Influenza Vaccine Administration Record: Fill & Download for Free

Guide to the Answer:A. History of VaccinationB. Major Arguments Against VaccinationThe history of vaccination is long - very long. I think in order to understand our current resistance to vaccination you need to understand the history a little. Throughout the story you will see a pattern -“We don’t like what we don’t understand, in fact it scares us, and this monster is mysterious at least!”Historians noted that people began observing the protective effect of acquiring some diseases, such as smallpox as early as 430 BC.[1] Records from the 10th century indicate Chinese physicians were inoculating through a process called “variolation” - deliberate infection with disease by blowing scabs up a healthy person’s nose. Variolation worked, too - cutting mortality from around 30% down to 1–2%.[2]Why would it take so many centuries? There were several problems. First, the early inoculation attempts worked — sort of. Often the person would get a lesser form of the disease. Sometimes they wouldn't. Sometimes they’d contract another disease. Because the physicians had no clue about other blood-borne diseases, sterile technique, secondary infections and the like, they often caused unexpected problems that were rather difficult to understand.Above everything else — no one really understood why people got sick in the first place, much less why this method of making a person sick — just less sick — worked. Germ theory of disease was proposed in 1546, and improved in 1762 — but largely ignored in favor the more plausible miasma (bad air) theory, which went back to antiquity (note to scientists — beware of “settled science”!) So the physicians by and large believed that smallpox was caused by “bad air”, and for whatever reason, exposing people to the lesions and giving them the disease this way protected them against the disease contracted through the “bad air” — particularly if a worse case of “bad air” came along.The physicians were pragmatic — they observed it worked, so they wanted to do it, but let’s be real here, the treatment is a bit gross. A lot gross. The physicians were cutting open scabs from the following types of lesions:People were terrified of this disease, and rightfully so. It killed between 30% to 100% of the people who got it, depending on the strain. Many people who survived were scarred for life. They might go blind, or become completely crippled from the disease attacking their bones and joints.Physicians were asking people to let them take fluid or powder from those pustules, and blow it up their nose or inject it right into them. Think about how frightening that must have been! They didn't even want to be near someone with the disease, or near someone who had been near a person with it because they all knew it was contagious. This was a terrible invasion of privacy.So people did what people always do — they invented a million reasons the physician should NOT do this terrifying thing to them.In 1721 a tremendous smallpox epidemic broke out in Boston. The Rev. Cotton Mather initiated a highly controversial inoculation program. Yes, that Cotton Mather, of the Salem Witch Trials — he wasn’t all bad.mezzotint portrait of Cotton Mather (Feb. 12, 1663 - Feb. 13, 1728), American Puritan clergyman.Peter Pelham, artist - http://www.columbia.edu/itc/law/witt/images/lect3/Cotton Mather was inspired by a slave named Onesimus, who told him about his inoculation in Africa, and by a letter published to the Royal Society of London in 1721 by Emanuale Timoni describing the procedure and its efficacy. He was backed by exactly one physician — Zabdiel Boylston. He faced opposition that was religious and scientific.Why do you fight God’s will? (doesn’t this sound familiar)There’s not enough evidence to use that method (not a bad science argument).Cotton Mather and Zabdiel Boylston decided to argue against the religious people with a fairly succinct message — this is no different than any other invasive medical procedure.And the scientific argument? Well — that meant collecting data. So they began inoculating people — not as many as they could have if they had had the support of the town’s physicians as a whole, but they managed to inoculate 287, and only 2% died, compared to nearly 15% of those in the city at large.[3] That largely put the matter to rest in the mind of the scientific community, and the practice was adopted to the great health benefit of the Boston community. (See graph below)The Fight Over Inoculation During the 1721 Boston Smallpox Epidemic - Science in the NewsNow, keep in mind, people still had no idea why this worked. Only that it did.Twenty years later, in 1774, a farmer in England named Benjamin Jetsay contracted cowpox. All the dairy farmers and milkmaids knew if you got cowpox, you could safely nurse people with smallpox and you wouldn't get the disease. Cowpox was much milder than any form of smallpox, so this was very good. Jetsay had heard about inoculating people with smallpox, and even though he wasn't a doctor, he decided to deliberately inoculate his wife and sons with cowpox.