Tdap

Vaccine safety – a huge systematic review says they don’t cause autism

by Michael Simpson
2021-06-23
Autism, Diabetes, Flu vaccine, HPV vaccine, Vaccines

Not that most of us need to be convinced, but there’s another huge systematic review that examined vaccine safety. Unsurprisingly, it shows that there are no major safety signals post-vaccination, plus no vaccine is linked to autism.

It’s ironic that this study is a high-quality systematic review and meta-analysis, the top of the hierarchy of biomedical research, while anti-vaxxers rely upon retracted articles published in predatory journals.

So, I want to do a quick review of this new article so that we can continue to support the settled science of vaccine safety.

October 2019 ACIP meeting review – vaccine discussions, part 1

This article is my October 2019 ACIP meeting review. On October 23, 2019, I attended one out of two days of the meeting of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP).

Unfortunately, I could not stay both days, because I had to get back to teach on Thursday. But that one day was instructive. Like last time, this meeting was data-heavy and intensive, and the process was thorough.

While a number of anti-vaccine activists attended, there was no real indication that they followed the committee’s deliberations, tried to understand what was discussed, or learned from the information presented.

Their comments during and after the meeting did not contribute substantively to the discussion or offered anything that could lead to meaningful policy changes.

Because of the length of this review, it will be divided into two parts:

Part I describes the content of the meeting.
Part II addresses the public comments.

Vaccine refusal by a healthcare worker – is it a disability?

On June 5, 2018, the US Third Circuit Court of Appeals overturned a District Court’s decision to dismiss a case filed by a nurse who alleged she was terminated for refusing a Tdap vaccine for medical reasons. The focus of the decision was not the vaccine refusal per se; the focus was what are the pleading standards in a claim alleging a failure to provide a reasonable accommodation of a disability. While the specific claim of the nurse’s vaccine refusal is unconvincing in many ways, I think the Third Circuit (“the court”) was right to allow her case to proceed at least a bit further.

For the purpose of the discussion of any motion to dismiss, the assumption is that the plaintiff’s factual allegations about her vaccine refusal choices are true. Therefore, what I am describing as “the facts” is the nurse’s version. Fact-finding may show that not all these allegations are provable. Read More »Vaccine refusal by a healthcare worker – is it a disability?

Whooping cough outbreak – science and simple math

by Michael Simpson
2017-10-24
2 Comments
Anti-vaccines, Infectious disease, Joe Mercola, Vaccines

I have written extensively about several whooping cough (Bordetella pertussis) outbreaks which had reached epidemic levels in areas like the Washington state, which had been considered one of the worst outbreaks in the USA during the past several decades. This whooping cough outbreak has lead to several deaths here in the USA and in other countries such as the UK.

Of course, these outbreaks and epidemics have lead to the “blame game” from the antivaccination cult, because they have claimed that since A) most kids are vaccinated, and B) we’re having this outbreak, then C) either the vaccines are useless or are actually the cause of the outbreak. Seriously. They blame the vaccines.

There have been numerous reports about a whooping cough outbreak in the Reno County, KS area, with about 70 cases of the disease being reported. The report indicates that most of the kids who have the disease were vaccinated. It is unclear who said this, and what are the actual statistics. But for now, we’ll take this at face value.

Since this outbreak will undoubtedly lead to the typical antivaccine rhetoric about the whooping cough vaccines, DTaP or Tdap (which also protect against tetanus and diphtheria), I decided to search the internet to find the most popular vaccine denialist arguments regarding pertussis vaccinations–then debunk them. Hopefully, this will be useful for those who are observing what’s going on in Reno.

Adult vaccines – the CDC wants to save adult lives too

Generally, when I write about vaccines, it’s about protecting children’s lives from vaccine preventable diseases. That itself is a noble goal for vaccines. But in case you didn’t know, there is also a CDC schedule for adult vaccines, which is as important to adults as they are to children.

Vaccines have one purpose – to protect us and those whom we love from potentially deadly and debilitating diseases. Many of us in the blogosphere have talked about the children’s schedule a lot, often to debunk claims of people who are ignorant of science, and think that the children’s vaccine schedule is causing undue harm. Yeah our intellectually deficient president, Donald Trump, thinks he knows more than the CDC, but that’s a problem shared by many vaccine deniers.

One adult vaccine I push regularly is the flu vaccine. It protects adults, pregnant women, the elderly, children, and healthy young adults from a severe infection that hospitalizes and kills more people every year than you’d think. Because flu is not really a serious disease, in some people’s minds, a lot of people decide that they don’t need the vaccine. They’d be wrong.

Just in case you were wondering, there is more to adult vaccines than just flu vaccines. There are several other vaccines indicated for adult use, including those adults with underlying health issues like diabetes, HIV and heart disease – unfortunately, the uptake for adult vaccines is depressingly low. Let’s take at the low uptake and the recommended adult vaccines schedule.

Pertussis vaccine waning effectiveness – the facts

The issues with the pertussis vaccine waning effectiveness has been circulating for several years. There have been a number of well-designed studies that have provided evidence of the issues with the pertussis component of the DTaP or Tdap vaccine (which also provides immunization against tetanus and diphtheria, both dangerous diseases).

