As if the US public health system wasn't fucked enough when RFK Jr. was somehow, inexplicably, I-fucking-hate-this-timeline confirmed as secretary of Health and Human Services, Donald Fucking (I think that's what the J stands for) Trump nominated someone for the position of Surgeon General who has never treated a patient in an unsupervised setting.
Let that sink in for just a second.
Let it sink in for a few more seconds. Feel free to scream if you like, because there's more.
If you don't know what or whom I talking about, Trump nominated grifter/supplement salesperson Casey Means, MD (yes, she has an MD...I'll get back to that) as US Surgeon General. In the land of "Let's Nominate Wholly Unqualified People for Very Important Posts", this may be the second most egregious selection (after Bobby Fucking Kennedy, of course).
Let's first talk about who the Surgeon General is supposed to be: the nation's doctor. The spokesperson on all things public health. The main advisor to the head of HHS on matters of public health and scientific issues. And the head of the US Public Health Service Commissioned Corps, which consists of 6500 health professionals who are to be dispatched immediately to any public health emergency. Every US Surgeon General has been a qualified physician with vast experience taking care of patients, and almost all have public health experience and qualifications (C. Everett Koop is a notable exception, though he became one of the more influential public health figures in the role).
And now let’s
talk about qualifications. Not vibes. Not branding. Not podcast lighting. Qualifications.
Dr. Means graduated from Stanford University School of Medicine and received her MD degree. That makes her a doctor, but it does not make her qualified to see patients. You see, after medical school, doctors in the US must complete a residency in their selected specialty, which can take 3 to 8 (or more) years. Means started an ENT residency...and then dropped out a few months before completing it. She claims that she dropped out because that just wasn't her path. She supposedly saw the evils of Big Bad Medicine and decided that wasn't for her, she'd much rather become a wellness influencer and supplement saleswoman. Now, for non-medical readers: residency is not decorative. It is not an optional side quest. It is the part where you learn to independently diagnose and treat diseases, manage complications, and not harm people. It is where you go from “has a degree” to “is a physician in practice.”
Now if you're shaking your head wondering if your eyes are messed up, nope, you read that right. The nominee for Surgeon General never completed a residency, never saw patients outside her residency, has never been board certified, and doesn't even have an active medical licence to practice medicine. The person who is supposed to be the pinnacle of public health can't even write a prescription.
FUCKING WHAT NOW?
After leaving residency, Means moved into functional medicine (which is nothing more than a buzz term and is meaningless outside "wellness" circles),
metabolic health advocacy, tech entrepreneurship, and wellness media. And supplement sales. She co-founded a health tech company. She built a significant online
presence. She became a voice in the “chronic disease is a systems
problem” space.
That’s not illegal. It’s not even inherently wrong. Yes, the healthcare system in the US is a disaster compared to many other countries around the world. They spend more there for worse outcomes, and it needs a complete overhaul.
But none of her "experience" qualifies her in any fucking way for Surgeon General, who traditionally has extensive clinical
experience, public health leadership roles, or both. They’ve run
departments. Led agencies. Managed crises.
Casey Means has done exactly ZERO of those things.
OK, BUT HAS SHE SAID ANYTHING BAD?
Well, I'll just start by saying that though Dr. Means has not successfully completed a residency, she has successfully learned how to say yes while actually saying no. That is to say, her answers were much more political and much less scientific.
At her confirmation hearing a few days ago, Means stated she believes vaccines save lives.
Good. Excellent. Bare minimum baseline achieved.
Then came the autism question — because it of course always comes, and rightfully so.
She acknowledged that evidence does not show vaccines cause
autism. Also good. But then she added that “science is never settled.”
Because of course she did.
Now philosophically, sure. Science evolves. Data refines. But when you’re auditioning for the role of national public
health communicator in an era of vaccine hesitancy and the largest goddamned measles
outbreak (and first measles deaths) in decades, this is not the time to sound like you’re moderating a school debate club.
The Surgeon General’s job is clarity. Not epistemological
nuance.
When she was pressed on whether she would recommend routine childhood vaccines, she didn't say 'yes'. She repeatedly emphasised the importance of individualized
decision-making over strong population-level messaging. Instead of just emphatically saying "YES", she wavered, equivocated, and stuck to her "BUT BUT BUT INFORMED CONSENT" bullshit, which is just thinly-veiled antivax rhetoric.
OK, WAS THERE ANTHING ELSE?
Of course there was, because grifters gonna grift. Senators also revisited her past public statements criticizing
hormonal birth control, including language characterising risks in
stark terms such as:
Birth control pills are "a disrespect of life",
Americans "use birth control pills like candy", and
Hormonal birth control carries "horrifying health risks".
Just like Kennedy did at his confirmation hearings, she said exactly what needed to be said to try to assuage as many people as possible without actually saying anything. She "clarified" that she supports access to
contraception and wants informed consent and risk discussions.
There's that "informed consent" buzz term again ("health choice" is another favourite, by the way). Remember what that actually means, because that's exactly the phrase that Kennedy kept using in his hearings.
But anyway, yes of course birth control pills have serious potential side effects (blood clots, stroke, etc), as does every single medicine that has ever been made. But framing matters. When you have previously described commonly used medications in
alarm-heavy language, you don’t get to be surprised when lawmakers
ask whether you can recalibrate to evidence-weighted communication. The Surgeon General cannot sound like a wellness podcast guest who is just trying to get people to check out her supplements that promise to balance hormone levels or your pH or chakras or whatever bullshit they want.
So let's take a deep breath and look more broadly at this travesty of a nomination and confirmation hearing. Dr. Means constantly referred her interrogators to informed consent between doctor and patient. And I 100% agree that informed consent is absolutely essential. But there are two small problems and one huge glaring error with this approach:
First, she (and Kennedy) keep framing this issue as if doctors don't already do informed consent. THEY DO. (All of them all the time? I wish I could say yes, but I don't know.) I got consent forms before every single one of my kids' vaccines, and my own.
Second, framing the discussion around birth control pills as an individual risk/benefit discussion between doctor and patient assumes that people don't have access to THE ENTIRE FUCKING INTERNET in their pockets 24 hours a day. Yes, doctors should (must) absolutely discuss serious risks of medications before prescribing them. But in the MAHA cult's own words, patients also must take independent ownership of their health and LOOK IT THE FUCK UP. Whenever I'm prescribed anything, the first thing I do is read the package insert to see what could potentially happen to me. Unfortunately not everyone is scientifically literate enough to understand a PI, but there are many websites out there that boil it down to very easily understood summaries. It's all there in black and white, clear as crystal. No one is hiding anything.
But most of all, the Surgeon General is a health communicator on a POPULATION HEALTH level, not an individual doctor-patient level. This person is supposed to be able to coordinate population health experts in the event of a pandemic, biothreat, or other disaster, and she can't even say that she would recommend measles vaccines in the face of the biggest outbreak in the US in DECADES where multiple children have died. That should have been the easiest softball question, and she completely fucking blew it.
The issue is not that she talks about nutrition or chronic disease. Nutrition
matters. Chronic disease matters. The issue is proportionality. The United States Surgeon General is not a fucking brand ambassador for
metabolic optimisation. The role exists within a system that depends
on trust from career scientists, practicing physicians, and the
public. That trust is built through experience, which she does not have. Through finishing the hard
parts, which she has not done. Through maintaining licensure, which she does not have. Through leading in crisis, which she has never done.
Leaving residency is a personal decision (unless she was fired...she's never actually addressed that). Letting a license lapse
is a personal decision. Building a monetised wellness platform is a
personal decision. But being Surgeon General is not personal branding. It is
institutional stewardship.
I have a sneaking suspicion that her confirmation vote will come down to one person...Senator (and doctor) Bill Cassidy. He was the deciding vote on RFK Jr, and though he said he had "reservations" about him, he ultimately took the coward's way out and voted to confirm him after Kennedy lied to his face and told him he wouldn't dismantle ACIP, wouldn't change the vaccine schedule...everything Kennedy has since done. I have a feeling the outcome here will be exactly the same.
The United States' public health system is reeling, and while this wouldn't exactly be a death blow, it would just lend even less credence to a system that the rest of the world USED TO rely on for guidance.
It will take years, possibly decades, to rebuild what Kennedy has destroyed, and if Means is confirmed, it will take even longer.
YES I AM ALIVE AND I AM BACK. Whether I'll continue to write after this is anyone's guess. This shit is exhausting. Aaaaaaaanyway... Every so often, more reliably than my pager waking me at 1AM to take care of yet another idiot who thought that driving without a seatbelt while drunk was a good idea, the same claims crawl out of the murky depths of the internet swamp and into real life. These idiotic claims, which have been corrected, recorrected, re-recorrected, and re-re-recorrected ad nauseam, are inevitably delivered with great confidence by someone who has never read a protocol for a clinical trial, let alone evaluated safety data.
And yes, I’m talking again...yet again...about vaccines. Since it’s been quite a while (5 years? Really??) since writing about vaccines (or anything, I suppose), I thought I’d dredge the topic from the mire, mainly to mollify my own stupid obsession with demonstrating that antivaxxers are not just wrong, but dangerously wrong. But you already knew that. Unless, of course, you’re an antivaxxer. And if you are, please do the entire world’s population a favour and get completely and entirely fucked. Sorry. Moving on. The first stupid claim I’m constantly seeing bandied about these days is "No vaccine has ever been tested against a saline placebo”. And the second is "Vaccine trials are rushed and way too short”. Both are impressive wrong, and yet they persist like idiots who just can't conceive that women can be physicians or men can be nurses. This is just how medical misinformation works. It continues to make the rounds, truth be damned. So let's get this underway, shall we? I'll start with the saline placebo nonsense, because it’s the loudest, dumbest, and most easily disproved, today, at least. There will be other stupid claims to refute later. The idea that vaccines have never been compared to saline placebo is simply false. Let’s start with these studies, which ALL used saline placebos:
Bonus: Oralpolio: https://www.jstor.org/stable/41983074 (Since this is an oral vaccine, this study used a cherry flavoured sugar solution. You wouldn’t just give a kid salt water, would you? No, of course you wouldn’t.)
There you go. Is that every vaccine ever? No, but I never claimed that every vaccine ever developed was tested against saline placebo. Now if you’re someone who has ever made the "saline placebo" claim, you’ve now been proven demonstrably wrong, and I expect you’ll never feel the need to make such a wrong (and stupid) claim ever again. Right? RIGHT? And if you’re a rational human being who enjoys engaging with antivaxxers and proving them wrong, now you have a nice handy list to use. You’re welcome. Now if I know how antivaxxers think, and I do, they'll move the goalpost to the equally stupid (and wrong), “But vaccines have never been studied against an unvaccinated control group!” (yes, a BONUS CLAIM!), which is a stupid argument for two reasons: 1) yes they have, and 2) you don’t understand why this is an unethical study design. But then again you don’t really seem to understand anything.
Anyway, there have been many studies where some subjects got the real vaccine and some got nothing. No placebo, no "other vaccine", just nothing. The largest (and arguably most famous) is the 1954 Poliomyelitis Vaccine Field Trial, where over 1.8 million children were studied. About 440,000 children received active polio vaccine, about 210,000 children got a placebo (which was not saline but was essentially the vaccine components minus the active ingredient), and 1.2 million children received neither. And guess what was found? Well, considering that you’ve never met anyone who’s had polio (unless you’re over age 75), I think you know. And yes, it was found to be safe. Shocking. There are other vaccines that have been studied with an unvaccinated control group:
Now that I’ve put those issues thoroughly to bed, you antivaxxers will probably shift the goalpost again to “But some of those are newer studies! But newer vaccines are compared to older vaccines! But the full vaccine schedule has never been studied! I want what I want now!” Fortunately, biomedical research ethics has evolved significantly over the past several decades, and the studies that you want (like a fully unvaccinated cohort vs a vaccinated cohort) are not ethical. I have neither the time nor inclination to delve into a full biomedical ethics dissertation, so let me offer you a scenario instead: Let’s just say that some unethical researcher offers you and your neighbours (who, unlike you, are well informed and vaccinate their children) exactly the study you’re yammering about – a double blind, saline placebo-controlled study of the full vaccine study. Keep in mind that “double blind” means neither the researcher nor you knows which arm your child will be in, and you do not get to choose. Half the children will receive all the vaccines, and half will receive none. Did I mention that you do not get to choose? Now think for one second. No, keep thinking. Are you done? Good. Now that you've tasked your brain, ask yourself this very simple question: Would you be willing to sign your children up for this study knowing there is a 50% chance they would be in the active arm and get the full vaccine schedule? HAHA no of course you wouldn't, because you think vaccines are poisons. And now ask yourself, would your neighbours be willing to roll the dice, knowing there’s a 50% chance their child would be left unprotected against over a dozen deadly and/or debilitating diseases? FUCK NO, of course we wouldn't. We all (even you) care about our children and want what's best for them. Fortunately for all of you, this study will never be done, because it is not ethical to withhold a vaccine that is known to work just to quell your stupid obsession (or shut you up, which would be nice). That’s not a conspiracy, it’s basic research ethics. We don’t randomise people to “nothing” when “something” is already known to save lives. We stopped doing that after learning a few hard lessons from unscrupulous researchers last century. Seriously, get with the times. Now on to the “Vaccine trials are too short!” claim, which is usually made in the same breath as the previous one. Yes, pre-marketing trials happen over months to years (not days, as I've seen claimed too). That’s because vaccines aren’t magic potions that lurk silently in the background, quietly waiting in your arm for a decade before pouncing. The overwhelming majority of serious adverse events, including life-threatening ones like Guillain-Barré syndrome and anaphylaxis, occur hours to days after study drug administration. Rarely weeks, and even more rarely months. This is in no way a mystery. Vaccines aren’t new – we’ve been studying them for decades and keeping meticulous records like the boring, obsessive professionals we are (and you aren't). It is known. Long-term safety isn’t ignored either, like you like to pretend. Post-marketing surveillance exists precisely because no trial can ever be large enough to catch everything. Millions of doses, real-world data, and ongoing monitoring just don’t fit neatly into a meme, so you ignore it. But the people who actually care about this (and do it for a living) don't. What really grinds my gears is the implication that everyone involved is either incompetent or lying (or your favourite insult: a SHILL). Thousands of clinicians, statisticians, regulators, and researchers across multiple countries on every continent over the entire globe, over decades, would all supposedly need to miss the same obvious flaws that Susan With WiFi And An iPhone spotted between episodes of Stranger Things or whatever conspiracy video she happens to be watching. In trauma we have a saying: common things happen commonly. Rare, delayed, mysterious effects are – you guess it – rare. And surveillance systems are in place to catch them. We adjust when evidence demands it, like when the 2009 H1N1 flu vaccine was found to cause narcolepsy in some people. That seriously sucked, but it's another piece of evidence that the system works. It’s messy but cautious, and it’s relentlessly dull compared to the thrill of a good conspiracy. The real problem isn’t that people ask questions. Questions are absolutely fine, even healthy and necessary. Without questions, Edward Jenner would never have wondered why milkmaids who had previously gotten cowpox didn't get smallpox, he would never have invented the first vaccine, and we all would have died of smallpox (not really, but a fuckload of people would have). The problem is when the same bad questions get recycled endlessly, long after the answers have been found (but curiously ignored), because outrage spreads better and faster than explanation. Comfortable lies are easier to accept than uncomfortable truths. And once someone decides the entire medical system is corrupt, no amount of data will ever be enough. The goalposts just keep moving. So that’s why I’m here, yet again, explaining the same damned thing I’ve explained to antivaxxers repeatedly. At this point I don’t even know whom to blame. Bobby Kennedy, maybe? Probably. But seriously, the entirety of mankind’s knowledge is literally at your fingertips at all times (assuming you keep your phone plastered to your body 24/7 like I do), so maybe try learning something once in a while instead of just yelling. I’m not saying to trust me, because if you’re an antivaxxer, you don’t. I acknowledge that. But if you’re going to distrust medicine, at least get your facts straight first instead of repeating the same tired bullshit like it’s some kind of revelation. You haven’t discovered anything that thousands of researchers (real ones, not you) have missed. You're not a researcher. You just have internet access.
I'll start this post by answering a few questions that may or may not be burning in your mind: No, I'm not dead. No, I didn't get COVID. No, I haven't quit Twitter (yet). Yes, I'm fine. Yes, Mrs. Bastard and the Little Bastards are all fine. -- As I've said many times, I started this stupid blog for one reason: so I wouldn't forget my stupid stories. I never had any misconceptions that 1) anyone other than my family and I would ever read it 2) I would ever get a book deal, or 3) I would ever have regulars or fans or any kind of a following. As the years have gone on and more and more of you people kept coming back for some strange reason, it morphed into a way for me not only to remember the stories but also to release stress and educate and entertain others. Unfortunately that change made it inevitably and increasingly difficult to write stories in a way that I felt would satisfy not only you but me as well. It also became harder and harder to keep myself and my patients anonymous. Those are the reasons why I went from a story at least weekly to every other week to perhaps once a month to . . . never. I can't blame my job, since that didn't get any more difficult (until the beginning of 2020, for obvious reasons). I can't blame my family, since 1) my children required less and less of me as they got older (my daughter was a toddler when I first started writing) and 2) they have been nothing but understanding and supportive. And I certainly can't blame COVID, since my slowdown started in 2017. The fact is, I don't need to blame anyone, because there isn't anyone or anything on which I need to place blame. As much fun as this whole experience has been and as much as I enjoy seeing the (mostly) positive feedback from my stupid stories and various mythbusting posts, I've run out of steam. I knew this time would come eventually, but I frankly expected it to come many years after this. However, after nearly 500 posts, over 15,000 comments, and well over 6 million page views, it's finally time for me to hang it up. I've written and deleted this post at least half a dozen times over the past year or two, but this time I'm publishing it. The decision has been difficult since I know many of you will miss the episodic stupidity (especially Kalica and The Regulars), but it's finally been made. The reasons behind it are several (though one predominates), and I'd rather not get into any of them. Just know that there is a main reason, and I'd much prefer that reason not exist. Also know that the main reason has nothing to do with ethics or anything legal. I may do more mythbusting posts in the future on an as-needed basis, but since those take about 649x longer to write than my stories do (I timed it), the likelihood is rather slim. But I'll say that at least there's a chance. Thank you all for your attention over the years. Please know that I appreciate all of you, even the trolls. Ok, not the trolls. Be well. Cheers.
Due to popular demand (well, two polite requests, actually), I have decided to create a clean version of my post about COVID-19 myths. If you don't mind (or in fact prefer) the sweary version, please go read that one.
Here we go again. Another rabbit hole, and another long post that no one will likely read, care about, or both. In case you don't know exactly what I'm talking about, I went about busting 76 of the most common vaccine myths I see on social media just over a year ago, so if you haven't read that post, I'd strongly suggest ignoring it completely unless you enjoy bashing your head against a wall repeatedly, because reading that would probably hurt quite a bit more.
Anyway, if you think this post strongly resembles that one, there's a very good reason for that, and it sounds something like COPY PASTE. I have no intention of reinventing the wheel, and that one seems to have worked out rather splendidly, so here we are with a lookalike (and possibly soundalike) post.
Let us begin.
If you've landed on this page, one of two things has happened:
You've been a loyal reader, got an email notification, and you excitedly clicked the link thinking you'd finally get your first stupid patient story in over 6 months, or
I or (hopefully) someone else referred you here from Twitter (or (hopefully) elsewhere) because you propagated some stupid myth or outright lie about COVID-19.
If it is #1, then I apologise in advance for your current state of profound disappointment. However, if it's #2, there is at least a 99.91% chance (I calculated it) that you have already clicked back over to Twitter or Facebook or Natural News or greenmedinfo or Children's Health Defense or Infowars or whatever your source of conspiracy theories may be. And if that is the case, then why on Earth am I still talking to you.
But on the off chance that you are still reading, and I sincerely hope you are, then please do read on to find out exactly why your myth is a myth.
I was temporarily suspended on Twitter at the end of April for reasons only known to Twitter. I had been in the middle of explaining why the #FilmYourHospital trend was nonsense (more on that later) when Twitter decided to shut me down, because apparently they don't care about medical misinformation being strewn about. At least that's what I think happened, though I have no proof since Twitter didn't bother to explain why my account had been suspended. I appealed (of course), and after about three weeks I got this reply:
Which, of course, explains exactly nothing. In those intervening three weeks, I missed out on a lot of snake oil salesmen peddling their snake oil, so without further ado, please allow me to bust some COVID-19 myths.
Unlike my usual mythbusting, there may be some opinion here. Unfortunately SARS-CoV-2 is still a new virus and COVID-19 is still a new disease, so while scientists have discovered plenty, the information coming out is often confusing, contradictory, or both.
Once again I will place a handy alphabetised and clickable table below with all the myths I'll be busting.
WRONG. Hey look, here it is!
And here is a transmission electron micrograph of it!
Science! The virus has been isolated, sequenced, and extensively studied including how it infects cells
It exists.
2) Ok, the virus exists but it's basically just the flu.
It would be incredibly easy to just say "No it isn't just the flu", but that would never satisfy you. Actually, nothing will actually satisfy you, but I'll go through the motions anyway.
Unfortunately many smart and/or famous people made this same comparison, including Dr. Drew Pinsky (who retracted, corrected, and apologised) and paediatrics and vaccine expert Dr. Paul Offit, who also notably minimised COVID-19 in mid-March when there were fewer than 100 deaths in the US (now just about 100,000).
To start, COVID-19 is far more infectious than the flu. Unfortunately I'll have to pause this explanation by explaining R0. It is an infectious disease's infectiousness, the average number of people who will contract a disease from someone who has it. As an example, measles (the most highly infectious infectious disease) has an R0 of 12-18, meaning on average 12-18 non-immune people who come into contact with someone with measles will catch measles. For influenza, the R0 is about 1.5. For COVID-19, it is between 2 and 3. This means that COVID-19 is up to twice as infectious as flu.
So what? you say? Well the lower the R0, the higher the likelihood the outbreak will burn itself out. That's why flu epidemics tend to fizzle, but also why Ebola outbreaks die out (people tend to die quickly before getting the chance to infect others).
What, not enough? Then let's also compare death rates, shall we? For influenza, the most recent H1N1 pandemic in 2009 had a case fatality rate (CFR, defined as number of deaths divided by number of cases) of 0.01-0.08%, which means that of every 10,000 people who had H1N1, between 1 and 8 died. Compare this to COVID-19, which has an estimated CFR of 1.3%, which is approximately WAAAAAAAAAAAY HIGHER than even the upper estimate of the 2009 swine flu pandemic at 0.08%.
COVID-19 spreads more easily and kills more people. It is NOT just the flu.
3) But that number is inflated! Stanford study!
I'll give this one a C- for accuracy, because there definitely is some validity to this argument, though not nearly as much as you hoped. The currently reported case fatality rate will almost certainly fall as more tests are done, because it is known that there are many asymptomatic cases that haven't been factored in. The "Stanford study" essentially offered volunteers free COVID antibody tests (when such tests were scarce), and based on their results the authors claimed that there are so many asymptomatic patients that they estimated 50-85 times as many people who had been tested actually had been infected. This theoretically means the death rate should be 50-85 times lower.
Well, no. Not really. There are so many things wrong with this paper (which as of this writing is still in pre-print and has not been peer reviewed), all of which are detailed by this Columbia statistician here. If you think about it another way, the current number of deaths (again as of this writing) in New York City is over 16,000. If every single New Yorker had been infected, this would be a case fatality rate of 16,000 divided by 8.4 million (the current population of NYC), which would be 0.19%. Again, that would be the CFR IF EVERY PERSON IN THE CITY HAD GOTTEN IT. Which they have not. Yet.
So is the CFR 6% as it stands right now? Of course not. But is it higher than flu? Yes, much higher. How much higher will not be known for quite some time, perhaps even years.
4) Ok, it isn't just the flu, but it isn't that dangerous. It's all just media panic
The easiest way to explain that it isn't just all panic is by showing how many more people are dying compared to the expected number of deaths.
In case you can't read or understand the graph, the red area is the number of deaths over the historical average in France, Spain, UK, Netherlands, New York City, Lombardy, Belgium, Sweden (more on Sweden later), Istanbul, and Austria. Notice anything striking? Yeah - lots more people are dying all over the world. There are similar graphs for other countries in South America and Southeast Asia, but hopefully by now you get the point - people are dying of this disease. Lots of them. Hundreds of thousands of them.
There are a few other related claims, like BUT HOSPITALS ARE EMPTY, which I will cover below.
5) Yeah! Hospitals are empty!
Some of them, sure. Like this one, for example. Does this prove you're right?
YES!
No. This was an idle cruise terminal that had been transformed into a makeshift hospital at a time when hospital utilisation in the city was incredibly high, including over 3,000 patients in intensive care. The city was preparing for the worst, and fortunately efforts to contain the disease finally began to be successful, and new cases began to fall, rendering the temporary facility unnecessary. All this proves is that the city was prepared. If your smoke alarm battery dies because it never went off, do you consider the smoke alarm useless? If your airbag in your car never goes off because you don't get into an accident, do you consider them a waste? No. It's called preparedness, and it is generally a Very Good Thing.
Now if you're talking about the #FilmYourHospital movement, slow the hell down and use your damned brain. People were walking through empty hospital corridors or filming outside hospitals and shouting about the lack of business. As someone who has walked through many hospital corridors over many years, I can tell you that patients aren't treated in the hallways, they are treated in treatment areas. Those people typically walking in the halls are visitors. Nearly all of them. And these people were filming these hospitals at a time when they were closed to visitors. Parking lots were empty because there were no visitors allowed. Cafeterias were closed because . . . that's right, no visitors allowed. And hospitals were generally slow during that time anyway because elective surgeries were cancelled to make room for COVID-19 patients. At my hospital, for example, 2/3 of the hospital wards were converted to COVID only, and they were full. The ICU was full of COVID-19 patients. The hospital was NOT empty.
If your local hospital is slow or relatively empty, then consider yourself lucky that the virus hasn't hit your area very hard. But claiming that that means the pandemic is a hoax is like saying that global temperatures aren't rising (they are) because it's cold at your house.
6) But doctors are inflating the death numbers so hospitals get paid more!
This is a two-pronged myth: 1) doctors are putting COVID-19 on the death certificate no matter what the cause of death was, and 2) hospitals are getting paid more if they say a patient has COVID-19. The source of this was a doctor and US state senator Dr. Scott Jensen, who said,
"Right now Medicare has determined that if you have a COVID-19 admission to the hospital, you’ll get paid $13,000. If that COVID-19 patient goes on a ventilator, you get $39,000, three times as much. Nobody can tell me after 35 years in the world of medicine that sometimes those kinds of things impact on what we do."
Interesting. The problem is that Medicare, the US federal insurance program for people 65 and older, pays hospitals to care for patients, and the amount paid for respiratory ailments with comorbidities in 2017 was . . . $13,000. And Medicare pays more for more complicated cases, ie need for a ventilator.
Oh, and it gets worse. In a later interview, Jensen "clarified" his statement:
"Do I think people are misclassifying? No."
The problem he had was that the CDC guidance on classifying deaths constituted, as he put it, "less precise standards". Well let's just look at the CDC guidance, shall we?
It says quite clearly that COVID-19 should be listed as "probable" or "presumed" if the patient was presumed to have it within a a reasonable degree of certainty. It does not say "Just put COVID on there no matter what, whatever". Anyone who has filled out a death certificate (as I have) without a solid cause of death knows how difficult it can be to put a diagnosis on there without being sure. We do the best we can with the information at hand, and that sometimes means being wrong. But your argument that doctors can just put COVID-19 as the cause of death even if the patient died in a car accident is 1) unfounded, and 2) assumes the doctors caring for these patients around the world would act unethically. In other words, it just doesn't hold water.
7) It was manufactured by China
This one just smacks of racism, though I reserve the right to be wrong. Though considering the current geopolitical landscape (yes, I just used the term "geopolitical landscape" in my stupid blog"), I am not at all surprised to see it rear its very ugly head.
Anyway, the genetic sequence of SARS-CoV-2 has been extensively studied by people who understand viral genetics much better than you and I, and their conclusion is so impossible to misinterpret that I feel no need to elaborate: No credible evidence supporting claims of the laboratory engineering of SARS-CoV-2. The author further states that there is no evidence the virus escaped from the lab in Wuhan either, so you can put that nonsense away too.
Another claim that the virus was man-made because it has HIV sequences in it, but this was also roundly destroyed by an HIV virologist. Once again, the title of the paper is impossible to misunderstand: HIV-1 Did Not Contribute to the 2019-nCoV Genome.
8) It doesn't matter, because hydroxychloroquine something something cures it something something game changer.
Hydroxychloroquine is a very old (first synthesised in the 1940's), very cheap, very safe, and very effective drug which is used to treat various autoimmune diseases (such as lupus and rheumatoid arthritis) as well as malaria. It also has been shown to have some antiviral and anti-inflammatory activity, which prompted its investigation into the treatment and/or prevention of COVID-19. The first report was written by French microbiologist Didier Raoult regarding the supposed "100% cure" of 80 patients. There were several, ah, problems with this:
no control arm
92% of patients had mild disease
only 15% of patients had a fever, which is a hallmark of COVID-19
only 15% of patients required oxygen
In other words, the overwhelming majority of the patients had mild disease and would have recovered anyway. Add no control arm, and this is a small, poorly done study. I won't even go into Raoult's track record of academic fraud, but feel free to look it up.
Once that study was produced and a certain demagogue promoted it as a "game changer", hydroxychloroquine became the go-to medicine (with or without azithromycin (an antibiotic) and zinc), mostly because clinicians had no other real treatment. A few small trials showed some promise, but more recent larger trials, including a multinational registry analysis of over 96,000 patients in over 600 hospitals on 6 continents have shown 1) no positive effect of hydroxychloroquine, and 2) increased risk of death. I have chosen to strike through rather than delete the link to this possibly fraudulent study, because I believe it is important to highlight bad science as well as good.
Regardless, a recent randomised placebo-controlled study showed that hydroxychloroquine was not effective as post-exposure prophylaxis. Another study of over 1400 hospitalised patients showed no efficacy of hydroxychloroquine in relation to intubation or death. Randomised trials are underway, but the results have not yet been published as of this writing.
In short, hydroxychloriquine does not appear to work, and it appears to increase the risk of death due to the well-known side effect of QT prolongation of both hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin. We want it to work - we want something, anything, to work - and any claims that we don't are preposterous.
9) But those two emergency doctors say COVID isn't so bad!
You're referring to Drs. Dan Erickson and Artin Massihi who made a viral video claiming that COVID-19 is no worse than the flu. They based their conclusions on the tests they had performed in their walk-in clinic that they own. Oh, you thought they were emergency doctors working in a hospital? Nope. They own and operate several walk-in clinics in California, and they were testing people who literally walked into their clinic. Concluding the seriousness of a disease based on the symptoms of people who are well enough to walk into a clinic is like concluding the endurance of all people by testing the riders at the Tour de France.
In fact, Erickson and Massihi's statements were so outrageous ludicrous that it prompted the American College of Emergency Physicians and American Academy of of Emergency Medicine to release a joint statement:
Ouch.
10) Only the old and sick are dying.
First of all, is there some reason you don't care about the elderly or infirm? Second and more importantly, while it is true that 1) the overwhelming majority of deaths are people over age 65 and/or people with co-morbidities, and 2) cases in children tend to be mild with fewer symptoms, there are previously healthy children and young adults who have died of COVID-19. One of the techs with whom I've worked for over a decade, who helped me take care of hundreds if not thousands of my trauma patients and was young and completely healthy, is now dead, having caught COVID-19 from a patient.
There are now multiple reports of children with a multisystem inflammatory syndrome similar to Kawasaki diseasehas now been described in multiple countries around the globe. It is still quite rare, but at the same time quite worrisome.
The bottom line is that who the virus is killing matters less than the number of people who are dying, which is about 350,000 so far.
11) But lockdowns don't work and are making everything worse. The 'cure' is worse than the disease! Open up!
Do lockdowns work? Well let's take a look at a tale of two cities in Italy, which saw its first case on February 21, that treated this a bit differently. Lodi went into lockdown two days later, the same day Bergamo, another city in the same region, reported its first case. However, unlike Lodi, Bergamo waited to enforce a lockdown until March 8. Just over a week later, Lodi (locked down) had fewer than 1400 cases while Bergamo had over over 3700. Though Bergamo has a population almost 3 times that of Lodi, their curves look very different indeed - Lodi leveled off rather quickly while Bergamo's cases continued to rise just as quickly:
Still not conviced? The chart below (from Financial Times) plots the daily death toll for various countries around the world at their point of lockdown versus 10 days after their 50th death. As you can see, the longer countries wait to impose a lockdown, the higher their death toll tends to be.
Studies out of both China and Hong Kong have shown the same thing - lockdown = fewer cases, and taking a look at countries around the EU, the data again seems clear - waiting longer to lock down means more deaths.
Is that definitive evidence that lockdowns work? No. There are other studies that show lockdowns do work, and others that say they don't. There are also opinion pieces by economists that seem to waver somewhere in between. My take on this issue of lockdowns is quite simple: we don't know yet, but the hypothesis and early evidence certainly seems to support the idea.
The next question deals with the economic aftermath of such lockdowns. Germany has already entered a recession, and the US economy has taken a decided and harsh downturn. I have heard the argument that more people will die of starvation because of the lockdown than would have died of COVID-19 had the lockdown never happened, but this is of course impossible to prove unless you happen to have a TARDIS or specially equipped DeLorean handy. However, if these strict measures had not been put in place and the disease had been left to spread unabated, there is a very good chance that hospitals and indeed entire countries' medical systems could have been overwhelmed, leading to even more deaths. And when medical systems collapse, that leads to even more poverty and even more deaths. The main point was to flatten the curve, not necessarily to bring the pandemic to an end.
So is it true that the treatment is worse than the disease? Maybe, but maybe not. Though I doubt it I have no real definitive answer, and neither do you.
12) But Sweden is different!
The myth here is that Sweden didn't lock down, and they have fewer cases and fewer deaths. Unfortunately for you (and more so for Sweden), that just isn't true.
The only portion of this myth with any truth is that Sweden didn't lock down as tightly as many other countries. Schools, bars, restaurants, and gyms remained open (though with distancing in place), the Swedish government issued recommendations on hand washing and social distancing, and people were recommended to work from home if possible, though gatherings of more than 50 people were banned. The hypothesis was that herd immunity would eventually kick in, mitigating the threat. And that worked, right?
No.
As of today, Sweden, with a population of 10.2 million, has over 34,000 cases and over 4,100 deaths. Their per capita death rate is among the worst in Europe, and far worse than their Nordic neighbours. In fact, Sweden's death rate per million (392) is worse than the US (300), and far worse than neighbours Denmark (93), Finland (53), and Norway (44). The Swedish experiment has failed.
13) The flu shot increases risk of COVID-19.
There is no evidence that this is true in any way. Unfortunately, this myth persists, and it comes from a January 2020 study from the US regarding the 2017-18 flu shot, which looked at 6000 people who had or had not had that particular flu shot. It found no difference in general in infections from other non-influenza respiratory viruses between vaccinated and unvaccinated Department of Defense personnel, but there was a slightly higher risk of contracting certain cold viruses, including metapneumovirus and coronaviruses.
HA! SLAM DUNK!
Nope. The data from this study were collected two years before SARS-CoV-2 was even known to exist, and the coronaviruses mentioned in this study are the garden variety coronaviruses which just cause the common cold, not SARS-CoV-2 which causes COVID-19. There are literally zero studies which show that the flu shot (or any other vaccine) increases the risk of contracting SARS-CoV-2. None. Zero.
This claim is pure, unadulterated fear mongering and pure, unadulterated antivax twaddle.
14) This is all just a ploy by Bill Gates to do something nefarious.
Ok, here we go. This is the first myth that I can more accurately categorise as a conspiracy theory, and this one is DEEP. Not deep as in profound, but deep as in knee-deep in manure. There are several components or iterations of this conspiracy theory:
Bill Gates created SARS-CoV-2 in order to create a mandatory vaccine.
The mandatory vaccine would make Bill Gates $200 billion in profit.
The mandatory vaccine will include a microchip to track everyone's vaccine status and/or location.
Bill gates owns a patent on SARS-CoV-2.
Event 201
Lest you think I'm making any of this up, prepare to be amazed (or not).
There are two iotas of truth here - Event 201, which I will discuss later, and a vaccine "chip". THE CHIP IS TRUE! I KNEW IT!
Slow down there, sparky. You're not nearly as correct as you think. The "microchips" are nothing remotely resembling actual microchips, which are all far too large to fit through a vaccination needle anyway. But I guess you didn't consider that little nugget of information, did you.
The technology is called biocompatible near-infrared quantum dots, and they more closely resemble an invisible tattoo that would be delivered along with a vaccine through a dissolvable needle (which is some pretty goddamned fancy science). Thus the person would carry a record that s/he had received that vaccine. Though this may sound like an evil method of ensuring everyone gets every vaccine ever conceived (or tracking your movement), the real purpose is useful and quite benign: in many places around the world there is no standardisation of record keeping, which makes tracking coverage difficult. Besides, if The Government (which one, by the way?) wants to track your movement, they'll just use your phone that you keep in your pocket or next to your bed 24/7.