[4]It worked.It was another twenty years before Edward Jenner caught wind of this wonderful phenomenon, and decided to stake his career as a physician on it. In 1796, Jenner gave his first trial, inoculating a child with material he gathered from a milkmaid’s pustule. He continued his inoculations, and two years later published “An Inquiry into the Causes and Effects of the Variolae Vacciniae.”[5] The book was pretty much a hit — people read it — and debated it widely — but it wasn't really accepted by the scientific community immediately. Jenner had to do a lot of work to get this idea accepted. However, he was tireless, and vaccination spread through England, and ultimately to America as well.That’s not to say it didn't have people up in arms!James Gillray's The Cow-Pock—or—the Wonderful Effects of the New Inoculation!, Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-USZC4-3147As you can see from the image abov,e there were those who thought that cowpox inoculation might turn you into a cow. Does this really seem much different than modern-day fears?All this — and people still thought disease was transmitted by “bad air”. Although several physicians working with microscopes had described microorganisms and implicated them in the bubonic plague (black death), smallpox, measles, rabies, and others, their work by and large just wasn’t accepted by physicians or the public.This work was probably set back in no small part due to the understandable fear of Antonie van Leeuwenhoek[6], “the father of Microbiology”, who developed a unique method of grinding lenses in the 1650s that enabled him to create microscopes of spectacular resolution. Due to a lack of patent law protection, he guarded his secrets and took them to his grave, and similar caliber instruments weren't developed for almost 200 years. This set back microbiology by about the same amount.The Geographer - by Johannes Vermeer - historians believe painting is of Antonie van Leeuwenhoek[7]It wasn’t until 1854 when a physician named John Snow, working to stem a cholera outbreak, realized that the disease must be transmitted by an agent present in water [8]— and that it was coming from feces of infected individuals. He meticulously detailed the contamination of water used for drinking and cooking with waste from infected individuals in a number of cases. Only after removing a single pump he believed infected with cholera did the epidemic in London subside.After another outbreak, he argued strenuously for filtration of water. He was convinced that people’s poop was contaminating water, and in drinking water with poop from sick individuals, everyone was getting sick and dying. Unfortunately for the citizens of London, and the world elsewhere, his ideas were slow to catch on. Why?It was too disgusting to accept.[9]How slow? Well, in 1854 the Italian scientist Filippo Pacini published a full description of the virus[10] that caused cholera, and in subsequent years further described how to properly treat the disease as well as how the disease became so deadly[11]. Somewhat later, and independently of him, scientific literature not being quite so easy to share in the 19th century, Robert Koch published his work describing the same bacterium[12] (1884).Now you would think the matter of cholera settled, right? It is, after all, 2019. We've understood how to combat this disease now for over 150 years.WHO Cholera Kit inforgaphic. [13]From the infographic: “Researchers estimate there are as many as 4 million cases each year and up to 143,000 deaths annually (2017).”OK, but what does this have to do with worldwide anti-vaccination sentiment?A lot, I’m afraid. You see, the persistence of cholera is only one symptom of the anti-vaccination sentiment that’s been around since the beginning of vaccination. The first cholera vaccination was available in the 1880s.[14] People are still afraid to get vaccinated even when they know they run a high risk of contracting and dying from cholera, a disease that has mortality between 10–90%, and can kill within 2 hours[15].2 hours.Did I mention there are vaccines for this? Now you’d think people would be MORE afraid of cholera than of vaccines, but — no. In fact, they’re not even afraid enough of cholera to wash their hands or drink bottled water consistently.[16] People are weird like that.Throughout history, and worldwide, people invoke the same reasons over and over and over for why vaccination is bad, or at least just isn't right for them.[17][18][19] [20][21] [22] [23] [24]Moral/Religious FoundationInvulnerabilityCost/Benefit Ratio isn't worthwhile* (this is complex)Fear of Bad EffectsNone of these are irrational — per se — not even the moral/religious foundation argument.Moral/Religious FoundationThis argument hasn't changed much. There aren’t that many groups [25]that claim a religious exemption to vaccination, and those that do aren’t under significant expansion in numbers. You’ve got the Christian Scientists, and some members of the Dutch Reformed church. For major religions, that’s it.InvulnerabilityCalvin of Calvin and Hobbes - being selective about accepting realityPeople are very good at this — feeling invincible. Invulnerable. That’s why 15% of Americans don’t use seat belts[26] and 43% of drivers admit to texting and driving[27] (seriously, people