing your legal right to make voluntary vaccine decisions.
Go to NVIC.org and NVICAdvocacy.org to learn how you can become a vaccine choice advocate in your state.
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Shock Video! Gov. Caught Lying About Vaccine Dangers
The Hypocrisy of Universal Vaccination Shaming
BY PAULA ONNIT
SEE: http://blogs.naturalnews.com/hypocrisy-universal-vaccination-shaming/; republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, and research purposes:
Dear Universal Vaccination Shamers,
It’s time to point out your hypocrisy. You try to shame parents into injecting their children with all CDC-recommended vaccinations, yet it is not federal law that everyone be vaccinated. Merely existing as a human being does not require vaccination. Certain vaccines are recommended for children to attend public school, but not home school or private school. All but two states have a philosophical or religious exemption for children to attend public school without certain vaccines, and all states allow medical exemptions. Some organizations require health-care workers to get certain vaccines, but that is not part of any state or federal law. (1)
The following will be a very uncomfortable conversation for you.
You Are a Public Health Pawn
Vaccination is a recommendation and not a law because it’s cheaper for our government to use you in the public health campaign to ratchet vaccination uptake toward 100%. Yes, you are a pawn of social engineering. You are key to the program to publicly shame those who don’t vaccinate, and it’s worked.
For thirty years, we’ve had 95% vaccination rates for the most communicable diseases. Despite these herd immunity levels, you still don’t believe in vaccine choice. In your world everyone should be vaccinated because – contrary to the herd immunity theory you espouse – the 5% who are unvaccinated are putting everyone else at risk for vaccine-preventable diseases. When you look at the facts, an outbreak of a “vaccine-preventable disease” is not a social engineering issue solved with shaming tactics, it’s a vaccine science issue. Fixing the scientific issues with vaccine effectiveness does not involve forcing vaccines on the minority of people who do not want them for philosophical, religious, or medical reasons. Below you’ll read how you have overlooked your own role in reaching the herd immunity goal, and it has to do with science, not your public health campaign.
As Mike Adams wrote the other day, pro-vaccine choice people are not necessarily against the theory of vaccination; most of us feel vaccines need further study to make them safer and work better. We want more science. You call us anti-science, but you’ll see that we are into the science, not you.
Your Shaming Strategies
As a Shamer, your strategies are transparent and tiresome. After you call pro-vaccine choice people “anti-science,” you normally cite the smallpox and polio vaccines as some sort of proof that all vaccines work and are not harmful. On a recent vaccine article, I even read a vitriolic comment stream (aren’t they all) where a Shamer actually thought we’d eradicated leprosy with vaccines. Leprosy is cured with antibiotics like Dapsone. I call that a swing and a miss.
Since the science does not exist to prove vaccines are safe and effective, you spend most of your time arguing public health. Then you get personally accusatory. You say the unvaccinated are putting the vaccinated at risk. If you believe vaccines work so well and that you and your fully-vaccinated children are immune to every disease for which you’ve been vaccinated, why, pray tell, would unvaccinated people be a danger to you? If you are in this camp, I don’t understand your argument.
I was talking to an otherwise intelligent Shamer about this point, and he actually thought people carry diseases until the vaccine somehow sanitizes them. Just for the record, the unvaccinated do not carry all the vaccine-preventable diseases and are not standing in corners eager to sneeze on the vaccinated.
You call vaccine choice people “dumb” and say that we just do a Google search and do what Jenny McCarthy says. You think it’s a paradox that the people you put down for supporting vaccine choice are more educated and wealthier than the general population. We are not a paradox. I assure you that the background art on PubMed is not composed of interlocking teddy bears holding hands. We know how to search the U.S. National Library of Medicine and can get access to the full text of any studies we want. We read the science. We critique the science. We know the difference between correlation and causation, and know that the fourteen studies cited as the proof that vaccines don’t cause autism are epidemiological – i.e. correlation studies, which have also been manipulated. (2)
Here’s another contradiction in your position to ponder. You allow that the immunocompromised such as people receiving chemotherapy, can skip vaccines for medical reasons, but you don’t feel children at risk of allergic, diabetic, and neurological disorders should skip any vaccines.
Are You Immunologically the Same as an Unvaccinated Person?
You’ve probably heard the phrase “vaccination is not immunization.” It means that you and your fully vaccinated children might not actually be immune to the diseases for which you were vaccinated.
This is the big point. As a Shamer, you are a hypocrite if you know vaccines don’t cause your immune system to mount immunity 100% of the time. If you are one of the people who never mounted a good immune response to a vaccine or if your immunity has waned over time, you (and your children) may be vectors of vaccine-preventable diseases, just like the unvaccinated. How do you know you are not immunologically the same as someone who didn’t vaccinate? Lack of immunity after vaccination is more common than you might think.
Studies that test people before and after bone marrow transplants actually look at what percent of people are immune to various vaccine-preventable diseases before their transplant. A study published in the Canadian Journal of Infectious Diseases found that pre-transplant only 82% of people were immune to polio, 77% to tetanus, 64% to diphtheria, and 27-59% to HIB. (3) These levels were true for the healthy marrow donors as well. For diphtheria, an 85% herd immunity threshold is the public health goal, yet if this small study indicates diphtheria only has 64% population immunity, how can the disease be all but totally eradicated? (4)
The solution to vaccine failure is not to vaccinate people against their will just to protect you. That’s selfish and mutually exclusive of the greater good that you always talk about. You have the tools to take self-responsibility for your immunity, but your public health campaign has probably distracted you from this basic science. The main way to test if a vaccine has made us immune is to look at antibodies in the blood. Disease-specific antibodies indicate your immune system now recognizes an illness. If you mount a high enough level of antibodies, you are considered theoretically immune to the disease for which you were vaccinated.