Anyway, as for the Gates Foundation owning a patent on SARS-CoV-2, that's just a malicious lie. Such a patent does not exist.
Bill Gates does not stand to profit on this situation. At all. He has donated billions of dollars (and has promised to donate tens of billions more) and has said on record (back in 2019 before COVID-19 even existed, by the way) that the "profit" received from his philanthropy is through economic return:
"Helping young children live, get the right nutrition, contribute to their countries — that has a payback that goes beyond any typical financial return."
No, Bill Gates is not a doctor or a scientist. No, he has no formal training in virology or immunology. No, Bill Gates is not profiting from his philanthropy. All he does is donate tens of billions of dollars to people who do so that they can improve the world, and he is being demonised for it. And that is one of the saddest things I've ever heard.
Event 201 on October 18, 2019 was a joint exercise in world readiness for just this type of pandemic among the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, the Gates Foundation, and the World Economic Forum. There are approximately 200 infectious epidemics worldwide each year, and fortunately few of them reach pandemic proportions. Considering the recent SARS (2003) and MERS (2012) epidemics, epidemiologists and other health experts thought it would probably be a good idea to make sure the world was ready for something bigger. They modeled a fictional coronavirus pandemic after SARS and MERS (which were also both coronaviruses) and assessed the impact it would make on the world. This was simply an effort to come up with ways to protect both lives and livelihoods in such a disaster. You can read their conclusions and recommendations here.
Oh, and this was far from the first meeting designed to identify a public health risk before it happened, such as this meeting in 2018. Epidemiologists have been warning about and planning for this sort of thing for a long, long time.
Unfortunately the timing of Event 201 stinks, which is what prompted this conspiracy theory. But again, the entire meeting is freely available to watch, so knock yourself out if you really are looking for something evil. Good luck finding any heinous crime being committed or planned.
16) You can't trust the WHO because they keep changing their minds.
This virus is new. Let's just get that out of the way. This isn't measles or rotavirus which are well known, well described, and well understood. SARS-CoV-2 is brand new, and absolutely nothing was known of it when it started circulating in Wuhan, China at the end of 2019. With this in mind, nothing was known at the beginning of how (or even if) it was spread from person to person, nothing was known of its deadliness, how contagious it was, nothing. So on January 14, 2020, just over a month after the first patient became ill, the World Health Organisation stated that there was "no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission".
This tweet has aged incredibly poorly and looks downright egregious in hindsight. But at the time, that statement was true - the evidence of human-to-human spread was not yet clear. Keep in mind that the virus had only been identified as a coronavirus two weeks before, and the virus isolated and genome map made public less than a week before. Officials in the Wuhan Health Commission seem to have seriously mucked this whole thing up, and this study suggests that had they acted just a few weeks earlier, this whole thing may have been mitigated or stopped before it ever began.
Once more information began coming in, the WHO changed their recommendations based on new data, just as they have done with social distancing, masks, hydroxychloroquine, and everything else having to do with this disease. Has WHO been perfect? Absolutely not. But it's almost like the process of science where new information makes old information obsolete, and people change their minds and what they say based on prevailing evidence, right?
Right?
17) Masks don't even work.
Well that's a rather complicated statement. What kind of mask do you mean? And what do you mean by "work"?
This issue is admittedly much more complicated and much less clear than I would like. What is clear is that N95 respirators are very effective at preventing the contraction of respiratory illnesses. There is some evidence that regular masks are also effective at preventing infection, though certainly less so compared to N95. There is also evidence that both N95 and surgical masks are effective at preventing spread of respiratory viruses from infected people.
"The evidence suggests protection of masks in high transmission settings such as household and college settings, especially if used early, if combined with hand hygiene and if wearers are compliant. If masks protect in high transmission settings, they should also protect in crowded public spaces, including workplaces, buses, trains, planes and other closed settings."
And
"In summary, there is a growing body of evidence supporting all three indications for respiratory protection – community, healthcare workers and sick patients (source control). The largest number of randomised controlled trials have been done for community use of masks by well people in high-transmission settings such as household or college settings. There is benefit in the community if used early, and if compliant. They also found no evidence of efficacy of hand hygiene or health education, suggesting mask use is more protective than hand hygiene."
Cloth masks are most likely less effective than surgical masks, but depending on the fabric and the method of manufacturing, they can be effective.
My take is that masks probably work to varying degrees, and even if they aren't terribly effective they certainly couldn't hurt.
18) But wearing a mask decreases my oxygen and increases my carbon dioxide!
Nope. This has actually been studied by looking at the oxygen saturation of surgeons of various ages wearing surgical facemasks while performing surgery. The study showed a significant decrease of oxygen saturation from . . . are you ready? 97% to 96%. That's it, even after 3-4 hours of stressful surgery. Normal oxygen saturation is anything above about 93%, so wearing a mask for 15 or 20 minutes while you pick up groceries will not affect you, unless you have a pre-existing lung condition. If you do, have someone bring your groceries to you.
As for N95 masks, they are much more tight fitting and have much smaller pores to filter out much smaller particles, including viruses. They can certainly restrict breathing much more than surgical or cloth masks, and they can make even healthy people feel like they can't breathe. They have also been shown to increase CO2 rebreathing. And this is why they are not recommended for the general public.
19) Ok, fine but being forced to wear a mask violates my constitutional rights!
All this proves is that you've never actually read your constitution. It doesn't even matter to which constitution you're referring (though if you made this argument, there is a 98.482% chance you mean the US Constitution), because no constitution on the planet says anything about face masks. If you could please point out where in this document it states that Congress shall make no law restricting your right not to wear a mask (or anything even close), please feel free to comment below.
But before you do, perhaps you should consult a constitutional law lawyer. Oh wait, this author already did, and you're wrong. If a restaurant can enforce "No shoes, no shirt, no service", then a grocery store can enforce "No mask, no shop". And if you still disagree, then you're still just wrong. But hey, you too still have the right to be wrong.
It is true that heat will kill the virus, but only if you get it up to 56°C (133°F) for 90 minutes or 75°C (167°F) for 30 minutes, and I don't suspect your sauna gets that high, nor would I suggest you try it. Radiation will also kill the virus, if you're willing to undergo UV radiation for 60 minutes. Which you're not, because then you'd be very dead.
As for "injecting" UV light, you mean this?
Yeah, that's pure nonsense despite its rather high-profile mention by the same demagogue. Ultraviolet blood irradiation was invented in the 1920's and had some popularity in the 1940's before antibiotics. However, there is simply no evidence that it is or could be effective in treating COVID-19, nor is there any physiologic mechanism whereby it could work.
Second, really? Are you never going outside? While decreased sunlight exposure can decrease your vitamin D level (which can actually weaken the immune system), are you never going outside? And while decreased exercise can also weaken the immune system, are you NEVER going outside?
Seriously, get outside. Grab a mask, get your butt outside, and go for a run. Climb a mountain. Or just take a walk. If there is no one around, take your damned mask off, especially if you're alone in your car. Seriously. Don't do this.
There is no reason whatsoever for you to stay inside your home 24 hours a day.
Oh, and while I'm on the subject, if you're wearing gloves to shop, take them off before you get into your car and touch everything. If you never take off your gloves, all you're doing is spreading contaminant onto every single damned thing you touch.
It doesn't matter how many vitamins you take, how many acai smoothies you drink, or how many herbal supplements you buy, you can not "boost" your immune system. You can support it by eating well and exercising, and if you are deficient in a nutrient you should absolutely take that supplement, but any other product or technique that supposedly "boosts" your immune system 1) doesn't, 2) drains your bank account, and 3) creates very expensive urine.
23) Hand sanitiser can catch fire and explode if left in a hot car.
Fortunately this isn't a dangerous myth, but one that should still be corrected.
The viral pictures do not show a car that was damaged by a bottle of hand sanitiser that spontaneously caught fire, it was taken from a different accident that had nothing to do with hand sanitiser. While hand sanitiser is indeed flammable, it would have to reach temperatures of around 370°C (700°F) to combust, and cars' interiors on a hot summer day only reach about about 47°C (116°F).
But while we're on the subject of misnomers, COVID also does NOT stand for 666, the mark of the beast. Yes, we're now going from stupid, provably wrong nonsense to plain silly nonsense. However, I've seen this sort of meme shared too many times to ignore it.
Ok, I'll admit I just added this for comedic value. But some people do seem to believe it, so I don't feel bad at all for laughing at them.
25) Plandemic!
Oh boy, I saved the worst for last. This is the idea that this pandemic is all planned and therefore a "plandemic". Ha! Such a clever portmanteau, right? It's so clever that a supposed movie by that name purportedly starring Dr. Judy Mikovits will be released in the summer of 2020. A 26 minute "preview" in the form of an interview with Dr. Mikovits was released May 4, 2020 to great (ha) fanfare, and you fell for it. How very sad.
I will not be debunking the entire video, because it has been done many, many, many times already. The best myth busting I've seen was by, not coincidentally, Science, which published (and then retracted) her seminal (not really) paper. I'll just give a few lowlights of her claims and why they are wrong:
Mikovits' 1991 doctoral thesis revolutionised the treatment of HIV/AIDS.
- It didn't.
Mikovits published a blockbuster article in Science.
- That study purported a link between a mouse retrovirus and chronic fatigue syndrome, a link that was later proved false, Mikovits' paper was retracted by Science, and she admitted no link exists, though she retracted her retraction later.
Mikovits: "And they’ll kill millions, as they already have with their vaccines. There is no vaccine currently on the schedule for any RNA virus that works."
- Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, and wrong. There is less than no evidence that vaccines have even killed thousands, let alone millions of people. There is myriad evidence, however, showing that they have saved millions of lives. And there are many vaccines for RNA viruses, including measles, mumps, rubella, influenza, and Ebola.
Mikovitz hints that SARS-CoV-2 was distributed in Italy in an influenza vaccine made using dog cell cultures, and "dogs have a lot of coronaviruses".
- No evidence to support this claim exists.
Mikovits: Wearing the mask literally activates your own virus. You’re getting sick from your own reactivated coronavirus expressions, and if it happens to be SARS-CoV-2, then you’ve got a big problem.
- There is no evidence whatsoever to support this claim.
Beaches should be open because the ocean contains "healing microbes".
- I can't even bring myself to respond because this is nothing but gibberish.
She also propagates several of the myths above, which I won't rehash here. There are many other claims she makes regarding her failed career as a researcher and her arrest (yes, really), but I won't get into those since that isn't what this is really about. What it is about is Mikovits promoting and drumming up interest in her new book, to which I will also most assuredly not link.
There is a similar video of an interview with professor Dolores Cahill from University College Dublin (to which I will also not link), where Dr. Cahill repeats the same myths again, including boosting the immune system, masks decrease oxygen, hydroxychloroquine, manufactured virus, and social distancing decreases immunity, as well as various generic antivax claims which I've already discussed previously.
But she makes one new one:
“SARS virus circulated [since] 2003 and essentially every three or four years since, so that people are immune—so that everybody practically in the world is immune.”
HAHAHA! No but seriously HAHAHAHAHAHA! If this were even partially true, then millions of people around the world wouldn't be sick or dead. I have no idea how she said that with a straight face, but she should be ashamed. Both she and Mikovits are disgraces and a stain on medicine and science.
Wait wait wait, I'm sure many of you think I'm just making this one up. Sadly, I am not.
Unfortunately this is a very real claim, but even more unfortunately Jesus will not save you:
I take absolutely no joy whatsoever in finding and listing these stories. None. But there are some true believers who misguidedly think their lord and saviour will protect them, and it is my duty to inform you that you are not protected any more than anyone else.
27) 5G causes/activates COVID-19.
I nearly forgot this one, which is rather shocking since it was the ridiculous myth that prompted me to write this stupid post. Once again, this is a very simple "NO". There is no evidence whatsoever that 5G is causing COVID-19 or similar symptoms, nor is there any mechanism by which high frequency radio waves could "activate" a virus or cause such symptoms. It's just drivel. Unfortunately that hasn't stopped several True Believers from burning down 5G towers. But if that isn't good enough, then please watch this very detailed (and chock-full-of-science) video by electrical engineer Mehdi Sadaghdar on exactly why 5G isn't dangerous in any way.
--
That's all I have. I'm sure there are many fringe myths that are slightly too whackadoodle to address, so I apologise for ignoring them with alacrity. If I made any glaring errors or omissions, please comment below.
And most importantly no matter what you believe, no matter whom you believe, no matter which way you align politically, keep yourselves, your loved ones, and everyone around you, safe.
God damn it, here we go again. Another goddamned rabbit hole, and another goddamned long-ass post that no one will likely read, care about, or both. In case you don't know exactly what I'm talking about, I went about busting 76 of the most common vaccine myths I see on social media just over a year ago, so if you haven't read that post, I'd strongly suggest ignoring it completely unless you enjoy bashing your head against a wall repeatedly, because reading that would probably hurt quite a bit more.
Anyway, if you think this post strongly resembles that one, there's a very good reason for that, and it sounds something like COPY PASTE. I have no intention of reinventing the wheel, and that one seems to have worked out rather splendidly, so here we are with a lookalike (and possibly soundalike) post.
Let us begin.
If you've landed on this page, one of two things has happened:
You've been a loyal reader, got an email notification, and you excitedly clicked the link thinking you'd finally get your first stupid patient story in over 6 months, or
I or (hopefully) someone else referred you here from Twitter (or (hopefully) elsewhere) because you propagated some stupid myth or outright bullshit lie about COVID-19.
If it is #1, then I apologise in advance for your current state of profound disappointment. However, if it's #2, there is at least a 99.91% chance (I calculated it) that you have already clicked back over to Twitter or Facebook or Natural News or greenmedinfo or Children's Health Defense or Infowars or whatever your source of conspiratorial bullshit may be. And if that is the case, then why the hell am I still talking to you.
But on the off chance that you are still reading, and I sincerely hope you are, then please do read on to find out exactly why your myth is a myth.
I was temporarily suspended on Twitter at the end of April for reasons only known to Twitter. I had been in the middle of explaining why the #FilmYourHospital trend was bullshit (more on that later) when Twitter decided to shut me down, because apparently they don't care about medical misinformation being strewn about. At least that's what I think happened, though I have no proof since Twitter didn't bother to explain why my account had been suspended. I appealed (of course), and after about three weeks I got this reply:
Which, of course, explains exactly fuck all. In those intervening three weeks, I missed out on a lot of bullshit peddlers peddling their bullshit, so without further ado, please allow me to bust some bullshit COVID-19 myths.
Unlike my usual mythbusting, there may be some opinion here. Unfortunately SARS-CoV-2 is still a new virus and COVID-19 is still a new disease, so while scientists have discovered plenty, the information coming out is often confusing, contradictory, or both.
Once again I will place a handy alphabetised and clickable table below with all the bullshit I'll be busting.
WRONG. Hey look, here it is!
And here is a transmission electron micrograph of it!
Science! The virus has been isolated, sequenced, and extensively studied including how it infects cells
It fucking exists.
2) Ok, the virus exists but it's basically just the flu.
It would be incredibly easy to just say "No it isn't just the flu", but that would never satisfy you. Actually, nothing will actually satisfy you, but fuck it, I'll go through the motions anyway.
Unfortunately many smart and/or famous people made this same comparison, including Dr. Drew Pinsky (who retracted, corrected, and apologised) and paediatrics and vaccine expert Dr. Paul Offit, who also notably minimised COVID-19 in mid-March when there were fewer than 100 deaths in the US (now just about 100,000).
To start, COVID-19 is far more infectious than the flu. Unfortunately I'll have to pause this explanation by explaining R0. It is an infectious disease's infectiousness, the average number of people who will contract a disease from someone who has it. As an example, measles (the most highly infectious infectious disease) has an R0 of 12-18, meaning on average 12-18 non-immune people who come into contact with someone with measles will catch measles. For influenza, the R0 is about 1.5. For COVID-19, it is between 2 and 3. This means that COVID-19 is up to twice as infectious as flu.
So fucking what? you say? Well the lower the R0, the higher the likelihood the outbreak will burn itself out. That's why flu epidemics tend to fizzle, but also why Ebola outbreaks die out (people tend to die quickly before getting the chance to infect others).
What, not enough? Then let's also compare death rates, shall we? For influenza, the most recent H1N1 pandemic in 2009 had a case fatality rate (CFR, defined as number of deaths divided by number of cases) of 0.01-0.08%, which means that of every 10,000 people who had H1N1, between 1 and 8 died. Compare this to COVID-19, which has an estimated CFR of 1.3%, which is approximately WAAAAAAAAAAAY GODDAMNED HIGHER than even the upper estimate of the 2009 swine flu pandemic at 0.08%.
COVID-19 spreads more easily and kills more people. It is NOT the fucking flu.
3) But that number is inflated! Stanford study!
I'll give this one a C- for accuracy, because there definitely is some validity to this argument, though not nearly as much as you hoped. The currently reported case fatality rate will almost certainly fall as more tests are done, because it is known that there are many asymptomatic cases that haven't been factored in. The "Stanford study" essentially offered volunteers free COVID antibody tests (when such tests were scarce), and based on their results the authors claimed that there are so many asymptomatic patients that they estimated 50-85 times as many people who had been tested actually had been infected. This theoretically means the death rate should be 50-85 times lower.
Well, no. Not really. There are so many things wrong with this paper (which as of this writing is still in pre-print and has not been peer reviewed), all of which are detailed by this Columbia statistician here. If you think about it another way, the current number of deaths (again as of this writing) in New York City is over 16,000. If every single New Yorker had been infected, this would be a case fatality rate of 16,000 divided by 8.4 million (the current population of NYC), which would be 0.19%. Again, that would be the CFR IF EVERY PERSON IN THE CITY HAD GOTTEN IT. Which they have not. Yet.
So is the CFR 6% as it stands right now? Of course not. But is it higher than flu? Yes, much higher. How much higher will not be known for quite some time, perhaps even years.
4) Ok, it isn't just the flu, but it isn't that dangerous. It's all just media panic
The easiest way to explain that it isn't just all panic is by showing how many more people are dying compared to the expected number of deaths.
In case you can't read or understand the graph, the red area is the number of deaths over the historical average in France, Spain, UK, Netherlands, New York City, Lombardy, Belgium, Sweden (more on Sweden later), Istanbul, and Austria. Notice anything striking? Yeah - lots more people are dying all over the world. There are similar graphs for other countries in South America and Southeast Asia, but hopefully by now you get the point - people are dying of this disease. Lots of them. Hundreds of thousands of them.
There are a few other related claims, like BUT HOSPITALS ARE EMPTY, which I will cover below.
5) Yeah! Hospitals are empty!
Some of them, sure. Like this one, for example. Does this prove you're right?
YES!
No. This was an idle cruise terminal that had been transformed into a makeshift hospital at a time when hospital utilisation in the city was incredibly high, including over 3,000 patients in intensive care. The city was preparing for the worst, and fortunately efforts to contain the disease finally began to be successful, and new cases began to fall, rendering the temporary facility unnecessary. All this proves is that the city was prepared. If your smoke alarm battery dies because it never went off, do you consider the smoke alarm useless? If your airbag in your car never goes off because you don't get into an accident, do you consider them a waste? No. It's called preparedness, and it is generally a Very Good Thing.
Now if you're talking about the #FilmYourHospital movement, slow the hell down and use your damned brain. People were walking through empty hospital corridors or filming outside hospitals and shouting about the lack of business. As someone who has walked through many hospital corridors over many years, I can tell you that patients aren't treated in the hallways, they are treated in treatment areas. Those people typically walking in the halls are visitors. Nearly all of them. And these people were filming these hospitals at a time when they were closed to visitors. Parking lots were empty because there were no visitors allowed. Cafeterias were closed because . . . that's right, no visitors allowed. And hospitals were generally slow during that time anyway because elective surgeries were cancelled to make room for COVID-19 patients. At my hospital, for example, 2/3 of the hospital wards were converted to COVID only, and they were full. The ICU was full of COVID-19 patients. The hospital was NOT empty.
If your local hospital is slow or relatively empty, then consider yourself lucky that the virus hasn't hit your area very hard. But claiming that that means the pandemic is a hoax is like saying that global temperatures aren't rising (they are) because it's cold at your house.
6) But doctors are inflating the death numbers so hospitals get paid more!
This is a two-pronged myth: 1) doctors are putting COVID-19 on the death certificate no matter what the cause of death was, and 2) hospitals are getting paid more if they say a patient has COVID-19. The source of this was a doctor and US state senator Dr. Scott Jensen, who said,
"Right now Medicare has determined that if you have a COVID-19 admission to the hospital, you’ll get paid $13,000. If that COVID-19 patient goes on a ventilator, you get $39,000, three times as much. Nobody can tell me after 35 years in the world of medicine that sometimes those kinds of things impact on what we do."
Interesting. The problem is that Medicare, the US federal insurance program for people 65 and older, pays hospitals to care for patients, and the amount paid for respiratory ailments with comorbidities in 2017 was . . . $13,000. And Medicare pays more for more complicated cases, ie need for a ventilator.
Oh, and it gets worse. In a later interview, Jensen "clarified" his statement:
"Do I think people are misclassifying? No."
The problem he had was that the CDC guidance on classifying deaths constituted, as he put it, "less precise standards". Well let's just look at the CDC guidance, shall we?
It says quite clearly that COVID-19 should be listed as "probable" or "presumed" if the patient was presumed to have it within a a reasonable degree of certainty. It does not say "Just fucking put COVID on there no matter what, whatever fuck it". Anyone who has filled out a death certificate (as I have) without a solid cause of death knows how difficult it can be to put a diagnosis on there without being sure. We do the best we can with the information at hand, and that sometimes means being wrong. But your argument that doctors can just put COVID-19 as the cause of death even if the patient died in a car accident is 1) unfounded, and 2) assumes the doctors caring for these patients around the world would act unethically. In other words, it just doesn't hold water.
7) It was manufactured by China
This one just smacks of racism, though I reserve the right to be wrong. Though considering the current geopolitical landscape (yes, I just used the term "geopolitical landscape" in my stupid blog"), I am not at all surprised to see it rear its very ugly head.
Anyway, the genetic sequence of SARS-CoV-2 has been extensively studied by people who understand viral genetics much better than you and I, and their conclusion is so fucking difficult to misinterpret that I feel no need to elaborate: No credible evidence supporting claims of the laboratory engineering of SARS-CoV-2. The author further states that there is no evidence the virus escaped from the lab in Wuhan either, so you can put that bullshit away too.
Another claim that the virus was man-made because it has HIV sequences in it, but this was also roundly destroyed by an HIV virologist. Once again, the title of the paper is impossible to misunderstand: HIV-1 Did Not Contribute to the 2019-nCoV Genome.
8) It doesn't matter, because hydroxychloroquine something something cures it something something game changer.
Hydroxychloroquine is a very old (first synthesised in the 1940's), very cheap, very safe, and very effective drug which is used to treat various autoimmune diseases (such as lupus and rheumatoid arthritis) as well as malaria. It also has been shown to have some antiviral and anti-inflammatory activity, which prompted its investigation into the treatment and/or prevention of COVID-19. The first report was written by French microbiologist Didier Raoult regarding the supposed "100% cure" of 80 patients. There were several, ah, problems with this:
no control arm
92% of patients had mild disease
only 15% of patients had a fever, which is a hallmark of COVID-19
only 15% of patients required oxygen
In other words, the overwhelming majority of the patients had mild disease and would have recovered anyway. Add no control arm, and this is a small, poorly done study. I won't even go into Raoult's track record of academic fraud, but feel free to look it up.
Once that study was produced and a certain demagogue promoted it as a "game changer", hydroxychloroquine became the go-to medicine (with or without azithromycin (an antibiotic) and zinc), mostly because clinicians had no other real treatment. A few small trials showed some promise, but more recent larger trials, including a multinational registry analysis of over 96,000 patients in over 600 hospitals on 6 continents have shown 1) no positive effect of hydroxychloroquine, and 2) increased risk of death. I have chosen to strike through rather than delete the link to this possibly fraudulent study, because I believe it is important to highlight bad science as well as good.
Regardless, a recent randomised placebo-controlled study showed that hydroxychloroquine was not effective as post-exposure prophylaxis. Another study of over 1400 hospitalised patients showed no efficacy of hydroxychloroquine in relation to intubation or death. Randomised trials are underway, but the results have not yet been published as of this writing.
In short, hydroxychloriquine does not appear to work, and it appears to increase the risk of death due to the well-known side effect of QT prolongation of both hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin. We want it to work - we want something, anything, to work - and any claims that we don't are preposterous.
9) But those two emergency doctors say COVID isn't so bad!
You're referring to Drs. Dan Erickson and Artin Massihi who made a viral video claiming that COVID-19 is no worse than the flu. They based their conclusions on the tests they had performed in their walk-in clinic that they own. Oh, you thought they were emergency doctors working in a hospital? Nope. They own and operate several walk-in clinics in California, and they were testing people who literally walked into their clinic. Concluding the seriousness of a disease based on the symptoms of people who are well enough to walk into a clinic is like concluding the endurance of all people by testing the riders at the Tour de France.
In fact, Erickson and Massihi's statements were so outrageous ludicrous that it prompted the American College of Emergency Physicians and American Academy of of Emergency Medicine to release a joint statement:
Ouch.
10) Only the old and sick are dying.
First of all, fuck you for not caring about the elderly or infirm. Second and more importantly, while it is true that 1) the overwhelming majority of deaths are people over age 65 and/or people with co-morbidities, and 2) cases in children tend to be mild with fewer symptoms, there are previously healthy children and young adults who have died of COVID-19. One of the techs with whom I've worked for over a decade, who helped me take care of hundreds if not thousands of my trauma patients and was young and completely healthy, is now dead, having caught COVID-19 from a patient.
There are now multiple reports of children with a multisystem inflammatory syndrome similar to Kawasaki diseasehas now been described in multiple countries around the globe. It is still quite rare, but at the same time quite worrisome.
The bottom line is that who the virus is killing matters less than the number of people who are dying, which is about 350,000 so far.
11) But lockdowns don't work and are making everything worse. The 'cure' is worse than the disease! Open up!
Do lockdowns work? Well let's take a look at a tale of two cities in Italy, which saw its first case on February 21, that treated this a bit differently. Lodi went into lockdown two days later, the same day Bergamo, another city in the same region, reported its first case. However, unlike Lodi, Bergamo waited to enforce a lockdown until March 8. Just over a week later, Lodi (locked down) had fewer than 1400 cases while Bergamo had over over 3700. Though Bergamo has a population almost 3 times that of Lodi, their curves look very different indeed - Lodi leveled off rather quickly while Bergamo's cases continued to rise just as quickly:
Still not conviced? The chart below (from Financial Times) plots the daily death toll for various countries around the world at their point of lockdown versus 10 days after their 50th death. As you can see, the longer countries wait to impose a lockdown, the higher their death toll tends to be.
Studies out of both China and Hong Kong have shown the same thing - lockdown = fewer cases, and taking a look at countries around the EU, the data again seems clear - waiting longer to lock down means more deaths.
Is that definitive evidence that lockdowns work? No. There are other studies that show lockdowns do work, and others that say they don't. There are also opinion pieces by economists that seem to waver somewhere in between. My take on this issue of lockdowns is quite simple: we don't know yet, but the hypothesis and early evidence certainly seems to support the idea.
The next question deals with the economic aftermath of such lockdowns. Germany has already entered a recession, and the US economy has taken a decided and harsh downturn. I have heard the argument that more people will die of starvation because of the lockdown than would have died of COVID-19 had the lockdown never happened, but this is of course impossible to prove unless you happen to have a TARDIS or specially equipped DeLorean handy. However, if these strict measures had not been put in place and the disease had been left to spread unabated, there is a very good chance that hospitals and indeed entire countries' medical systems could have been overwhelmed, leading to even more deaths. And when medical systems collapse, that leads to even more poverty and even more deaths. The main point was to flatten the curve, not necessarily to bring the pandemic to an end.
So is it true that the treatment is worse than the disease? Maybe, but maybe not. Though I doubt it I have no real definitive answer, and neither do you.
12) But Sweden is different!
The myth here is that Sweden didn't lock down, and they have fewer cases and fewer deaths. Unfortunately for you (and more so for Sweden), that just isn't true.
The only portion of this myth with any truth is that Sweden didn't lock down as tightly as many other countries. Schools, bars, restaurants, and gyms remained open (though with distancing in place), the Swedish government issued recommendations on hand washing and social distancing, and people were recommended to work from home if possible, though gatherings of more than 50 people were banned. The hypothesis was that herd immunity would eventually kick in, mitigating the threat. And that worked, right?
No.
As of today, Sweden, with a population of 10.2 million, has over 34,000 cases and over 4,100 deaths. Their per capita death rate is among the worst in Europe, and far worse than their Nordic neighbours. In fact, Sweden's death rate per million (392) is worse than the US (300), and far worse than neighbours Denmark (93), Finland (53), and Norway (44). The Swedish experiment has failed.
13) The flu shot increases risk of COVID-19.
Another load of bullshit. There is no evidence that this is true in any way. Unfortunately, this myth persists, and it comes from a January 2020 study from the US regarding the 2017-18 flu shot, which looked at 6000 people who had or had not had that particular flu shot. It found no difference in general in infections from other non-influenza respiratory viruses between vaccinated and unvaccinated Department of Defense personnel, but there was a slightly higher risk of contracting certain cold viruses, including metapneumovirus and coronaviruses.
HA! SLAM DUNK!
Nope. The data from this study were collected two years before SARS-CoV-2 was even known to exist, and the coronaviruses mentioned in this study are the garden variety coronaviruses which just cause the common cold, not SARS-CoV-2 which causes COVID-19. There are literally zero studies which show that the flu shot (or any other vaccine) increases the risk of contracting SARS-CoV-2. None. Zero.
This claim is pure, unadulterated fear mongering and pure, unadulterated antivax bullshit.
14) This is all just a ploy by Bill Gates to do something nefarious.
Ok, here we go. This is the first myth that I can more accurately categorise as a conspiracy theory, and this one is DEEP. Not deep as in profound, but deep as in knee-deep in bullshit. There are several components or iterations of this conspiracy theory:
Bill Gates created SARS-CoV-2 in order to create a mandatory vaccine.
The mandatory vaccine would make Bill Gates $200 billion in profit.
The mandatory vaccine will include a microchip to track everyone's vaccine status and/or location.
Bill gates owns a patent on SARS-CoV-2.
Event 201
Lest you think I'm making any of this up, prepare to be amazed (or not).
There are two iotas of truth here - Event 201, which I will discuss later, and a vaccine "chip". THE CHIP IS TRUE! I KNEW IT!
Slow down there, sparky. You're not nearly as correct as you think. The "microchips" are nothing remotely resembling actual microchips, which are all far too large to fit through a vaccination needle anyway. But I guess you didn't consider that little nugget of information, did you.
The technology is called biocompatible near-infrared quantum dots, and they more closely resemble an invisible tattoo that would be delivered along with a vaccine through a dissolvable needle (which is some pretty goddamned fancy science). Thus the person would carry a record that s/he had received that vaccine. Though this may sound like an evil method of ensuring everyone gets every vaccine ever conceived (or tracking your movement), the real purpose is useful and quite benign: in many places around the world there is no standardisation of record keeping, which makes tracking coverage difficult. Besides, if The Government (which one, by the way?) wants to track your movement, they'll just use your phone that you keep in your pocket or next to your bed 24/7.
Anyway, as for the Gates Foundation owning a patent on SARS-CoV-2, that's just a malicious lie. Such a patent does not exist.
Bill Gates does not stand to profit on this situation. At all. He has donated billions of dollars (and has promised to donate tens of billions more) and has said on record (back in 2019 before COVID-19 even existed, by the way) that the "profit" received from his philanthropy is through economic return:
"Helping young children live, get the right nutrition, contribute to their countries — that has a payback that goes beyond any typical financial return."
No, Bill Gates is not a doctor or a scientist. No, he has no formal training in virology or immunology. No, Bill Gates is not profiting from his philanthropy. All he does is donate tens of billions of dollars to people who do so that they can improve the world, and he is being demonised for it. And that is one of the saddest things I've ever heard.
Event 201 on October 18, 2019 was a joint exercise in world readiness for just this type of pandemic among the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, the Gates Foundation, and the World Economic Forum. There are approximately 200 infectious epidemics worldwide each year, and fortunately few of them reach pandemic proportions. Considering the recent SARS (2003) and MERS (2012) epidemics, epidemiologists and other health experts thought it would probably be a good idea to make sure the world was ready for something bigger. They modeled a fictional coronavirus pandemic after SARS and MERS (which were also both coronaviruses) and assessed the impact it would make on the world. This was simply an effort to come up with ways to protect both lives and livelihoods in such a disaster. You can read their conclusions and recommendations here.
Oh, and this was far from the first meeting designed to identify a public health risk before it happened, such as this meeting in 2018. Epidemiologists have been warning about and planning for this sort of thing for a long, long time.
Unfortunately the timing of Event 201 stinks, which is what prompted this conspiracy theory. But again, the entire meeting is freely available to watch, so knock yourself out if you really are looking for something evil. Good luck finding any heinous crime being committed or planned.
16) You can't trust the WHO because they keep changing their minds.
This virus is new. Let's just get that out of the way. This isn't measles or rotavirus which are well known, well described, and well understood. SARS-CoV-2 is brand new, and absolutely nothing was known of it when it started circulating in Wuhan, China at the end of 2019. With this in mind, nothing was known at the beginning of how (or even if) it was spread from person to person, nothing was known of its deadliness, how contagious it was, nothing. So on January 14, 2020, just over a month after the first patient became ill, the World Health Organisation stated that there was "no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission".
This tweet has aged incredibly poorly and looks downright egregious in hindsight. But at the time, that statement was true - the evidence of human-to-human spread was not yet clear. Keep in mind that the virus had only been identified as a coronavirus two weeks before, and the virus isolated and genome map made public less than a week before. Officials in the Wuhan Health Commission seem to have seriously fucked this whole thing up, and this study suggests that had they acted just a few weeks earlier, this whole thing may have been mitigated or stopped before it ever began.
Once more information began coming in, the WHO changed their recommendations based on new data, just as they have done with social distancing, masks, hydroxychloroquine, and everything else having to do with this disease. Has WHO been perfect? Absolutely not. But it's almost like the process of science where new information makes old information obsolete, and people change their minds and what they say based on prevailing evidence, right?
Right?
17) Masks don't even work.
Well that's a rather complicated statement. What kind of mask do you mean? And what do you mean by "work"?
This issue is admittedly much more complicated and much less clear than I would like. What is clear is that N95 respirators are very effective at preventing the contraction of respiratory illnesses. There is some evidence that regular masks are also effective at preventing infection, though certainly less so compared to N95. There is also evidence that both N95 and surgical masks are effective at preventing spread of respiratory viruses from infected people.
"The evidence suggests protection of masks in high transmission settings such as household and college settings, especially if used early, if combined with hand hygiene and if wearers are compliant. If masks protect in high transmission settings, they should also protect in crowded public spaces, including workplaces, buses, trains, planes and other closed settings."
And
"In summary, there is a growing body of evidence supporting all three indications for respiratory protection – community, healthcare workers and sick patients (source control). The largest number of randomised controlled trials have been done for community use of masks by well people in high-transmission settings such as household or college settings. There is benefit in the community if used early, and if compliant. They also found no evidence of efficacy of hand hygiene or health education, suggesting mask use is more protective than hand hygiene."
Cloth masks are most likely less effective than surgical masks, but depending on the fabric and the method of manufacturing, they can be effective.
My take is that masks probably work to varying degrees, and even if they aren't terribly effective they certainly couldn't hurt.
18) But wearing a mask decreases my oxygen and increases my carbon dioxide!
Nope. This has actually been studied by looking at the oxygen saturation of surgeons of various ages wearing surgical facemasks while performing surgery. The study showed a significant decrease of oxygen saturation from . . . are you ready? 97% to 96%. That's it, even after 3-4 hours of stressful surgery. Normal oxygen saturation is anything above about 93%, so wearing a mask for 15 or 20 minutes while you pick up groceries will not affect you, unless you have a pre-existing lung condition. If you do, have someone bring your groceries to you.
As for N95 masks, they are much more tight fitting and have much smaller pores to filter out much smaller particles, including viruses. They can certainly restrict breathing much more than surgical or cloth masks, and they can make even healthy people feel like they can't breathe. They have also been shown to increase CO2 rebreathing. And this is why they are not recommended for the general public.
19) Ok, fine but being forced to wear a mask violates my constitutional rights!
All this proves is that you've never actually read your constitution. It doesn't even matter to which constitution you're referring (though if you made this argument, there is a 98.482% chance you mean the US Constitution), because no constitution on the planet says anything about face masks. If you could please point out where in this document it states that Congress shall make no law restricting your right not to wear a mask (or anything even close), please feel free to comment below.