STOP IT!). When it comes to vaccines, a fair number of people don’t believe they or their child will actually become ill, so they forgo vaccines. This is a major factor in why people routinely travel without proper vaccinations.Cost/Benefit Ratio isn’t worthwhile* (this is complex)Costs of vaccination vary widely. Many people receive free or low-cost vaccination for children — but the money cost isn't the only cost involved. There’s time spent traveling to and from the provider. This may be fairly trivial in much of the Western world, where vaccinations can be received at any grocery store pharmacy as well as community clinic or hospital, but in developing nations it can present a huge roadblock. A parent may not want to deal with a child being feverish or cranky after vaccination after a tough night on a previous course. They may perceive vaccines as not being effective enough to justify the cost or inconvenience (this is especially true with influenza vaccines). A lot goes into the decision to actually get up and go get a vaccination — and people acting in rational self-interest don’t always weigh the factors the way those invested in public health would hope they should.Fear of Bad EffectsBy far and away, the current anti-vaccine sentiment roared to a new momentum with the 1998 study led by Andrew Wakefield that seemed to link autism to the combined measles mumps & rubella (MMR) vaccine.[28]Andrew Wakefield, Certified FraudThat study was a disaster from the moment of publication — and honestly, it wreaked havoc in far more than just vaccine science. In that same paper, now retracted, which cost Wakefield his medical license, [29]Wakefield et al. proposed the now terribly popular “leaky gut” theory that you can find all over the place — that GI disturbances from food cause a “leaky gut” which in turn leads to “bad blood” and every ailment known to mankind. All of it is modern quackery nonsense, and all of it widely embraced by far more than just those afraid of vaccines.The study was a disaster — with a selected sample size of 12, no control, and terrible statistics, The Lancet never should have published it. Publish it they did, and the damage was done. His co-authors ultimately retracted the paper, but Wakefield went on a martyr tour, selling his “leaky gut” hypothesis. After that, as they say, the horse was out of the barn, and hysterics piled on.“Thiomersal!” became the new rallying cry. As with the MMR issue, there was little scientific evidence for that hypothesis, and a lot against it.[30][31]In fact, there is only one serious research group pursuing this theory at this time, and they self-refer to their own studies most of the time, a hallmark of quack science. Moreover, even though the use of the preservative was phased out[32] in most of Europe and the U.S. after 1999, autism rates continue to rise — making the correlation hypothesis very difficult to support.This is the oldest, and most intractable of the problems — yet seemingly the most simple. Unfortunately, it goes hand-in-hand with distrust of authority, so reinforcement by peer networks is playing a large role in the spread of anti-vaccination sentiment.Combating this movement will require a good deal of public health work[33] — but it also is a responsibility of every parent and citizen. Talk to your friends and neighbors. Encourage vaccination with positive, fact-based information. When you see them spreading misinformation, don’t be afraid to point it out — tactfully. (OK, I admit — this can be hard!). Ultimately vaccination protects both individuals and the population.It’s a wonderful time we live in, when so many awful diseases can be prevented. Now, if only we can get everyone to fully appreciate how lucky we are!Now go check to make sure your vaccines are up-to-date.And get your flu shot!Don’t forget — immunizations are for adults, too!Relaxed. Researched. Respectful. - War ElephantFootnotes[1] http://Gross, C. P., & Sepkowitz, K. A. (1998). The myth of the medical breakthrough: smallpox, vaccination, and Jenner reconsidered. International journal of infectious diseases, 3(1), 54-60.[2] Smallpox: Variolation[3] The Fight Over Inoculation During the 1721 Boston Smallpox Epidemic - Science in the News[4] http:// Nicolau Barquet and Pere Domingo. "Smallpox: The Triumph over the Most Terrible of the Ministers of Death". Annals of Internal Medicine. Retrieved 2006-10-26.[5] http://Jenner, E. (1800). An inquiry into the causes and effects of the variolae vaccinae, a disease discovered in some of the western counties of England, particularly Gloucestershire, and known by the name of the cow pox. author.[6] Antonie van Leeuwenhoek | Biography, Discoveries, & Facts[7] The Geographer by Johannes Vermeer: Geography in Fine Art[8] http://Snow, J. (1855). On the mode of communication of cholera. John Churchill.[9] http://Chapelle, Frank (2005) Wellsprings. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press. ISBN 0-8135-3614-6. p. 82[10] http://Pacini, F. (1854). Osservazioni microscopiche e deduzioni patologiche sul cholera asiatico. tip. di F. Bencini.[11] Who first discovered cholera?[12] http://Koch, R. (1884). An address on cholera and its bacillus. British medical journal, 2(1236), 453.