According to current research, individuals who have been vaccinated against whooping cough (Bordetella pertussis), with either the DTaP (version for usually for children) or Tdap vaccine, lose protection against whooping cough in some time period after being vaccinated.

A new article, published in Pediatrics, written by Nicola P Klein et al., examined children who received the Tdap vaccine in the Kaiser Permanente Northern California (KPNC) health care plan, a vertically integrated managed care system which closely tracks patients after vaccination. Their data provide important information about the strategies for the vaccine going forward.

Why we vaccinate – pertussis and epilepsy are linked

by Michael Simpson
2015-11-04
3 Comments
Infectious disease, Neurological, Vaccines

There is really only one reason to vaccinate – protecting everyone, especially children, from dangerous vaccine preventable diseases. We have eliminated smallpox. We have almost eliminated polio.

And we had almost made measles extinct, until the myth that the MMR vaccine (to prevent mumps, measles and rubella) caused autism, started by one of sciences greatest fraudsters, the defrocked Mr. Andy Wakefield. It’s a myth that’s been thoroughly and definitively debunked.

One vaccine preventable infectious disease that we’ve been unable to conquer is whooping cough (caused by the bacteria, Bordetella pertussis), also known as pertussis. Pertussis is a relatively dangerous infection, the disease itself has serious consequences for children and adults:

1 in 4 (23%) get pneumonia (lung infection)
1 or 2 in 100 (1.6%) will have convulsions (violent, uncontrolled shaking)
Two thirds (67%) will have apnea (slowed or stopped breathing)
1 in 300 (0.4%) will have encephalopathy (disease of the brain)
1 or 2 in 100 (1.6%) will die

Whooping cough can be easily prevented by the DTaP or Tdap vaccines (which also protect against tetanus and diphtheria). The vaccines can be given to infants as early as 6 weeks to 2 months old.

As with all medical procedures, there are some adverse effects with the pertussis vaccines. Moderate adverse effects from the vaccine occur in about 1 in 10,000 (or even fewer) injections. The most severe effects, which may or may not be causally related to the vaccine since the rate is so low, are in the range of 1 out of a million doses.

One out of one million doses of the vaccine cause a serious adverse event (maybe). Compare that to the 1-2 out of 100 will die of the disease. Unless you flunk math, there is no rational reason to avoid the vaccine.Read More »Why we vaccinate – pertussis and epilepsy are linked

Why we vaccinate–to protect our children from pertussis

During this past week, a 25 day old baby in Santa Barbara, CA died from pertussis, commonly known as whooping cough (caused by the Bordetella pertussis bacteria). The disease can be easily prevented by the DTaP or Tdap vaccines (also protect against tetanus and diphtheria), which can be given to infants as early as 6 weeks to 2 months old.

According to the California Department of Public Health, infants who are too young to be fully immunized or those who are not vaccinated are most vulnerable to severe and fatal cases of pertussis. In 2014, 66 of the pertussis hospitalizations cases were children four months of age or younger. Two infants have died of pertussis in California during 2014.Read More »Why we vaccinate–to protect our children from pertussis

Worldwide vaccine uptake-2014

I make it a point to update this blog with the most current CDC analysis of vaccine uptake in the USA for kindergarten children (usually around 5 years old). Generally, the numbers have stayed stable, at around 95% vaccinated, although there is high variance from state to state, and locality to locality. The weakness in the vaccination uptake in the USA is that some areas may approach 100% vaccinated, but then other areas may be 50%, which makes those areas with low vaccine uptake susceptible to a quick spread of diseases that are not endemic to the USA (such as measles, polio, and others) through that unvaccinated population.

Given the 95% vaccine uptake rate, it begs the questions of why I push so hard for vaccination–because I want to protect the lives of children, and those 5% who aren’t vaccinated are at risk of serious disease and even death. And vaccines are the safest way to protect a child–protect them from death.

Nearly 55% of the readers of this blog are not American (a couple of years ago,this blog got a regular reader from Iran, which meant that all countries were represented amongst this blog’s readers). I have been accused of being a bit American-centric, but at the same time, I was also curious about vaccine uptake worldwide. Read More »Worldwide vaccine uptake-2014

Why we vaccinate–so mom will protect her newborn baby

One of the important hypotheses of vaccination is to make sure that all family members or others who may encounter a newborn child be vaccinated, especially since many vaccinations are not indicated for infants for a couple of months after birth–those newborns are very susceptible to vaccine preventable diseases until they themselves are vaccinated with the DTaP vaccine (which also protects against tetanus and diphtheria).

This protective “cocoon,” especially important with whooping cough (Bordetella pertussis), theoretically blocks the transmission of the disease to a newborn by creating a protective circle of vaccinated individuals around the newborn. A teenage sibling could catch the disease and accidentally infect the infant. Pertussis is bad enough for a teenager, but it can be deadly to a baby.

Even though the evidence for cocooning is growing, there are some flaws to the idea that are still being investigated in various parts of the world. One of the concerns is that asymptomatic carriers of pertussis (who have been vaccinated) might transmit the disease through a cocoon. However, scientists have known that the current version of pertussis vaccine, called acellular pertussis, isn’t as effective as it should be, but it is still better than not vaccinating. Much better. But that is a potential hole in the protective cocoon that needs to be understood better through research.Read More »Why we vaccinate–so mom will protect her newborn baby