But before you do, perhaps you should consult a constitutional law lawyer. Oh wait, this author already did, and you're wrong. If a restaurant can enforce "No shoes, no shirt, no service", then a grocery store can enforce "No mask, no shop". And if you still disagree, then you're still just wrong. But hey, you too still have the right to be wrong.
It is true that heat will kill the virus, but only if you get it up to 56°C (133°F) for 90 minutes or 75°C (167°F) for 30 minutes, and I don't suspect your sauna gets that high, nor would I suggest you try it. Radiation will also kill the virus, if you're willing to undergo UV radiation for 60 minutes. Which you're not, because then you'd be very dead.
As for "injecting" UV light, you mean this?
Yeah, that's just bullshit despite its rather high-profile mention by the same demagogue. Ultraviolet blood irradiation was invented in the 1920's and had some popularity in the 1940's before antibiotics. However, there is simply no evidence that it is or could be effective in treating COVID-19, nor is there any physiologic mechanism whereby it could work.
Second, really? Are you never going outside? While decreased sunlight exposure can decrease your vitamin D level (which can actually weaken the immune system), are you never going outside? And while decreased exercise can also weaken the immune system, are you NEVER going outside?
Seriously, get the fuck outside. Grab a mask, get your ass outside, and go for a run. Climb a mountain. Or just take a walk. If there is no one around, take your damned mask off, especially if you're alone in your car. Seriously. Don't do this.
There is no reason whatsoever for you to stay inside your home 24 hours a day.
Oh, and while I'm on the subject, if you're wearing gloves to shop, take them off before you get into your car and touch everything. If you never take off your gloves, all you're doing is spreading contaminant onto every single damned thing you touch.
22) I'd rather boost my immune system naturally.
No you wouldn't, because that would mean you have an autoimmune disorder. And as someone who has one of those, trust me, you don't fucking want it.
It doesn't matter how many vitamins you take, how many acai smoothies you drink, or how many herbal supplements you buy, you can not "boost" your immune system. You can support it by eating well and exercising, and if you are deficient in a nutrient you should absolutely take that supplement, but any other product or technique that supposedly "boosts" your immune system 1) doesn't, 2) drains your bank account, and 3) creates very expensive urine.
23) Hand sanitiser can catch fire and explode if left in a hot car.
Fortunately this isn't a dangerous myth, but one that should still be corrected.
The viral pictures do not show a car that was damaged by a bottle of hand sanitiser that spontaneously caught fire, it was taken from a different accident that had nothing to do with hand sanitiser. While hand sanitiser is indeed flammable, it would have to reach temperatures of around 370°C (700°F) to combust, and cars' interiors on a hot summer day only reach about about 47°C (116°F).
But while we're on the subject of misnomers, COVID also does NOT stand for 666, the mark of the beast. Yes, we're now going from stupid, provably wrong bullshit to plain silly bullshit. However, I've seen this sort of meme shared too many times to ignore it.
Ok, I'll admit I just added this for comedic value. But some people do seem to believe it, so I don't feel bad at all for laughing at them.
25) Plandemic!
Oh boy, I saved the worst for last. This is the idea that this pandemic is all planned and therefore a "plandemic". Ha! Such a clever portmanteau, right? It's so clever that a supposed movie by that name purportedly starring Dr. Judy Mikovits will be released in the summer of 2020. A 26 minute "preview" in the form of an interview with Dr. Mikovits was released May 4, 2020 to great (ha) fanfare, and you fell for it. How very sad.
I will not be debunking the entire video, because it has been done many, many, many times already. The best bullshit busting I've seen was by, not coincidentally, Science, which published (and then retracted) her seminal (not really) paper. I'll just give a few lowlights of the bullshit claims and why they are bullshit:
Mikovits' 1991 doctoral thesis revolutionised the treatment of HIV/AIDS.
- It didn't.
Mikovits published a blockbuster article in Science.
- That study purported a link between a mouse retrovirus and chronic fatigue syndrome, a link that was later proved false, Mikovits' paper was retracted by Science, and she admitted no link exists, though she retracted her retraction later.
Mikovits: "And they’ll kill millions, as they already have with their vaccines. There is no vaccine currently on the schedule for any RNA virus that works."
- Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, and wrong. There is less than no evidence that vaccines have even killed thousands, let alone millions of people. There is myriad evidence, however, showing that they have saved millions of lives. And there are many vaccines for RNA viruses, including measles, mumps, rubella, influenza, and Ebola.
Mikovitz hints that SARS-CoV-2 was distributed in Italy in an influenza vaccine made using dog cell cultures, and "dogs have a lot of coronaviruses".
- No evidence to support this claim exists.
Mikovits: Wearing the mask literally activates your own virus. You’re getting sick from your own reactivated coronavirus expressions, and if it happens to be SARS-CoV-2, then you’ve got a big problem.
- There is no evidence whatsoever to support this claim.
Beaches should be open because the ocean contains "healing microbes".
- I can't even bring myself to respond because this is such deep bullshit.
She also propagates several of the myths above, which I won't rehash here. There are many other claims she makes regarding her failed career as a researcher and her arrest (yes, really), but I won't get into those since that isn't what this is really about. What it is about is Mikovits promoting and drumming up interest in her new book, to which I will also most assuredly not link.
There is a similar video of an interview with professor Dolores Cahill from University College Dublin (to which I will also not link), where Dr. Cahill repeats the same myths again, including boosting the immune system, masks decrease oxygen, hydroxychloroquine, manufactured virus, and social distancing decreases immunity, as well as various generic bullshit antivax claims which I've already discussed previously.
But she makes one new one:
“SARS virus circulated [since] 2003 and essentially every three or four years since, so that people are immune—so that everybody practically in the world is immune.”
HAHAHA! No but seriously HAHAHAHAHAHA! If this were even partially true, then millions of people around the world wouldn't be sick or dead. I have no idea how she said that with a straight face, but she should be ashamed. Both she and Mikovits are disgraces and a stain on medicine and science.
Wait wait wait, I'm sure many of you think I'm just making this one up. Sadly, I am not.
Unfortunately this is a very real claim, but even more unfortunately Jesus will not save you:
I take absolutely no joy whatsoever in finding and listing these stories. None. But there are some true believers who misguidedly think their lord and saviour will protect them, and it is my duty to inform you that you are not protected any more than anyone else.
27) 5G causes/activates COVID-19.
I nearly forgot this one, which is rather shocking since it was the ridiculous myth that prompted me to write this stupid post. Once again, this is a very simple "NO". There is no evidence whatsoever that 5G is causing COVID-19 or similar symptoms, nor is there any mechanism by which high frequency radio waves could "activate" a virus or cause such symptoms. It's just pure bullshit. Unfortunately that hasn't stopped several True Believers from burning down 5G towers. But if that isn't good enough, then please watch this very detailed (and chock-full-of-fucking-science) video by electrical engineer Mehdi Sadaghdar on exactly why 5G isn't dangerous in any way.
--
That's all I have. I'm sure there are many fringe myths that are slightly too whackadoodle to address, so I apologise for ignoring them with alacrity. If I made any glaring errors or omissions, please comment below.
And most importantly no matter what you believe, no matter whom you believe, no matter which way you align politically, keep yourselves, your loved ones, and everyone around you, safe.
Let's face it, seat belts are a good idea. This statement is in no way controversial, and all who try to argue against it aren't just "expressing an opinion" or "arguing the other side", they are just plain fucking wrong. Seat belts were designed to keep you safely in the car in the event of a crash rather than getting blasted through a window to land on a fence post, over a guardrail down an embankment, or into oncoming traffic. They are a Very Good Idea that have been implemented spectacularly well all over the world (mostly) (fuck you, New Hampshire).
As simple and effective as they are, I can not believe that there are people living and driving today who still don't put them on, but there are. And because these people exist, I get to take care of them.
And then I get to write about them when they are inevitably injured much more severely than they should have been.
Judy (not her real name™) and her husband Mickey (not his real name™) decided to take a break from their door-to-door Xanax business and take a little drive. Now before I continue, please go back and read that last sentence again. I'll wait right here.
*pleasing hold music, but not the boring twaddle you hear while on hold on the phone*
You're back? Excellent hold music, right? Anyway, I assume you read it back at least twice, because I know I sure did, and I wrote the damned thing. Yes, Judy and Mickey had a little neighbourhood benzodiazepine business. They literally went door to door asking their friends and neighbours if they wanted any pills. Where they got these pills is anyone's guess, but I have to assume business was booming because the police officer who came with them described their stash as a "large grocery bag full".
In case you thought that was stupid, what made it even stupider (yes, that's a word) is that they dipped into their own cache and then mixed the pills with alcohol.
And what made it even stupider is that on their break they decided to go for a little drive while drunk and stoned out of their minds.
And what made it even stupider was then choosing to engage in a street race while stoned out of their minds.
And then what made it the stupidest (yes, that's also actually a word) is that they failed to put on their seat belts.
Ironically I can't even fault them for not putting their seat belts on, because they were both too drunk/stoned to keep their eyes open let alone perform a complex task such as inserting tab A into slot B. How Mickey managed to navigate the controls of a motor vehicle is one of life's great mysteries. Regardless, engage in a street race they did, and I believe it is a safe assumption that they lost. Crashing into a bridge abutment at 120 kph (75 mph) in a 50 kph (30 mph) zone will usually lose you any race fairly instantaneously, unless the objective of the race was to see who dies the fastest (or tries, at least).
And because Judy and Mickey were not wearing their seat belts, both were ejected from the car, far, far away from all the various safety mechanisms that had been designed, extensively tested, and installed specifically to protect them. Mickey was thrown through the windscreen, presumably striking his head and/or neck on the bridge or the ground or a tree or it doesn't really fucking matter what. Judy was partially ejected through the passenger window, bending her lower spine at a rather awkward angle.
Both of them were awake when they arrived in the trauma bay. Neither was moving.
"Hey trauma team, this is Mickey and Judy. He's 50, she's 35. They were in a street race, high speed, struck a bridge. He was ejected, not moving anything below the neck. She was partially ejected, moving her arms but not her legs. Doesn't look good, Doc."
No, no it sure didn't.
Mickey had fractured his sixth cervical vertebra, and a portion of the fractured bone had been pushed into his spinal cord, paralysing him from that point down instantly. He also had a few broken ribs, but those would only pose minor problems (relatively speaking). Judy had fractured her first lumbar vertebra, also injuring her spinal cord at that location. Mickey had no motor or sensory function below his neck, and it was a minor miracle that he was still able to breath on his own, since the nerves that control the diaphragm come from just above that level (C3-5). Judy had no motor or sensory function below her waist in addition to a minor laceration of her spleen.
Both required major spine surgery. Both survived.
I had several opportunities to sit and chat with Judy during her two weeks with me. She was actually a reasonably intelligent woman, polite, appreciative, and apologetic (even though she hadn't been the one driving at the time). Mickey, on the other hand, remained recalcitrant despite his quadriplegia. Despite his horrific and life-changing injury, he was adamant that he had only survived because he had been "thrown clear of the wreck". Judy at least understood that remaining in the car with the seat belts and airbags would have been much less harsh on their bodies than, you know, hitting concrete at 1/10 the speed of sound (yes, really).
She too failed to convince him before she went to a spinal rehabilitation facility.
Mickey had some respiratory complications and ended up needing a tracheostomy. He stayed with me for about a six weeks before going to the same spinal rehab facility, arguing the entire time that he still would never ever wear "that damned belt".
I saw Judy about a month later. She had finished her inpatient rehabilitation and was starting to regain some use of her legs. I saw Mickey about two weeks later, and owing only to the quick response of our neurosurgeon had regained near full use of his arms, though he will remain paralysed from the chest down for the rest of his life. But unfortunately that had only strengthened his bewildering belief that not wearing his seat belt had saved his arms. I again tried to explain that, had he stayed in the car and been buffered by the seat belt and airbag, his injuries would have been significantly less, and he may have literally walked away from the accident, but he only cut me off.
"I'll never wear that damned belt. It would have killed me."
I seldom give up, especially when it comes to something as important and life-saving (and simple) as using a seat belt. But after several attempts and an equal number of rude interruptions, I gave up.
And if you're wondering, I have no idea what happened to their Xanax business. I forgot to ask.
I often look at my pager sitting next to my mobile phone and think, "How the fuck are we still using this 1950's technology in 2019?" But we still unfortunately rely on these outdated, grossly obsolete prehistoric monstrosities. Regardless, if my pager tells me I'm getting a car accident, I can predict that I will be getting some kind of car accident - rollover, car vs tree, car vs car, etc. If it says I'm getting a fall victim, I can predict with at least 90% accuracy that it will be either an elderly person who lost his footing and fell from standing position, a drunk person who fell from standing position, or a construction worker who fell off a ladder or partially completed building. If I see I'm getting a stabbing victim, I can be fairly well assured it will be a young man in his late teens or early 20's. What I do when they get to my trauma bay varies based on the location and severity of the injuries, of course, but the patterns remain the same.
Until they don't.
This particular day's pattern had been falls. Over my previous 42 hours of call (24 from the last shift and 18 from this one . . . wait, carry the 1 . . . yeah, 42), my last fourteen patients had been falls. ALL of them. Elderly falls from standing, elderly fall off a roof (yes, really), elderly fall off a ladder (yes, really), elderly fall off a toilet, elderly fall out of a wheelchair . . . you get the idea. As you may (though probably don't) remember from earlier posts, I don't much care for falls because they are very rarely exciting or fulfilling (though I did have one guy rupture his bladder jumping off a roof while trying to jump into a swimming pool (and missing) several years back, but that's another story). I was beginning to think that everyone over the age of 70 in the entire {redacted} metropolitan area had decided to fall that day, until my pager finally told me my next trauma would be a level 1 stabbing. My Inner Pessimist seemed excited.
YES! FINALLY!
I know, I know. It's awfully macabre to want someone to get stabbed, but there are only so many nonagenarian falls I can see in one day before going completely insane. Technically I didn't really want anyone to get stabbed, I just wanted to see someone who had been stabbed. Sort of. Technically. Dammit, you know what I mean.
As my team and I prepared for the patient's arrival by donning our personal protection gear (masks, gowns, and gloves, that is, not guns), I was also mentally preparing for said patient to be another 20-something male rolling through the door with various and sundry stab wounds. So you can imagine my surprise when that 20-something male turned out to be a 70-something female. My Inner Pessimist began pestering me:
They made a mistake! This is obviously yet another elderly fall! Will I ever get anything other than a fall?
Am I now officially an Elderly Fall Trauma Surgeon?
As these thoughts rolled around my brain and the medics transferred her from their gurney to mine, the blanket fell from around her neck, revealing a large, bloody bandage. My Inner Pessimist refused to back down, trying to convince me "She probably just fell in the shower against something sharp!"
Shut up, Inner Pessimist.
"Hi Doc, this is Bess. She's 72, stabbed once in the right neck. No loss of consciousness. Bleeding is controlled. It's pretty big though."
Other than my elderly lady several years ago that was nearly decapitated by her seat belt (that's yet another story for yet another time), this was the first elderly female stabbing victim I could remember. Ever.
Bess was stunningly calm for someone with a 10 cm laceration on the side of her neck. She was also completely alert and sharp as a tack, which made her somewhat different than most of my septuagenarian patients. Her laceration was on the posterolateral aspect of her right neck over the posterior cervical triangle. Whew. I breathed a small sigh of relief. If you simply must get stabbed in the neck (which you shouldn't), that's a good place to do it, mainly because the only really important structures in the area are the transverse cervical artery and accessory nerve (and a few sensory nerves), none of which were close to this particular laceration.
There was no active bleeding and the laceration was well above the subclavian artery, and her neurological exam was normal, so I was not worried about any major vascular or nerve injury. I started to tell her that she would just need a whole bunch of stitches when my pager went off again.
Another fall? Nope, another level 1 stabbing, arriving in 2 minutes.
Hey, at least it isn't another fall! That's two in a row! Woo!
Shut up, Inner Pessimist.
Rhys (not his real name ™) arrived exactly 2 minutes later and looked much more like what I had been expecting with Bess - young, male, healthy, thin, and 25 years old. I was back in my comfort zone. Until Rhys started talking. Well, ranting actually:
"I'm Tupac Shakur's son! You hear me? Tupac's son! You can't hurt me! YOU CAN'T HURT MEEEE! Tupac ShaKUUUUR!!!"
Hey, at least it isn't another fall! SHUT THE FUCK UP, Inner Pessimist. I fucking hate that guy sometimes.
"Ok Doc, Rhys is 25. Healthy, no meds, history, or allergies. Single stab wound to the right upper abdomen, we think self-inflicted. He's been talking like this the whole time. Oh, and he stabbed his grandmother in the neck too."
Yeah. Because that's what you do to, especially to your own grandmother.
Rhys had a single stab wound to his upper right abdomen, directly in The Box.This is a danger zone where nearly anything in the chest and/or abdomen could be hit, depending on 1) where exactly the patient was in the respiratory cycle when the knife went in, 2) the angle of entry, and 3) how deep it went. Heart, great vessels, lung, diaphragm, liver, gall bladder, colon, stomach, and small intestine are all potential targets.
Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it) Rhys had managed to do significantly more damage to himself than to Bess. He managed to lacerate his right lung, right diaphragm, and liver. Liver lacerations (especially penetrating ones) tend to stop bleeding by themselves, and small right diaphragm lacerations rarely need to be repaired. All he needed was a chest tube, a few sutures, and a few days in hospital to make sure his liver and lung stopped bleeding (they did).
Oh, and restraints. And a psychiatrist. And one metric fuckton (that's the technical term) of sedatives.
Rewind to Bess who, on the other hand, merely needed a few sutures and a new grandson. Ok, a lot of sutures. But yeah, definitely a new grandson. Still, she was completely fine, though sporting a new badass neck scar. Though she had no idea why Rhys stabbed her, she nevertheless remained incredibly stoic (though perplexed) as I fixed her up. As I was placing the dressings and giving her her discharge and follow up instructions, she said probably the most grandmother thing any grandmother has ever said in the history of grandmothers:
"I'm still giving him that shirt and tie I bought him for Christmas. It'll look so nice on him."
I've said it before, but I'll say it again: trauma is usually boring. I know, I make it sound so utterly fascinating here. I mean, if trauma is so devoid of excitement, why do I do it, and even more importantly, why the hell are you people here to share in my banality?
But it is sadly true: the car accidents, elderly falls, and bicycle accidents are just not typically exciting. Sure they may have some serious injuries, but there are only but so many broken ankles and concussions I can see before I feel ready to pack up and go home. Even the penetrating injuries often fail to inspire my intellectual curiosity. Indeed, most stabbings are mere flesh wounds. When I see a stab to the chest in a man who is awake and talking to me, chances are the knife just went into his chest wall, the bleeding is just from the underlying soft tissue, and a few sutures or staples are all that is necessary to staunch the not-really-exsanguination.
Until it isn’t.
Troy (not his real name™) decided that it would be a great idea to take some PCP before engaging in a high stakes poker match. This may not sound like a very bright idea, but that’s only because it isn’t. While I highly doubt Troy’s poker skills were scintillating while sober, they took a noticeable dive after the PCP, probably because he couldn’t tell an ace from a potato. After he lost everything including his shirt (literally (yes really)), the drugs told Troy that the only reasonable thing to do would be to demand his money (and his shirt) back in a language only he could understand. They guy who won both Troy's shirt and money fair and square said no (or something very closely approximating "no"), so Troy and his addled brain said something incomprehensible and then lunged at him. And the other guy predictably whipped out a knife and stabbed him in the chest.
Troy was brought to me in a still-incomprehensible mass of outrage and paranoia, bleeding very mildly from his chest.
“Hey Doc, this is Troy, 26, healthy. Two small stab wounds in the right chest. Vitals have been good, a bit tachycardic, breath sounds are equal. We put some occlusive dressings over the wounds, but they look pretty small and superficial.”
His vital signs were normal other than a slightly high heart rate of 100 which could easily be explained by the PCP, and he indeed had two small stab wounds, about 1 cm each, in his right chest over his pectoralis muscle, neither of which was actively bleeding. I started to assume that this would be just another “staple and go” stabbing victim, but my Inner Pessimist, on the other hand, wouldn’t let me assume anything and began whispering his usual obnoxious sweet nothings in my ear:
He's awfully thin, and you don't know how big the knife was. Maybe it went into his lung. Or his heart. Or his aorta. Maybe he's bleeding to death and YOU JUST DON'T KNOW.
Yeah. Maybe.
But sure enough a few minutes later a chest X-ray showed a haemothorax, a collection of blood in the thoracic cavity.
I hate when my Inner Pessimist is right.
I inserted a chest tube which drained about 800 ml of dark blood, indicating that the bleeding was not from an arterial source, which you can probably imagine would be a Very Bad Thing. The treatment for a simple haemothorax is chest tube drainage for a few days, at which point the tube comes out and the patient goes home. Another patient saved. Huzzah, or something.
But my Inner Pessimist kept pestering me. What about the heart? Maybe it hit his heart! Look at the heart!
What are the odds, I was thinking. But making assumptions in my line of work is both a very bad diagnostic and therapeutic technique. So I did a bedside ultrasound on his heart and found once again that my Inner Pessimist was right - there was fluid in his pericardium, the sac that surrounds the heart.
Have I mentioned that I hate when my Inner Pessimist is right?
Fluid in the pericardium can be benign in someone with congestive heart failure, but fluid in the pericardium in someone who has been stabbed in the chest is unquestionably a Very Bad Thing. That fluid is blood until proven otherwise, because it means there’s a hole in the heart allowing that blood to escape and collect around the heart. Given enough volume, that fluid can compress the heart and not allow it to function properly, causing tamponade and death. And death is a Very Bad Thing.
What it truly means is I need to fix that goddamned hole. Most people with holes in their heart are either dead or actively dying, and Troy was neither.
Yet.
Ten minutes later we were in the operating theatre, and five minutes after that I was using a very fancy saw to cut down Troy’s sternum. As the saw was doing its job, the slightly larger of the two wounds in his right chest started bleeding bright red blood. A lot. Now he was actively dying. SHIT.
One of my assistants put her finger in the hole to try to slow the bleeding as the anaesthesiologist started pouring blood into Troy from above. I got his chest open and found about half his blood volume, now bright red, in his right chest. I opened his pericardium and found a very small hole, perhaps 3 or 4 mm, in his right atrium which I quickly repaired. It was clear, however, that was not where this bright red blood was coming from, as the blood in the right heart is deoxygenated and much darker, and the blood kept coming even with the heart repaired.
Hmmmmmmmmmmmmm. . .
A cursory evaluation of the right hemithorax showed that there were no injuries to the great vessels or the hilum of the lung. Well that's all fine and dandy, but that bright red blood was coming from somewhere in there. A closer inspection of the underside of the chest wall, however, showed that the knife had completely transected the internal mammary artery, which had clotted off initially but then started bleeding profusely once his blood pressure increased.
It took about 75 seconds to get that under control and then ligate it. We all then paused to take a breath and take notice of the complete lack of any further bleeding from anywhere. After the fact it all seemed rather trivial, though everyone in the room knew it was nothing of the sort. We all high-fived (not really), I cleaned him up, put in a bunch of tubes, and closed.
The next morning Troy was extubated in the intensive care unit, his haematocrit was rock stable, he was awake alert and talking, and he was shockingly unappreciative of our efforts at saving his life. He had two chest tubes draining the minimal residual blood from his right chest and another drainage catheter coming out of the middle of his chest which we had left in the mediastinum over his heart. I was rather stunned to see him looking so stable after everything that had happened, and after explaining his injuries and what we did for him, I asked him how he was feeling. Without missing a beat (and without answering the question), he demanded, “I need to go home today.”
“Um, no. No you don't. You just had open heart surgery less than 12 hours ago. You understand that, right?”
“But I need to get home to pick up a cheque. I have to go.”
No you don’t. I assumed he needed that money to pay off a gambling debt, but regardless I tried to explain that someone else would have to pick up his cheque. Troy was rather insistent that he had to leave. Unfortunately for him I was even more insistent that he stay.
Troy spent four contentious days in hospital with me, every day asking if he could go home irrespective of the number of tubes hanging out of his body (“I can come back to your office so you can remove it.”) and his inability to complete the most basic of self-care tasks, like walking and peeing. Finally the day of his discharge came, and even up until the moment he left he remained completely, utterly, and in all other ways devoid of any appreciation for what my team and I did for him, never once offering even the briefest of thanks for saving his life.
What did not shock me, however, is that he failed to return for any follow up. It’s been months, and Troy is either doing great or he’s dead, quite possibly of another knife wound. I guess I’ll never know.
Violence is unfortunately part of my job. I'm not talking about workplace violence, though several of my trauma nurses have been victims of that. No, I mean just regular violence - stabbings, shootings, slashings, animal bites, human bites, and assaults with deadly weapons. And sometimes also assaults with not-so-deadly weapons.
Based on the title of this post you may think this story is about guns or the second amendment. I can assure you it is not.
I'll explain.
I sometimes get excited when I see "LEVEL 2 ASSAULT" on my pager, but rarely because of the injuries. Don't misunderstand me, serious injuries can happen with blunt assaults, but they are almost universally some combination of facial lacerations, facial fractures (especially the mandible), and brain injuries ranging from mild concussion to severe intracranial bleeding. I don't fix facial bones (facial reconstruction surgeons do that), and I obviously don't fix brains (brain surgeons do that), so all I can do initially is manage any initial life-threatening cerebral oedema until the brain surgeon arrives. Or apply ice to the face. Fucking wheeeeee. That isn't exactly why I spent {redacted} years training as a trauma surgeon.
No, the singular reason I get excited at blunt assaults is the story. Was this a drunken pub brawl? A fan of the opposing team? A fight with a guy over an ex-girlfriend? A fight with an ex-girlfriend? A robbery gone awry?
Or something even better?
Rufus (not his real name™) was something even better. Don't worry, before you get concerned that I am a bit too excited over someone getting seriously injured, he wasn't. I don't celebrate serious injuries. Much.
Just before midnight on Saturday night is prime time for drunk assault victims to slosh into the trauma bay, usually having pissed off (or pissed on, occasionally) the wrong guy for the wrong reason. But 10 AM on a Tuesday is just slightly less common. However, that is exactly when Rufus decided to get the shit kicked out of him. The trauma bay immediately filled with the aroma of stale whiskey, old cigarettes, and mothballs (for some strange reason) when the medics rolled an extremely drunk Rufus through the doors just past Coffee Part II Time. They looked not-at-all-concerned (though obviously bemused), because while they were trying to give me their report, Rufus was continually, loudly, unashamedly, and slurredly singing:
He mussst have been an admiral a sssultan or a king, and to hisss praisssses we sall alwaysh sssing. . .
"Sigh. Hey Doc, this is Rufus. He was assaulted about the face with some object, not sure what it was and he won't tell us because we can't get him to stop singing. He's 62, history of hypertension, untreated. Obvious swelling around his left eye, has a laceration there. Bleeding is controlled. No other injuries as far as we can tell."
Look what he hass done for us he'ss filled ussup with cheer. . .
Ugh. This was obviously not going to be one of those "fun" stories, just another drunk asshole who pissed off the wrong guy. A quick but thorough evaluation of a very slovenly Rufus showed no injuries below his neck, only what I could only assume was several years' worth of built up grime beneath his fingernails. Clean that shit up, people. Seriously.
It was becoming painfully obvious that this would be 1) a boring story, 2) a quick run through the CT scanner, 3) a few sutures, 4) a litre or four of saline to sober him up, and 5) a discharge to whatever cave Rufus called home.
Lord blessh Charlie Mopsh, the man who invented beer beer beer . . .
I was only 4/5 correct.
His CT scans showed no brain injury and no facial fractures, as expected. He continued singing (he may have gotten one note on key, possibly as many as two) as I tried to renovate him to his former glory and place a few sutures in his creased face. Well, my Innter Pessimist reminded me, at least his singing career can continue, though his modeling days are clearly over.
My Inner Pessimist can be a bit of an asshole sometimes.
At 11 o'clocks we'll ssstop for 5 short sheconds, we'll remember Charlie Mopsh . . .
By the time the police arrived to take his statement, I was already filling out his discharge paperwork. I guess Rufus had finally sobered up to the point where he could speak rather than sing, because he told them a story I was not expecting:
"Well you see officer, there I was at the pub minding my own business when this guy comes over talking shit to me. Now I'm a little drunk {HA!}, but he's real drunk, REAL drunk you see, and I'm not the sort of man to take that kind of shit, so I talk shit right back to him. He gets up in my face real close, so naturally I take a swing at him. You know. Well, he takes his arm off and . . . "
He . . . wait, what?
"Yeah, he takes his fake arm off and starts beating the hell out of me with it."
I'm glad I was on the other side of the room, because I somehow doubt my agape look was terribly becoming. Nor was the ensuing laughter from everyone within earshot of this conversation.
After Rufus was finished with his story, the police confirmed that they already had in custody both the suspect and his weapon of choice: his prosthetic arm. The next 20 minutes were filled with pretty much everyone over the age of 35 asking if Rufus' real name was Richard Kimble.
Alas, it wasn't. I only know that because, unbeknownst to me, I was about the 14th very uncreative and not-quite-as-clever-as-I-thought person who asked.
Yeah yeah yeah, I know I've been gone for over four months, and my Inner Egotist has been yelling at me regularly that my loyal readers (the few I may still have) have probably been missing me and wondering what may have happened. I have also taken several months off Twitter (as you may or may not have noticed), and when my brother recently asked me why, I replied simply, "Sanity". I realised that I was taking inordinate amounts of time writing, and that isn't fair to my family, and it isn't right. They deserve better.
Writing this blog isn't difficult, but it can be time consuming. Coming up with a patient to write about is easy, but making a blog post out of it can be cumbersome, because I don't want my stories to be trite, boring, or repetitive. So instead of putting out boring short stories, I consider it better to put out nothing and keep people wondering.
Well wonder no further, because the patient I'm writing about today was easy to come up with.
It is I.
No, I wasn't in a car accident, and I wasn't stabbed or assaulted, and no I didn't cut off my finger with my table saw or have any other kind of traumatic injury. But over the past few months I have seen three different doctors, including a specialist, a sub-specialist, and a sub-sub-specialist, and I now have an official diagnosis.
In the interest of my own privacy, I will not be revealing what the diagnosis is or the type of doctor that I've been visiting. I will, however, divulge that just this past week I was diagnosed with a very rare degenerative disease that is incurable, progressive, and potentially disabling, though it is not in any way deadly. It's not multiple sclerosis, and it's not ALS or any other motor neurone disease.
I'm not dying.
The good news is that this condition was diagnosed very early, and it was only found based on a hunch that the second doctor had. He very easily could have chalked up my symptoms to aging and let it go, but he decided to investigate further. Usually this disease isn't diagnosed until much later in life once significant and irreversible damage has already been done, but mine was found before any of that happened, so my long term prognosis seems to be good.
The bad new is that no one knows the cause of this disease because it is so rare. It was only first described about 30 years ago, but no one took it seriously until about 15 years ago when it was discovered that it was indeed progressive. Because of that, there is no textbook treatment. The disease is thought to be autoimmune, so I will be taking immunosuppression medication for the rest of my life to keep it at bay. Hopefully.
I'm not looking for sympathy. I'm not interested in anyone's thoughts or prayers. Yes this sucks, but I have accepted the diagnosis and am hitting it with everything I can. Ignoring a problem like this won't make it better, and pretending it doesn't exist will only make it worse.
If you're looking for a silver lining like I was, consider this: if you thought I railed against antivaxxers before, just imagine how I'll treat them now that I am one of those immunosuppressed patients they put at risk with their bullshit.
Before you start composing an angry comment over this blog post which seems to be about a blender endorsed by infamous charlatan and overall anti-science fuckwit David "Avocado" Wolfe, this is not about the Magic Bullet blender. Nor is it about this Magic Bullet (warning: link very NSFW). Nor is it about the JFK assassination or the Seinfeld parody thereof.
No, it is about an actually really real magic bullet that struck Belle (not her real name™). So delete your nastygram, sit back down, and stay tuned.
Let me first take you back a couple of weeks before I met Belle. My previous call before Belle's I had gotten a stabbing victim at 8 PM who needed a laparotomy. The call before that I got a car accident victim at 7:30 PM who needed a laparotomy. The call before that I had gotten a fall victim at 7:45 PM who had needed a laparotomy. Cases like these are relatively rare, so getting three in a row at essentially the same time of day is extremely uncommon. But as we all know, bad things tend to happen in threes. Or fours.
Yes, that's foreshadowing.
Now fast forward back (forward?) to the present. I was in the midst of getting over a cold, so I started my day by nearly begging the Call Gods to let me off easy. In retrospect this was a Very Bad Idea. About halfway through the shift the Call Gods proved that not only are they evil and vengeful, but they are also cold and heartless and have no goddamned regard for my feelings. Not that I ever suspected they did.
My pager told me I would be getting a level 1 gunshot victim in 5 minutes. I looked at the clock, and when I saw it was 7:50 PM, I actually looked up at the sky (because somehow in that moment I figured that's where the Call Gods were hanging out and laughing their cruel, heartless asses off) and vigorously and repeatedly cursed them with every single bit of foul language my brain could come up with. Then I took a deep breath and realised I had a job to do, and imprecating some nebulous nefarious fantasy creatures would help neither me nor my patient in the slightest.
Sigh . . . yet another call where I'll be in the operating theatre at 9 PM, I thought. At least it isn't 2 AM, right?
Belle arrived a few minutes later, and while she didn't necessarily look close to death, she was certainly having some difficulty breathing.
"Hi Doc, 29 year old woman, single gee-ess-double-you to the right back. Blood pressure has been stable, oxygen sats in the 90's, but decreased breath sounds on the right."
My initial evaluation lined up perfectly with theirs - she had a single gunshot wound to the right mid-back with no exit wound. This bodes poorly because I have no idea what direction the bullet was traveling when it hit her or what happened to it once it did. On examination her heart sounded fine, but she had no breath sounds on the right, a sign that she had either a pneumothorax (collapsed lung), haemothorax (blood in the thoracic cavity), or both. Fortunately the treatment of both of these problems is the same - a chest tube. But whenever there is an entry wound with no exit, the main two questions I always have to answer are:
Where did the bullet go?
What did that bullet go through?
The good news is a simple chest X-ray should answer both of those questions within a minute or so. As the nurses were getting IV's started and checking vital signs (which were fine), I was finishing the physical exam (which revealed no exit wound and was also otherwise fine) and the radiology techs got the chest X-ray done. Within a minute I was looking at exactly what I did NOT want to see:
The bullet was overlying the left upper abdomen.
GOD DAMN IT. FUCK YOU, CALL GODS. FUCK YOU TO WHATEVER HELL I CHOOSE TO BELIEVE IN RIGHT NOW.
There are a lot of Very Important Structures between the right mid-back and the left upper abdomen, not the least of which are the right lung, heart, aorta and other great vessels, œsophagus, stomach, liver, duodenum, pancreas, spleen, and diaphragm. Holes in any of those things are by definition Very Bad Things, and holes in a few of them can be rapidly fatal, though obviously she shouldn't have any of those.
Maybe. Probably. At least she wasn't dead yet.
The problem is that an X-ray can't tell me if the bullet is in the soft tissue of the back (which would be fine), the soft tissue of the front (which would be much less fine, since it had to go through the entire body to get there), or somewhere in between (which would also be not at all fine), nor can it tell me what the bullet went through to get there. If the bullet was just in the soft tissue of the back, all she would need is a chest tube and no major abdominal or thoracic surgery. But you've already seen me foreshadow, so you know goddamned well that's not what happened.
A chest tube was rapidly inserted, and about 600 ml of blood drained immediately then stopped. While this sounds pretty bad, that's actually not a huge amount, and the fact that it stopped means there was no active bleeding from the chest. Good. Since her blood pressure and heart rate had remained essentially normal, I had time to get a CT scan for further evaluation.
It didn't answer my questions, it only muddied the waters further.
Not Belle's abdomen
Th scan showed the bullet tract through the right back into the right chest, bouncing off a rib and shattering it, then ricocheting (I guess) towards the left side. And there bullet was, sitting somewhere in the left upper abdomen (not the soft tissue in the back . . . god damn it) apparently in the space right between the spleen and the stomach. There appeared to be a blush of contrast in the stomach indicating active bleeding within the stomach (which was of course full of food), which as you can imagine is indeed a Very Bad Thing. Weeeeell, shit. To the theatre we go. Again.
It was 8:30 PM. Because of course it was.
I re-examined her after the scan and just before wheeling her to surgery, and indeed her left upper abdomen was now mildly tender. Certainly no signs of peritonitis (yet), but the exam was decidedly different than it had been just a few minutes before. I told her she needed emergent surgery to find out what damage the bullet had done, and then (hopefully) fix it. As I listed off the potentially injured organs, I gave her no guarantee that she would survive the surgery just like I do with every such patient, because no matter what I suspect and no matter what I find, it is always both a challenge and a surprise. Belle seemed to take the news well: "Just do the best you can, doctor" was all she said.