[13] World Health Organization[14] http://Barrett, A. D., & Stanberry, L. R. (2009). Vaccines for biodefense and emerging and neglected diseases. Academic Press.[15] Cholera - Symptoms and causes[16] http://KOZICKI, MARKUS, ROBERT STEFFEN, and MEINRAD SCHÄR. "‘Boil it Cook it, Peel it or Forget it’: Does this Rule Prevent Travellers ‘Diarrhoea?." International journal of epidemiology 14.1 (1985): 169-172.[17] The Four Main Reasons People Don't Vaccinate[18] http://Gordon, D., Waller, J., & Marlow, L. A. (2011). Attitudes to HPV vaccination among mothers in the British Jewish community: reasons for accepting or declining the vaccine. Vaccine, 29(43), 7350-7356.[19] http://Canning, H. S., Phillips, J., & Stephen Allsup, M. D. (2005). Health care worker beliefs about influenza vaccine and reasons for non‐vaccination–a cross‐sectional survey. Journal of clinical nursing, 14(8), 922-925.[20] http://Kee, S. Y., Lee, J. S., Cheong, H. J., Chun, B. C., Song, J. Y., Choi, W. S., ... & Kim, W. J. (2007). Influenza vaccine coverage rates and perceptions on vaccination in South Korea. Journal of Infection, 55(3), 273-281.[21] http://Singleton, J. A., Santibanez, T. A., & Wortley, P. M. (2005). Influenza and pneumococcal vaccination of adults aged≥ 65: racial/ethnic differences. American journal of preventive medicine, 29(5), 412-420.[22] http://Constantine, N. A., & Jerman, P. (2007). Acceptance of human papillomavirus vaccination among Californian parents of daughters: a representative statewide analysis. Journal of Adolescent Health, 40(2), 108-115.[23] http://Darden, P. M., Thompson, D. M., Roberts, J. R., Hale, J. J., Pope, C., Naifeh, M., & Jacobson, R. M. (2013). Reasons for not vaccinating adolescents: National Immunization Survey of Teens, 2008–2010. Pediatrics, peds-2012.[24] http://Francis, M. R., Nohynek, H., Larson, H., Balraj, V., Mohan, V. R., Kang, G., & Nuorti, J. P. (2018). Factors associated with routine childhood vaccine uptake and reasons for non-vaccination in India: 1998–2008. Vaccine, 36(44), 6559-6566.[25] http://Grabenstein, J. D. (2013). What the world's religions teach, applied to vaccines and immune globulins. Vaccine, 31(16), 2011-2023.[26] Policy Impact: Seat Belts[27] Facts & Statistics About Texting & Driving (Updated for 2018)[28] http://Wakefield, A. J., Murch, S. H., Anthony, A., Linnell, J., Casson, D. M., Malik, M., ... & Valentine, A. (1998). RETRACTED: Ileal-lymphoid-nodular hyperplasia, non-specific colitis, and pervasive developmental disorder in children.[29] Doctor behind vaccine-autism link loses license | TIME.com[30] http://Gadad, B. S., Li, W., Yazdani, U., Grady, S., Johnson, T., Hammond, J., ... & Ferrier, C. (2015). Administration of thimerosal-containing vaccines to infant rhesus macaques does not result in autism-like behavior or neuropathology. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 112(40), 12498-12503.[31] http://Uno, Y., Uchiyama, T., Kurosawa, M., Aleksic, B., & Ozaki, N. (2015). Early exposure to the combined measles–mumps–rubella vaccine and thimerosal-containing vaccines and risk of autism spectrum disorder. Vaccine, 33(21), 2511-2516.[32] Thiomersal - Wikipedia[33] The International Roadblocks To Achieving Global Vaccination

I can show both that vaccines do in fact protect you AND that they are worth the risk. How? With free online statistics data and 5th grade math.The Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System is a cooperative program for vaccine safety of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). VAERS is a post-marketing safety surveillance program, collecting information about adverse events (possible side effects) that occur after the administration of US licensed vaccines. This online database provides a nationwide mechanism by which these reports may be analyzed and made available to the public. The data are updated monthly and include reports received through the last Friday of the previous month. See the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) web site for more information.No one thinks that vaccines are 100% safe. No drug is. This is why there is an entire system devoted to watching how vaccines function after they make it to market and check for safety concerns. The records of this system go back to 1990 and you can search it using a wide variety of different fields such as vaccine used, symptoms, whether they recovered, the severity of the reaction, known allergies and other medical conditions prior to vaccination, etc. It can even make tables, charts, and maps for you. For such a handy system, you would think more anti-vaxxers would reference it instead of making up conspiracies about how “Big Pharma is suppressing the truth and using vaccines as population control/making money by keeping people sick”.I did a search for all reports related to any type of influenza vaccine between January of 2014 and December of 2015.20,428 reported casesOut of those cases: 1,179 ( 5.77%) were seriousData from the CDC says:148.1 million (95% CI 146.6–149.7 million) people vaccinated against seasonal flu during July 2014 through May 2015 among the civilian, non-institutionalized U.S. population.Flu Vaccination Coverage, United States, 