Topic: WorldNetDaily
Jane Orient is a medical misinformer who leads the fringe-right Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, and her current crusade is ranting aghainst compulsory vaccination by peddling misleading fearmongering about their safety. WorldNetDaily has been giving Orient a platform for this -- particularly during the current measles outbreak -- and did so again n a May 2 column, in which she mocks the proven concept of herd immunity:
It’s about the need for herd immunity, they say. We need a 95 percent vaccination rate for herd immunity to measles. With only 91 percent or so, we are having outbreaks! If we could just vaccinate another 4 or 5 percent!
Mayor De Blasio has a point about vaccinating everyone. Adults are getting measles because their shots have worn off. It is likely that we have survived for decades with a large part of the adult population vaccinated – but not immune. So where do the mandates stop?
Outbreaks have occurred in populations with a near-100 percent vaccination rate. Was it vaccine failure? Or was the vaccine not refrigerated properly? Or was a claimed outbreak real? One in Ann Arbor, Michigan, was called off when a special test, a reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) showed a vaccine-strain measles virus rather than a wild-strain measles virus. Some 5 percent of vaccinees may get an illness that looks like measles, but it is just a “vaccine reaction.” Can they shed live virus? Yes. Should you keep your immuno-compromised child away from recently vaccinated people? Just asking.
Like all medical treatments, vaccines are neither 100 percent effective, nor 100 percent safe. Read the FDA-required, FDA-approved package inserts.
Does Orient really want to stop all vaccinations until they can be 100 percent effective with no side effects? That's irresponsible -- even as she admits that no medical treatment is totally safe. She can't even admit that vaccines help the vast majority of people.
Orient did attempt a conciliatory note at the end of her column:
The threat of infectious diseases is real and increasing. We need more robust public health measures, better vaccines, and improved public knowledge and awareness. Deploying vaccine police and shutting down debate will erode trust in health authorities and physicians, although more people may get their shots. But such heavy-handed measures will not defeat the enemy – measles and worse diseases.
But Orient is not interested in "debate" -- she just cares about irresponsible fearmongering that is solely designed to convince people to act against their best health interests.