I promised her nothing more and nothing less than that. And while I did get a surprise, it was just not the one I could have anticipated:
Nothing.
I found absolutely nothing. I was expecting to find a hole in her stomach with spilled gastric contents, a diaphragm laceration, liver laceration, lacerated intestine, perhaps a lacerated spleen. But there was no blood in her abdomen, no spillage of food, no injury to any organ whatsoever. NOTHING.
Well, almost nothing. I did find one thing.
Knowing the bullet was somewhere in her left upper abdomen, I reached up into that area expecting to find a free-floating bullet between her stomach and spleen like I saw on the CT. I found the bullet alright, and it was indeed free-floating. In her stomach. IN HER STOMACH.
Wait, what?? How the fuck did that get there? There are only three possible mechanisms for a bullet to get into the stomach:
swallow it,
go through the stomach wall, or
go through the œsophagus and drop in.
Hmm.
I made a small incision in her stomach to retrieve the bullet, which was deformed from having passed through soft tissue (and bouncing off a rib), so option 1 was definitely out. I searched for at least an hour trying to find a hole in the stomach, looking at every square millimetre of its surface, both back and front, top and bottom. Nothing. So option 2 was out. That only left option 3 - through the thoracic œsophagus with the bullet simply dropping into her stomach. But that would mean the bullet would have had to have juuuust enough energy to get in one wall of the œsophagus, stop, and then fall.
I wasn't buying it, but I had absolutely no other ideas. I took one last look at the stomach wall, but I once again came up empty. Since she had a nasogastric tube traversing the supposed area of injury in the œsophagus, I decided to close her abdomen and look for the injury another way.
My first study immediately after surgery was a CT œsophagram. Contrast was instilled into her œsophagus, and as the scan was done I should be able to see the leaked contrast, showing me exactly at what level the injury was. NOPE. That study, just like her surgery, was completely normal. NORMAL! Usually I want normal studies, but in this case I just wanted to find the goddamned hole.
Hmmm.
The next morning Belle was doing fine, awake, talking, minimal abdominal pain from her incision. Still no signs of peritonitis (or pleuritis, for that matter), and no further bleeding from her chest tube. She was very understanding as I explained how I was still trying to find how the hell this bullet got into her stomach, and that the next test would be an upper endoscopy. Later that day the endoscopist looked at every square centimetre of the inside of both her œsophagus and stomach. NOTHING. No blood, no injury, no hole. Nothing. NOTHING!
Hmmmmmm.
There had to be a hole there! Where the hell is the goddamned hole?
My final study, my last chance, was a swallow study under fluoroscopy. Belle swallowed oral contrast and the radiologist watched it under real-time fluoroscopy. THAT will definitely show me the site of the injury leaing. It will show the injury, right? RIGHT??
Nope. It was normal. Negative. Nothing. There was no hole anywhere.
FUCKING HMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM
Over the next 4 days Belle had what I can only call a completely normal recovery from a completely abnormal surgery (her chest tube was removed on day 3). By her fifth day in hospital, she had essentially no pain, she was eating, she was pooping, she was walking, and she was ready to go home.
I saw her back in my office a week later, and she was continuing her totally normal recovery. I tried (and probably failed) to explain how bizarre a situation this was, and that she was a once-in-a-career type of patient. Sure I've seen other patients who probably should have sustained some kind of damage based on their mechanism of injury but didn't, but never something like this. And I probably never will again.
Belle just laughed and said "Thank you for saving my life."
I was not and still am not sure I saved anything (except maybe her lung).
I have presented this case to literally every other trauma surgeon at my hospital, a few trauma surgeons from other hospitals, a few trauma surgeons from other countries, and DadBastard (who you may remember was a general surgeon for several decades). Not a single one has been able to offer me any insight as to how the FUCK this actually happened other than "Well, I guess it was a magic bullet".
So I offer it to you folks. HOW THE HELL DID THIS HAPPEN?
How many true surprises are there in life? This was the question I asked Mrs. Bastard when she was pregnant with our first child and wanted to find out the baby's gender (and I didn't). Now I've heard the counter argument that the gender of a baby is not a true surprise, because it's either going to be (except in extremely unusual circumstances) an A or a B, so that essentially eliminates the surprise. I wholeheartedly disagree for reasons I find very difficult to elucidate because I'm right and you're wrong and shut up.
Regardless, I suspected my first child would be a girl. Mrs. Bastard "just knew" it was a boy.
The birth turned out to be one surprise after another. To start, after Mrs. Bastard was struggling with labour for about 10 hours, the baby-to-be began showing signs of foetal distress. The "normal" delivery was immediately converted to an emergency C-section.
Surprise #1.
My wife was very calm (and very awake) throughout the surgery, which was so violent that her blood got on her face, the anaesthesiologist's scrubs, and even the ceiling (yes, really).
Surprise #2.
The baby was unceremoniously extracted from my wife, and the first thing I noticed (YES OF COURSE I was in the operating theatre) was the full head of hair followed immediately by decidedly female genitalia. As I leaned down with a grin and said in my wife's ear "I told you it was a girl", the delivery nurse yelled "IT'S A BOY!"
Surprise #3.
It was NOT a boy. MiniBastard Number One was, and still is, a girl, though her actions occasionally make me suspect she is actually a monkey.
Without question the most surprising aspect of that entire experience was that the nurse, whose job is literally taking care of newborn children, could not tell the difference between a girl and a boy. And before anyone comments about ambiguous genitalia, it wasn't. At all. The nurse was just plain wrong.
Now in case you're wondering why the fuck I'm telling this story and how the fuck it relates to trauma, I will now risk giving everyone whiplash and move on to my seemingly-unrelated-but-still-somehow-related gunshot victim story.
Surprise!
It should come as no surprise that the overwhelming majority of my gunshot victims are young males. I get a few women, most of whom have been shot by ex-boyfriends, but the demographic is fairly uniform. So when I was told I would be getting a gunshot to the chest at 3 o'clock in the afternoon, I was 1) surprised it wasn't at 2 AM, and 2) naturally assuming it would be another young man who would be actively dying.
Wrong and wrong.
When the medics wheeled in 78-year-old Bertha (surprise!), she was awake, alert, and, uh, smiling. Every single person in the room immediately turned to each other and quizzically said the exact same thing: "This is supposed to be trauma, so what exactly the fuck is this?"
"Hello everyone, this is Bertha. She was eating lunch when she heard a gunshot and was hit in the arm and chest. No one else in the house could give us any information. The police are on it. Anyway, she's been awake and alert the whole time. Vitals have been stable."
Bertha turned and smiled at me. Surprise!
Any gunshot-wound-to-the-anything immediately gets a full head-to-toe exam, because where there is one hole, there could be two or three or more. Bertha had a through-and-through gunshot wound to her right upper arm, clearly below where the humerus and neurovascular bundle are found. She was also moving her arm just fine, and her radial and ulnar pulses were both normal and equal to the opposite side, so there was obviously no serious injury there. After going through her arm, however, the bullet had entered her right chest around the level of the 6th rib. And there was no exit wound to be found.
Uh oh . . .
No exit wound means just one thing: the bullet it still in there somewhere. Unless I happen to be able to feel the bullet just under the skin somewhere, I have no way of knowing if it went up, down, sideways, diagonally, backwards, or frontwards. Fortunately, however, we have X-rays to help solve the mystery. Two minutes later I was looking at her chest X-ray, which showed . . . nothing. No pneumothorax, no haemothorax, no fractured rib . . .
And no bullet. Nothing. Unfortunately this could mean that the bullet had gone south into her abdomen, though I doubted it since her abdominal exam was normal. An abdominal X-ray a few minutes later confirmed that this had not happened either. There was no bullet.
Surprise!
I re-examined her chest, and there was clearly and undoubtedly a bullet hole there. She had definitely been shot. I also re-examined her from head to toe in an attempt to find the missing hole, but I again came up empty. So where the hell was the bullet?
Bertha smiled pleasantly at me.
With my Inner Pessimist yelling that the bullet had probably entered her heart and embolised to her leg (no it didn't, shut up), we wheeled her over to the CT scanner where the surprises continued. The scan from head-to-toe also revealed no bullet. It also showed no injury to her thorax. It then became apparent that the magic bullet did indeed hit her in the chest, but it had lost enough kinetic energy while traversing her arm that it had simply struck her 6th rib and bounced out.
The bullet bounced out.
As I explained to Bertha that she had a few holes but no actual injuries and that she was incredibly lucky, she just smiled at me and said "Thank you. I think my lunch is probably cold now."
And then I sent my gunshot-wound-to-the-chest patient home.
I got home the next morning and told this story to Mrs. Bastard, and she just nodded her head and said "Blog post?" because nothing I tell her about what I see in the trauma bay ever surprises her anymore. I told it to my daughter (who has exactly zero interest in going into medicine) later that afternoon when she got home from school. All she could say was "Wow".
As for me, I just thought of the question I asked my wife when she was pregnant: How many true surprises are there in life?
If you are reading this, chances are that you repeated an anti-vaccine myth or said you weren't vaccinating your children, and someone referred you in an attempt to dispel that myth. If so, I truly hope you keep reading. Because as you know, this issue is vitally important.
Vaccines are one of the safest and most effective medical tools ever invented. Hang on, hang on. Before you sigh and click "exit", please continue on. Vaccines have saved literally millions of lives and have eradicated two previously rampant diseases from the face of the planet (smallpox and rinderpest), and they potentially have the capability of eliminating several more, including polio and measles. Unfortunately vaccines have been getting rather unfair treatment from people who make all manner of false claims about their risks. The problem is that impressionable parents believe these lies, and vaccination rates have been falling. This has led to unfortunately predictable outbreaks of several vaccine-preventable diseases, including severaloutbreaks of measles which have killed thousands of children in 2019 alone.
That's where this article steps in. I have compiled a list of the most oft-repeated myths, half-truths, and outright lies that hardcore anti-vaccine advocates use to scare parents. And I get it - you love your children and want to protect them. I'm a parent too. I have two small children whom I love more than life itself, and just like you I would do anything and everything to keep them safe.
So with that said, please read on. Nothing I am presenting here is opinion, it is all backed by hard evidence.
I'm placing a handy alphabetised table right here with all 76 82 arguments I'll be discussing for easy reference.
2). . . toxins like mercury
There is no elemental mercury in any vaccine, nor has there ever been. What you are referring to is thimerosal, which is approximately 50% ethylmercury. And while the word "ethylmercury" has the word "mercury" in it, that does not make it either mercury or poison. Think of it this way: the word "chair" has "hair" in it. That doesn't mean it's made of hair.
Ok, that is admittedly a terrible analogy. How about this: sodium is a metal which explodes when exposed to water, and chloride gas is highly poisonous. But when you (well, not you exactly) combine the two into a compound, it produces ordinary table salt (which can still be toxic, but that's a subject for another time). This is basic chemistry. Basic. Heh. Yes, that was a chemistry joke.
Anyway, ethylmercury is not the mercury found in thermometers. It is also not the dangerous mercury compound found in fish. That would be methylmercury, and though it is only one letter different than ethylmercury, it is an entirely different compound with entirely different metabolism and effect on human physiology (just like ethanol, which is the alcohol found in your wine, and methanol, which will kill you if you drink it). Studies have found that ethylmercury is readily metabolised and excreted so does not increase blood mercury levels, while methymercury lingers for much longer and is much more toxic.
This all ignores the fact that thimerosal was removed from all childhood vaccines in the US in 2001. I will address this point further later.
3) . . . and aluminum . . .
Aluminum salts have been used as adjuvants in vaccines for decades. Adjuvants increase the immune response, increasing the chance that a vaccine will grant immunity. The exact mechanism by which it does this is still not clear, but what is clear is that aluminum salts have been extensively studied and found to be safe. This is an excellent review article which documents the excellent safety profile and the minimal risks (including macrophagic myofasciitis) of using aluminum salt adjuvants. Yes, they have risks. But they are very small, mainly because the amount of aluminum in any vaccine is very small. There is also no aluminum in MMR, nor has there every been.
4) . . . and polysorbate 80 . . .
Polysorbate 80 is a surfactant and emulsifier used in innumerable foods, cosmetics, eye drops, mouth wash, etc. It is also used in some vaccines as a stabiliser, but in such tiny amounts as to be negligible to human physiology.
As a comparison, the HPV vaccine contains 50 microgram of polysorbate 80, while a small scoop of ice cream contains about 170,000 micrograms, or 3400 times as much polysorbate 80. (reference) It has also been studied in infants given vaccines with and without polysorbate 80, and it has been found to be safe.
5) . . . aborted foetal tissue . . .
No babies are aborted to manufacture vaccines. A few vaccines are grown on cell lines derived from a foetus that was aborted decades ago, because viruses grow better on the type of cells that they normally infect. The vaccine is then washed, eliminating all but a trace of the growth medium. So there are no dead babies in any vaccine, and no new foetuses are aborted to make vaccines.
6) . . . formaldehyde . . .
Formaldehyde sounds scary, because everyone knows it is the chemical used to preserve corpses. However, formaldehyde is actually a very normal part of human metabolism. As you sit there reading this, your cells are creating way more formaldehyde than could be found in any vaccine. In fact, in the 30 or so seconds it took you to read this paragraph thus far, your liver has metabolised about 11 mg of formaldehyde, which is over 10 times as much as an infant could ever receive from even multiple vaccines (0.7 mg). In the time it took you to read that last sentence, an infant would have already metabolised all the formaldehyde from their vaccines twice. If your infant read that last sentence, however, then Mensa would probably like to have a word with you. And her.
7) . . . cancer virus.
Unfortunately many thousands of people unknowingly (at the time) received a polio vaccine that was tainted (or contaminated, if you'd prefer) with SV40, which is a virus that infects monkeys (the "S" stands for "simian"). And that is truly unfortunate. However, SV40 was not discovered until 1960, whereas the polio vaccine was first produced in 1955. It was simply not yet known. But once it was discovered, it was removed from the polio vaccine (obviously).
Still, by the time it was removed in 1963 about 90% of children had received a polio vaccine contaminated with the virus, which causes tumours in animals. Of course the fear was that it would also cause cancer in humans, and it is true that SV40 has been found in various human cancer cells. However, it has been extensively studied, and while the virus has been found in human cancers, a review of the evidence has shown that SV40 does not cause cancer in humans. It has been studied for over 50 years, and no association has been found. It also hasn't been in any vaccine since 1963, so there is no cancer in any vaccine.
8) Vaccines cause autism.
The short answer here is "No they don't", but that won't (and shouldn't) satisfy you. Vaccines have been studied extensively for their possible role in causing autism. There are exactly ZERO large studies that show any association between vaccines and autism, and while I'm thinking about it there are exactly ZERO small studies which show it. This myth comes from a very small study by former doctor Andrew Wakefield in 1998, where his sample size was only 12 patients. The study was retracted due to ethical violations and scientific misrepresentation, and Wakefield was stripped of his licence to practice medicine (you can read more about his fraud here).
That last one was just published March 4, 2019 and represents probably the largest, most comprehensive study which shows absolutely no link between MMR and autism. They even looked at children who had siblings with autism and other risk factors that would make them high risk for autism, but they still found no link. The conclusion speaks for itself:
Conclusion: The study strongly supports that MMR vaccination does not increase the risk for autism, does not trigger autism in susceptible children, and is not associated with clustering of autism cases after vaccination. It adds to previous studies through significant additional statistical power and by addressing hypotheses of susceptible subgroups and clustering of cases.
That is 7 huge studies including over 2.5 million children vs various anecdotes or Wakefield's fraudulent paper that started it all.
Vaccines DO NOT cause autism.
9) Only MMR has been studied.
I will refer you back to response 8 above. Studies 4, 5, and 6 all looked at children who received thimerosal-containing vaccines. As mentioned above MMR never contained thimerosal. So yes, other vaccines have most definitely been studied, and they all show the same thing - that those other vaccines also do not cause autism.
10) MTHFR
MTHFR stands for methylenetetrahydrofolate reductase. It is a gene on chromosome 1 which encodes an enzyme that catalyses 5,10-methylenetetrahydrofolate to 5-methyltetrahydrofolate (which has to do with homocystine metabolism and is some pretty fancy science). There are many polymorphisms (ie variations) of the genes, and some are incredibly common (for example, 10% of the North American population has 2 copies of a specific polymorphism). Preliminary research shows it may increase the risk of schizophrenia or dementia, but no research shows the gene has anything to do with any vaccine side effect.
MTHFR is a polymorphism, not a mutation. Those two words are not synonymous, and you can read about the difference between them here.
11) What about Hannah Poling?
Hannah Poling had a very rare mitochondrial disorder, so rare that its exact incidence is unknown. She received her normal series of vaccines at 19 months old (DTaP, MMR, HiB, varicella, polio), and two days later was lethargic with a rash. She was diagnosed with vaccine-derived varicella, and several months later continued to have delays in her neurological development. Ultimately she was diagnosed with encephalopathy, followed by language, behaviour, and communication problems. Though mitochondrial disorders can appear quite similar to autism, her parents (including her father, who is a neurologist) took her case to the Vaccine Court and won.
While it may appear that means that vaccines caused her autism, it really doesn't. Dr. Paul Offit has reviewed this case in very specific detail here, but I'll give a short summary nevertheless: Infections are known to exacerbate encephalopathy but vaccines are not. And children with mitochondrial disorders are at a higher risk of infections, which can exacerbate encephalopathy.
So did vaccines cause Hannah's autism? No.
12) Dr. Andrew Zimmerman said vaccines cause autism.
Andrew Zimmerman is a paediatric neurologist who co-authored a case report in 2006 which documented a child with a mitochondrial disorder who developed autism after being vaccinated (sound familiar?). While this is being translated by anti-vaccine advocates as "VACCINES CAN CAUSE AUTISM!", the issue is actually much more complex. Dr. Zimmerman's full statement was: "There may be a subset of children who are at risk of regression if they have underlying mitochondrial dysfunction and are simultaneously exposed to factors that stress their mitochrondrial reserve (which is critical for developing the brain). Such factors might include infections, as well as metabolic and immune factors, and vaccines".
In other words, children with these extremely rare disorders may be predisposed to developing autism or autism-like symptoms if they are exposed to some environmental trigger. Vaccines may be one of them, but there are many others as well. Keep in mind that children are exposed to thousands of antigens every single day of their lives. Unless they are kept in a sterile bubble, the risk with these children is way higher with infectious diseases compared to vaccines.
14) CDC whistleblower.
This is merely an elaborate conspiracy. It involves a team of CDC researchers, including William Thompson, supposedly throwing data in the garbage can (literally) which purportedly showed that black children were more than three times more likely to develop autism as a result of vaccines. This was supposedly found after a non-scientist named Brian Hooker re-evaluated the data.
Unfortunately there are a few problems with this: first, who keeps paper data anymore? Data is all digital and backed up repeatedly in multiple locations. If they didn't then they are shoddy researchers who should not be trusted with anything. Second, William Thompson is still employed by CDC. Whistleblowers generally do not continue working for the company or agency against whom they blew a whistle. Third, the re-evaluation by Hooker was completely incorrectly done, using the wrong statistical analysis to evaluate the data. And fourth, even if the re-evaluation were true (it isn't - read here), it only shows an increase in risk in one demographic (black males). It did not show any increased risk in white boys or girls. This would mean that vaccines STILL do not cause autism in every other demographic.
15) Why is my unvaccinated kid such a threat to your vaccinated kid if vaccines work?
There are several answers to this question. First, no vaccine is 100% effective. The closest is measles, which is 97% effective after two doses. So despite the fact that a very high percentage of children are vaccinated, there is a 3% chance that it will still fail. Second, not all children can be vaccinated due to immunocompromise. Third, some children are too young to be vaccinated and are completely unprotected. Fourth, believe it or not we care about your child too. No child should contract and suffer through any of these diseases if it can be avoided.
16) These are all just harmless childhood diseases.
None of these vaccine-preventable diseases is harmless. Measles, for example, continues to kill over 100,000 children every year. In fact, there has only been one year on record that measles has killed fewer than 100,000 children (2016). Between 2000 and 2017, global measles vaccination increased from 72 to 85%, while during the same period measles rates decreased 83% and measles deaths fell 80%. Let me repeat - measles deaths fell 80%. To this you may say "But that isn't happening in my country!", but that is rather heartless. Children are dying of these diseases to this day.
And that's just for measles (which seems to have become the poster child for "harmless" vaccine-preventable diseases). Unfortunately this argument ignores all the other various deadly and/or debilitating diseases for which vaccines exist (hepatitis B, Haemophilus influenza, meningitis, polio, etc). Even chicken pox. Yes, chicken pox, which used to kill about hundred kids in the United States alone each year before the vaccine. Even one child killed by chicken pox is too many. And after the vaccine was introduced, this happened:
Some people try to use an episode of "The Brady Bunch" as evidence that measles was considered harmless, but keep in mind that was a sitcom, produced to make people laugh. It was not a documentary on the supposed (but nonexistent) benign nature of infectious diseases.
Consider this picture:
which shows two young cousins age 4 and 7 who died within 2 days of each other from diphtheria, which is preventable with a vaccine.
Or this:
which shows two brothers and a sister, ages 7, 10, and 11, who all died within about two weeks of each other of diphtheria, which is preventable with a vaccine.
The fact is there are graveyards filled with the gravestones of children who died of vaccine-preventable diseases. While it is true that most children survive these diseases, all of them can kill, and not a single one of them is truly benign. NONE of them.
17) But there are too many vaccines on the schedule. 72 doses!
You have probably seen this graphic (or a similar one):
This is supposed to scare people into thinking that kids just get more unnecessary shots compared to 50 years ago. But when you look closer, the truth becomes clear. In 1960 there were only three shots which prevented 5 diseases (polio, smallpox, diphtheria, pertussis, and tetanus). By 1983 this had been expanded to include 3 more diseases (measles, mumps, and rubella), and studies had shown that efficacy was much better for several vaccines when boosters were given. By 2016 we were now able to protect children from several other diseases, including flu, rotavirus, chicken pox, hepatitis A, hepatitis B, haemophilus influenza, pneumococcus, and meningitis. Protecting children from diseases is a good thing, not a bad thing. Yes we give children many more shots now, but only because we don't want them to suffer or die the way so many others did.
I had chicken pox as a child because there was no vaccine for it at the time. I remember it vividly because it was unquestionably the worst week of my life. I wouldn't wish chicken pox on my worst enemy, so it's fortunate we now have a vaccine for it. I watched my sister almost die from H flu meningitis when she was a toddler (also no vaccine at the time). She survived and recovered fully, but the kid in the adjacent room was not so lucky. He died. But we can now prevent that disease, which is a very good thing.
18) There are too many vaccines too soon.
There is no evidence to support such a statement. You have probably been led to believe that children's immune systems are not developed enough to be able to handle the antigens in a vaccine, but keep in mind children can handle all the other thousands or millions of antigens they deal with every day. If you've ever watched an infant for more than 5 seconds, you know they put everything right in their mouths. That teething ring your little angel just put back in her mouth was sitting on the floor that you walk on. Unless you sterilised your shoes this morning, your floor (and that teething ring) are covered in antigens (ie germs). Your child's immune system can handle that, so it can handle a few antigens in a few vaccines, even at the same time.
20) But the vaccine court has paid out billions. This proves vaccine injury is real and vaccines are dangerous.
The vaccine court was created in the United States to make it easier for parents to get compensation for serious adverse events following vaccination. So let's actually look at the numbers from the vaccine court. According to the latest statistics (July, 2018) between 2006 and 2016 a total of 3,153,876,236 doses of vaccines were distributed in the US. Over that same time period, there were 3727 compensable claims in the vaccine court amounting to $1.74 billion (the $3.5 billion number being bandied about is the total amount give by the court since its inception in 1989). Crunching the numbers shows us 3727 claims divided by 3,153,876,236 doses of vaccines, which comes out to 0.000118%. That is just over 1 compensable claim per million doses. In other words, the amount the vaccine court has awarded seems huge at first glance, but it is far less important than the actual number of cases, and the number of cases is far less important than the proportion of compensable cases compared to doses given. And that's one per million doses
The numbers from the vaccine court prove that vaccines are not 100% safe (which is fully acknowledged by everyone in the medical field), but that they are REALLY close.
As for the claim that vaccine manufacturers are immune from being sued, no they aren't. While it is true in the US that you go through the vaccine court first, it is still possible for the manufacturers to be sued. And this is of course ignoring the fact that the vaccine court (and NCVIP) only applies in one country on the planet.
21) Only 10% of vaccine reactions are even reported.
I'm not sure where that estimate came from, but I do see it repeated very often. Regardless, of course most adverse events aren't reported, because most vaccine reactions are mild and self-limiting (injection site pain, swelling, and redness). My arm was a bit sore after my last flu shot. Technically that is a "vaccine reaction", but did I report it? No. The serious ones get reported.
22) It's my child, so it's my choice.
Of course it's your choice, and no one is saying it isn't (except the truly hardcore vaccine proponents, who overstate things about child protective services). But what if you choose to beat your child with a plank of wood? Is that your choice?
Yes, how you raise your child is your choice. No one is trying to take your choices away from you. If you want to feed your kid nothing but organic, free range, sugar-free, gluten-free, non-GMO kale, that's your prerogative. You'll probably end up with a malnourished (and picky) (and very angry) kid, but that's completely up to you. And sure, not vaccinating your child is also your choice. No one is going to force you to take your kid to the doctor for her shots no matter what anti- or pro-vaccine fear mongers want you to believe, and no one is going to snatch them away and do it without your knowledge or consent. But if you are making that choice based on misinformation and fear, then you are making the wrong choice.
23) Compulsory vaccines are wrong.
I suppose that depends on your definition of "wrong". If you mean it violates your civil rights or civil liberties, no it doesn't. The United States Supreme Court ruled that states may indeed enact mandatory vaccination laws in Jacobson v Massachusetts. And they also ruled in Zucht v. King that schools may refuse admission to children who are not vaccinated.
There are currently mandatory vaccination laws in Argentina, Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, China, Croatia, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Malta, Latvia, Pakistan, Poland, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, and Ukraine (no, the US and Canada have no federal law mandating vaccines, though all 50 states and 3 provinces require children to be vaccinated prior to starting school).
Vaccination laws do not violate any civil liberties.
24) Unvaccinated children are healthier.
No they aren't. There are no reputable studies that support this argument. There are a few which have been published, most notably one by Mawson which was first retracted and then published in a predatory journal, but it was just a questionnaire of mothers who homeschool their children. Medical records were not consulted, and vaccination status was not verified. In fact, the authors even state this as the potential limitation of the "study": "We did not set out to test a specific hypothesis about the association between vaccination and health." The other is a questionnaire (again, not a study) by German homeopath Bachmair, which is also not a study.
All of these real studies show the same thing - that unvaccinated children are NOT healthier but contract vaccine-preventable diseases at a MUCH higher rate than vaccinated children." Vaccinated children do not have a higher risk of asthma, allergies, or cognitive issues.
25) There is no true study of unvaccinated vs vaccinated children!
True. That study would be unethical, because it would purposefully withhold vaccines from 50% of the study participants, which would be the vulnerable children everyone is trying to protect. A "true" vaccinated-unvaccinated study would observe tens or hundreds of thousands of children from birth through adulthood, with only half of them getting vaccinated, leaving the other half vulnerable, though no one would know which half was which. While I'm sure some die-hard anti-vaccine advocates would volunteer their children to be in the unvaccinated arm of such a study, that's not the way these randomised studies work. First, there would be a 50% chance that anyone else's child would be in the unvaccinated arm, leaving them vulnerable to various diseases, and no reasonable parent would consent to such a study. Plus, there would be a 50% chance the anti-vaccine advocates' child would be in the vaccinated arm, and I somehow doubt they would be ok with that either.
Regardless, no researcher with any sense of ethics would allow such a study to be done, knowing that half the children in the study are being left unprotected from so many preventable diseases, and no institutional review board would allow such a study to be proposed, let alone done. It will simply never happen.
26) According to VAERS . . .
If you are using the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System in your argument, then I need to explain what VAERS is and how it works. VAERS is a passive reporting system where literally anyone can report any adverse reaction to a vaccine. I'll repeat - anyone can report any adverse reaction in VAERS. As an example, there are several children who have died in car accidents in VAERS:
There was also (for a short time) a report in VAERS of Dr. James Laidler receiving a measles vaccine, and the following day he reports that his skin turned green, his muscles grew, and he displayed uncontrolled rage: signs that he was turning into The Incredible Hulk. As Dr. Laidler wrote,
And before you ask, that's not a joke. I mean the "reaction" was clearly a joke, but the fact that Hulk is in VAERS is not. It just underscores the worthlessness in using VAERS as evidence that vaccines are unsafe. Do not misunderstand me, VAERS is extremely important because it can help scientists track side effects from various vaccines. But make no mistake: VAERS is not evidence that "vaccine damage" is real or that vaccines are dangerous.
27) Vaccines are not 100% effective.
No they aren't, and no one has ever claimed they are. Seat belts aren't 100% effective either, but you should still wear one.
Let's just see exactly how well they do work:
Incidence of tetanus: decreased by 96%
Incidence of pertussis: decreased by 86%
Incidence of measles: decreased by over 99%
Incidence of hepatitis B: decreased by 87%
Incidence of diphtheria: decreased by 100%
Yes, vaccines are spectacularly effective.
28) Vaccines are not 100% safe.
Nothing is 100% safe. When discussing severe side effects, vaccines are approximately 99.9999% safe (1 severe adverse event per 1 million doses). If I told you that the severe complication rate from a "routine" surgery was 1/1000, would you run away screaming? Probably not, but that is the true number for "routine" gall bladder surgery, and it is literally one thousand times higher than the risk from any vaccine. And while many severe surgical complications result in death or permanent disability, the overwhelming majority of patients with severe adverse reactions from vaccines recover completely.
29) The flu vaccine is worthless.
I will agree that the flu vaccine is the least effective vaccine available, and the efficacy varies from year to year depending on how close the vaccines approximate the prevalent infecting strains. As opposed to the ones above, the average efficacy is around 45%, which at first admittedly sounds pretty terrible. But look at it this way - 45% is literally infinity times higher than 0%, which is exactly how effective not getting a flu shot is.
31) The flu shot causes the flu.
No it doesn't, and it never has. Not occasionally, not sometimes, NEVER. The flu shot is a dead virus vaccine, meaning it is 100% biologically impossible to get the flu from a flu shot. Feeling a little crummy for a day or two after a flu shot is not the flu - that's your body's immune system reacting to the shot, meaning it is doing what it is supposed to do. If you got the actual flu immediately after getting a flu shot, you had either 1) probably already acquired the virus but hadn't shown symptoms yet, or 2) picked it up wherever you got the shot.
Note this refers to the flu shot, not the flu mist, which is an attenuated vaccine.
34) I've never gotten the flu shot, and I've never gotten the flu.
That's great. But let me pose this silly scenario: I put a banana in my fireplace every night before I go to sleep, and I have never had a bear break into my house. So does that mean the banana prevents bear attacks?
Ok ok, I'll give you a slightly less silly analogy - I've never gotten into a serious car accident and I don't wear my seat belt, so I don't need to wear a seat belt. Or consider this - I do not have a smoke detector in my house or a fire extinguisher, and I have never had a fire in my house, so I need neither a smoke detector nor a fire extinguisher. Or how about this - my kid has never crashed his bicycle and suffered a severe traumatic brain injury and he never wears a helmet, so he doesn't need to wear a helmet.
The fact that you've never gotten the flu despite not getting the flu shot doesn't mean you don't need the flu shot, it just means you happened not to need it before. It doesn't mean your immune system is better than anyone else's. It only indicates that you have been lucky so far.
35) Why would you give a 1-day old baby a hepatitis B vaccine?
Hepatitis B is not just an infection of IV drug abusers and prostitutes. It is an extremely serious infection worldwide, with nearly 300 million people suffering from it. An estimated 2 million children worldwide are infected with hep B. The big problem is that when contracted as a child, hepatitis B is much more likely to develop into a chronic disease, resulting in cirrhosis or liver cancer. It can be transmitted from mother to child during childbirth, or from child-to-child from bites or other bodily fluids. No one is saying your child is going to shoot up heroin at age 3, but at the same time you can't guarantee the little brat next door who is unknowingly and asymptomatically infected isn't going to bite your kid and give him a death sentence.
The great part about the hep B vaccine is that it is extremely effective, with a 72% worldwide drop in prevalence due to widespread vaccination. That should also put your fear that a 1-day-old baby isn't equipped to handle a vaccine to rest. But wait, there's more! The best part is that the vaccine has been shown to last for at least 30 years, with no boosters needed after the initial 3-shot series. In other words, a vaccine given to a newborn child will last well into and through their doing-stupid-stuff years.
36) Vaccine immunity wanes.
Depending on the vaccine, yes sometimes it does. However, if it waned significantly, we'd be seeing epidemics of diphtheria, polio, and measles in previously vaccinated adults. Have you heard of any of those?
No?
Me either.
If you're still arguing, see #37 below.
37) The pertussis vaccine doesn't work.
It is true that the current pertussis vaccine doesn't work as well as the previous one. The original pertussis vaccine was a whole cell vaccine, meaning the entire B. pertussis bacterium (inactivated) was used, and it was extremely effective. However, due to a relatively high rate of local adverse reactions (pain, redness, and swelling), it was swapped for an acellular vaccine, which contains only pertussis toxin or other various components of the bacterium and not the whole organism. However, not only is the acellular vaccine more expensive, but the local side effect rate is about the same as the whole cell version. To make things worse, it is not as effective as the whole cell vaccine, and immunity tends to wane within 5-7 years. But immunity to the tetanus portion of the DPT combination vaccine also wanes in about 10 years, so boosters are recommended for both.
That's the end of that story. It works, but not as well as the previous version, and not as well as it should. A better vaccine is necessary. Don't worry, I'm not entirely satisfied with that answer either.
38) Natural immunity is better than artificial immunity.
That depends on your definition of "better":
-Longer lasting? Sure.
-Doesn't require a scary shot with scary-sounding ingredients which are not actually scary once you understand them? Most definitely.
-Requires you to suffer through the disease AND SURVIVE in order to gain immunity? YES.
Not suffering through a disease is always better than suffering through a disease, I assure you.
Plus, I am also baffled why anyone thinks "natural" is somehow better. Belladonna is natural, but it will kill you. Tornadoes are completely natural, but they will kill you. It doesn't get much more natural than the Sydney funnel-web spider, but it will kill you. Natural does not necessarily mean better. At all.
39) I've never met anyone who has had any of these diseases.
This statement is incredibly ironic since it implies that these vaccines actually work extremely well. Vaccines are a victim of their own success. Because they work so well and have nearly eradicated so many previously common diseases, doctors in practice now have probably never seen most (if not all) of them, nor have parents. The memory of children dead or disabled from polio, the vision of rows upon rows of children in hospitals in iron lungs has faded to the point where some people actually believe polio was relatively harmless. The fact that smallpox hospitals, entire hospitals dedicated to treating smallpox, no longer even need to exist because of vaccines is lost to the ravages of time. No one remembers the parents waiting in line to get their kids vaccinated against measles. But those lines still exist today:
This is what was happening to mortality in the first half of the 20th century. It is clear that mortality rates were indeed falling since the turn of the 20th century to the point where the mortality was near 0 for most of these diseases, but that can be attributed to huge advances in medical science, including supportive care, antibiotics, mechanical ventilation, etc. So of course mortality of everything would improve. To illustrate, life expectancy in the US in 1900 was 47 years for a white man, and by 1950 it had increased to 65.6 (an improvement of over 28% in just 50 years).
But the number of cases of these diseases (ALL OF THEM) did not fall until the vaccines were introduced. Again, to illustrate:
These are the disease rates of polio and measles, and you can once again plainly see that the rates DID NOT FALL until the vaccines were introduced. And as each vaccine was introduced, that disease's rate fell dramatically. It happened every time a new vaccine was introduced, right on schedule.
diphtheria rates began to decline in the 1930's after the vaccine was introduced, and
polio rates began to decline in 1955 when the vaccine was introduced, and
measles rates began to decline in 1963 when the vaccine was introduced, and
rubella rates began to decline in 1969 when the vaccine was introduced, and
chicken pox rates began to decline in 1995 when the vaccine was introduced, and
rotavirus rates began to decline in 2006 when the vaccine was introduced.
Furthermore, while the mortality graph sure makes it looks like the mortality rate of these diseases was 0, it was not. Not remotely. Hundreds of children in the US still died every year of measles:
Notice this graph starts in 1950, after the mortality rate had dropped so close to 0 according to your graph. That "so close to 0" still translated to 400-500 dead children in the US every year. And once the vaccine was introduced, then and only then did it actually drop to 0.
42) Vaccines cause SIDS.