2014-15 Influenza Season (I added the bold)So, .014% of people who were vaccinated had some form of adverse reaction and only .0008% of those reactions were serious. If you want to know the details, you can easily put in a search for yourself: The Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) RequestThat looks pretty safe to me, but does it work?CDC’s end-of-season influenza vaccine effectiveness (VE) estimates for the 2014-2015 season were presented to the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) on June 24, 2015. CDC’s adjusted overall VE estimate against influenza A and B viruses for all ages was 23%. The adjusted VE estimate against influenza A (H3N2) viruses for all ages was 13%.Reduced protection against influenza A (H3N2) viruses for the 2014-2015 season was attributed to the fact that more than 80% of circulating influenza A (H3N2) viruses analyzed at CDC were different or “drifted” from the recommended influenza A (H3N2) vaccine virus….Laboratory analysis of circulating flu viruses indicated that most of the influenza A (H3N2) viruses were antigenically or genetically different than the influenza A (H3N2) vaccine virus. This is probably why there was reduced vaccine effectiveness against those drifted influenza A (H3N2) viruses. However, the vaccine worked well against about one-third of circulating influenza A (H3N2) viruses that were similar to the recommended vaccine virus and against influenza A (H1N1) and influenza B viruses.What You Should Know for the 2014-2015 Influenza SeasonWell no. It looks like the vaccine was a bad match for this year. So what about the next year?CDC’s end-of-season influenza vaccine effectiveness (VE) estimates for the 2015-2016 season were presented to the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) on June 22, 2016. CDC’s adjusted overall VE estimate against influenza A and B viruses for all ages was 47%. The overall VE against A(H1N1)pdm09 was 41% and the overall VE against influenza B was 55%. This data is consistent with VE observed during previous seasons when vaccine viruses and circulating viruses were similar. These vaccine effectiveness estimates were derived from data collected from the U.S. Flu VE Network from November 2, 2015, through April 15, 2016…Was this season's vaccine a good match for circulating viruses?Yes. Laboratory data show that most of the circulating flu viruses were like the viruses recommended for the 2015-2016 influenza vaccines.What You Should Know for the 2015-2016 Influenza SeasonA much better match. Choosing the right vaccines for the virus is difficult since you are actually making predictions. Sometimes you get it right, sometimes you don’t. Medicine isn’t perfect and you are dealing with a “live” virus population after all. Things get complex.In this case, 50% effectiveness against a disease that used to kill people by the millions with only a .014% chance of an adverse reaction and only a .0008% chance that it will be serious? It doesn’t take a lot of skill in math to see that vaccines are a pretty good choice when comparing costs with benefits. Even if you are unlucky and the vaccine is only 13% effective, it isn’t like you are taking a big risk. However, you should do the obvious thing and check for possible allergies or other potentially complicating factors beforehand. Apart from that, the benefits of vaccines very clearly outweigh the risks, especially when you consider that there are many people who cannot be vaccinated (e.g. babies and the those with impaired immune systems) and you being vaccinated helps prevent diseases getting to them through you. Contributing to herd immunity is sort of a public duty.

I’ll repost my previous answer that also answers this:These days there’s so much information out there, it can be hard to know what to believe without specialized, technical context. There are many people that want to take advantage of the fear and uncertainty surrounding the coronavirus situation by saying vaccines are "a money-making enterprise that causes medical harm".I’ve outlined the reasoning without relying on the trust of the words of any government agency, and skeptically review her claims, such as alleged violation of the Sixth Amendment when she got arrested for “secret” FBI charges and Dr. Fauci allegedly “stealing” her research. I take all alleged conspiracies seriously and I evaluate them on a case-by-case basis with no conflicts of interest. I even showed Snowden’s alleged US government surveillance on British newspaper The Guardian was not a conspiracy theory way back and I also proved Bitcoin was absolutely not a Ponzi Scheme/pyramid scheme when a good amount of bankers said otherwise years ago as proven on Quora, so I hope that gives you an open-minded, unbiased, independent perspective on this matter.Before we start looking at this alleged conspiracy, I’d also suggest to look at the mathematics of the number of co-conspirators needed for a viable covered conspiracy that doesn’t immediately collapse quickly across multiple previous conspiracies done in 2016 using empirical data.Source: On the Viability of Conspiratorial Beliefs (University of Oxford - United Kingdom)Since the timing of the alleged conspiracy made by