Anti-Vaxxers Accusing Media Of Creating Vaccine Hesitancy By Criticizing Anti-Vaxxers
RFK Jr.'s vaccine advisory panel not going great!
Earlier this week, Martin Kulldorff, the new chair of the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), chastized the media for undermining faith in institutions — and in vaccines — by reporting on the absolutely batshit beliefs of the newly appointed ACIP members.
“Some media outlets have been very harsh on the new members of this committee, issuing false accusations and making concerted efforts to put scientists in either a pro- or anti-vaccine box,” Kulldorff said. “Such labels undermine critical scientific inquiry, and it further feeds the flames of vaccine hesitancy.”
Oh, like this?
Next up, we’ve got Dr. Martin Kulldorff, who claims to have been fired from Harvard for his “dissident” views about vaccine requirements for the COVID vaccine. Kulldorff was a co-author of the truly batshit Great Barrington Declaration, which advocated for eliminating most pandemic-era restrictions, such as lockdowns and mask requirements, and instead having people who were not “at risk” of dying from the virus go out and get it in order to develop “herd immunity” that would then protect those who were at risk of dying from it. There were just a few problems with that, starting with the fact that a whole lot of people who thought they were not at risk of dying from COVID did, in fact, die from COVID.
Because that sure seems like a thing people should know about, so that when they make decisions on their health choices, they can properly consider the source.
Now, we wouldn’t want to unfairly malign the ACIP or “feed the flames of vaccine hesitancy,” but it does seem somewhat important to point out that the panel just recommended that flu vaccine manufacturers remove thimerosal, a preservative agent that anti-vaxxers believe causes autism.
Do they have any actual proof that it causes autism? They do not. They just think it does.
Sadly, only one panel member voted against the measure.
“The risk from influenza is so much greater than the non-existent, as far as we know, risk from thimerosal,” said Dr. Cody Meissner. “So I would hate for a person not to receive the influenza vaccine because the only available preparation contains thimerosal. I find it very hard to justify.”
On the bright side, the panel did approve the use of flu vaccines that do not contain any thimerosal, so at least we’ll have some protection.
Before you go putting all of your eggs into a Dr. Cody Meissner-shaped basket, though, you may want to be aware that at Wednesday’s ACIP meeting he claimed that COVID-19 is a “very rare illness” for young people and adults, which definitely doesn’t sound like a thing that is true.
Thimerosal is an extremely well-studied, known to be safe substance, but in the 1990s, anti-vaxxers started claiming that it caused autism because it contains a tiny bit of mercury. Again, it does not cause autism. In 1999, the CDC asked pharmaceutical companies to remove it from most childhood vaccines, not because it was in any way harmful, but because they wanted parents to get their kids vaccinated.
It doesn’t seem like that approach worked very well, in retrospect. Rather, it ended up making people think they were right about it being dangerous, rather than that they were idiots who were being placated.
For the most part, flu vaccines do not contain thimerosal, but as the Huffington Post explains, “it is still used in multi-dose vials to prevent bacterial contamination when multiple needles are inserted.”
Well, who wouldn’t prefer a bacterial infection to … not a bacterial infection, or anything else for that matter?
Quite frankly, given how rarely it is used, it’s likely that they are just imposing this restriction so that they can talk more about how it causes autism, despite the fact that it doesn’t cause autism.
Is that too harsh? Are we going to push people into the loving arms of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. by pointing out that his panel is making very stupid recommendations? Is the opposition to vaccines like Nazism in that way? Where if you criticize it, people are forced to adopt it as their most sincerely held belief?
Perhaps so, but it also seems fairly likely that anyone who could be pushed to oppose vaccines in that way would do so anyway, even if we were not telling them that vaccines do not cause autism. (Same with embracing the tenets of National Socialism to own the libs.)
PREVIOUSLY ON WONKETTE!
One small correction. Thimerosal is a chemical compound that has a mercury atom in it. This is not elemental mercury, which is that really dense liquid metal that's in thermometers, even though it's the same atoms. The mercury in thimerosal is chemically bonded to other atoms, because that's what chemical compounds are. Point is, chemical compounds are different than the atoms that they are composed of.
Saying thimerosal is bad because of the mercury is like saying salt is bad because it has chlorine gas in it. For some stuff, like lead, the compounds are as bad news as the element and you should avoid it whenever possible, but for mercury, you'll be fine with the proper precautions.
There is more mercury in a can of tuna than in the flu vaccine.