No they don't. You have this entirely backwards: vaccines reduce the risk of SIDS by 50%. This is based not just one one paper, not two, but a meta-analysis of nine case-control studies looking at the relationship between vaccination and SIDS. And it found that vaccination decreases the risk of SIDS by half.
Vaccines DO NOT cause SIDS. They never have.
43) SIDS is listed on the package insert as a potential side effect!
Oh, you must be talking about this?
This is an excerpt from the vaccine package insert which says, "Adverse events reported during post-approval use". It also says "Because these events are reported voluntarily from a population of uncertain size, it is not always possible to reliably estimate their frequencies or to establish a causal relationship".
The vaccine insert is a legal document, and vaccine manufacturers are legally obligated to list every adverse event that has been reported, regardless of whether or not the vaccine has caused it. That's also why you see "autism" on that list. It has been reported in children who have gotten that vaccine. But autism has also been reported in children who have not gotten that vaccine, though there is no legal document for that. The vaccine insert does not state, imply, or in any other way suggest that the vaccine caused it.
This also ignores the fact that around the world over 100,000 children still die of measles every year (see #16 above).
45) But over 100 people have died of the MMR since 2003, so more people die of the vaccine than the disease.
This "100" figure is derived from VAERS, which as you learned in #26 above is not designed to track that kind of data. So, there is no way to determine if this figure is even remotely true, though I highly doubt it is even close. There are about 4 million children born in the US each year, and since median vaccine coverage is 94.3%, that's 3,772,000 children getting the measles vaccine each year. As we know the serious adverse event rate is around 1 per million doses, so that would be between 3 and 4 serious adverse events annually, and most children recover completely. Even if they all died (they don't), that would be 16 years x 3.7 children = approximately 59 deaths, not 100. And that's if they all died, which they most assuredly do not.
So, no.
46) Doctors even admit that vaccines are dangerous.
Do they? Which ones? How many of them? This is just another form of "Some people believe . . ." If I were to say, "I believe the sky is purple", I could then logically go on to say "Some people believe the sky is purple". Is the sky purple? Does that make the sky purple? Of course not, but some people believe it is, so that means it might be true! Except that it doesn't.
What you're saying is that some doctors believe it, or at least they say they do. These are fringe doctors who are members of fringe groups who believe fringe things. So the important question is, what other beliefs do these doctors espouse? If you look hard enough you can find paleontologists who believe earth is less than 10,000 years old (like this guy who has a Ph.D in paleontology from Harvard. Seriously). I will grant that there are a few doctors who are anti-vaccine, the most prominent and/or vocal being:
Joe Mercola, DO, who also believes that sunscreen causes skin cancer, homeopathy can treat autism, and HIV does not cause AIDS; and who has an online store;
Sherri Tenpenny, DO, who also believes an earthquake could cause California to fall off North America and sink into the Pacific Ocean, and who missed her entire third grade because she was too sick; and who has an online store;
Toni Bark, MD, who also practices homeopathy, and who has an online store;
Russell Blaylock, MD, who also believes in chemtrails, that aspartame causes multiple sclerosis, and that MSG is toxic to the brain; and who has an online store;
Tetyana Obukhanych, PhD who is not a physician but does have a Ph.D in immunology, who believes that immunology has no evidence-based explanation for immunity due to vaccines, that vaccines compromise our "natural immunity", and that homeopathy works;
Jack Wolfson, DO, who touts himself as a "holistic cardiologist", charges a $2800 fee for an initial consultation, and who believes children should get measles, mumps, rubella, and chicken pox because it is "their right"; and who has an online store;
Kelly Brogan, MD, who is also an HIV-AIDS denialist, advises diabetics not to take insulin, and who has an online store;
Suzanne Humphries, MD, who believes homeopathy works, who believes pertussis can be treated with vitamin C, and who believes the bible is a reason not to vaccinate; but who does not have an online store
Yes, there are a handful of fringe doctors out there who say that vaccines are dangerous. But these are charlatans who are seizing on the very fear that brought you here to attract gullible people and make money. That's why these people almost invariably have online stores, and how Mercola brings in about $10 million per year from his website.
Keep in mind that every single major medical association in the entire world supports vaccines. Every. Single. One. And if you've heard of the American Association of Physicians and Surgeons, despite their official-sounding name they're one of those fringe groups I mentioned who have advocated such beliefs as AIDS denialism and abortions causing breast cancer. Quacks, all.
47) Vaccines cause autoimmune diseases.
There are a few known associations of vaccines increasing the risk of certain autoimmune diseases, such as the flu vaccine and Guillain-Barré and MMR with immune thrombocytopenic purpura (ITP). And it makes sense that vaccines could hypothetically cause autoimmune diseases, since they are designed to stimulate the immune system, and autoimmune diseases are disorders of that immune system. However, studies have shown that these are very rare. Using MMR and ITP as an example, there is an increased risk. However, 1) the risk with vaccines is lower than it is with measles infection, 2) the clinical course of ITP after vaccination is less severe compared to ITP after measles infection, and 3) 90% of children with ITP resolve completely within 6 months.
If you're curious about the actual risk, they only described 23 cases in 700,000 children. That's just 0.0033%.
As for other autoimmune diseases (like ASIA), these occurrences are so fleetingly rare that studying them is difficult exactly because of their rarity, and some researchers do not believe ASIA even exists. An excellent review article can be found here which details pretty much everything I just said.
48) Vaccines cause seizures.
Febrile seizures are a well-known and relatively common side effect of vaccines, but they are also a well-known and relatively common side effect of many febrile illnesses. That's why they are called "febrile seizures" - it's the fever that causes them. They also aren't nearly as common as you may think - this study found a risk of 1 febrile seizure per 3,300 vaccinations even when multiple vaccines were given at the same time. Keep in mind that 3-5% of children experience a febrile seizure each year due to an infection (in other words unrelated to vaccines), so a busy paediatrician seeing 500 infants each year would see one vaccine-related febrile seizure every 5-10 years.
Febrile seizures are terrifying to parents, make no mistake. But as scary as they look, they are benign.
49) Vaccines cause allergies, asthma, and eczema.
This myth is referring to the supposed epidemic of food allergies, peanut allergies, atopic dermatitis, etc. This myth is not, however, supported by actual data.
This study of thousands of children across 97 centers in 10 countries showed no evidence that any vaccine is associated with food allergies, airborne allergies, or eczema. This study of over 1000 children found the exact same thing. This British study of over 29,000 children found the exact same thing. And this study of nearly 15,000 children across 5 countries found, once again, the exact same thing.
There are multiple studies of tens of thousands of children across dozens of countries around the globe which all show that vaccines are not associated with allergies, asthma, or eczema.
50) What about the Cutter Incident?
This is one of those terribly unfortunate tragedies in medicine that should never happen but still did. A batch of live polio vaccines made by Cutter Laboratories in 1955 were not properly inactivated, and at least 120,000 people received them before they were recalled, now known as the Cutter Incident. This caused about 40,000 cases of mild polio, 56 cases of paralysis, and 5 deaths.
There are other medical tragedies, including the production and distribution of blood products tainted with HIV prior to the virus having been discovered, Dr. Mengele's horrific human experimentation during the Holocaust, and similar ghastly experiments on humans in Japan's Unit 731. But perhaps the most notorious is the 1932 Tuskegee Study, in which black men who were already infected with syphilis were knowingly not treated for the infection, even after penicillin was proved to treat it successfully in 1947. The investigators withheld both treatment and information about that treatment until a whistleblower finally blew the lid off in 1972. The fact that this continued for 40 years only compounds its utterly unethical nature, and it has fueled a deep distrust in the medical industry which continues to this day.
These occurrences are rare but terrible. There is absolutely no doubt that they should never happen. But they have, they did, and they still do. However, this is hardly a reason to argue against vaccination in general. Incidents like these should be taken as very difficult lessons from which we can learn and then prevent anything like them from ever happening again.
51) And the Simpsonwood meeting . . .
And here is where we start diving into Conspiracy Theory Land. This CDC conference ("Scientific Review of Vaccine Safety Datalink Information" actually happened in 2000. They reviewed the data regarding the possible link between thimerosal and autism and ultimately refuted any link, obviously. Enter Robert F. Kennedy, Jr, who wrote an article in 2005 (that was retracted by Salon) alleging the conference was intended to hide the evidence and that the lead author, Thomas Verstraeten, altered it.
Well there are a few problems with this - first, the entire transcript of the meeting is freely available (for example here) (warning, it's really long), and there is no evidence of any conspiracy to cover up or change any evidence. Second, the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions reviewed the entire affair and found no evidence of any impropriety by either Dr. Verstraeten or the CDC. In fact, they concluded "Instead of hiding the data or restricting access to it, CDC distributed it, often to individuals who had never seen it before, and solicited outside opinion regarding how to interpret it".
52) We just need safer vaccines.
I wish I could just say "Obviously" and leave it at that. We need safer everything - safer cars, safer bicycle helmets, safer sports gear, safer lawn mowers, safer lithium batteries, safer home wiring, safer food, safer schools. Everything around us should be safe, and everything around us (for the most part) has been designed specifically to be as safe as possible with the available technology. As safer technology evolves (think seat belts followed by air bags followed by even more air bags), products get ever safer. The same goes with vaccines. As vaccine science has evolved, the number of antigens in vaccines has decreased dramatically even as the number of vaccines given has increased:
And as the science continues to evolve, the products will continue to become safer.
53) Measles protects against cancer.
This silly claim is based on this one article (I can't even call it a study) from 1998 in which anthroposophic practitioners (I can't even call them doctors) in Switzerland conducted a questionnaire and supposedly found that the number of febrile illnesses (ie measles, mumps, rubella, chicken pox, pertussis, etc) was inversely proportional to the risk of non-breast cancer. Why is this such a silly claim? To start, anthroposophic medicine is an alternative practice based on the occult, homeopathy, and other assorted pseudoscientific nonsense. As an example, Rudolf Steiner, one of the founders of anthroposophic medicine, believed 1) that the sex of a baby was determined at conception by the alignment of the stars, and 2) that the heart was not actually a pump, but that instead blood circulates via its own "biological momentum". If the founder of such a cult (I can't even call it a form of alternative medicine) can't even understand concepts as (relatively) simple as genetics and the circulatory system, I can hardly expect his devout followers to understand something as complex as running a scientific study.
And this was in fact not a scientific study. It was merely a survey of anthroposophic practitioners with all the inherent confirmation bias and observation bias one would expect. This is similar to the Bachmair questionnaire where only home-school mothers were surveyed by a homeopath. It begins with a biased premise and just goes off the rails from there.
The main reason this article is completely worthless is that it has not been replicated despite 20 years of opportunity to do so. This sort of information should have elicited an "AHA!" reaction from the medical world. Instead, there has been nothing. No replication, no confirmation, nothing. It simply isn't true.
In short, yes some live virus vaccines shed as these case reports prove. However, the cases are milder than wild-type infections, and they are extremely rare. Millions of doses of these vaccines are given every year, so this argument only strengthens the argument that vaccines are extremely safe.
55) The flu shot has never been tested for its ability to cause cancer.
You have probably seen this graphic:
Here is the reality - all vaccines (ALL OF THEM) go through pre-clinical toxicology testing for safety, including mutagenicity and carcinogenicity. But the problem with the flu shot is that the component for each year's shot is different, so each year's shot cannot possibly be tested prior to being used. But the data from several decades' worth of flu vaccination is that it does not cause cancer.
First, we’ve got population. The world today has 6.8 billion people. That’s headed up to about nine billion. Now, if we do a really great job on new vaccines, health care, reproductive health services, we could lower that by, perhaps, 10 or 15 percent
While that may seem damning, he wasn't talking about reducing population, he was talking about reducing population growth. Mr. Gates was referring to ways to reduce the creation of carbon dioxide, and one of those is to reduce the rate of population growth, not to reduce population. THAT is what he meant by "lower that by 10-15%". He has said repeatedly that as vaccination rates go up in developing nations, infant mortality goes down, and as more children survive, parents don't feel the need to have 8 or 10 children anymore (emphasis added):
"A surprising but critical fact we learned was that reducing the number of deaths actually reduces population growth. […] Contrary to the Malthusian view that population will grow to the limit of however many kids can be fed, in fact parents choose to have enough kids to give them a high chance that several will survive to support them as they grow old. As the number of kids who survive to adulthood goes up, parents can achieve this goal without having as many children."
and
"When a mother can choose how many children to have, her children are healthier, they’re better nourished, their mental capacities are higher—and parents have more time and money to spend on each child’s health and schooling. That’s how families and countries get out of poverty. This link between saving lives, a lower birthrate, and ending poverty was the most important early lesson Melinda and I learned about global health."
There is no eugenics conspiracy, no depopulation, no agenda 21, and no conspiracy to decrease the world population to 500 million.
57) Vaccines are contaminated with harmful particles.
This myth refers to Antonietta Gatti's rather silly evaluation of so-called contamination of vaccines with nanoparticles which backfired. First, you'll notice the paper is on Medcrave, not Pubmed. That should be a huge red flag, because Medcrave is a for-profit open-access predatory publisher. As an example, this writer had a completely fictitious case report accepted for publication, completely with supposed peer-review, for $799.
Regardless, Gatti and her partners found varying numbers of inorganic particles when they evaporated 44 samples of 30 different vaccines and looked at them under an electron microscope. And they found tiny particles of various substances including tungsten, gold, aluminum, etc, ranging from two to 1821 particles per 20 microlitres of fluid. While that seems scary, that is an incredibly small amount of these substances compared to the amount of the vaccine, which is itself very small.
They didn't use any controls, so there is no telling how many of these particles would be found in tap water or sterile saline or distilled water or anything else. The bottom line is that nothing is completely pure, but this study actually shows that vaccines are very, very pure.
58) Gardasil is dangerous.
The usual supposed dangers I hear about Gardasil are autoimmune disorders, demyelinating diseases (like multiple sclerosis), and miscarriage. However, there are myriad safety studies of Gardasil showing it to be very safe. Here is a review of 109 safety studies across six countries including over 2.5 million subjects which showed only an increased risk of local injection site reactions (pain, redness, swelling), but no increased risk of any of the various things supposedly attributed to HPV vaccines, including demyelinating diseases and neurological syndromes.
And here is a study of nearly 1 million girls in Denmark and Sweden which shows no increased risk of autoimmune, neurological, or thromboembolic events.
The bottom line is that Gardasil is very safe. Oh, and it prevents cancer.
59) Gardasil causes premature ovarian failure.
Sorry, I left that out the last one. There are case reports of teenage girls developing primary ovarian insufficiency after HPV vaccination. But these are mere anecdotes, and even before HPV vaccination there was a 22/100,000 rate of primary ovarian insufficiency, so it has always existed. But this study of nearly 200,000 girls showed no increased risk of primary ovarian insufficiency after HPV vaccination.
60) Herd immunity doesn't exist.
Sure it does. It's been demonstrated numerous times, but I think one of the best examples was this study from Burkina Faso, in which nearly 90% of the population at risk was vaccinated for meningitis (Neisseria meningitidis serotype A, or NmA), and 13 months later when the subjects (both the vaccinated and unvaccinated) were resampled, exactly ZERO still carried NmA. As the authors conclude, "The disappearance of NmA carriage among both vaccinated and unvaccinated populations is consistent with a vaccine-induced herd immunity effect".
That's just one example. There are many others.
61) X didn't exist before vaccines.
I've seen various claims here, but the most common ones are autism (of course) and SIDS. Leo Kanner first described autism in 1943 before all but two vaccines (smallpox and diphtheria) were invented (diphtheria antitoxin was invented in 1901, and Hans Asperger was lecturing about a group of children with autism in 1938, but the vaccine didn't come out until the 1920's). And Eugen Bleuler first used the term "autism" in 1908. That is a very long-winded way of saying yes, autism actually existed before vaccines. Except smallpox, but I haven't seen a single person arguing that the smallpox vaccine causes autism. Probably because it doesn't.
Do you know what else decreases the risk of SIDS? Right, vaccines.
62) Polio never went away, it was just renamed transverse myelitis or GBS or acute flaccid myelitis.
Take a look at this:
That's a polio virus. Polio is a viral disease, and all those other things are not (as far as we know). When polio virus is isolated from a patient with a paralytic disease, it is then called polio. However, the virus cannot be isolated from a patient with Guillain–Barré syndrome, because it does not cause Guillain–Barré syndrome. It cannot be isolated from transverse myelitis patients, because it does not cause transverse myelitis. It cannot be isolated from acute flaccid myelitis patients, because it does not cause acute flaccid myelitis. While we don't know what does cause acute flaccid myelitis, we do know it is not polio.
There are several different, distinct paralytic diseases, and they all present differently. That's why they are different, distinct diseases. Polio is polio, and not polio is not polio.
However, far more common are outbreaks (and subsequent deaths) in unvaccinated (or undervaccinated) populations. Looking back at the recent Disneyland measles outbreak in 2015, 45% of the patients from California were unvaccinated while only 7% were fully vaccinated (the rest were either undervaccinated or had an unknown vaccination status).
An even sadder example is the 2019 Philippines outbreak, with nearly 15,000 cases and over 230 deaths (so far as of this writing), 65% of whom were unvaccinated.
Another example is the current outbreak of measles in Ukraine, with 24,000 cases and 9 deaths
And an even more tragic example is the ongoing outbreak of measles in Madagascar, where they have had over 82,000 cases and about 1000 deaths, two-thirds of whom were unvaccinated.
64) Squalene is dangerous.
Squalene is not an adjuvant by itself, but it is when emulsified with surfactants. It is only added to certain flu vaccines in Europe and one for seniors in the US, so it is not present in any childhood vaccine. The reason for the fear is the supposed presence of anti-squalene antibodies found in American soldiers with the so-called Gulf War Syndrome.
A few problems with this:
Squalene is a naturally occurring substance, and your liver is making it right now as you read this;
What is causing it is (probably) the attempted environmental sterilisation that too many parents undertake to keep their kids "safe" from germs. Unfortunately this practice appears to be preventing the normal development of the immune system and is increasing the risk of food allergies. In case you think I'm just pulling this out of thin air (which I admittedly was when I started talking about it well over a decade ago), recent evidence fully supports this hypothesis.
66) Measles virus doesn't even exist.
This mind-bending claim comes from ultra anti-vaccine advocate Stefan Lanka, who bet 100,000 euros that no one could prove the measles virus exists. Of course someone (Dr. David Bardens) proved him wrong beyond any reasonable doubt, and a court ordered Lanka to pay up. But the decision was reversed on appeal, judging that the evidence Bardens provided had to live up to Lanka's expectations. Bardens could probably have invented a machine to embiggen the virus to 2m in diameter and shoved it in Lanka's face, but so deeply entrenched are his rabid beliefs that he would have still denied its existence.
Yeah, measles virus exists. Here it is.
67) We never had all these vaccines when I was a kid, I got all these diseases, and I'm fine.
This is a perfect description of survivorship bias, because there are literally millions of other people who contracted these exact same diseases and are now dead because of them. No vaccine-preventable disease is anywhere close to 100% fatal (except rabies), so of course most people who got them survived unscathed. This doesn't make the diseases benign (see #16), it just makes you one of the majority who made it. Not every kid is as lucky.
68) Polio was caused by DDT, not poliovirus.
This is just an example of germ theory denialism. It is true that DDT was used to try to prevent the spread of polio, because at the time (mid 1940s) it was incorrectly thought that polio was transmitted by insects like mosquitoes or flies (it is actually faecal-oral).
The big problem with this hypothesis is the timing. The first polio epidemic in the US, for example was in 1894, and the polio virus was discovered in 1908. DDT, on the other hand, was invented in 1874 but was not discovered to be an insecticide until 1939, well after polio was harming children.
69) There hasn't been a vaccine safety study in 30 years.
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr is the main celebrity promiting this claim, which has been wildly twisted from its origins and stems from a 1986 US law which, among other things, required that HHS report vaccine safety studies to congress. But somehow even though the reports were done, they were not all properly filed. Let me repeat - the studies were done, they just weren't properly reported. In fact, here is one. And here is a list of safety studies by year.
Do not misunderstand me, the law was not followed here, and that's not a good thing. I don't know why the reports were not properly filed, and I don't know why HHS didn't present the information to congress as they were supposed to. Regardless, safety studies have been done, task forces have regularly met and reported on vaccine safety, vaccine safety oversight committees have been formed and reported to HHS, the Clinical Immunization Safety Assessment project was started in 2001, etc etc etc.
The evidence shows that vaccines are safe, that evidence just wasn't reported properly to congress. That does not mean it does not exist.
70) MMS can cure autism.
No. It. Can. Not. There is literally no evidence to support such a ludicrous claim, so I can't even cite anything refuting it. MMS is chlorine dioxide (an industrial bleach), and some people give this either orally or rectally to their children to supposedly cure autism. This is nothing short of child abuse.
71) I'm not anti-vaccine, but . . .
If you start a statement with "No offence, but . . .", you can be assured that the next thing out of your mouth will be offensive. By the same token, any sentence starting with "Not to sound racist, but . . ." is guaranteed to be followed by something racist. Similarly, if you start with "I'm not anti-vaccine, but . . .", there is at least a 99.9974% chance (I calculated it) that yes, you are repeating anti-vaccine rhetoric.
Please do not claim to be "pro safe-vaccines", because vaccines are already safe. Please do not claim to be "pro medical autonomy", because no one is forcing you to vaccinate yourself or your children. And please do not claim to be "pro informed consent", because informed consent is already done prior to vaccination (I have signed these forms myself when my children got their shots).
72) Vaccines are against my religion.
Unless you happen to be a Christian Scientist or in the Dutch Reformed church, no they aren't. There are exactly zero major religions on the planet that have any doctrine, law, or rule against vaccines. This review article lists all major religions, including Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, and Judaism. Not even Catholicism forbids vaccines, despite some of them being grown using cell lines from an aborted foetus. According to the National Catholic Bioethics Center, if there is no alternative, "One is morally free to use the vaccine regardless of its historical association with abortion. The reason is that the risk to public health, if one chooses not to vaccinate, outweighs the legitimate concern about the origins of the vaccine."
Besides, Christian Scientists believe that disease can be cured through prayer and the Dutch Reformed church believes vaccines interfere with "divine providence", whatever that means. So no, your religion does not outlaw vaccines.
73) Vaccines are injected directly into the bloodstream.
There are exactly ZERO vaccines that are injected intravenously. All vaccines (other than oral polio and intranasal flu) are administered into the muscle (intramuscular), skin (subcutaneous), or dermis (intradermal). There are, however, lots of things injected directly into the bloodstream: saline, anaesthestics, pain medicine, antibiotics, anti-convulsants, sedatives. You know those vitamin drips that are so in these days? Yup, directly into the bloodstream. Is anyone demanding to know what's in the regenerative vitamin B infusion at the vitamin bar? I didn't think so. Regardless, vaccines are not given IV. Ever.
If you are getting a vaccine directly into your bloodstream, then whoever is giving it to you is making a mistake.
74) Vaccines are unavoidably unsafe.
Yes they are. All "unavoidably unsafe" means is that there is no way for the manufacturer to make them 100% safe and prevent any side effect.
This term comes from the Restatement (Second) of Torts, which was written by the American Law Institute in 1965, 1977, and 1979. In it, an "unavoidably unsafe product" is described as "an apparently useful and desirable product, attended with a known but apparently reasonable risk." You can read a thorough explanation here.
Medicines have side effects. This is a well-known fact that is not disputed. Vaccines are medicines. This is also a well-known fact that is not disputed. Therefore, vaccines will have side effects, including serious side effects such as anaphylaxis. There is no way to predict who will develop such a reaction, so there is no way to make the vaccine safer in that regard. However, as we have learned above the risk of such serious side effects is about 1 per million doses, so the benefits far outweigh these risks.
75) Vaccines are just ways to make money.
Vaccines are made by pharmaceutical companies, and pharmaceutical companies are designed to make money. This is not even debatable, because it is fact. However, according to the World Health Organisation vaccines comprise less than 2% of pharmaceutical companies' revenue. These companies make far more with blockbuster medicines like Lipitor or Viagra. Vaccines, on the other hand, are just not big money makers.
Doctors don't really profit from vaccines either. In the UK, doctors don't get paid any extra for giving vaccines. In the US, studies have shown that paediatricians make little-to-no money giving vaccines. And that "$400 bonus" you've heard about? That's not a bonus per shot, it's a bonus given to a doctor by an insurance company for their entire cohort of patients if they immunise above a certain percentage. I'm sure you've seen the "$400 per eligible member" line on the insurance company's form, but the eligible member in this case is the doctor, not the patient. They get one bonus. That's it.
But why? Simple - money. It is far less expensive for the insurance companies to prevent a disease than to pay for treating it, and just like pharmaceutical companies, insurance companies are also in the business of making money, not paying for medical care.
Take for example this case of tetanus in an unvaccinated 6-year-old boy who spent 8 weeks in hospital at a cost of over $811,000. On the other hand, a tetanus shot costs $64 in the US, £52 in the UK, and $0 in Australia.
76) Vaccines violate the Nuremburg Code.
The Nuremburg trials were a series of twelve military tribunals which took place after the end of World War II from 1946-1949. The first of the trials (The "Doctors Trial") saw 23 former Nazis (20 of whom were doctors) tried for war crimes, including various heinous human torture experiments as well as over 3 million forced sterilisations. During the trial, doctors working with the prosecution outlined six points (later expanded to 10) which outlined legitimate human experimentation. These ten points, the Nuremburg Code, defined "Permissible Medical Experiments":
1) The voluntary consent of the human subject is absolutely essential.
2) The experiment should be such as to yield fruitful results for the good of society, unprocurable by other methods or means of study, and not random and unnecessary in nature.
3) The experiment should be so designed and based on the results of animal experimentation and a knowledge of the natural history of the disease or other problem under study that the anticipated results will justify the performance of the experiment.
4) The experiment should be so conducted as to avoid all unnecessary physical and mental suffering and injury.
5) No experiment should be conducted where there is an a priori reason to believe that death or disabling injury will occur; except, perhaps, in those experiments where the experimental physicians also serve as subjects.
6) The degree of risk to be taken should never exceed that determined by the humanitarian importance of the problem to be solved by the experiment.
7) Proper preparations should be made and adequate facilities provided to protect the experimental subject against even remote possibilities of injury, disability, or death.
8) The experiment should be conducted only by scientifically qualified persons. The highest degree of skill and care should be required through all stages of the experiment of those who conduct or engage in the experiment.
9) During the course of the experiment the human subject should be at liberty to bring the experiment to an end if he has reached the physical or mental state where continuation of the experiment seems to him to be impossible.
10) During the course of the experiment the scientist in charge must be prepared to terminate the experiment at any stage, if he has probably cause to believe, in the exercise of the good faith, superior skill and careful judgment required of him that a continuation of the experiment is likely to result in injury, disability, or death to the experimental subject.
This code has nothing to do with vaccines - it is solely about human experimentation, not about established medical procedures, which always have some risk of harm and which are also covered by informed consent. The Nuremburg Code is meant to protect humans from unethical and/or immoral researchers (see Tuskegee, Unit 731, British mustard gas experiments, Soviet poison laboratory, and the Canadian tuberculosis vaccine experiment, among others). This argument is just an example of Godwin's Law.
Oh, and even if the Nuremburg Code applied to vaccines (which it doesn't), vaccines still don't violate the codes in the slightest.
Not all are positive trials, either. Here is one such negative trial for the pneumococcal vaccine which showed no efficacy for otitis media.
Saline placebo vaccine studies, lots of them, exist. This is incontrovertible and inarguable.
78) But look at the rate of autism compared with the number of vaccines! It's obvious that vaccines cause autism!
I'll just start by saying that correlation doesn't equal causation. That simply means that just because the two rates increased at the same time, it doesn't necessarily mean one caused the other. If you'd like a graphical explanation, take a look at this:
From this graph it could seem plainly obvious that organic food causes autism. But that is, of course, ridiculous. Organic food sales started going up in the 1990's just as the rate of autism was increasing. But organic food sales did not cause the rate of autism to increase, just like increased vaccine usage in the same time period didn't.
So what did?
The main reasons the incidence of autism is rising are 1) broadened diagnostic criteria in the early 1990's, and 2) increased awareness and recognition. This enormous study of over 600,000 children in Denmark found that about 60% of the perceived increase in the number of cases of autism spectrum disorder is due to changes in reporting practices. And this 16-year study also out of Denmark (which has an excellent national medical record system) found that some of the biggest increases in autism spectrum disorder incidence over the period from 1995-2010 were found in females, adolescents, and adults. In fact, 9% of the new cases of ASD were found in people aged 21-65.
Obviously adults with their fully formed brains were not suddenly becoming autistic - they were simply finally getting the diagnosis that had eluded them for their entire lives. To illustrate - I can think of at least a dozen people off the top of my head that I knew growing up several decades ago who are clearly on the spectrum but were never diagnosed. They were just "that kid" who was slightly different or had difficulties with social interactions. I never learned about autism until years later. And neither did they.
79) Well if correlation doesn't equal causation, then having antibodies to a virus doesn't necessarily mean you're immune.
Sometimes correlation DOES mean causation. For example, when we know how the adaptive immune system works, when we know exactly how and why the body forms B cells against a virus or bacterium, and when we know how those B-cells convert to plasma cells when they re-encounter the same virus or bacterium to produce massive amounts of specific antibodies against it, then yes, that correlation is causation.
The fact that I still have high titres of measles antibody (yes, I actually checked) several decades after my last measles shot, and the fact that I (and several hundred million other people) have not gotten measles since then, means I am still immune. THAT is causation.
80) Dr. Paul Offit said that babies can handle 10,000 vaccines at once.
Is it though? Paul Offit is a paediatrician, the chief of infectious diseases at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, a vaccine researcher, one of the inventors of the Rotateq vaccine (rotavirus vaccines save the lives of over 25,000 children under age 5 every year), and one of the most vocal proponents of vaccines in the world. In other words, he knows a heck of a lot more about vaccines, infectious diseases, and immunology than you or I ever could. He is a world-renowned expert on the subject.
In January 2002 he published an article entitled "Addressing Parents’ Concerns: Do Multiple Vaccines Overwhelm or Weaken the Infant’s Immune System?" (spoiler alert: no). In it he addresses the diversity of antigen receptors, antigens and epitopes per vaccine, and generation of antibodies and B cell clones (which is some pretty fancy science), among many other things. Based on the science, he concludes,
"each infant would have the theoretical capacity to respond to about 10,000 vaccines at any one time (obtained by dividing 107 B cells per mL by 103 epitopes per vaccine)".
All he tried to do is allay people's fear about vaccines using actual science (which the average person unfortunately doesn't understand), and of course he was harassed for it:
I referred to exactly this concept back up in #18 - children, especially infants who live on the floor, are exposed to thousands and possibly millions of antigens every day. Starting from the moment they exit the uterus, infants are constantly bombarded with antigens in the air, in their food, in their bath water, on their toys, on their clothes, on their pets, and on their (and your) skin. While their immune systems are not fully mature, they are more than equipped to deal with all of these antigens, so they are more than equipped to deal with a few hundred antigens in even several vaccines given all at once. And before you start with But what about all the other junk in the vaccines, please go back and read #2, #3, #4, #5, and #6 which explains why none of the other ingredients are "junk" or "toxic" at the doses given.
1) The microorganism must be found in abundance in all organisms suffering from the disease, but should not be found in healthy organisms.
2) The microorganism must be isolated from a diseased organism and grown in pure culture.
3) The cultured microorganism should cause disease when introduced into a healthy organism.
4) The microorganism must be re-isolated from the inoculated, diseased experimental host and identified as being identical to the original specific causative agent.
Three years after they were published, Koch himself admitted that the first postulate isn't necessary when he discovered the existence of asymptomatic carriers of typhoid fever. This idea has also been completely abandoned by modern medicine because there are many other diseases (HIV, polio, colds, flu, etc) which have asymptomatic carriers.
But viruses don't satisfy them either, because they can't be grown in culture. Viruses have to be grown on the type of cells they infect, and viruses were not known to exist in 1890 when these were first written. Furthermore, Koch also realised that not everyone who is exposed to a microorganism becomnes infected, which is why the third postulate says "should" rather than "must".
This is all just a long-winded way of saying that viruses don't satisfy Koch's postulates because Koch's postulates were not intended for viruses. The argument is moot. Viruses have been isolated from the diseases they cause. That is irrefutable.
82) Something something microchip something something deep state something.
You probably shared something like this:
There is no evidence - NONE - that this is remotely true. The Gates Foundation has funded research into a type of invisible "tattoo" which would be given at the same time as a vaccine and would provide a useful vaccination history. This is especially helpful in poorer countries where vaccination records are difficult to keep. But it is not a chip, it's just an invisible tattoo dye. And it does not contain any information other than "THIS VACCINE WAS GIVEN HERE TO THIS PERSON". No location, no personal information, nothing. If THE GOVERNMENT wants to track your location, they'll just use your mobile phone.
Oh, and I forgot to mention that it doesn't even actually exist yet - it's purely investigative at this point.
- - - - -
Whew. That's all I have. I truly hope anyone makes it this far, and if you have, know that I truly appreciate it. I hope I've perhaps busted some myths, dispelled some fear, and helped you to learn something.
If you are still on the fence or have questions about vaccines, please comment below.
EDIT: New and improved version, now with 83 of your favourite myths.
Ooooooh boy. I have no idea what kind of rabbit hole I'm entering here, and this may end up being the 1) longest, 2) least read, and 3) most unworthwhile (yes, it's a word) post in the history of blogs. But fuck it, I'm doing it anyway.
If you've landed on this page, one of three things has happened:
You've been a loyal reader, got an email notification about this post, and you clicked it.
You searched the internet for "docbastard vaccines" for some stupid reason, or
I or (hopefully) someone else referred you here from Twitter because you made some bullshit argument about vaccines.
If it's #3, there is at least a 99.21% chance (I calculated it) that you haven't even read this far. But in case you have, please immediately refer to the number I listed so you can quickly find out why you're wrong here wrong.
If that last sentence doesn't make sense, just read on. Everyone else knows it will all come together by the end.
My Twitter life has devolved into arguing about pseudoscience, and that has devolved even further into mainly arguing about vaccines. I have officially gotten sick and fucking tired of answering the same stupid points repeatedly, so I have decided to make this handy dandy little (not-so-little) compendium of Answers To Stupid Antivax Talking Points. These are the same tired old arguments I have heard over and over and fucking over again, and that I have refuted over and over and fucking over again. So instead of repeating myself, I can just point people here and thus assure myself that no one will ever read this ever in the future history of ever.
If you're expecting any of the answers to be just "NO", then prepare to be sorely disappointed, because what I will not do is simply say "NO". What I will do is say "NO" and explain why it's NO while citing sources, so you can't just say "WELL THAT'S JUST YOUR OPINION". Let me stress here that almost nothing here is "just my opinion".
I'm going to place a handy little (and now-alphabetised) table right about here with all 76 83 arguments I'll be assassinating discussing for easy reference.
2). . . toxins like mercury
Sigh . . . "toxins". There is no elemental mercury in any vaccine, nor has there ever been. What you are referring to is thimerosal, which is approximately 50% ethylmercury. And while the word "ethylmercury" has the word "mercury" in it, that does not make it either mercury or poison. Think of it this way: the word "chair" has "hair" in it. That doesn't mean it's made of hair.
Ok, that is admittedly a terrible analogy. How about this: sodium is a metal which explodes when exposed to water, and chloride gas is highly poisonous. But when you (well, not you exactly) combine the two into a compound, it produces ordinary table salt (which can still be toxic, but that's a subject for another time). This is basic chemistry. Basic. Heh. Yes, that was a chemistry joke.
Anyway, ethylmercury is not the mercury found in thermometers. It is also not the dangerous mercury compound found in fish. That would be methylmercury, and though it is only one letter different than ethylmercury, it is an entirely different compound with entirely different metabolism and effect on human physiology (just like ethanol, which is the alcohol found in your wine, and methanol, which will kill you if you drink it). Studies have found that ethylmercury is readily metabolised and excreted so does not increase blood mercury levels, while methymercury lingers for much longer and is much more toxic.
This all ignores the fact that ethylmercury was removed from all childhood vaccines in 2001. I will address this point further later.
3) . . . and aluminum . . .
Aluminum salts have been used as adjuvants in vaccines for decades. Adjuvants increase the immune response, increasing the chance that a vaccine will grant immunity. The exact mechanism by which it does this is still not clear, but what is clear is that aluminum salts have been extensively studied and found to be safe. This is an excellent review article which documents the excellent safety profile and the minimal risks (including macrophagic myofasciitis) of using aluminum salt adjuvants. Yes, they have risks. But they are very small.
4) . . . and polysorbate 80 . . .
Polysorbate 80 is a surfactant and emulsifier used in innumerable foods, cosmetics, eye drops, mouth wash, etc. It is also used in some vaccines as a stabiliser, but in such tiny amounts as to be negligible to human physiology.