Judy that allegedly started in 1980s for the alleged Dr. Fauci suppression of breakthrough HIV/AIDS research and number of co-conspirators would require very high numbers, even with conservative numbers, I would note the mathematical probability of failure of covering up such a conspiracy as very, very high based on the generalized conspiracy viability algorithm. But I will examine further below with the assumption of ignoring this probabilistic statement. This is simply for those that prefer a probabilistic summary instead of reading more depth. Feel free to leave a comment if you wish to dispute any information I have provided.Let’s start with Judy’s prior words and actions that are directly relevant to the issue with actions contradicting Judy’s current words and actions in the “documentary”:She is on Natural News - a well-known retail conspiracy and pseudoscience website (owned by Mike Adams, former Y2K Newswire retail conspiracy website that made $400,000 in 6 months from Y2K products with only one employee, until the Y2K bug conspiracy theories all were disproven beyond reasonable doubt after the year 2000 he moved to an array of separate conspiracy sites to make more money) that sells dietary supplements, promotes alternative medicine, climate change denial, and pro-Donald Trump views. You know what’s great about conspiracy sites? All the ads, supplements (much higher average profit margins than “Big Pharma”), and affiliate revenue involved. How do I know? I know a guy that runs a retail conspiracy theory website for-profit through ad revenue with more money than most will expect, but when I asked him if he believes in conspiracy theories his team writes, he shrugged and said he doesn’t believe in his team’s writing. Take a look at their third party audited financials, you don’t have to take my word for it. If they make money on multiple conspiracies instead of going on reputable media (can be outside of the US, such as in the case of Snowden) or whistleblowing networks, then the probability of the conspiracy actually being true is much, much lowered. Retail conspiracy websites are highly incentivized to keep web traffic for ad revenue and affiliate sales revenue, regardless of viability of a claim.Judy claims on video that she is “not an anti-vaxxer” in the “documentary”. While she claims that she is not, her for-profit book Plague of Corruption, is under Skyhorse Publishing, known for actively publishing anti-vaxxer and conspiracy theory books, including Thimerosal: Let the Science Speak by the disgraced Andrew Wakefield (who made $280,000 per year at least in the anti vaccine organization “Thoughtful House” - much more than most doctors in his country of origin, let alone those that lose their license). She has many typical anti-vaccine themes in her writing, not to mention coauthor for her book Kent Heckenlively also authored The Age of Autism: Mercury, Medicine, and a Man-Made Epidemic. She also is a guest speaker for Vaxxed II: The People’s Truth which touts the myth of a "vaccine injury epidemic”, and was seen wearing a Vaxxed II hat. She also does the usual links of autism to vaccines, as well as thimerosal in her books. There has been no proven link between mercury and autism. It’s pretty evident if the thimerosal in vaccines caused “mercury poisoning”, the symptoms would affect all parts of the nervous system. If you test an infant’s blood and urine mercury levels they are going to be too low to measure after vaccine administration if they had thimerosal such that it makes no sense.(Edit: Since there was one commenter who questioned the evidence and made a claim she is pro-vaccine - there is a video proof of her giving a lecture on “vaccine injury” on autism and thimerosal, and provided a snapshot for more conclusive evidence)In her for-profit book Plague: One Scientist’s Intrepid Search for the Truth about Human Retroviruses and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (ME/CFS), Autism, and Other Diseases, she claims vaccines are contaminated with gammaretroviruses in production and thus the virus was transferred to the human population through vaccines. That is not true - but if you really think there is even a small chance, go ahead and randomly get 5 vaccines vials out there and test them using immunoassays with a lab. Easily verifiable. You don’t need to tell them the specimen was from a vaccine, if you’re really worried about tampered results. I assure you none will have gammaretroviruses. Not hard to verify lab results with your own eyes.If anything, sounds like she’s making quite a bit of money through any means possible. Who knows how much she makes? Andrew Wakefield has been confirmed in the past to make at least $280,000 a year on top of royalties and paid speaking sessions. This should give you great pause on any other wild claims she makes. Essentially, the whole documentary is extremely factually inaccurate, and many other alleged claims are either unsupported or unable to be disproven, but probably inaccurate.I’m going to warn you this is going to be a very long answer, but I’ll go over a select few claims that are not related to government statements, if you still decide you want to watch it anyways (there