Your Hypocrisy Test
Now that it’s clear you might not be immune to many “vaccine-preventable diseases,” let’s review what you can do about it. It will serve two purposes. You can personally achieve 100% immunity to all vaccine-preventable diseases, allowing you freedom from fearing the unvaccinated. Plus, the higher rate of immunity in those who do want vaccines will help us reach goals for herd immunity.
Here’s how to do it. You should get annual blood draws for antibody titers for you and your children to prove that you remain immune to vaccine-preventable diseases. Since you are worried about being a disease vector, consider quarantining yourself and your children until your tests are back. If titers show you and your darlings are not immune, continue that quarantine until you’ve been re-vaccinated enough times that your titers show immunity. Your doctor euphemistically terms these shots “boosters.” If you aren’t doing regular titers and re-vaccination until immunity is proven, it is your fault if you or your fully vaccinated child gets a vaccine-preventable disease. That’s science, not public health.
Quarantine and titering are highly inconvenient and expensive, which is why it’s not part of our public health recommendations, and never will be. But, since you are running your public health campaign for the greater good, you can now personally help make up for vaccine failure and waning immunity by ensuring you are 100% immune to every vaccine-preventable disease. It’s great you’ve told us so many times that you aren’t worried about vaccine side effects. You will have some, but you’ll be immune to a few diseases, which you say is more important anyway.
The herd immunity threshold is thought to occur when 75% to 94% of people are immune to each communicable disease, with rates varying by disease. Since you are among the 95% of people who want vaccines, and you will now have 100% immunity due to your revaccinations, the minority of people who cannot have or do not want vaccines can exercise their choice, without affecting herd immunity. (4)
People for Vaccine Choice are Healthier & Do Their Research
Since you say you look at the science, maybe you should get to know pro-vaccine choice people a little better. We take more responsibility to maximize our own immunity than those who hold the quaint notion that a vaccine or pill will prevent or cure everything that ails them. People for vaccine choice do consider vaccines and might get some. However, unlike Universal Vaccinators, we painstakingly research the risks and benefits of each vaccine before each decision. In addition to reading the published literature, we read the package inserts, especially Sections 6 (Adverse Reactions) and 14 (Clinical Studies), and check VAERS for the current count of adverse reactions to each vaccine. That way we can roughly calculate a risk-benefit for each vaccine, since we know neither the government nor vaccine manufacturers has provided that critical information. We also know that doctors and vaccine manufacturers are immune from liability, so they have no incentive to ensure we are safe. We are on our own, so we weigh the evidence. Can you still call us anti-science?
Each vaccine decision is based on our circumstances and individual risks. For example, a pre-existing mitochondrial disorder or methylation defect makes the likelihood of vaccine injury much higher. We are aware that all studies of the vaccinated versus the unvaccinated show much higher rates of chronic conditions among the vaccinated, such as allergies, diabetes, and neurological disorders. (5, 6) We know the CDC and NIH have funded none of those studies, but we recognize directional science, if you want to call it that. The question people for vaccine choice ask is this: Is herd immunity worth it, if the risk of lifetime illnesses is so high? Are we just robbing Peter to pay Paul?
You’ve called us parasites, but we don’t feel that way. We take health into our own hands and feel we are healthier for our vaccine decisions. We take Vitamin D and eat nutrient-dense diets to bolster our immune systems. It works. Our children are sick much less often than fully vaccinated children. If we do get sick, we are more likely to stay away from public places as a courtesy to others. I’ve noticed children who are sick all the time get sent to school anyway.
If we get sick, we know how to take care of the problem with natural medicine. You know, the stuff you incorrectly blanket with the term “homeopathy,” usually uttered with a sneer. Some of us do use homeopathic remedies, but mostly we look to foods and herbs, which by the way, can also be researched through PubMed. Despite what you might believe, we will take pharmaceutical drugs if our natural approach fails, and if the safety profile is good.
Speaking of herbs, drugs and research, did you know Tamiflu doesn’t work because it was derived from star anise? Star anise is a weak herbal antiviral. Pharma should have researched their herbs better before trying to chemicalize one that doesn’t work well in its herbal form. It would have been more scientific to select a strongly antiviral herb.
How Committed Are You?
Now that you know how committed vaccine choice people are to their own health, let’s talk about your commitment to your position. To keep your position without hypocrisy, you need to vaccinate, quarantine and titer until you are immune. Let’s take flu shots as an example. When the flu shot first becomes available each year, guess what? Yup, for the greater good, you should get vaccinated the first day that shot is available, or per your logic, you are putting others in danger since you are an unvaccinated vector. Then since the flu shot achieves peak immunity in only 60% of adults (at best), please quarantine yourself for two to four weeks to allow your antibodies to peak. (7) Whether you are in the 60% who do mount enough antibodies, or in the 40% who don’t, some of you will shed and spread your genetically modified vaccine strain flu virus to others, and that is impolite. In my book it is shameful. Repeat your seasonal flu quarantine and titer until you are immune. It might take months each year.
Since you won’t quarantine yourself, I will continue to walk the other way when I see you smugly sporting that little flu shot Band-Aid.
I hope this was uncomfortable for you. Please consider if your Shaming campaign is misdirected at those who exercise vaccine choice. Do we really need people to be vaccinated against their will, or do we need more effective vaccines with immunity that won’t wane over time? Since vaccines do not work perfectly, the onus is on you – the majority of you who favor vaccination without reservation – to take personal responsibility for your own immunity with more vaccines for yourself and your children. It also helps with herd immunity. Then, you have no reason to fear the unvaccinated or have those uncomfortable shaming conversations.
To Your Health,
Paula Onnit
Paula Onnit is not related to Paul Offit.
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