Let's do a comparison, shall we? The HPV vaccine contains 50 microgram of polysorbate 80, while a small scoop of ice cream contains about 170,000 micrograms, or 3400 times as much polysorbate 80. (reference) It has also been studied in infants given vaccines with and without polysorbate 80, and it has been found to be safe.
5) . . . aborted foetal tissue . . .
This one usually makes me laugh. Antivaxxers make it sound like aborted babies are ground up and placed in a vaccine vial along with other assorted toxins. But no babies are aborted to manufacture vaccines. A few vaccines are grown on cell lines derived from a foetus that was aborted years ago, because viruses grow better on the type of cells that they normally infect. The vaccine is then washed, eliminating all but a trace of the growth medium. So no, there are no dead babies in any vaccine, and no new babies are aborted to make vaccines.
6) . . . formaldehyde . . .
If you have used this stupid argument, then you have displayed your ignorance of human physiology. Formaldehyde sounds scary - "THAT'S WHAT THEY PRESERVE CORPSES WITH!" - but it is actually a very normal part of human metabolism. As you sit there steaming at me, your cells are creating way more formaldehyde than could be found in any vaccine. In fact, in the 30 or so seconds it took you to read this paragraph thus far, your liver has metabolised about 11 mg of formaldehyde, which is over 10 times as much as an infant could ever receive from even multiple vaccines (0.7 mg). In the time it took you to read that last sentence, an infant would have already metabolised all the formaldehyde from their vaccines twice. If your infant read that last sentence, however, then Mensa would probably like to have a word with you. And her.
7) . . . cancer virus.
Oh, you made the SV40 argument. Yes, many thousands of people unknowingly received a polio vaccine that was tainted (or contaminated, if you'd prefer) with SV40. And that is truly unfortunate. However, SV40 was not discovered until 1960, whereas the polio vaccine was first produced in 1955. It was simply not known. But once it was discovered, it was removed from the polio vaccine (obviously). Still, by the time it was removed in 1963 about 90% of children had received a polio vaccine contaminated with the virus, which causes tumours in animals. Of course the fear was that it would cause cancer in humans, and it is true that SV40 has been found in various human cancer cells. However, it has been extensively studied, and while the virus has been found in human cancers, a review of the evidence has shown that SV40 does not cause cancer in humans. It has been studied for over 50 years, and no association has been found. It also hasn't been in any vaccine since 1963, so there is no cancer in any vaccine.
8) Vaccines cause autism!
I knew you would get here. The short version is "NO THEY FUCKING DON'T", but that won't satisfy you. Actually, nothing will satisfy you but I'm going to continue anyway. Vaccines have been studied extensively for their possible role in causing autism. There are exactly ZERO large studies that show any association between vaccines and autism, and while I'm thinking about it there are exactly ZERO small studies which show it. Wakefield's original 1998 bullshit fraud was only 12 patients, if you didn't know.
That last one was just published March 4, 2019 and represents probably the largest, most comprehensive study which shows absolutely no link between MMR and autism. They even looked at children who had siblings with autism and other risk factors that would make them high risk for autism, but they still found no link. The conclusion speaks for itself (emphasis mine):
Conclusion: The study strongly supports that MMR vaccination does not increase the risk for autism, does not trigger autism in susceptible children, and is not associated with clustering of autism cases after vaccination. It adds to previous studies through significant additional statistical power and by addressing hypotheses of susceptible subgroups and clustering of cases.
Oh . . . I suppose I accidentally emphasised the entire conclusion completely on purpose. That's because it should be fucking obvious by now. That's 7 huge studies and over 2.5 million children vs your anecdote or Wakefield's bullshit. So stop already.
Just fucking stop.
9) But only MMR has been studied!
I will refer you back to response 8 above. You can clearly see three studies (4, 5, and 6) which looked at children who received thimerosal-containing vaccines. Antivaxxers seem to think that every vaccine ever produced has several tonnes of thimerosal in it, but in reality MMR never contained thimerosal. Not "but trace amounts", not "but it was removed" - never. NONE. So yes, other vaccines have most definitely been studied, and they all show the same thing - that those other vaccines also do not cause autism.
10) But MTHFR!
I've asked every antivaxxer who has mentioned this to tell me in their own words what MTHFR is and how it relates to vaccination without looking it up, but not a single person has other than to call it a mutation. Strange. MTHFR stands for methylenetetrahydrofolate reductase. It is a gene on chromosome 1 which encodes an enzyme that catalyses 5,10-methylenetetrahydrofolate to 5-methyltetrahydrofolate (which has to do with homocystine metabolism and is some pretty goddamned fancy science). There are many polymorphisms (ie variations) of the genes, and some are incredibly common (for example, 10% of the North American population has 2 copies of a specific polymorphism). Preliminary research shows it may increase the risk of schizophrenia or dementia, but no research shows the gene has anything to do with any vaccine side effect. MTHFR is a polymorphism, not a mutation. Those two words are not synonymous.
I know you think citing MTHFR makes you look smart, but it has the exact opposite effect. If you didn't understand the above paragraph but still think MTHFR is a mutation which causes autism, it isn't and it doesn't.
11) But Hannah Poling!
Hannah Poling had a very rare mitochondrial disorder, so rare that its exact incidence is unknown. She received her normal series of vaccines at 19 months old (DTaP, MMR, HiB, varicella, polio), and two days later was lethargic with a rash. She was diagnosed with vaccine-derived varicella, and several months later continued to have delays in her neurological development. Ultimately she was diagnosed with encephalopathy, followed by language, behaviour, and communication problems. Though mitochondrial disorders can appear quite similar to autism, her parents (including her father, who is a neurologist) took her case to the Vaccine Court and won.
HA! SLAM DUNK! VACCINES CAUSE AUTISM! RIGHT?
Well, no. Dr. Paul Offit has reviewed this case in very specific detail here, but I'll give a short summary nevertheless since I can't expect anyone to click on a link and read something: Infections are known to exacerbate encephalopathy but vaccines are not. And children with mitochondrial disorders are at a higher risk of infections, which can exacerbate encephalopathy (didn't I just say that)?
So did vaccines cause Hannah's autism? No.
12) But Dr. Andrew Zimmerman said vaccines cause autism!
This is a rather recent antivax talking point. Andrew Zimmerman is a paediatric neurologist who co-authored a case report in 2006 which documented a child with a mitochondrial disorder who developed autism after being vaccinated (sound familiar?). While this is being translated by antivaxxers as "SEE? VACCINES CAN CAUSE AUTISM!", these people are merely cherry picking and completely missed Dr. Zimmerman's full statement: "There may be a subset of children who are at risk of regression if they have underlying mitochondrial dysfunction and are simultaneously exposed to factors that stress their mitochrondrial reserve (which is critical for developing the brain). Such factors might include infections, as well as metabolic and immune factors, and vaccines".
In other words, children with these extremely rare disorders may be predisposed to developing autism or autism-like symptoms if they are exposed to some environmental trigger. Vaccines may be one of them, but there are many others as well. Keep in mind that children are exposed to thousands of antigens every single day of their lives. Unless they are kept in a sterile bubble, the risk with these children is way higher with infectious diseases compared to vaccines.
13) Dr. Wakefield was exonerated!
First of all, it's Mister Wakefield. He lost his licence to practice medicine and thus should not be called "Doctor". Second, no he wasn't. Charges against one of his co-authors, who has stated both his continued support of MMR and that their paper did not establish any link between MMR and autism, were dropped on appeal. Mr. Wakefield, on the other hand, lost his license due to his elaborately fraudulent paper which involved paying children at his kid's birthday party £5 for blood samples, without permission from an ethics committee. Oh what's the matter, you didn't know that little detail? Shame. I suspect you also didn't know that Wakefield was trying to patent his own single measles vaccine by tarnishing MMR. What, you didn't know that either? Well now you do. Your hero is an unethical asshole.
14) CDC whistleblower!
Speaking of elaborate, this one is merely an elaborate conspiracy. It involves a team of CDC researchers, including William Thompson, supposedly throwing data in the garbage can (literally) which purportedly showed that black children were more than three times more likely to develop autism as a result of vaccines. This was supposedly found after a non-scientist named Brian Hooker re-evaluated the data.
Well there are a few problems with this: first, who keeps paper data anymore? Data is all digital and backed up repeatedly in multiple locations. If they didn't then they are shoddy researchers who should not be trusted with anything. Anyway, I literally laughed out loud when I read the part about throwing data in the bin. Second, William Thompson is still employed by CDC. Anyone ever heard of a whistleblower still being employed by the company (or agency) against whom they blew a whistle? Third, the re-evaluation by Hooker was completely incorrectly done, using the wrong statistical analysis to evaluate the data. And fourth, even if the re-evaluation were true (it isn't - read here), it only shows an increase in risk in one demographic (black males). It did not show any increased risk in white boys or girls. This would mean that vaccines STILL do not cause autism in every other demographic.
15) Why is my unvaccinated kid such a threat to your vaccinated kid if vaccines work?
This argument is so stupid that I'm surprised anyone still uses it. First, no vaccine is 100% effective. The closest is measles, which is 97% effective after two doses. Second, not all children can be vaccinated. Third, some children are too young to be vaccinated. Are you telling me that you don't give a fuck about an infant suffering from a disease she's too young to be vaccinated against? What kind of monster are you? Actually I'll just let this handy graphic explain the rest:
16) These are all just harmless childhood diseases.
What kind of "harmless disease" continues to kill over 100,000 children every year? There has only been one year on record that measles has killed fewer than 100,000 children (2016). Does this still sound harmless? Between 2000 and 2017, global measles vaccination increased from 72 to 85%, while during the same period measles rates decreased 83% and measles deaths fell 80%. Let me repeat - measles deaths fell 80%. And before you even say "But not in my country!", well fuck you. Fuck you for not caring about children dying in other countries just because they don't live near you and look like you. Fuck you.
Regardless, that's just for measles (which seems to have become the poster child for "harmless" vaccine preventable diseases), because this stupid argument also completely ignores all the other various deadly and/or debilitating diseases for which vaccines exist (hepatitis B, Haemophilus influenza, meningitis, polio, etc). Even chicken pox. Yes, chicken pox, which used to kill about hundred kids in the United States alone each year before the vaccine. Is 100 dead children enough for you? And after the vaccine was introduced, this happened:
Is that clear to you yet? And I swear to fucking god, if you try to say "But the Brady Bunch . . ." I will somehow find you and slap the shit out of you. The Brady Bunch was a fucking sitcom, produced to make people laugh. It was not a documentary on the supposed (but nonexistent) benign nature of infectious diseases. Did you expect them to show the graveyards of children killed by disease? I don't think the ratings would have been very high if they showed this:
which shows two young cousins age 4 and 7 who died within 2 days of each other from diphtheria. Which is preventable with a vaccine.
Or this:
which shows two brothers and a sister, ages 7, 10, and 11, who all died within about two weeks of each other of diphtheria. Which is preventable with a fucking vaccine.
There are graveyards filled with the corpses of children who died of vaccine-preventable diseases. So fuck you for not caring about them.
17) But there are too many vaccines on the schedule. 72 doses!
You probably sent this graphic or a similar one:
This is supposed to scare people into thinking "HOLY HELL! LOOK AT ALL THOSE SHOTS!" But look closer - in 1960, there were only three shots which prevented 5 diseases (polio, smallpox, diphtheria, pertussis, and tetanus). By 1983 this had been expanded to include 3 more diseases (measles, mumps, and rubella), and studies had shown that efficacy was much better for several vaccines when boosters were given. By 2016 we were now able to protect children from flu, rotavirus, chicken pox, hepatitis A, hepatitis B, haemophilus influenza, pneumococcus, and meningitis. And you think this is a bad thing? Preventing debilitating and/or deadly diseases is somehow wrong to you? Yes we give children many more shots now, but only because we don't want them to suffer or die the way so many others did. It's like complaining that computers nowadays have 2 TB of storage space, but 30 years ago they only had 10 MB. Yeah - that's called technological advancement.
I had chicken pox as a child because there was no vaccine for it at the time. I remember it vividly because it was unquestionably the worst week of my life. I wouldn't wish chicken pox on my worst enemy (not even you, antivaxxer), so it's fortunate we now have a vaccine for it.
How much do you have to hate children to want them to suffer from these diseases? I watched my sister almost die from H flu meningitis when she was a toddler (also no vaccine at the time). She survived and recovered fully, but the kid in the adjacent room was not so lucky. He's in the fucking ground now, from a disease we can prevent.
18) Well then there are too many vaccines too soon.
Are there? According to whom, you? There is no evidence to support such a statement. You have been led to believe that children's immune systems are not developed enough to be able to handle the antigens in a vaccine, but somehow you believe they can handle all the other thousands or millions of antigens they deal with every day? Have you ever seen a baby? You know infants put everything right in their mouths, right? That teething ring your little angel just put back in her mouth was sitting on the floor that you walk on. Did you sterilise your shoes this morning? Did you even realise you stepped in dog shit? No? Well your child's immune system can handle that, so it can handle a few antigens in a few vaccines, even at the same time.
19) But the vaccine schedule has never been tested.
Yes it has. The fact that you don't know it has is your failing, not anyone else's. Here is one such piece of evidence. And here is a study of macaques who were given the full infant vaccine schedule and observed for 5 years (keep in mind that autism generally manifests around 2 years old), and there were no neurodevelopmental problems. The best part of this study was that it was funded by antivaxxers who were expecting to find problems, but they didn't. This study proved them, and you, wrong.
20) But the vaccine court has paid out billions. This proves vaccine injury is real and vaccines are dangerous.
No, it proves that vaccines are not 100% safe, which is fully acknowledged by anyone who knows anything about vaccines. The only people who say anything about vaccines being 100% safe or 100% effective are antivaxxers, but always in the context of "But pro-vaxxers say vaccines are 100% safe and effective!" which is not remotely true. We do not say that. You say that. (More on that later)
Regardless, let's actually look at the numbers from the vaccine court, shall we? According to the latest statistics (July, 2018) between 2006 and 2016 a total of 3,153,876,236 doses of vaccines were distributed in the US. Over that same time period, there were 3727 compensable claims in the vaccine court amounting to $1.74 billion (the $3.5 billion number being bandied about is the total amount give by the court since the inception of the vaccine court in 1989).
$1.74 billion! HA! You lose!
You didn't let me finish. Let's do some fun math here - 3727 claims divided by 3,153,876,236 doses of vaccines amounts to 0.000118%, which is just over 1 compensable claim per million doses. Hm, one per million sounds vaguely familiar. Anyway, the amount the vaccine court has awarded seems huge, but it is far less important than the actual number of cases, and the number of cases is far less important than the proportion of compensable cases compared to doses given.
I'll repeat - one per million.
As for the claim that vaccine manufacturers are immune from being sued, no they aren't. While it is true in the US that you go through the vaccine court first, it is still possible for the manufacturers to be sued. And this is of course ignoring the fact that the vaccine court (and NCVIP) only applies in one country on the planet.
21) But only 10% of vaccine reactions are even reported! The real number is much higher!
I'm not sure where that estimate came from, but you sure do like to repeat it. Regardless, of course most adverse events aren't reported, because most vaccine reactions are mild and self-limiting (injection site pain, swelling, and redness). My arm was a bit sore after my last flu shot. Technically that is a "vaccine reaction", but did I report it? No. The serious ones get reported.
22) It's my child, so it's my choice.
Well that's a rather stupid thing to say. Of course it's your choice, and no one is saying it isn't (except the truly hardcore vaccine proponents, who may overstate things about child protective services and all that bullshit). But what if you choose to beat your child with a plank of wood? Is that your choice?
Yes, how you raise your child is your choice. No one is trying to take your choices away from you. If you want to feed your kid nothing but organic, free range, sugar-free, gluten-free, GMO-free kale, that's your prerogative. You'll probably end up with a malnourished (and picky) (and very angry) kid, but that's completely up to you. And sure, not vaccinating your child is also your choice. No one is going to force you to take your kid to the doctor for her shots no matter what antivax (or pro-vax) fear mongers want you to believe, and no one is going to snatch them away and do it without your knowledge or consent. But if you are making that choice based on misinformation and fear, then you are making the wrong choice.
23) Compulsory vaccines are wrong.
I suppose that depends on your definition of "wrong". If you mean it violates your civil rights or civil liberties or personal medical liberty or whichever other buzz phrase you choose to use, well no it doesn't.
Yes it does!
No it doesn't. If you still think it does, then you happen to disagree with the United States Supreme Court which ruled against you in Jacobson v Massachusetts.
But that was only one ruling!
Then you must not know about Zucht v. King, in which the Supreme Court ruled that schools may refuse admission to children who are not vaccinated.
There are currently mandatory vaccination laws in Argentina, Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, China, Croatia, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Malta, Latvia, Pakistan. Poland, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, and Ukraine (no, the US and Canada have no federal law mandating vaccines, though all 50 states and 3 provinces require children to be vaccinated prior to starting school).
It is legal and it is constitutional. You just don't like it. That makes it neither wrong nor illegal.
Did you guess "Unvaccinated children are NOT healthier but contract vaccine-preventable diseases at a MUCH higher rate than vaccinated children?"
No? Then you're fucking wrong. Because that's what they all say.
25) But there is no true study of unvaccinated vs vaccinated children!
True, because that would be unethical.
WHY?
Because the study you're looking for would purposefully withhold vaccines from 50% of the study participants (you know, those vulnerable children you think you're trying to protect). A "true" vaccinated-unvaccinated study would observe tens or hundreds of thousands of children from birth through adulthood, with only half of them getting vaccinated, leaving the other half vulnerable, though no one would know which half was which. While I'm sure some of you True Believers would recklessly volunteer your child to be in the unvaccinated arm of such a study, that's not the way these double-blind studies work. First, there would be a 50% chance that anyone else's child would be in the unvaccinated arm, leaving them vulnerable to various diseases, and no reasonable parent would consent to such a study. Plus, there would be a 50% chance your precious snowflake would be in the vaccinated arm. You ok with that?
Regardless, no researcher with any sense of ethics would allow such a study to be done, knowing that so many children are being left unprotected from so many preventable diseases, and no institutional review board would allow such a study to be proposed, let alone done.
26) According to VAERS . . .
I'm not going to let you finish that argument, because if you are using the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System in your antivax argument, I have calculated a 99.9923% chance that you have no fucking idea what VAERS is or how it works. Anyone can report any adverse reaction in VAERS. I'll repeat - anyone can report any adverse reaction in VAERS. There are several children who have died in car accidents in VAERS:
There was also (for a short time) a report in VAERS of Dr. James Laidler receiving a measles vaccine, and the following day his skin turned green, his muscles grew, and he displayed uncontrolled rage: signs that he was turning into The Incredible Hulk. As Dr. Laidler wrote,
And before you ask, that's not a joke. I mean the "reaction" was clearly a joke, but the fact that Hulk is in VAERS is not. It just underscores the worthlessness in using VAERS as evidence that vaccines are unsafe. Do not misunderstand me, VAERS is extremely important because it can help scientists track side effects from various vaccines. But make no mistake: VAERS is not evidence that "vaccine damage" is real or that vaccines are dangerous.
27) But vaccines are not 100% effective.
Well no, no they aren't. Has anyone ever claimed they are? If so, he was lying. Seat belts aren't 100% effective either, but you should still fucking wear one. And before you say, "Well vaccines don't work that well anyway!", let's just see how well they do work:
Incidence of tetanus: decreased by 96%
Incidence of pertussis: decreased by 86%
Incidence of measles: decreased by over 99%
Incidence of hepatitis B: decreased by 87%
Incidence of diphtheria: decreased by 100%
Not effective? Really? How much more effective can you possibly get?
28) But vaccines are not 100% safe.
Nothing is 100% safe. When discussing severe side effects, vaccines are approximately 99.9999% safe (1 severe adverse event per 1 million doses). If I told you that the severe complication rate from a "routine" surgery was 1/1000, would you run away screaming? Probably not, but that is the true number for "routine" gall bladder surgery, and it is literally one thousand times higher than the risk from any vaccine. And while many severe surgical complications result in death or permanent disability, the overwhelming majority of patients with severe adverse reactions from vaccines recover completely.
29) The flu vaccine is worthless.
I will agree that the flu vaccine is the least effective vaccine available, and the efficacy varies from year to year depending on how close the vaccines approximate the prevalent infecting strains. As opposed to the ones above, the average efficacy is around 45%, which at first admittedly sounds pretty terrible. But look at it this way - 45% is literally infinity times higher than 0%, which is exactly how effective not getting a flu shot is.
31) But the flu shot causes the flu.
No it doesn't, and it never has. Not occasionally, not sometimes, NEVER. The flu shot is a dead virus vaccine, meaning it is 100% biologically impossible to get the flu from a flu shot. Feeling a little crummy for a day or two after a flu shot is not the flu - that's your body's immune system reacting to the shot, meaning it is doing what it is supposed to do. If you got the actual flu immediately after getting a flu shot, you had either 1) probably already acquired the virus but hadn't shown symptoms yet, or 2) picked it up wherever you got the shot.
Note this refers to the flu shot, not the flu mist, which is an attenuated vaccine.
34) I've never gotten the flu shot, and I've never gotten the flu.
Well isn't that nice. I have no idea what you think that proves, but let me pose this scenario: I put a banana in my fireplace every night before I go to sleep, and I have never had a bear break into my house. So does that mean the banana prevents bear attacks?
Ok ok, I'll give you a slightly less silly analogy - I've never gotten into a serious car accident and I don't wear my seat belt, so I don't need to wear a seat belt. Or consider this - I do not have a smoke detector in my house or a fire extinguisher, and I have never had a fire in my house, so I need neither a smoke detector nor a fire extinguisher. Or how about this - my kid has never crashed his bicycle and suffered a severe traumatic brain injury and he never wears a helmet, so he doesn't need to wear a helmet.
Now do you see how stupid that sounds?
The fact that you've never gotten the flu despite not getting the flu shot doesn't mean you don't need the flu shot, it just means you happened not to need it before. It doesn't mean your immune system is better than anyone else's or that you are better than anyone else. It only indicates that you have been lucky so far.
35) How could you possibly give a 1-day old baby a hepatitis B shot?
Hepatitis B is not just an infection of IV drug abusers and prostitutes. It is an extremely serious infection worldwide, with nearly 300 million people suffering from it. An estimated 2 million children worldwide are infected with hep B. The big problem is that when contracted as a child, hepatitis B is much more likely to develop into a chronic disease, resulting in cirrhosis or liver cancer. It can be transmitted from mother to child during childbirth, or from child-to-child from bites or other bodily fluids. No one is saying your precious flower is going to be shooting up heroin at age 3, but can you guarantee the little shit next door who is unknowingly and asymptomatically infected isn't going to bite your kid and give him an instant death sentence?
The great part about the hep B vaccine is that it is extremely effective, with a 72% worldwide drop in prevalence due to widespread vaccination. That should also put your "A one day old baby's immune system isn't ready for a vaccine" bullshit to rest. But wait, there's more! The best part is that the vaccine has been shown to last for at least 30 years, with no boosters needed after the initial 3-shot series. In other words, a vaccine given to a newborn child will last well into and through their doing-stupid-shit years.
Tell me again about vaccine immunity waning.
36) Yeah, vaccine immunity wanes!
Sigh. Sometimes, yes it does. However, if it waned significantly, we'd be seeing epidemics of diphtheria, polio, and measles in previously vaccinated adults. Have you heard of any of those?
No?
I'm shocked.
If you're still arguing, see #37 below.
37) The pertussis vaccine doesn't work.
You're wrong here, but I'll grant that you're very slightly less wrong than before. Let me fix it for you - the pertussis vaccine doesn't work as well as the previous one. The original pertussis vaccine was a whole cell vaccine, meaning the entire B. pertussis bacterium (inactivated) was used, and it was extremely effective. However, due to a relatively high rate of local adverse reactions (pain, redness, and swelling), it was swapped for an acellular vaccine, which contains only pertussis toxin or other various components of the bacterium and not the whole organism. However, not only is the acellular vaccine more expensive, but the local side effect rate is about the same as the whole cell version. To make things worse, it is not as effective as the whole cell vaccine, and immunity tends to wane within 5-7 years. But immunity to the tetanus portion of the DPT combination vaccine also wanes in about 5 years, so boosters are recommended. Huzzah! Science!
Yeah, that's the end of that story. It works, but not as well as the previous version, and not as well as it should. A better vaccine is necessary. Don't worry, I'm not entirely satisfied with that answer either.
38) Natural immunity is better than artificial immunity.
That depends on your definition of "better":
-Longer lasting? Sure.
-Doesn't require a scary shot with scary-sounding ingredients which are not actually scary once you understand them? Most definitely.
-Requires you to suffer through the disease AND SURVIVE in order to gain immunity? Fucking yes.
I'm not sure why you think suffering through a disease is better than, you know, not suffering through a disease.
Plus, I am also baffled why you think "natural" is somehow better. Belladonna is natural, but it will kill you. Tornadoes are completely natural, but they will kill you. It doesn't get much more natural than the Sydney funnel-web spider, but it will fucking kill you. Natural does not necessarily mean better. At all.
All condescension aside, vaccines are a victim of their own success. Because they work so well and have nearly eradicated so many previously common diseases, doctors in practice now have probably never seen most (if not all) of them. The memory of children dead or disabled from polio, the vision of rows upon rows of children in hospitals in iron lungs has faded to the point where you actually believe it is relatively harmless. The fact that smallpox hospitals, entire hospitals dedicated to treating smallpox, no longer even need to exist because of vaccines is lost to the ravages of time. No one remembers the parents waiting in line to get their kids vaccinated against measles. You probably think these lines don't exist.
NO IT ISN'T FALSE! JUST LOOK AT THIS GRAPH!
I absolutely agree - look at it, because it is plainly obvious that you never have. at least not carefully. It says right on top "Mortality Rates", and as we can all plainly see the mortality rates were indeed falling since the turn of the 20th century to the point where the mortality was near 0 for most of these diseases.
HA! I WIN! YOU JUST ADMITTED IT!
No, I admitted that mortality was falling. During the first half of the 1900's there were huge advances in medical science, including supportive care, antibiotics, mechanical ventilation, etc. So of course mortality of everything would improve. Life expectancy in the US in 1900 was 47 years for a white man, and by 1950 it had increased to 65.6 (an improvement of over 28% in just 50 years).
But the number of cases of these diseases (ALL OF THEM) did not fall until the vaccines were introduced. Since you like graphs so much, take a look at these:
These are the disease rates of polio and measles, and you can once again plainly see that the rates DID NOT FALL until the vaccines were introduced. And as each vaccine was introduced, that disease rate fell.
I'm sure your next argument will be "But clean water and sanitation caused disease rates to fall, not vaccines".
diphtheria rates waited to decline until the 1930's after the vaccine was introduced, and
polio rates waited to decline until 1955 when the vaccine was introduced, and
measles rates waited to decline until 1963 when the vaccine was introduced, and
rubella rates waited to decline until 1969 when the vaccine was introduced, and
chicken pox rates waited to decline until 1995 when the vaccine was introduced, and
rotavirus rates waited to decline until 2006 when the vaccine was introduced.
You'd have to be pretty daft to think clean water and sanitation could be so sneaky as to wait just until the vaccine came out to start decreasing those particular diseases. That damned sneaky sanitation and clean water. Do you think that clean water and sanitation suddenly improved in the US in 1995 or 2006 when the varicella and rotavirus vaccines were introduced?
Furthermore, while the mortality graph sure makes it looks like the mortality rate of these diseases was 0, it was not. Not remotely. Hundreds of children in the US still died every year of measles. Yeah, you know measles - that "harmless childhood disease":
Notice this graph starts in 1950, after the mortality rate had dropped so close to 0 according to your graph. That "so close to 0" still translated to 400-500 dead children in the US every year. And once the vaccine was introduced, then and only then did it actually drop to 0.
42) Vaccines cause SIDS.
No they don't. In fact, if you have made this argument, it only shows your stunning ignorance of this entire issue. At least with autism there was a bullshit paper published in 1998 which suggested a link (that's Wakefield's bullshit, in case you didn't catch the reference), but with SIDS, you have it entirely backwards: vaccines reduce the risk of SIDS by 50%.
In case you think I just pulled that number out of my ass, this is based not just one one paper, not two, but a meta-analysis of nine case-control studies looking at the relationship between vaccination and SIDS. And it found that vaccination decreases the risk of SIDS by half.
43) But SIDS is listed on the package insert as a potential side effect!
Oh, you mean this?
Read that carefully. It says, "Adverse events reported during post-approval use". It also says "Because these events are reported voluntarily from a population of uncertain size, it is not always possible to reliably estimate their frequencies or to establish a causal relationship".
The vaccine insert is a legal document, and vaccine manufacturers are legally obligated to list every adverse event that has been reported, regardless of whether or not the vaccine has caused it. That's also why you see "autism" on that list. It has been reported in children who have gotten that vaccine. But autism has also been reported in children who have not gotten that vaccine, though there is no legal document for that. The vaccine insert does not state, imply, or in any other way suggest that the vaccine caused it. Any of it.
I also think it is extremely ironic that you don't trust Big Pharma at all, until they publish the words "autism" and "SIDS" on one of their legal papers, and then you treat what they say as gospel.
45) But over 100 people have died of the MMR since 2003, so more people die of the vaccine than the disease.
This "100" figure is derived from VAERS, which as you learned in #26 above is not designed to track that kind of data. So, there is no way to determine if this figure is even remotely true, though I highly doubt it is even close. There are about 4 million children born in the US each year, and since median vaccine coverage is 94.3%, that's 3,772,000 children getting the measles vaccine each year. As we know the serious adverse event rate is around 1 per million doses, so that would be between 3 and 4 serious adverse events annually, and most children recover completely. Even if they all died (they don't), that would be 16 years x 3.7 children = approximately 59 deaths, not 100. And that's if they all died, which they most assuredly do not.
So, no.
46) Doctors even admit that vaccines are dangerous.
Do they? Which ones? How many of them? This is just another form of "Some people believe . . ." If I were to say, "I believe the sky is purple", I could then logically go on to say "Some people believe the sky is purple". Is the sky purple? Does that make the sky purple? Of course not, but some people believe it is, so that means it might be true! Except that it doesn't.
What you're saying is that some doctors believe it, or at least they say they do. These are fringe doctors who are members of fringe groups who believe fringe things. So the important question is, what other beliefs do these doctors espouse? If you look hard enough you can find paleontologists who believe earth is less than 10,000 years old (like this guy who has a Ph.D in paleontology from Harvard. Seriously). I will grant that there are a few doctors who are antivaxxers, the most prominent and/or vocal being:
Joe Mercola, DO, who also believes that sunscreen causes skin cancer, homeopathy can treat autism, and HIV does not cause AIDS; and who has an online store;
Sherri Tenpenny, DO, who also believes an earthquake could cause California to fall off North America and sink into the Pacific Ocean, and who missed her entire third grade because she was too sick; and who has an online store;
Toni Bark, MD, who also practices homeopathy, and who has an online store;
Russell Blaylock, MD, who also believes in chemtrails, that aspartame causes multiple sclerosis, and that MSG is toxic to the brain; and who has an online store;
Tetyana Obukhanych, PhD who is not a physician but does have a Ph.D in immunology, who believes that immunology has no evidence-based explanation for immunity due to vaccines, that vaccines compromise our "natural immunity", and that homeopathy works;
Jack Wolfson, DO, who touts himself as a "holistic cardiologist", charges a $2800 fee for an initial consultation, and who believes children should get measles, mumps, rubella, and chicken pox because it is "their right"; and who has an online store;
Kelly Brogan, MD, who is also an HIV-AIDS denialist, advises diabetics not to take insulin, and who has an online store;
Suzanne Humphries, MD, who believes homeopathy works, who believes pertussis can be treated with vitamin C, and who believes the bible is a reason not to vaccinate; but who does not have an online store
Andrew Wakefield, who HAHAHAHAHA just kidding, he's not even a doctor anymore. Fuck that guy.
Yes, there are a handful of quacks out there who believe and endorse the same bullshit you do. But these are charlatans who are seizing on the very fear you are propagating to sucker in gullible people and make money. That's why these people almost invariably have online stores, and why Mercola brings in about $10 million per year from his bullshit website.
Keep in mind that every single major medical association in the entire world supports vaccines. Every. Single. One. And before you mention the American Association of Physicians and Surgeons, despite their official-sounding name they're one of those fringe groups I mentioned who have advocated such beliefs as AIDS denialism and abortions causing breast cancer. Quacks, all.
47) Vaccines cause autoimmune diseases.
There are a few known associations of vaccines increasing the risk of certain autoimmune diseases, such as the flu vaccine and Guillain-Barré and MMR with immune thrombocytopenic purpura (ITP). And it makes sense that vaccines could potentially cause autoimmune diseases, since they are designed to stimulate the immune system, and autoimmune diseases are disorders of that immune system. However, studies have shown that these are very rare. Using MMR and ITP as an example, there is an increased risk. However, that risk is lower than it is with measles infection, the clinical course of ITP after vaccination is less severe compared to ITP after measles infection, and 90% of children resolve completely within 6 months.
And before you tell me how risky that is, the actual risk in that study was 23 cases in 700,000 children. Do the math, and . . . you know what, don't. I've done it for you - it's 0.0033%.
As for other autoimmune diseases (like ASIA), these occurrences are so rare that studying them is difficult because of their rarity, and some researchers do not believe ASIA even exists. An excellent review article can be found here which details pretty much everything I just said.
48) Vaccines cause seizures.
Hooray! You finally said something true!
See? I told you vaccines were dangerous!
Oh don't worry, you aren't nearly as correct as you thought you were. Febrile seizures are a well-known and relatively common side effect of vaccines, but they are also a well-known and relatively common side effect of many other febrile illnesses. That's why they are called "febrile seizures" - it's the fever that causes them. The other reason you're wrong is that they aren't nearly as common as you think - this study found a risk of 1 febrile seizure per 3,300 vaccinations even when multiple vaccines were given at the same time. Keep in mind that 3-5% of children experience a febrile seizure each year that are unrelated to vaccines, so a busy paediatrician seeing 500 infants each year would see one vaccine-related febrile seizure every 5-10 years.
49) Vaccines cause allergies, asthma, and eczema.
I'm assuming you're referring to the supposed epidemic of food allergies, peanut allergies, atopic dermatitis, etc that you believe are all caused by vaccines, because in your mind vaccines cause everything bad in the world and nothing bad every happened before vaccines were invented. Unfortunately, your belief is not supported by, you know actual data. This study of thousands of children across 97 centers in 10 countries showed no evidence that any vaccine is associated with food allergies, airborne allergies, or eczema. This study of over 1000 children found - gasp - the exact same thing. And this British study of over 29,000 children found - are you sitting down? - the exact same thing. And this study of nearly 15,000 children across 5 countries found - let me know when you tire of this - the exact same thing.
So who are we to believe - your unsubstantiated story of your kid developing a peanut allergy after getting vaccinated or multiple studies of tens of thousands of children across dozens of countries around the globe which all refute you?
50) What about the Cutter Incident?
This is one of those terribly unfortunate tragedies in medicine that should never happen but still did. A batch of live polio vaccines made by Cutter Laboratories in 1955 were not properly inactivated, and at least 120,000 people received them before they were recalled, now known as the Cutter Incident. This caused about 40,000 cases of mild polio, 56 cases of paralysis, and 5 deaths.
There are other medical tragedies, including the production and distribution of blood products tainted with HIV prior to the virus having been discovered, Dr. Mengele's horrific human experimentation during the Holocaust, and similar ghastly experiments on humans in Japan's Unit 731. But perhaps the most notorious is the 1932 Tuskegee Study, in which black men who were already infected with syphilis were knowingly not treated for the infection, even after penicillin was proved to treat it successfully in 1947. The investigators withheld both treatment and information about that treatment until a whistleblower finally blew the lid off in 1972. The fact that this continued for 40 years only compounds its utterly unethical nature, and it has fueled a deep distrust in the medical industry which continues to this day.
These occurrences are rare but terrible. There is absolutely no doubt that they should never happen. But they have, they did, and they still do. However, this is hardly a reason to argue against vaccination in general. Incidents like these should be taken as very difficult lessons from which we can learn and then prevent anything like them from ever happening again.
51) And the Simpsonwood meeting . . .
And here is where we start diving into Conspiracy Theory Land. This CDC conference ("Scientific Review of Vaccine Safety Datalink Information" actually happened in 2000. They reviewed the data regarding the possible link between thimerosal and autism and ultimately refuted any link, obviously. Enter your hero Robert F. Kennedy, Jr who wrote an article in 2005 (that was retracted by Salon) alleging the conference was intended to hide the evidence and that the lead author, Thomas Verstraeten, altered it.
Well there are a few problems with the bit of bullshit - first, the entire transcript of the meeting is freely available (for example here) (warning, it's really long), and there is no evidence of any conspiracy to cover up or change any evidence. Second, the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions reviewed the entire affair and found no evidence of any impropriety by either Dr. Verstraeten or the CDC. In fact, they concluded "Instead of hiding the data or restricting access to it, CDC distributed it, often to individuals who had never seen it before, and solicited outside opinion regarding how to interpret it".