are other sources that debunk it one by one).Judy: “Why would you close the beach? You’ve got sequences in the soil, in the sand. You’ve got healing microbes in the ocean in the salt water. That’s insanity.”The ocean could have healing microbes. Sounds great because “nature”, but it’s not proven. It could easily be the opposite, I’ll make something up that could be plausible - the ocean could destroy your skin flora and you could end up with more infections. Which one is it? It’s a huge burden to test and then prove, but incredibly easy to claim.And sometimes, the ocean also has so-called “flesh-eating” microbes. See Vibrio vulnificus necrotizing fasciitis if you have the stomach for the images of it. This is already known. Leptospira interrogans can cause Weil’s disease in severe form for those engaging in water activities, such as surfers. Severe leptospirosis is associated with a high mortality rate. Naegleria fowleri can cause meningoencephalitis with a very high mortality rate from swimming in warm freshwater.Judy: “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.”“Reactivated coronavirus expressions” is not a scientific term. It’s nonsensical. But let’s say somehow this is all true, it’s completely inconsistent with Judy’s claims that the coronavirus comes from previous influenza vaccinations AND also the false belief that it originated from a Wuhan lab. These are internally inconsistent logically and cannot all happen together.Judy: "There is no vaccine currently on the schedule for any RNA Virus that works."Besides ignoring the fact that she claimed she was not anti-vaccine, Hep A, rotavirus, influenza, Polio, rabies vaccines are RNA virus vaccines and they clearly work. The rabies vaccine (discovered in 1885) clearly works extremely effectively against an otherwise near certain death by a virus with an extremely high, nearly 100% mortality rate. You can even get it early on right after an infected animal bite via IM route, since there is enough time for an innate immune response to form in this specific disease. You can also look at many countries where it is far more endemic. This is a specific vaccine that isn’t just used in preventive settings, it’s a treatment for an otherwise nearly 100% fatal disease.Now for a much longer version on the anti-vaccine crowd if you wish to dive deeper by following the money (TLDR, you have been warned of the length):Do you know a parent that wants to *change things* because pharmaceutical companies want to price gouge to *keep your kids alive* for a $20 vaccine? I doubt prices will drop really fast if they try to prove Big Pharma wrong. Often vaccines are free under insurance or government subsidy.There is far more money to be made selling Natural News unproven snake oil “therapies”, selling pseudoscience books, asking for donations tax-free by convincing you otherwise than trying to push vaccines for “obscene” profits. Fringe snake oil treatments with no proof anywhere in the world (not just the FDA), are being touted as “therapies”, such as hyperbaric oxygen (roughly $10,000) or chelation therapy (roughly $4,000) in lieu of vaccines, are way more than ~$20, and have far worse known potential side effects. Throughout history, the chemicals anti-vaccination groups cite have used the age old tactic of shifting goalposts - from thimerosal to aluminum salts that are “generally recognized as safe” by multiple countries, often spanning several decades. And they are in extraordinarily tiny amounts used such that you might get more aluminum salts from food/water rather than vaccines AND these are still being part of the safety studies included in vaccines. If you want to be worried about some scary chemical harming children, you should look at BPA, phthalates, lead, perfluoroalkyl chemicals, perchlorate, nitrates/nitrites etc. These chemicals are everywhere, and nearly impossible to avoid completely. The serum levels can be increased with high exposure to everyday items and I actually look into this in-depth such that the faulty “scary chemical” claims in vaccine become obvious. The amounts of claimed “poisons” in vaccines are in negligible amounts despite being in the “generally recognized as safe” category, and the symptoms don’t even fit their original claims. I wonder how much NaturalNews makes from all these wild safety claims that aren’t even close to being a real issue compared to others?There are also “natural” herb extracts they are selling that have caused liver failure (it’s easy to run a liver function test independently to see if a supplement is potentially causing liver damage) - they have just as much potential to cause harm in the claimed potent doses (unless you are literally giving someone “nothing” like homeopaths purported “law of infinitesimals” which literally violates the law of physics). A good number of real medicines are made from natural herbs actually like willow bark, sweet wormwood and ma huang, but they undergo a very long testing phase to make sure the isolated natural chemical is safe at specific dosages, then another long phase to make sure it works at specific dosages. That’s because natural herbal extracts can cause safety issues even if it’s “natural”. Quacks refuse to do