That doesn't sound like anyone trying to hide something.
52) Well we just need safer vaccines.
I wish I could just say "Obviously" and leave it at that. We need safer everything - safer cars, safer bicycle helmets, safer sports gear, safer lawn mowers, safer lithium batteries, safer home wiring, safer food, safer schools. Everything around us should be safe, and everything around us (for the most part) has been designed specifically to be as safe as possible with the available technology. As safer technology evolves (think seat belts followed by air bags), products get ever safer. The same goes with vaccines. As vaccine science has evolved, the number of antigens in vaccines has decreased dramatically even as the number of vaccines given has increased:
And as the science continues to evolve, the products will continue to become safer.
53) Measles protects against cancer.
This ridiculous claim is based on this one article (I can't even call it a study) from 1998 (does that year ring any other antivax bells?) in which anthroposophic practitioners (I can't even call them doctors) in Switzerland conducted a questionnaire and supposedly found that the number of febrile illnesses (ie measles, mumps, rubella, chicken pox, pertussis, etc) was inversely proportional to the risk of non-breast cancer. Why is this such a bullshit claim? To start, anthroposophic medicine is an alternative practice based on occult bullshit, risible bullshit, homeopathic bullshit, and other assorted bullshit. As an example, Rudolf Steiner, one of the founders of anthroposophic medicine, believed 1) that the sex of a baby was determined at conception by the alignment of the stars, and 2) that the heart was not actually a pump, but that instead blood circulates via its own "biological momentum". If the founder of such a cult (I can't even call it a form of alternative medicine) can't even understand concepts as (relatively) simple as genetics and the circulatory system, I can hardly expect his devout followers to understand something as complex as running a scientific study.
And this was in fact not a scientific study. It was merely a survey of anthroposophic practitioners with all the inherent confirmation bias and observation bias one would expect. This is similar to the Bachmair questionnaire where only home-school mothers were surveyed by a homeopath. It begins with a biased premise and just goes off the rails from there.
The main reason this article is completely worthless is that it has not been replicated despite 20 years of opportunity to do so. This sort of information should have elicited an "AHA!" reaction from the medical world. Instead, there has been nothing. No replication, no confirmation, nothing.
In short, yes some live virus vaccines shed as these case reports prove. However, the cases are milder than wild-type infections, and they are extremely rare. Millions of doses of these vaccines are given every year, so this argument only strengthens the argument that vaccines are extremely safe.
55) The flu shot has never been tested for its ability to cause cancer.
You obviously posted this graphic:
Here is the reality - all vaccines (ALL OF THEM) go through pre-clinical toxicology testing for safety, including mutagenicity and carcinogenicity. But the problem with the flu shot is that the component for each year's shot is different, so each year's shot cannot possibly be tested prior to being used. But the data from several decades' worth of flu vaccination is that it does not cause cancer.
First, we’ve got population. The world today has 6.8 billion people. That’s headed up to about nine billion. Now, if we do a really great job on new vaccines, health care, reproductive health services, we could lower that by, perhaps, 10 or 15 percent
See! He wants to reduce population by 10-15%!
No he doesn't. As I said, this quote is taken out of context. He is talking about ways to reduce the creation of carbon dioxide, and one of those is to reduce the rate of population growth, not to reduce population. THAT is what he meant by "lower that by 10-15%". He has said repeatedly that as vaccination rates go up in developing nations, infant mortality goes down, and as more children survive, parents don't feel the need to have 8 or 10 children anymore (emphasis added):
"A surprising but critical fact we learned was that reducing the number of deaths actually reduces population growth. […] Contrary to the Malthusian view that population will grow to the limit of however many kids can be fed, in fact parents choose to have enough kids to give them a high chance that several will survive to support them as they grow old. As the number of kids who survive to adulthood goes up, parents can achieve this goal without having as many children."
and
"When a mother can choose how many children to have, her children are healthier, they’re better nourished, their mental capacities are higher—and parents have more time and money to spend on each child’s health and schooling. That’s how families and countries get out of poverty. This link between saving lives, a lower birthrate, and ending poverty was the most important early lesson Melinda and I learned about global health."
There is no eugenics conspiracy, no depopulation, no agenda 21, and no conspiracy to decrease the world population to 500 million.
Anyway, you're talking about Antonietta Gatti's rather silly evaluation of so-called contamination of vaccines with nanoparticles which backfired. First, you'll notice the paper is on Medcrave, not Pubmed. That should be a huge red flag, and if you don't know why, then you have no business trying to evaluate a scientific paper. Regardless, Gatti and her partners found varying numbers of inorganic particles when they evaporated 44 samples of 30 different vaccines and looked at them under an electron microscope. And they found tiny particles of various substances including tungsten, gold, aluminum, etc, ranging from two to 1821 particles per 20 microlitres of fluid. While that seems scary, that is an incredibly small amount of these substances compared to the amount of the vaccine, which is itself very small.
They didn't use any controls, so there is no telling how many of these particles would be found in tap water or sterile saline or distilled water or anything else. The bottom line is that nothing is completely pure, but this study actually shows that vaccines are very, very pure.
58) But Gardasil . . .
I'm going to stop you right there, because you said either "premature ovarian failure" or "kills" or "maims" or some other bullshit. I'm sure you probably mentioned some scary-sounding anecdote about a young girl getting her Gardasil shot and then becoming lethargic or wheelchair-bound or dead. Right?
Ooooh wait I know, you said that there are no Gardasil safety studies. Right?
Oh, you said there are no placebo-controlled safety studies, right?
Wrong, wrong, and wrong. In fact, here is a review of 109 safety studies across six countries including over 2.5 million subjects which showed only an increased risk of local injection site reactions (pain, redness, swelling), but no increased risk of any of the various things supposedly attributed to HPV vaccines, including demyelinating diseases and neurological syndromes.
And here is a study of nearly 1 million girls in Denmark and Sweden which shows no increased risk of autoimmune, neurological, or thromboembolic events.
59) Gardasil causes premature ovarian failure.
Sorry, I left that out the last one. There are case reports of teenage girls developing primary ovarian insufficiency after HPV vaccination. But these are mere anecdotes, and even before HPV vaccination there was a 22/100,000 rate of primary ovarian insufficiency, so it has always existed. But this study of nearly 200,000 girls showed no increased risk of primary ovarian insufficiency after HPV vaccination.
60) Herd immunity doesn't exist.
Sure it does. It's been demonstrated numerous times, but I think one of the best examples was this study from Burkina Faso, in which nearly 90% of the population at risk was vaccinated for meningitis (Neisseria meningitidis serotype A, or NmA), and 13 months later when the subjects (both the vaccinated and unvaccinated) were resampled, exactly ZERO still carried NmA. As the authors conclude, "The disappearance of NmA carriage among both vaccinated and unvaccinated populations is consistent with a vaccine-induced herd immunity effect".
That's just one example. There are many others.
61) X didn't exist before vaccines.
It doesn't really matter what you said didn't exist before vaccines, unless you said "herd immunity". I've seen various claims here, but the most common ones are autism (of course) and SIDS. Leo Kanner first described autism in 1943 before all but two vaccines (smallpox and diphtheria) were invented (diphtheria antitoxin was invented in 1901, and Hans Asperger was lecturing about a group of children with autism in 1938, but the vaccine didn't come out until the 1920's). And Eugen Bleuler first used the term "autism" in 1908. That is a very long-winded way of saying yes, autism actually existed before vaccines. Except smallpox, but I haven't seen a single person arguing that the smallpox vaccine causes autism. Probably because it doesn't.
Do you know what else decreases the risk of SIDS? Anyone? Bueller?
62) Polio never went away, it was just renamed transverse myelitis or GBS or acute flaccid myelitis.
Take a look at this:
Any idea what it is? If you said "That's a polio virus", then chances are you are not an antivaxxer, because that is, in fact, the polio virus. I only say that because if you're an antivaxxer you probably couldn't tell a polio virus from a volleyball. You see, polio is a viral disease, and all those other things are not (as far as we know). Polio virus can be isolated from a patient with a paralytic disease. It cannot be isolated from Guillain–Barré syndrome, because it does not cause Guillain–Barré syndrome. It cannot be isolated from transverse myelitis patients, because it does not cause transverse myelitis. It cannot be isolated from acute flaccid myelitis patients, because it does not cause acute flaccid myelitis. See where I'm going with this? While we don't know what does cause acute flaccid myelitis, we do know it is not polio.
There are several different, distinct paralytic diseases, and they all present differently. That's why they are different, distinct diseases. Polio is polio, and not polio is not polio.
What you are ignoring are the far-more-common outbreaks (and subsequent deaths) in unvaccinated (or undervaccinated) populations. And no, I'm not going to use the Disneyland outbreak in 2015, even though 45% of the patients from California were unvaccinated while only 7% were fully vaccinated (the rest were either undervaccinated or had an unknown vaccination status).
Oops, I guess I am going to use that as an example. An even better example is the 2019 Philippines outbreak, with nearly 15,000 cases and over 230 deaths (so far as of this writing), 65% of whom were unvaccinated.
Another example is the current outbreak of measles in Ukraine, with 24,000 cases and 9 deaths
And an even better example is the ongoing outbreak of measles in Madagascar, where they have had over 82,000 cases and about 1000 deaths, two-thirds of whom were unvaccinated. If you aren't seeing a pattern here, then you're even more intellectually dishonest than I could have predicted.
64) Squalene something something Gulf War Syndrome . . .
I would have put this up in the "toxins" section, but I don't see it terribly often, so I decided to put it waaaaaaaaaaay down here. Squalene is not an adjuvant by itself, but it is when emulsified with surfactants. It is only added to certain flu vaccines in Europe and one for seniors in the US, so it is not present in any childhood vaccine. The reason for the fear is the supposed presence of anti-squalene antibodies found in American soldiers with the so-called Gulf War Syndrome.
A few problems with this:
Squalene is a naturally occurring substance, and your liver is making it right now as you read this;
It isn't squalene. At all. This is just another example of you being scared of something that sounds scary.
65) Peanut oil is used as a vaccine adjuvant and is causing the peanut allergy epidemic.
A peanut oil adjuvant was tested in the 1960's, but it was never approved for use and is currently found in exactly 0 vaccines anywhere on the planet. While it is (probably) true that peanut (and other food) allergies are increasing in many countries, it isn't vaccines causing it, because much like the mythical truly well-informed antivaxxer, peanut oil adjuvants do not exist.
What is causing it is (probably) the attempted environmental sterilisation that too many parents undertake to keep their kids "safe" from germs. Unfortunately this practice appears to be preventing the normal development of the immune system and is increasing the risk of food allergies. In case you think I'm just pulling this out of my ass (which I admittedly was when I started talking about it over a decade ago), recent evidence fully supports this notion.
66) Measles virus doesn't even exist.
This one may sound completely batshit insane, but that's only because it fucking is. This ridiculous mind-bending claim comes from ultra antivaxxer Stefan Lanka, who bet 100,000 euros that no one could prove the measles virus exists. Of course someone (Dr. David Bardens) proved him wrong beyond any reasonable doubt, and a court ordered Lanka to pay up. But the decision was reversed on appeal, judging that the evidence Bardens provided had to live up to Lanka's expectations. Bardens could probably have invented a machine to embiggen the virus to 2m in diameter and shoved it in Lanka's face, but so deeply entrenched are his rabid antivax beliefs that he would have still denied its existence.
Yeah, measles virus exists. Here it is.
67) We never had all these vaccines when I was a kid, I got all these diseases, and I'm fine.
Congratulations! You just described survivorship bias. Because there are literally millions of other people who contracted these exact same diseases and are now dead because of them. No vaccine-preventable disease is anywhere close to 100% fatal (except rabies), so of course most people who got them survived unscathed. This doesn't make the diseases benign (see #16), it just makes you one of the majority who made it. Not every kid is as lucky.
68) Vaccines make you gay.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
No but seriously, HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
If you believe a word that comes out of Alex Jones' mouth, then you are quite literally a lost cause. There really isn't a refutation to this, because it is actually that risible.
69) Polio was caused by DDT, not poliovirus.
This is just an example of germ theory denialism. It is true that DDT was used to try to prevent the spread of polio, because at the time (mid 1940s) it was incorrectly thought that polio was transmitted by insects like mosquitoes or flies (it is actually faecal-oral).
The big problem with this hypothesis is the timing. The first polio epidemic in the US, for example was in 1894, and the polio virus was discovered in 1908. DDT, on the other hand, was invented in 1874 but was not discovered to be an insecticide until 1939, well after polio was harming children.
70) There hasn't been a vaccine safety study in 30 years.
I see you are a fan of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr's brand of antivax bullshit. This claim has been wildly twisted from its origins and stems from a 1986 US law (NCVIA ring a bell?) which, among other things, required that HHS report vaccine safety studies to congress. But somehow even though the reports were done, they were not all properly filed. Let me repeat - the studies were done, they just weren't properly reported. In fact, here is one now.
Do not misunderstand me, the law was not followed here, and that's not a good thing. I don't know why the reports were not properly filed, and I don't know why HHS didn't present the information to congress as they were supposed to. Regardless, safety studies have been done, task forces have regularly met and reported on vaccine safety, vaccine safety oversight committees have been formed and reported to HHS, the Clinical Immunization Safety Assessment project was started in 2001, etc etc etc.
The evidence shows that vaccines are safe, that evidence just wasn't reported properly to congress. That does not mean it does not exist.
71) MMS can cure autism.
No. It. Can. Not. There is literally no evidence to support such a ludicrous claim, so I can't even cite anything refuting it. And if you really think giving your child chlorine dioxide (an industrial bleach), either orally or rectally, can cure his autism, then you are even more evil than I could have imagined.
72) I'm not anti-vaccine, but . . .
If you start a statement with "No offence, but . . .", you can be assured that the next thing out of your mouth will be offensive. By the same token, any sentence starting with "Not to sound racist, but . . ." is guaranteed to be followed by something racist. Similarly, if you start with "I'm not anti-vaccine, but . . .", there is at least a 99.9974% chance (I calculated it) that yes, you are anti-vaccine.
No, you are not "pro safe-vaccines", because vaccines are already safe. No, you are not "pro medical autonomy", because no one is forcing you to vaccinate yourself or your children. No, you are not "pro informed consent", because informed consent is already done prior to vaccination. What you are is doing using these excuses as excuses. And what you are is anti-vaccine.
73) Vaccines are against my religion.
Unless you happen to be a Christian Scientist or in the Dutch Reformed church, no they aren't. There are exactly zero major religions on the planet that have any doctrine, law, or rule against vaccines. This review article lists all major religions, including Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, and Judaism. Not even Catholicism forbids vaccines, despite some of them being grown using cell lines from an aborted foetus. According to the National Catholic Bioethics Center, if there is no alternative, "One is morally free to use the vaccine regardless of its historical association with abortion. The reason is that the risk to public health, if one chooses not to vaccinate, outweighs the legitimate concern about the origins of the vaccine."
Besides, Christian Scientists believe that disease can be cured through prayer and the Dutch Reformed church believes vaccines interfere with "divine providence", whatever that means. So no, your religion does not outlaw vaccines.
74) Vaccines are injected directly into the bloodstream.
This is a rather strange claim that seems to be pure and unadulterated fear mongering, because so fucking what if they are? There are lots of things injected directly into the bloodstream: saline, anaesthestics, pain medicine, antibiotics, anti-convulsants, sedatives. You know those vitamin drips that are so in these days? Yup, directly into the bloodstream. Are any of you demanding to know what's in your regenerative vitamin B infusion at the vitamin bar? Are any antivaxxers demanding that their anaesthesiologist list the ingredients in their magic sleeping potion? I didn't think so. Regardless, do you know what is not injected directly into the bloodstream? Come on, I'll give you one guess.
That's right, vaccines. There are exactly ZERO vaccines that are injected intravenously. None. Zip. All vaccines (other than oral polio and intranasal flu) are administered into the muscle (intramuscular), skin (subcutaneous), or dermis (intradermal). If you are getting a vaccine directly into your bloodstream, then whoever is giving it to you is making a mistake.
75) Vaccines are unavoidably unsafe.
Yes they are.
HA! I WIN!
No you don't, because if you use this argument then you don't know what "unavoidably unsafe" means. All it means is that there is no way for the manufacturer to make them 100% safe and prevent any side effect.
This term comes from the Restatement (Second) of Torts, which was written by the American Law Institute in 1965, 1977, and 1979. In it, an "unavoidably unsafe products" is described as "an apparently useful and desirable product, attended with a known but apparently reasonable risk." You can read a thorough explanation here.
Medicines have side effects. This is a well-known fact that is not disputed. Vaccines are medicines. This is also a well-known fact that is not disputed. Therefore, vaccines will have side effects, including serious side effects such as anaphylaxis. There is no way to predict who will develop such a reaction, so there is no way to make the vaccine safer in that regard. However, as we have learned above the risk of such serious side effects is about 1 per million doses, so the benefits far outweigh these risks.
76) Vaccines are just ways to make money.
Vaccines are made by pharmaceutical companies, and pharmaceutical companies are designed to make money. This is not even debatable, because it is fact. However, according to the World Health Organisation vaccines comprise less than 2% of pharmaceutical companies' revenue. These companies make far more with blockbuster medicines like Lipitor or Viagra. Vaccines, on the other hand, are just not big money makers.
But doctors make a ton giving vaccines!
Most doctors make exactly fuck all from giving vaccines. In the UK and Australia, doctors don't get paid any extra for giving vaccines. Exactly 0. In the US, studies have shown that paediatricians make little-to-no money giving vaccines.
But American doctors get a $400 per patient bonus for giving vaccines!
You seriously believe that? How many paediatricians do you know driving Aston Martins home to their enormous mansions? That "bonus" you've heard about does exist, but it is not a bonus per shot, it's a small bonus given to a doctor by an insurance company for their entire cohort of patients if they immunise above a certain percentage. That is one bonus per doctor for all their patients, not for each one. After all, it's far less expensive for the insurance companies to prevent a disease than to pay for treating it, and just like pharmaceutical companies, insurance companies are also in the business of making money, not paying for medical care.
Take for example this case of tetanus in an unvaccinated 6-year-old boy who spent 8 weeks in hospital at a cost of over $811,000. On the other hand, a tetanus shot costs $64 in the US, £52 in the UK, and $0 in Australia. I've done the arithmetic once again, and treating the disease cost the parents' insurance company (assuming they were insured) 12,671 times the cost of the vaccine.
Now tell me more about vaccines being all about the money. Go ahead. Just try it.
77) Vaccines violate the Nuremburg Code.
Oh how I wish I could just say "NO THEY FUCKING DON'T" and be done with it, but just like with the autism myth, this one does not want to die.
The Nuremburg trials were a series of twelve military tribunals which took place after the end of World War II from 1946-1949. The first of the trials (The "Doctors Trial") saw 23 former Nazis (20 of whom were doctors) tried for war crimes, including various heinous human torture experiments as well as over 3 million forced sterilisations. During the trial, doctors working with the prosecution outlined six points (later expanded to 10) which outlined legitimate human experimentation. These ten points, the Nuremburg Code, defined "Permissible Medical Experiments":
1) The voluntary consent of the human subject is absolutely essential.
2) The experiment should be such as to yield fruitful results for the good of society, unprocurable by other methods or means of study, and not random and unnecessary in nature.
3) The experiment should be so designed and based on the results of animal experimentation and a knowledge of the natural history of the disease or other problem under study that the anticipated results will justify the performance of the experiment.
4) The experiment should be so conducted as to avoid all unnecessary physical and mental suffering and injury.
5) No experiment should be conducted where there is an a priori reason to believe that death or disabling injury will occur; except, perhaps, in those experiments where the experimental physicians also serve as subjects.
6) The degree of risk to be taken should never exceed that determined by the humanitarian importance of the problem to be solved by the experiment.
7) Proper preparations should be made and adequate facilities provided to protect the experimental subject against even remote possibilities of injury, disability, or death.
8) The experiment should be conducted only by scientifically qualified persons. The highest degree of skill and care should be required through all stages of the experiment of those who conduct or engage in the experiment.
9) During the course of the experiment the human subject should be at liberty to bring the experiment to an end if he has reached the physical or mental state where continuation of the experiment seems to him to be impossible.
10) During the course of the experiment the scientist in charge must be prepared to terminate the experiment at any stage, if he has probably cause to believe, in the exercise of the good faith, superior skill and careful judgment required of him that a continuation of the experiment is likely to result in injury, disability, or death to the experimental subject.
Is anybody seeing a problem here? That's right - this code is about human experimentation, not about established medical procedures, which always have some risk of harm and which are also covered by informed consent. The Nuremburg Code is meant to protect humans from unethical and/or immoral researchers (see Tuskegee, Unit 731, British mustard gas experiments, Soviet poison laboratory, and the Canadian tuberculosis vaccine experiment, among others). This argument is nothing more than an appeal to I-hope-you-don't-actually-look-this-up-and-see-that-this-argument-is-pure-bullshit.
Oh, and even if the Nuremburg Code applied to vaccines (which it doesn't), vaccines still don't violate the codes in the slightest.
78) There are no saline placebo vaccine trials.
This should have been incredibly simple for you self-professed "researchers" to prove wrong and prevent yourself from looking like a fucking idiot. Even a 0.299 second google search for "vaccine saline placebo" would have turned up not only several dozen saline placebo vaccine trials, but also several other blog posts which catalogue just such trials. But since you can't be bothered to do such an elementary search (because if you did, you'd find out just how fucking wrong you are), I've done it for you. Here are a few highlights:
Got it now? Saline placebo vaccine studies, lots of them, exist. This is incontrovertible and inarguable, and continuing to lie otherwise is nothing more than an attempt at willful deception.
79) But look at the rate of autism compared with the number of vaccines! It's obvious that vaccines cause autism!
First, let's just countering this bullshit by saying that correlation doesn't equal causation. In case you don't know what that means (and if you made this stupid argument, there is a 99.481% chance that you don't), it means that just because the two rates increased at the same time, it doesn't necessarily mean one caused the other. If you'd like a graphical explanation (since you probably still don't quite get it), take a look at this:
See? From this graph it should be plainly obvious that organic food causes autism.
But that's ridiculous! Of course organic foods don't cause autism!
Why is that so ridiculous to believe? You seem to believe that vaccines cause autism simply because the total number of vaccine doses increased at the same time as the rate of autism increased, so why is it so impossible to believe that organic food did the same thing? I mean, just look at that graph!
It's a bullshit argument because correlation doesn't equal causation.
The main reasons the incidence of autism is rising are 1) broadened diagnostic criteria in the early 1990's, and 2) increased awareness and recognition. This enormous study of over 600,000 children in Denmark found that about 60% of the perceived increase in the number of cases of autism spectrum disorder is due to changes in reporting practices. And this 16-year study also out of Denmark (which has an excellent national medical record system) found that some of the biggest increases in autism spectrum disorder incidence were found in females, adolescents, and adults. In fact, 9% of the new cases of ASD were found in people aged 21-65.
Now unless you somehow think that full-grown adult people with their full-grown adult brains are somehow becoming autistic, this should tell you quite clearly where the increase in cases is coming from. I can think of at least a dozen people off the top of my head that I knew growing up several decades ago who are clearly on the spectrum but were never diagnosed. They were just "that kid" who was slightly different or had difficulties with social interactions. I never learned about autism until years later. And neither did they.
80) Well if correlation doesn't equal causation, then having antibodies to a virus doesn't necessarily mean you're immune.
Sigh. Sometimes correlation DOES mean causation. For example, when we know how the adaptive immune system works, when we know exactly how and why the body forms B cells against a virus or bacterium, and when we know how those B-cells convert to plasma cells when they re-encounter the same virus or bacterium to produce massive amounts of specific antibodies against it, then yes, that correlation is causation.
The fact that I still have high titres of measles antibody (yes, I actually checked) several decades after my last measles shot, and the fact that I (and several hundred million other people) have not gotten measles since then, means I am still immune. THAT is causation.
81) Dr. Paul Offit said that babies can handle 10,000 vaccines at once! Ridiculous!
Is it though? Paul Offit is a paediatrician, the chief of infectious diseases at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, a vaccine researcher, one of the inventors of the Rotateq vaccine (rotavirus vaccines save the lives of over 25,000 children under age 5 every year), and one of the most vocal proponents of vaccines in the world. In other words, he knows a hell of a lot more about vaccines, infectious diseases, and immunology than you or I ever could.
In January 2002 he published an article entitled "Addressing Parents’ Concerns: Do Multiple Vaccines Overwhelm or Weaken the Infant’s Immune System?" (spoiler alert: no). In it he addresses the diversity of antigen receptors, antigens and epitopes per vaccine, and generation of antibodies and B cell clones (which is some pretty goddamned fancy science), among many other things. Based on the science, he concludes,
"each infant would have the theoretical capacity to respond to about 10,000 vaccines at any one time (obtained by dividing 107 B cells per mL by 103 epitopes per vaccine)".
All he tried to do is allay people's fear about vaccines using actual science (which the average person unfortunately doesn't understand), and of course antivaxxers jumped all over him for it:
Classy. Really fucking classy. I referred to exactly this concept waaaaaaaay back up in #18 - children, especially infants who live on the floor, are exposed to thousands and possibly millions of antigens every day. Starting from the moment they exit the uterus, infants are constantly bombarded with antigens in the air, in their food, in their bath water, on their toys, on their clothes, on their pets, and on their (and your) skin. While their immune systems are not fully mature, they are more than equipped to deal with all of these antigens, so they are more than equipped to deal with a few hundred antigens in even several vaccines given all at once. And before you start with your stupid But what about all the other junk in the vaccines, go the fuck back and read #2, #3, #4, #5, and #6, and then come back and apologise for repeating such a stupid argument since you should fucking know better by now.
82) None of this matters, because viruses don't even cause disease because they don't even satisfy Koch's postulates.
Wow, a germ theory denier! I still find it abso-fucking-lutely stunning that germ theory deniers (and flat earthers, for that matter) can exist now with all humankind's information so readily available. And if by chance you aren't a germ theory denier and just regurgitated this bit of stupidity that you saw on Facebook or greenmedinfo or Infowars or whatever your idiotic choice of idiotic information is without bothering to learn anything about it whatsoever, then the only other possibility for you making this stupid argument is that you 1) don't have a fucking clue what Koch's postulates are, 2) don't realise that Koch conceptualised this in 1884, 3) don't know that Koch was talking only of cholera and tuberculosis, 4) don't know that Koch's postulates don't (and never did) apply to viruses, and 5) don't know that Koch's postulates have essentially been replaced by the Bradford Hill criteria (which themselves have become obsolete since they were published in 1965 - yeah, that's how science works).
Koch's postulates are supposed to establish a causal relationship between a microbe and the disease it causes:
1) The microorganism must be found in abundance in all organisms suffering from the disease, but should not be found in healthy organisms.
2) The microorganism must be isolated from a diseased organism and grown in pure culture.
3) The cultured microorganism should cause disease when introduced into a healthy organism.
4) The microorganism must be re-isolated from the inoculated, diseased experimental host and identified as being identical to the original specific causative agent.
Three years after they were published, Koch himself admitted that the first postulate isn't necessary when he discovered the existence of asymptomatic carriers of typhoid fever. This idea has also been completely abandoned by modern medicine because there are many other diseases (HIV, polio, colds, flu, etc) which have asymptomatic carriers. So that should throw this idea right out the window.
But viruses don't satisfy them either, because they can't be grown in culture. Viruses have to be grown on the type of cells they infect, and viruses were not known to exist in 1890 when these were first written. Furthermore, Koch also realised that not everyone who is exposed to a microorganism becomnes infected, which is why the third postulate says "should" rather than "must".
This is all just a long-winded way of saying that viruses don't satisfy Koch's postulates because Koch's postulates were not intended for viruses, so your argument is moot.
Viruses have been isolated from the diseases they cause. That is irrefutable.
83) Something something microchip something something deep state something.
Oh fucking dear. You must have shared something like this:
There is no evidence - NONE - that this is remotely true. The Gates Foundation has funded research into a type of invisible "tattoo" which would be given at the same time as a vaccine and would provide a useful vaccination history. This is especially helpful in poorer countries where vaccination records are difficult to keep. But it is not a chip, it's just an invisible dye. And it does not contain any information other than "THIS VACCINE WAS GIVEN HERE TO THIS PERSON". No location, no personal information, nothing. If THE GOVERNMENT wants to track your location, they'll just use your mobile phone.
Oh, and I forgot to mention that it doesn't even actually exist yet - it's purely investigative at this point.
- - - - -
Whew.
That's all I have at the moment. I'm sure there are myriad other bullshit anti-vaccine claims out there, so if I missed any good ones please comment below.
It should surprise exactly no one that most of my patients come to me by ambulance. There are a few walk-ins (walks-in?) - mainly 1) folks who are assaulted and have fractured noses and/or mandibles, 2) people who wake up having blacked out drunk the night before with have no fucking clue why the hell their head is bleeding, or 3) cars that roar up to the ambulance bay, kick some bleeding kid out of the car, and roar back off. Patients in categories 1 and 2 are usually not injured enough to call an ambulance, but they are still injured enough to warrant my attention once they get to the hospital, while patients in category 3 are usually dead or dying and need my attention an hour ago.
And then there are the people transported by helicopter.
Since my hospital is the only trauma centre for a very large portion of the surrounding geography (much of which is rather rural), it would simply take too long for a regular ambulance to navigate traffic, so they are flown in. The rural area and the people who live there are . . . well, let's just call them different. I won't go into detail, because I am not disparaging these people, and because I think everyone reading this, no matter what part of the globe you occupy, has that area very close by where the people are just a shade disparate. Admit it, you know exactly what I mean.
Unfortunately it isn't just the general population that is unique, but the doctors as well.
Henrietta (not her real name™) was a very sweet 72-year-old woman who was brought to me by air ambulance after a fall. Most falls in elderly people are ground-level falls (sorry all you 70+-year-olds out there, but yes, you're elderly), but Henrietta was a bit different. Not different, just different. She had fallen off a bed. Now I get falls from bed all the time (unfortunately), but again Henrietta was different. Because the bed she had fallen off wasn't so much a bed, but more of a table.
A CT scanner table.
I'll pause here so you can reread that last sentence fragment again.
If your head is spinning like a CT scanner and you're wondering just what the hell you just read, then you can rest assured that you read it correctly.
Henrietta had been at an outpatient radiology centre located somewhere very close to the Ass End Of Space and was getting a CT scan of her brain for reasons known only to her doctor (apparently). I asked her several times why she was getting her brain scanned, but her only response was "My doctor told me to". [Note to everyone out there: if your doctor instructs you to get a test done, any test, make sure you ask WHY.]
Anyway, Henrietta had become a bit restless and anxious while the CT tech was adjusting the table and had rolled off and bonked (that's the technical term) the back of her head a bit. She did not lose consciousness, was acting completely appropriately, and had no complaint other than the mild head bonk.The radiologist was concerned (for some unknown reason) that she had a brain injury, so he did the correct thing to do in that situation, which was absolutely nothing different than was already planned. Since she was there for a brain scan anyway, he simply got her up, put her back on the table, did the scan she was supposed to get, and let her go home after reading her scan and making sure her brain was uninjured.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHA no he didn't. He didn't do any of those things. No, with a neurologically normal patient and a CT scanner literally at his fingertips, he called a fucking ambulance.
Yes, really.
Twenty minutes later the medics arrived and assessed her. It seems they were inexplicably just as concerned as the radiologist, because they also felt she needed a full trauma workup. But because the radiology centre was located near the Restaurant At The End Of The Universe, they called for an air ambulance.
Yes, really.
The helicopter brought Henrietta to my trauma bay about an hour after the incident. This included the time for the ground crew evaluation, the helicopter taking off, flying, landing, packaging her up, inserting her into the bowels of the helicopter, taking off again, flying again, landing again, and unpacking her at my hospital.
I'd just like to take a brief moment to recap for anyone who may have gotten lost: a helicopter brought a woman from a CT scanner, where she was getting her brain scanned, to me, so that I could put her in a CT scanner and scan her brain.
Incredulity just barely scratches the surface of every single person in the room as the transport crew gave us their report, which sounded a little like this:
"Hi there (sorry) Doc, this is (really sorry) Henrietta. She (seriously, we're sorry) rolled off a CT table and hit her head (so sorry)."
Henrietta was still acting completely appropriately, though she had a slight headache and a very small bump on the back of her head. After approximately 623 confused glances were exchanged among the hospital staff and the helicopter crew ("Hey, they call us, we come", they said in their defence as they left), I did a thorough head-to-toe evaluation and then, you know, scanned her head.
And wouldn't you know, it was absolutely, completely, totally, and in all other ways stone cold normal and gave exactly no indication as to why she was getting the original scan in the first place. About two hours later, Henrietta's husband arrived after navigating traffic from Bumfuck Nowhere. Notably, he had no idea why she was getting the original scan either. Regardless I made sure to give them copies of her scan to give to her doctor.
I also sent a copy of both the scan and our radiologists' report to the referring radiologist at the outpatient imaging centre. I strongly considered attaching a note that said "Here is what you would have seen had you not wasted an absurd amount of time and money and had instead just done the right goddamned thing", but my restraint came through in the end and I thought better of it. Instead, my note simply said,
Though I live in a relatively small enclave of a much larger city, there are still occasions where I will see someone I recognise. It could be hospital staff, another physician, a nurse, or a patient or their family member. One of my patients several years ago (whom I did not recognise as first) turned out to be a woman who lived just a few houses down from me. It is usually difficult for me to identify a familiar face, because while I am good at recognising the face, I am terrible at coupling a name or place to it. But there are some faces that just stand out for whatever reason, and these faces tend to belong to people who, for one reason or another, have made an impact on my brain.
Yes, that's foreshadowing.
It was right around lunch time, which my stomach kept reminding me by attempting to digest itself (or so it felt and sounded), when Paolo (not his real name™) was brought to me in a heap of mud and vodka. According to the ambulance crew, Paolo had thought it would be a really fantastic idea to drink heavily during his lunch break at work and then drive his van off the road, causing it (and him) to roll over several times. I have to assume his right foot tumbled partially out of the window as the vehicle rolled, which caused it to get crushed between the van and the road and mangled both the foot and the van nearly beyond recognition. It's difficult to describe the carnage I found around what-used-to-be his ankle, but let's just say that there were very few structures I could actually identify as belonging to a human foot. And for the first time in my career, I removed a piece of a pencil from a traumatic wound.
Seriously.
Yet despite his grisly injury, he had surprisingly very little pain as we examined him and found no other injuries (other than a few lacerations on his scrotum. No, I have no idea how that happened). I suppose there is a reason the phrase "feeling no pain" exists.
Anyway, I'll just give you the short-short version: I sutured his scrotum and Paolo lost his leg, but he lived.
Wait wait wait, that's it? 'He lost his leg'? And you sutured his scrotum and aren't going to tell us anything more about that? That's the end of the story? What the hell is this, Doc?
What this is, is not a story about Paolo.
Uh . . . what? Haha, the old bait and switch! I teased you with what you thought was an interesting story, but I'm swapping it for (what I think is) an even-more-interesting story, which will probably fall flat and be interesting to no one but me.
Alas, woe is me.
Aaaaaanyway yes indeed, this story is not about Paolo but rather about the guy who was taking Paolo's blood pressure, getting him a warm blanket, and reporting his findings back to the trauma nurse. I had no idea who he was. He wasn't one of the trauma nurses, because there were already two of them there and he was dressed in street clothes. He was a young guy in his mid 20's, handsome, tall, long hair, and he had a hospital badge, so clearly he wasn't just some guy who walked in off the street offering to help.
I know this kid, I thought. Who is he? Is he the son of a family friend? A neighbour No wait, is he the guy who replaced my refrigerator motor last year? I just couldn't place him, but he definitely looked familiar. Very familiar.
If anyone had been watching me from across the room, it must have looked as if I were ogling this kid, which I, uh, I guess I was in a way.
This bizarre leering continued for at least five minutes as he continued bustling around helping the nurses and I continued racking my brain for some inkling as to just who the hell he was. Finally, still at a loss, I decided that I had imagined the whole thing and that I didn't actually know him and that he wasn't the guy I saw buying 10 packs of Velcro at the hardware store last week (my mind goes to some rather strange places sometimes). I started berating myself for wasting so much time in this futile endeavor, and right around then the kid finally caught my eye, cocked his head, and smiled knowingly. As he walked up to me holding his hand out for a handshake with a big grin on his face, it instantly hit me, and I smiled back, extended my hand, and said,
"Oh, hello again Theo."
His grin brought it all back to me. I had seen Theo (not his real name™) in my trauma bay almost exactly four years ago to the day. He had been working as a volunteer medic, standing on the side of the road helping the victim of a minor car crash in the middle of the night, when a drunk driver plowed into him and another volunteer at high velocity. Both of them had been brought to me, but Theo was in much worse shape. While the other young lady had a minor fracture of her thoracic spine and a few abrasions, Theo had a horrific open skull fracture and a large subdural haematoma. He underwent surgery to remove a portion of his skull and evacuation of the blood clot and then spent several weeks in hospital before going to a brain injury rehabilitation facility. I remember him as being extremely polite, always willing to participate, always thankful, and always smiling.
He had had another operation several months later to replace his portion of skull followed by many more months of rehab. And now here he was, four years later, completely recovered.
And on his way to nursing school.
Instead of being turned off to the medical field, Theo told me that his experience only strengthened his will to continue his pursuit of helping. Today he was shadowing the trauma nurses and gaining experience for the future. As Theo put it, "As stupid as it sounds Doc, after seeing firsthand what paramedics, nurses, and doctors can do, I just want to give back. Pretty corny, right?"
I didn't think it sounded corny at all. I actually thought it sounded rather wonderful.
Of all the trauma alerts I get, the most frustrating has to be "FALL". These are usually elderly patients who fight gravity and lose, and their cases are seldom (if ever) satisfying. They typically are uninjured beyond bumps, bruises, and lacerations, though due to their age their recovery from such minor injuries can take several days or even longer. But if they do sustain serious injuries, they tend to be isolated to hip fractures, which I don't treat. The other types of falls (off a ladder, off a roof, off a bar stool etc) usually are from heights of 3-4 metres and are thus mostly uninjured (zzzzzzzz) or have broken ankles, which I still don't treat. All of this adds up to a very sullen me as I trot down to the trauma bay for yet another fall.
So when my pager alerted me to a fall recently (my third one of the day by 10 AM already), I got not a bit excited and tried my best to avoid the trauma bay entirely. I had only had one coffee by then, so I figured maybe the caffeine would elevate my heart rate even if the complexity of the trauma didn't. My Inner Pessimist, however, forced me to walk down to the trauma bay despite my efforts to ignore him.
The bustle when I got to the trauma bay confused me. Normally for low-level traumas the nurses and other staff sort of mill around chatting prior to the patient arriving, but in this case everyone was rushing around getting equipment. For a fall? What the hell is going on?
And about 30 seconds later, Xavier (not his real name™) arrived, and that question was quickly answered.
"Hey there Doc, this is Xavier. He fell off a cliff and . . ."
Wait, wait, wait. He fell off a what? Where the fuck is there a cliff around here??
"Yeah, you know the {Redacted} Cliffs."
Uh . . . no I really don't. I had no idea there were any cliffs in this area.
"Anyway, Xavier fell off a cliff about 30-40 metres. He woke up at the bottom and doesn't remember anything.
No but seriously, where the hell is there a cliff?
"Ahem. Vitals have been stable though he's breathing a bit fast. He's complaining of pain all over his body."
Yeah, after falling 40 metres down a goddamned cliff I would be stunned if he weren't.
Normally the first thing I do is a full assessment, but my Inner Pessimist was insisting that I google where the fuck this cliff was. I resisted that urge and instead decided to, you know, examine my patient, an idea which seemed only slightly more important at the time. Xavier looked completely miserable. His blood pressure was fine but his heart rate was in the 140's. The most common reason for a high heart rate in trauma is bleeding, the second most common cause is bleeding, and third most common cause is fucking bleeding. It could also be due to pain or heart injury or drugs, but bleeding is always my first concern. My concern was somewhat higher because his oxygen saturation was in the 80's (normal is 95-100%).
On my initial head-to-toe assessment he was tender in his head cervical spine, thoracic spine, lumbar spine, chest, left hip, and left arm, though other than some rather crunchy ribs he had no obviously broken bones. His breath sounds were diminished on the left side, indicating that he likely had a pneumothorax (collapsed lung) under those fractured ribs. That concern was confirmed about 60 seconds later when I saw his chest X-ray.
His workup, which included X-rays and/or CT scans of pretty much every single body part (I think I skipped his thymus and right foot), showed that he was fucking broken. Think of a body part - go ahead, just think of one (other than the thymus and right foot, obviously). Yup, you got it, that was broken. He had fractures in his skull neck, upper back, lower back, ribs, hip, arm, and leg, along with his pneumothorax. He would need a chest tube for his lung, surgery for his hip, arm, and leg, and a neck brace and full back brace for his spine, which would not need surgery.
But the main question I had (other than "What cliff?") was, How the fuck do you fall off a cliff? And seriously, what goddamned cliff??
After several rounds of IV narcotics finally successfully controlled Xavier's pain (because of course he had a longstanding history of oral narcotic abuse), I got a chance to ask Xavier what happened. He very groggily told me that he was trying to show his in-laws the {Redacted} Cliffs while they were visiting that morning, and he simply got too close to the edge, lost his footing, and toppled.
This, I thought, is why I will never be out of a job.
As I contemplated the amount of human stupidity that it takes to get that close to the edge of a cliff (which, I learned later, has no guard rail on it), I looked at Xavier's blood work. While there was no major abnormality in either his blood counts or chemistry, his blood alcohol was about 3 times the legal limit to drive, which a quick calculation told me is approximately infinity times the amount of alcohol one should have in one's system while walking near a fucking cliff at 9 in the morning.
Xavier spent about two weeks with me before going home in a wheelchair, but it took me far less time than that to find out where these cliffs were. The moment I got in my car to go home the next morning I whipped out google and discovered that these cliffs are less than an hour's drive from the hospital. I briefly considered checking them out, but instead I decided to drive straight home and give my kids a big hug.
That seemed much more important. The cliffs can wait.
Seriously . . . very NSFW pictures DO NOT read this in the presence of children. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.
Several people have emailed me over the past two months to ask if I'm ok because my blog has been silent. I thank you good people very kindly for your concern, but I assure you I'm fine. But good lord, you people are right! It's been over two months since I've written anything. Well, that isn't exactly true - I've tried to sit down and write several times, and I now have 10 (!!) posts partially written and sitting abandoned in my "Drafts" folder. And by "partially written" I mean "a paragraph or two". And by "a paragraph or two" I mean "a sentence". Or a title.
Sigh. Writer's block sucks.
It isn't that I don't have material, it's just that lately I don't seem to have the desire to sit and do it for whatever reason. It isn't mentally exhausting to write and it isn't terribly difficult. Hell, I could sit in my car and dictate a blog post if I wanted to. It's just that I didn't want to.
Until now. Because it's rectal foreign object time again!
If I seem excited, it's because I am. Call it macabre or bizarre, call it weird, call it really fucking disgusting if you prefer. But these cases are, well, fun. There's no way around it - they're just fun. And lest you think it's just me, it isn't.
I always worried that it was just me until yesterday, because yesterday I had the opportunity to have an RFO Battle Royale with one of my colleagues, Dr. T (not his real name™).
And I lost.
I lost.
I told Dr. T about my latest RFO, which happened to be a small pill bottle. Wrapped in a condom. Wrapped in yet another condom. Unfortunately the bottle had slipped up way too high and could not be extracted from below. Normally we can reach up (yes, really) either with our fingers or some surgical grasper, grab the . . . thing, and then pull it out the way it went in. But this bottle was so high (like 25 cm high) it could not be reached. So I was forced to enter his abdomen the old fashioned way ("Never let the skin get between you and a diagnosis"), and squeeze the bottle down his colon into his rectum. As I pushed it through, I said to the assistant who was waiting down below to catch it, "Ok, it should be crowning".
If you aren't laughing right now, then you don't have kids, because that's fucking hilarious.
As I related this story (and my infamous Coke bottle story) to Dr. T, he merely stood there impassive with a slight smile on his face, because he knew that he had already won. Apparently those stories didn't even come close to Dr. T's best (worst?). He then told me not his best story, not his two best, but his three best stories, any one of which could beat any one of mine.
Yeah, I lost badly.
3) The third best story starts with "He was bored". Normally when I get bored I read a book or something, but not this guy. Nooooooo. This guy (yes, it's always a guy) put an enormous dildo in his rectum and then lost it. It could be felt from below, but it could also be felt from above. WAY above. Like at his umbilicus (navel (belly button)). Because this wasn't just a normal dildo, it was one of these:
I warned you there were NSFW pictures. I fucking warned you.
Anyway, Dr. T took him to the operating theatre, put him to sleep, and grabbed it from below with a surgical clamp like we always do. There was one problem - if you look at the bottom of that, uh, device, you'll see a little dial. Dr. T, unfortunately, couldn't, because he didn't yet know it was there. I'm sure by now you see where this is going. Dr. T grabbed the dial, twisted to try to extract the object, and turned the damned thing on. Apparently this one didn't just vibrate, it also rotated. After the initial shock and panic, the rotation actually helped free it from its environment and it slid back out to freedom.
One loss.
2) The objects we remove are mostly phallic, for obvious reasons. Mostly. The second best story Dr. T told me involved a bone cutter.
What?
You heard me. Indeed, this man had inserted a pair of metal cooking tongs. I'm sure you've seen them before. You know, one of these:
If you're wondering, he inserted the small end first, "small" of course being a relative term. If you look carefully at the grasping end you'll see a very small gap between the end of the metal and the body of the tongs. As they were being removed, that little gap had been able to trap a tiny ridge of rectal mucosa and was unable to let go, so Dr. T had to use a bone cutters to snip off the tip of the tongs, being careful not to snip anything else by mistake.
Loss #2.
1) Dr. T was almost in tears as he told me this last story, his best. It was another guy who was "just bored". But when he got to the hospital he refused to tell anyone what it was, just that "it" had been there for several hours. An X-ray showed . . . something round. A CT scan also showed something. Round. I looked at a picture of the scan and could not figure out what the hell it could be. It looked to me like the head of a toilet brush:
Dr. T just laughed harder and had to stop to wipe his eyes. No, not a toilet brush. Not even close.
He took the patient to theatre, and once he was under anaesthesia he was able to feel the object. It felt rough though somehow also smooth and supple. Organic, one could say. He couldn't get his fingers around it, and regular graspers kept slipping off. So he tried a larger grasper and was able to gain purchase on it, but then the thing tore.
Shit.
He grabbed it again and tore it again. And again. Finally after several attempts he managed to spear the object, and was able to extract it in its entirety:
If you're wondering, this wasn't a little clementine or tangerine. No, this was a big orange. A really big orange. According to Dr. T, the only thing that allowed him to remove it was the fact that the patient was "a professional".
And with that, tears streaming down his face, Dr. T defeated me soundly.
I'm sure you've all heard the phrase "No good deed goes unpunished". If you haven't, you really need to get out and/or read more. Seriously. Anyway, it is typically said in a sarcastic way after something bad happens after you've done something nice ("I raked my neighbourss leaves and then watched as they were strewn all over the yard by their obnoxious children"). Sometimes, however, the phrase can be taken literally.
Like with Ted (not his real name™).
Ted is an auto mechanic and the nice guy of the neighbourhood. Though he had a large beard and unkempt hair and generally looked like my usual Friday night assault victim, Ted was quiet, kind, and respectful, proving once again that you shouldn't judge a book by its cover (read: I shouldn't be an idiot and prejudge people based on their looks because I'm too often wrong).
Ted is the guy who would fix your blender if it stopped working, clean your gutters when they got clogged with leaves, and change your tyre while you were at work. You know, just because. He is a true Nice Guy, that one-in-a-million fellow that you hope to find next door when you move to a new house.
So when one of his neighbour's needed a new engine for his car, of course Ted volunteered not only to buy him a new engine at his cost, but also to install it for him at no charge. All he asked was for his neighbour to reimburse him the cost of the engine.
Apparently that wasn't good enough.
After the job was finished, Ted presented his neighbour with his now-functional car and asked him to pay him for the engine. Not for labour and not for his time (which would normally be approximately an arm and a leg), just for the engine. The neighbour bafflingly said no.
Ted was confused, as I think anyone in his right mind would be. Still being a Nice Guy, Ted asked again, nicely. The neighbour refused again (somewhat less-than-nicely) and stormed off.
Ted was still confused. Obviously.
The neighbour returned a short while later with several friends in tow. I have no idea what the neighbour could have possibly told them ("This fucking guy actually wants me to PAY for my new engine that he bought and then installed for me for free! What an asshole!"), but I suspect Ted was expecting him to be bringing payment.
Ha. No. The group of men proceeded to beat Ted half to death resulting in:
fractured mandible
seven fractured ribs
two punctured lungs
fractured nose
forehead laceration
knee laceration
ear laceration
Ted needed surgery for his mandible and bilateral chest tubes to reinflate his lungs, and he spent nearly two weeks in hospital recovering. But no matter how much pain he was in, regardless of the fact that he couldn't open his mouth after his jaw was wired shut, he always took the time to say "Thank you, Doc" and tell me how a great a job the nurses were doing.
Yes, Ted truly was a Nice Guy.
I saw him in my office a week or so later for follow up. The first thing he did was give me a bear hug (again, despite his broken ribs) to thank me for saving his life, which I didn't really do and tried to explain to him. He was never in a whole lot of danger of dying, though I suppose if I hadn't put in the chest tubes that was possible. Regardless, Ted looked great and was feeling great (relatively speaking), and though I didn't ask, that's when he told me the whole story of how he got hurt.
The neighbour is behind bars. The friends are behind bars. And Ted is back to being Ted, fixing refrigerators and painting fences. And just before leaving (and after giving me another bone-crushing hug), he said he would invite me to his house next time he brews up a batch of beer. And I absolutely believe he will.
And I believe I will take him up on that offer.
I am not a lawyer, nor do I claim any specific expertise in any field having to do with law. But I do know what the word "dismissed" means, and I do know what the phrase "with prejudice" means, so when I saw these words in a Request for Dismissal, written by Bruce Brusavich (who happens to be the lawyer representing Jahi McMath's mother Nailah Winkfield), and submitted to Alameda County Superior Court on September 7, 2018, my eyes got a bit wide.
In case you aren't quite following, it appears that the Jahi McMath saga may finally finally FINALLY be over. Professor Thaddeus Pope posted this document to his website:
Again, I claim no expertise in law, but this certainly appears to me to be a request by Nailah Winkfield to dismiss all complaints against Dr. Rosen with prejudice. This means case closed, never to be reopened, etc.
If that is in fact true, I have no doubt that the two sides reached a settlement, which I (and everyone else) have predicted from the very beginning. I am also not surprised that there has been no media coverage of this whatsoever. I am also not the least bit surprised that no autopsy results have been produced, as I highly suspect Ms. Winkfield would never have let an autopsy happen. As the world learned with Terry Shiavo, autopsy results can refute family members' claims better and more soundly than any expert.
If any lawyers happen to come around, I would appreciate some verification on this. But to my untrained and extremely amateur eyes, it appears the Jahi ordeal is finally, actually, really, and in all other ways over.
It's been over two months since I wrote anything, which is by far the longest interregnum I've ever taken. And by "interregnum" I mean "I've been too goddamned lazy and/or distracted to sit down at my computer and get some writing done". Sure, I've seen many blog-worthy patients in the past 8 weeks, but I've just had some trouble framing them into what I thought would be an interesting story.
Until now.
I'd like to present a pair of patients whom I admitted on the same date just a few hours apart. Both were seriously injured and both spent considerable time with me recovering. But I found the differences between the two rather startling. So for this post I've decided to do something a little bit different and see who can spot the differences.
Ready?
Let's begin.
Patient 1: Ivan (not his real name™) was the victim of a hit-and-run pedestrian accident. He was walking home from work when a car struck him at high velocity. He suffered a complex fracture of his left tibial plateau, a right humerus fracture, an open right ankle fracture, several broken ribs, and a ruptured urinary bladder. I performed an exploratory laparotomy and repair of his bladder laceration, and an orthopædic surgeon performed a surgery for his humerus, two surgeries for his right ankle, and 3 surgeries for his left knee (so far). He had an external fixator on his left knee for several weeks while his œdema improved before his final two surgeries, he had an uncomfortable urinary catheter in his penis for several weeks while his bladder healed, and he was unable to bear any weight on his right (dominant) arm and both legs for 2 months. In short: he was broken.
Patient 2: Tera (not her real name™) was driving her car down a dark road at night with a blood alcohol level over twice the legal limit when she went off the road and struck a tree. In the process she fractured her left acetabulum (the socket of the hip) and a bone in her right hand. She required one surgery on her left hip and was unable to bear weight on her left leg for 6 weeks (no surgery was required for the right hand). In short: she was mostly fine.
Every day that I went to see Ivan, he was kind, respectful, and polite despite his multiple injuries and significant pain. "Thank you, doctor" was his closing statement each morning as I walked out of his room. Even though I had cut him open and inserted a large, uncomfortable tube into his penis, he thanked me.
On the other hand, every day that I went to see Tera, she had nothing but complaints. The nurse took too long to get my medicine (20 minutes), the nurse took too long cleaning me up (15 minutes), it's too hot (it wasn't), my leg is swollen (it's broken, of course it is), my splint on my hand is too tight (it wasn't), it took too long getting back from getting X-rays (30 minutes), no one is telling me what's going on (yes I was), I want to be transferred to another hospital.
Anyone see the difference yet?
I sure did. As I walked from one room to the other day after day, the difference in their attitudes astounded me.
Tera (who you will remember caused her own injuries by driving drunk) did nothing but complain. She even refused physical therapy on multiple successive days because of pain despite the fact that it was the only thing keeping her in hospital. I wanted to suggest to her nicely (read: scream in her face) that she had a team of people whose entire job was to take care of her so she could try showing some basic gratitude, but I didn't. No, I just listened. Standing there and listening to her many grievances was a far, far better thing that I did than I had ever done. And yet she never once said "Thank you". She showed no appreciation or gratitude at any time before I finally was able to send her to rehab.
Ivan, on the other hand, who was much more severely injured through no fault of his own, who was completely unable to walk, who had a catheter hanging out of his penis, who had three broken limbs, and who had a huge incision on his abdomen, was still able to smile and cooperate and participate with his own care. No matter what was asked of him, no matter how much pain he was in, Ivan simply gave a weak smile, said "Ok", and then did it (or at least tried).
Look, I understand that no one wants to be in the hospital. My patients are in pain and I'm asking them to get out of bed and walk. I get that. But all I ask for is a little civility and a little gratitude. Trust me, I don't want to be seeing your obnoxious drunk ass in the trauma bay at 2 AM either or repairing your bladder at midnight, but here we both are. So let's try our damnedest to make the worst of times into the best of times.
It's over. After nearly 5 years, the Jahi McMath saga is finally over.
Almost.
If you aren't aware of the Jahi McMath story, then you obviously have not been reading this blog very carefully, because I have written about her rather extensively, first here, then here, here, here, here, here, here, and most recently here. The short version is that Jahi was a 13-year-old girl who underwent a series of upper airway procedures for sleep apnoea in December 2013 which was complicated by bleeding, cardiac arrest, anoxic brain injury, and brain death. Jahi's family refused to accept the diagnosis, and thus began a battle between Jahi's mother, Nailah Winkfield, and Children's Hospital Oakland over whether Jahi was really brain dead (she was) and what should have been done with her (nothing).
Eventually Nailah and CHO came to an agreement that Jahi would be released from the hospital to her mother's care, and after moving from California to New Jersey (one of only two states where brain death can be refused on religious grounds), Jahi has remained on a ventilator, completely unresponsive, still brain dead, at a private apartment.
Over the ensuing years there was a report that she had started menstruating, despite evidence to the contrary that she had already had her first period prior to surgery. There was a video supposedly showing her breathing over her ventilator, despite the fact that in April while she was in hospital she never did. There were videos released by the family purportedly showing Jahi moving her finger or a foot to voice commands despite radiologic evidence that her cerebral audio pathways were completely destroyed and she had no anatomic mechanism by which that could be possible. A neurologist rather ludicrously claimed, based solely on these videos, that Jahi was not brain dead, but rather severely disabled. Despite these claims, Jahi never woke up, never opened her eyes, never showed any sign of life other than a beating heart.
Ever since this adventure began, I've been rather adamantly averring that Jahi was dead and that delaying her burial was unethical and nothing short of cruel to her and her siblings. There have been a multitude of deniers, people full of hope and wishes and thoughts and prayers, that claimed Jahi would wake up. Through it all I have continued to maintain that brain dead is dead, that Jahi would never wake up, that no one in human history who was properly diagnosed as brain dead had ever recovered from it, even a little bit. While that may on the surface seem callous and uncaring, it is in fact quite the opposite.
And though sometimes I don't want to be right, I was right.
On June 22, 2018, over 4 1/2 years after she lost her life, Jahi finished passing on. For the sake of simplicity, I will refer to this event as her death, even though she actually died on December 9, 2013 and was declared dead on December 12, 2013. I have known about her final death since it happened, but I decided not to write about it until it was reported in the news out of respect for her family and what they are going through.
Jahi had been hospitalised several times for various issues, including January and April of this year for some kind of undisclosed "intestinal issue". I suspect it was intestinal ischaemia (decreased blood flow to the gut), though I cannot confirm this. She was treated with antibiotics both of those times, and the surgeons seemed unwilling to operate on her. Finally in early June she was taken to surgery, where they apparently found nothing grossly wrong. Nailah and her supporters of course declared this as some kind of miracle. I, on the other hand, knew that it was simply the beginning of the end.
Jahi started a slow but steady decline since then, including renal failure and lactic acidosis, culminating in disseminated intravascular coagulation, multi-system organ failure, and fulminant liver failure causing uncontrollable bleeding. She was apparently brought back to the operating theatre for "one last look" on June 22, got back to the intensive care unit, promptly coded, and died. Again.
It's finally over.
I suspect Nialah will continue her legal battle against CHO, though I would be shocked if CHO doesn't immediately settle the wrongful death lawsuit out of court just to get it over and done. But Nailah plans to pursue a federal civil rights lawsuit to get the date of death on the death certificate changed from December 12, 2013 to June 22, 2018. I haven't a clue what she thinks that would accomplish nor how much time and effort this would take away from her caring for her three other children.
I don't know details of Jahi's various illnesses or operations, nor can I divulge how I know this information, nor is that in any way important. What is important is that Jahi can finally be laid to rest after being abused for so many years. And her siblings can finally move on with their lives. And I can finally stop writing about this case.
Until the next one comes along.
NOTE: I realise it has been over a month since I have written anything here, and for that I apologise. It isn't that I haven't had any interesting cases, because I have. However, it has become increasingly difficult to frame my stories in a way that I have not before, and I don't want to risk becoming boring and/or repetitive.
I read a little story on the internet some time back (and because it was on the internet, it simply must be true) about a young man who was brought to the trauma bay (not mine) after being shot, and though he definitely looked like he was up to no good, he claimed he was shot while waiting for his grandmother to pick him up to take him to church. No one in the trauma bay believes his ludicrous story, of course, until Grandma shows up a short while later in her Sunday Best, looking for her grandson to take him to church.
We often joke about what nefarious deeds our trauma patients have been perpetrating immediately preceding their injuries, and I have no idea if that vignette is true, but whether you believe it or not, it makes for a great fucking story. This story is kind of like that.
Not really.
Mondays are supposed to be slow, easy trauma days. After all, the Call Gods should be exhausted after harassing the unlucky weekend trauma surgeons for 72 straight hours (Friday counts as a weekday in the Call God Calendar for some damned reason), but this Monday was most definitely not easy. The chaos started exactly 2 minutes after I walked through the door (fall), and it continued with a new fall or car accident or motorcycle crash every 30 minutes or so for the next 10 hours. For a while it appeared that I would break my personal record for trauma patients in one shift, but finally right around dinner time it slowed down, giving me just enough time to shovel a cold hamburger (leftover from lunch) into my face before my pager started screaming again:
level 1 GSW 5 minutes God damn it.
Exactly 12 minutes later (damned rush hour) Ryan (not his real name™) rolled through the door. Screaming. Sigh.
"Hi Doc, this is Ryan. 19 years old. We've found 3 gunshot wounds - one to the right upper chest, looks like an exit wound in the right upper back, and one in the right hand. Vitals stable, decreased breath sounds on the right. Got two large bore IV's in his AC's."
"AH GOD DAMN MY HAND DAMN GOD DAMN"
I knew at once Ryan and I would get along swimmingly.
On my initial assessment, his breath sounds sounded clear and equal to me (I don't know how the hell the medics hear anything in those ambulances with the sirens wailing), so I doubted he had a pneumothorax (collapsed lung). He indeed had a gunshot wound to the anterior right shoulder and a corresponding wound (entry? exit?) in the back of the shoulder. Fortunately he was moving his shoulder and arm perfectly and had a bounding radial pulse, so I seriously doubted the bullet hit his humeral head or the neurovascular supply to the arm (which is much closer to the armpit). His hand, on the other hand (har har har) was Seriously Fucked Up.
X-rays confirmed that he had no injury to the bones of the shoulder and no pneumothorax, but what he did have were several broken bones and lacerated tendons in his hand. As I was consulting the hand specialist, I overheard Ryan giving his story to the police:
"I was sitting in my kitchen eating dinner when I heard a bunch of shots outside, and I guess a couple of them hit me."
Yeah, sure you were, Ryan. I wonder if they actually expect anyone to believe this bullshit story.
After I patched Ryan up temporarily until the hand specialist could come in, I went back to reassess the last 172 traumas (or so it seemed) who had come in that day, suture up some lacerations, and discharge a few who had managed to sober up. About 3 hours later I was finally nearly caught up when my pager went off again:
level 1 GSW 7 minutes GOD DAMN IT. IT IS FUCKING MONDAY, CALL GODS!
We cleared the trauma bay and readied ourselves for the next young man who was about to arrive. Or at least we thought we did.
The 67-year-old woman who rolled through the door was not what we were expecting. Nor did she really look like she had been shot.
"Hey Doc, this is Doris (not her real name™). She was sitting in her kitchen eating dinner with her grandson a few hours ago when a bunch of bullets came through the window. I think her grandson was brought here earlier, wasn't he? Anyway, she has one gunshot wound to the left buttock. No exit wound. Bleeding is controlled."
Uh . . .
Ahem. Hm.
I assessed Doris while eating some serious crow, and all I found was a single wound with the bullet retained in her rather voluminous left buttock. A CT scan confirmed no serious injuries, and a short while later she was walking upstairs to visit her grandson. I, on the other hand, had several days of making rounds on Ryan and Doris (who was always there visiting) to remind me just how stupid and wrong my stupid and wrong preconceived notions usually are.
If you're wondering about the three hour delay, Doris initially decided to forgo medical treatment when the medics arrived to pick up Ryan because, as she explained it, her wound wasn't really bleeding, she was walking normally, and she thought a few paper towels would do the trick. And she was probably right.
Anyway, I guess this story proves once again what happens when you make an assumption: it makes an ass out of you and umption. Or something. Whatever, I just need to get some goddamned sleep. Fuck you, Call Gods.
I can't remember if I promised I would never watch an episode of The Resident ever again, but if I did, I am officially rescinding that promise. Don't worry, it's for a very good reason.
If you have no idea what "The Resident" is, I urge you to click here and read this. In short, it is a very terrible TV show written by a very terrible writer about very terrible doctors doing very terrible things. I got into a bit of a feud with the show's creator and writer, Amy Holden Jones (which is detailed in the post linked above), regarding the blatant and rampant anti-doctor rhetoric that suffuses the entire first episode. As bad as the pilot was, I told myself I would never watch another episode.
Until now.
Amy seemed to take great offence at my twitter profile picture (if you're not familiar with it, it's right over there). She seemed to think it was an example of patient shaming and that its use would somehow prevent people who inserted a foreign object into their rectums from seeking medical care. I have no idea if Ms. Holden has ever had any foreign objects impacted in her rectum, but in my experience with many patients who have, they do not tend to wait long, nor do they allow profile pictures from anonymous trauma surgeons on the internet from finding someone to remove the offending object as quickly as fucking possible.
But I digress.
During my little tiff with Amy a few months ago, she threatened to write an episode of her soap opera that related to shaming of rectal foreign object patients and/or an incompetent trauma surgeon (unfortunately I believe that was in a series of tweets which have since been deleted or which I otherwise cannot find). I laughed it off at the time.
And I'm still laughing it off, because she did.
Dr. Mark Hoofnagle is a general surgeon in Philadelphia, and he has taken it upon himself to fall on his sword and watch The Resident each week, live tweeting as he does. It is a very amusing take on the show, and it has also gotten him blocked on Twitter by Ms. Holden. According to Dr. Hoofnagle's assessment, his past week's episode appears to feature, well, me. Or at least a very poorly done spoof of someone like me:
What have we learned this week?
I don't know. The Austin plot was basically nonsensical. York was brought back to mock him sexually in front of his mother, and I think, they might have been making a dig at @DocBastard
— Mark Hoofnagle (@MarkHoofnagle) May 8, 2018
Of course I had to check this out.
Literally 14 seconds into the "Previously, on The Resident" recap, someone says "York, what did you shove up your rectum this time, and this flashes on the screen:
Hmmmmmmm. Does this look familiar? No, I can't possibly be seeing what I think I'm seeing. I'm sure this is just an unfortunate coincidence, right? Let's move on.
On second thought, let's temper my torture (and yours) and move way on. In fact, let's skip all the regular soap opera bullshit and just get to the scenes in question.
A woman is struck by an ambulance and brought to the trauma bay, and the trauma surgeon, Dr. Nolan, somehow diagnoses a ruptured diaphragm from a pelvis X-ray. I'm trying my best to ignore the pseudo-medical bullshit, so I'll simply say that while this is a major injury, we see this regularly and repair them routinely. Dr. Nolan, however, appears confused by the diaphragm rupture, so instead of, you know, fixing it like a trauma surgeon, he calls in Dr. Austin, a cardiothoracic surgeon, to do it. "He'll probably . . . save her life", he says.
Wait, what??
During the surgery, the trauma surgeon stands on the opposite side of the room looking at the monitor while Drs. Austin and Bell (the dangerous surgeon from the pilot) perform the trauma surgery. Sigh. Austin finds a lacerated spleen. "Do you need a trauma surgeon, or . . . ?" the trauma surgeon meekly asks. "NO", Austin replies while Nolan pathetically holds his hands in front of him, turns around, and wanders away like a chastised child. He then stands idly by as Austin and Bell do . . . something to stop the spleen from bleeding.
I had to skip about 30 minutes of routine soap opera bullshit to get to the part I was seeking.
Dr. Austin is doing an aortic valve replacement on a nice old lady (who happens to be the mother of York, the rectal-foreign-object patient from earlier) and who, of course, codes on the table and appears to be in imminent danger of dying. Austin coolly stands in the corner with his arms folded during the code and calls for . . . Nolan, the trauma surgeon. When asked why he's calling for a trauma surgeon when there is no trauma, he replies gruffly, "I have my reason". Nolan comes in a few seconds later, hands scrubbed, ready for surgery. "I'm here. What's going on? What do we got?" he asks as he bursts through the doors. He looks around confused.
"Am I needed for this surgery?" he asks hesitantly.
"No you are not needed for this surgery, Dr. Nolan", Austin chides. He doesn't need a trauma surgeon, he merely makes him look like an idiot and uses him as an example of "someone who listens, who learns, and who understands", whatever the hell that means. Understands what? I have no idea, even after watching the scene five times. Nolan then starts to quote Nietzsche before Austin cuts him off with, "You've served your purpose. Now get out." Nolan again turns pitifully and leaves.
Cut to advertisement. That's the end of our trauma surgeon experience on The Resident.
I have no idea what this scene was supposed to represent or what the message here was other than "HAHA, look at this idiot! Trauma surgeons are totally lame!" The scenes seem to have been poorly cobbled together for the sole purpose of making the trauma surgeon look bad, and by extension to make me look bad. It is yet another glaring example of Amy Holden's utter contempt for doctors.
I find it amusing and rather pathetic that Amy Holden would go to these lengths to prove a point. What that point is, I'm still trying to figure out, but I strongly suspect she watched the episode back and said, "There! I sure showed him!"
Perhaps I'm over-reading this. Maybe I completely misread the message being delivered. Maybe I'm just really egotistical and this has absolutely nothing to do with me whatsoever, and the bottle-in-the-rectum X-ray and the feeble trauma surgeon appearing in the same episode just a few months after our spat are nothing but a huge coincidence. Maybe Ms. Holden had this episode written years ago and has just been biding her time, waiting for the opportunity to present it.
As everyone should know based on my tagline, I usually write stories about stupid things a patient of mine has done. I will occasionally write a story about myself, mainly stupid things I've done or said, and every now and then I will write about something stupid another doctor has done. But I recently realised that of all the posts I've written, there is one thing woefully and glaringly absent: stories of my very smart colleagues doing very stupid things. The reason for this is probably obvious - I don't care to write about other surgeons' blunders, preferring to focus on my own. Sure, I talk about emergency physicians and the stupid things they've done, but they're emergency physicians and likely deserve the abuse. (A note to all my emergency associates out there: shush, you know I secretly respect you. And that you deserve the abuse.)
The main reason I don't write about my colleagues is that I rarely get detailed enough stories from them. I have no reason to believe my patients and their antics are special or unique in any way, and I'm sure the other trauma surgeons have just as many stories as I do.
Except Dr. John (not his real name™). Not because he doesn't have as many, but because he has more. Way more.
Dr. John always seems to have bad stuff happen around him and has been described as having a bit of a black cloud over him. I think this is quite understated: He is a certified, bona fide, 100% undisputed shit magnet. Wherever there is a shitstorm, you can rest assured that Dr. John is at the center of it. It obviously isn't his fault - he isn't the one out there crashing cars into trees, toppling motorcycles over ravines, or stabbing people in the face. No, he's just the trauma surgeon taking care of the people who have all decided to have these terrible things happen to them all at the same time.
Lest you think I'm exaggerating, I'm not. At all. He will often still be in the operating theatre four or five hours after his shift is over, still fixing the mess from the previous day. Fortunately he is a very good surgeon, but the patients that he acquires always seem sicker, more badly injured, and more bizarre than mine. This was almost exactly the case recently, except instead of finishing surgery four hours after his shift was over, it was twelve hours.
And I finally discovered why.
I was on call one recent Sunday after John had been on call the previous day. I instantly knew it had been another Dr. John Shitstorm because his stuff was still littering the call room when I got there and the bed looked not-at-all-slept-in. So I got out my computer and started reading (Ready Player One, if you're curious), waiting for him to come and gather his stuff.
And I waited. (Good book)
Aaand I waited more. (Very good book)
Aaaaand I waited more (Wow, that was a fun book)
About ten hours, zero traumas, and no John later, my pager finally went off with my first patient of the day: a fall. Sigh. I walked down to the trauma bay where I was greeted with an elderly person who fell out of a chair the previous day and had no injuries. While I was working her up, another trauma came in, this one a very lightly injured car accident victim. Two patients, two discharges. It was shaping up to be a very light day . . . until Trauma Nurse Martha (not her real name™) decided to pipe up.
"Doctor Bastard," she said with a grin, "we're going to have a good night. I can feel it. You're going to get some sleep tonight!" There was dead silence as everyone stared at her, mouths agape.
WHAT THE FUCK DID YOU JUST SAY TO ME?
Martha has been a trauma nurse for about 20 years, so she obviously knows about the Call Gods. She also knows that what she just said is never to be even thought about, let alone uttered aloud.
After finishing discharging the two traumas, I went back to my call room, muttering something about Martha fucking knowing better the entire way. It was now just past 8 PM, just over halfway through my shift. Still, it had been very quiet for a Sunday as I had had only had two patients so far. I could feel the sense of foreboding rising inside me when I got a text from John.
Hey is my stuff in the call room?
It seemed John was finally done with whatever the hell he was doing. He came to the call room a few minutes later, and with a huge grin on his face he recounted the two car accident victims he had gotten 15 minutes before his shift was up, both of whom had suffered lacerations to their mesentery (the blood supply to the intestine), both of whom had segments of bowel which were dead and required resection, and both of whom were now barely clinging to life. I listened, rapt, as he detailed the procedures he had done, amazed at his bad luck.
"Wow, rough shift," I told him when he finally took a breath.
"I love this stuff!" he replied with a laugh.
What? Despite having been awake for at least 38 hours and looking completely exhausted, he was as giddy as a schoolboy. We chatted for a few more minutes as he collected his things. On his way out the door, he said something that made me understand the Dr. John Shitstorm:
"I hope your night is quiet. Have a great night!"
WHAT THE FUCK DID YOU JUST SAY TO ME?
The rest of my night went exactly as you expect after both Martha and John decided to give a big "FUCK YOU" to the Call Gods. Keeping in mind that I only had two traumas over the previous 14 hours, I then got a drunk man who fell down the stairs at 11 PM, a drunk driver who crashed into a tree just before midnight, a stabbing at 1 AM, a drunk man who fell off a bicycle at 2 AM and an elderly woman who fell out of bed at 4 AM.
The end of my shift finally rolled around, ending my misery. I may have said a few not-so-subtle curses under my breath, but they were directed not at the Call Gods, but rather at John and Martha. After what Martha and John said, I couldn't even blame the Call Gods for what they did to me.
But at least now I got it. I finally understood why John is a shit magnet. Because John doesn't give a fuck about the Call Gods. He challenges them. He taunts them. He uses them to fuel his desire to operate on fucking everyone.