enough of safety studies (or often any at all) and prefer the shortcut - selling it and making unverified claims by appealing to people’s desire for the “natural”.If these big money making “treatments” are so great, why aren’t any other countries testing it out and approving it as real medicine that has been properly tested so their companies can profit from this more than we are? Medicine encompasses a diverse crowd, and includes researchers from very different backgrounds looking for a treatment and cure around the world. You can bet various European, Japanese or Chinese companies will want to find real medicine quicker than us to profit. Researchers around the world will jump on any potential compounds that work, such as fish oil, which was once a supplement that ended up becoming prescription medicine in a specific concentrated form. However, very few compounds out of thousands and tens of thousands actually end up working and the same applies to supplements. It’s far, far easier to sell something and say the FDA is suppressing information, rather than prove it works. If the FDA is suppressing information, European, Japanese or Chinese government agencies will be ready to approve anything provably safe and effective for their citizens - regardless of democratic/republic/authoritarian/socialism. These countries can barely agree on a few things, so how is this supposed collusion existing globally? Do you really think authoritarian governments like China would let US Big Pharma tell them what to do? They executed dairy milk farmers to death who put tainted milk in infant formula and negotiates real hardball on US Big Pharma on prices to the point where they make nearly breakeven per vaccine. They even fined a domestic vaccine manufacturer $1.3 billion for a faulty vaccine issue and people want foreign made vaccines. Don’t you think they would have noticed if some vaccine really started killing or severely injuring children at significantly higher rates than expected, when they are so worried about their birth rate now? And this isn’t just China.Global “alternative medicine” market is expected to be nearly $200 billion dollars with a growth rate of ~20% and average 38% profit margin. There are a ton of investors, including billionaire investors in venture capital/private equity firms and even Big Tobacco, that buy into the ownership to profit off what is the vast majority - essentially - snake oil that if you asked other doctors from different countries - they would point out these are by far a vast majority - snake oils. And if you find this so profitable to the point of disbelief, feel free to ask for a third party audited financial statements by a reputable accounting firm to see.Vaccines are not usually huge profit-makers as the profit margin can be ~5% (with real risks on R&D) for pharmaceutical companies with an average growth rate of ~3–5% and average profit margin of ~12–14%. In addition to low profits and liability risks, manufacturers have complained about low prices paid for vaccines by the CDC since the 20th century and anti-vax crowd in the 20th century has been using roughly the same fear tactics and misinformation strategies, except by different crowds (National Anti-Vaccination League was founded in 1896 in the UK, and some of the first anti-vaccine reasons were rumors of “sprouting cow appendages” from the cowpox vaccine - the exact rate of that is 0%)Vaccines are maybe $20 billion or so in a good year globally (less than 1% of $2.6 trillion dollars market cap of pharmaceutical industry), so I really don’t see the big agenda for Big Pharma at all, as they have far better money makers. You’re welcome to enlighten me exactly where all the supposed money is. “Big Pharma” doesn’t even need such a conspiracy to make tons of money if you know how they make money, let alone often one of their worst and tiniest money makers.The reason why non profit organizations, governments around the world, and philanthropic organizations use vaccines are quite evident - the good coming out of prevention of diseases is extraordinarily cheap for the quality-adjusted human “life-years” saved. Old US data records show during 1958-1962, an average of 503,282 measles cases per year. The percent decline today versus then is 99.9%. I haven’t seen even one measles case in the clinic even in internal medicine-infectious disease wards, and you can easily survey any practicing physician using a randomized process. The only local measles outbreak that happened recently was due to anti-vaccination. A random individual at the clinic is far more likely to die of rare sudden cardiac death from exercise.If anything, our teaching hospital had trouble getting funding for furthering an effective animal tested SARS coronavirus vaccine because no company or government wanted to fund a disease that went away in 2004, until recently when it could be potentially repurposed for SARS-CoV-2 before philanthropic foundations started thinking about it again. There’s not *that* much money in vaccines and our teaching hospital isn’t even for-profit, they barely make ends meet. Cancer drugs can sell for $100,000+ easily a pop and get tons more funding, especially with the private sector.