Since 1991, the Hepatitis B vaccine, administered at birth, has prevented approximately half a million childhood Hepatitis B infections. That’s pretty awesome, especially considering how dangerous (very) a Hepatitis B infection can be for children.
However, not too long ago, some people who are very, very stupid but think they are very very smart started saying to themselves, “Hey! My baby is not a slut or an intravenous drug user and neither am I, so why does my baby need a Hepatitis vaccine?” Some even worry that simply getting the vaccine could make their babies think it is safe to have premarital sex or shoot up heroin, so there has been a significant amount of pushback against the vaccine in recent years. That pushback, unfortunately, has included Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Department of Health and Human Services no longer recommending the vaccine immediately after birth, but rather “whenever the parents feel like it, if they ever feel like it.”
According to a study published in the Annals of Internal Medicine on Monday, this is not going to turn out well. Although if you have two brain cells to rub together, you probably could have figured that one out on your own.
Compared with the universal birth-dose strategy (255 childhood infections [95% UI, 130 to 530]), the deferred and shared decision-making strategies would increase chronic HBV infections in the 2026 birth cohort by 19% to 303 (95% UI, 155 to 610) and by 83% to 467 (95% UI, 209 to 1032), respectively. These strategies would also increase the number of HBV-susceptible people at year 20 (474 000 and 1 806 000) compared with the universal birth-dose strategy (232 000).
It’s not a huge number on the face of it, given how very low the current rates are, but it will also, obviously, gradually increase with every year that passes. According to the National Institutes of Health, 16,000 to 20,000 children under the age of 10 contracted Hepatitis B each year prior to 1991, when they first started recommending the vaccine at birth. This was not because the children were sluts or junkies, as these are not the only ways to get Hepatitis B. It can also be transmitted through the sharing of personal items that may have trace amounts of bodily fluids on them, and if there is anything we know about toddlers, it is that they are leaky AF.
After the New York Times published an article on the study earlier this week, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. put out his own statement whining that it’s an unfair assessment because no one really knows how many parents will choose to defer the vaccine or not get it at all, and because it will still be recommended at birth for babies whose mothers test positive or whose status is unknown. The thing is, unless they are doing rapid tests during labor, which seems unlikely, every mother’s HVB status is unknown, as it is, again, something that one can contract at any time.
He wrote:
The paper they discuss is a “modeling study” or simulation based on assumptions, not a study of evidence or outcomes. The model assumes allowing parents and doctors to decide when or whether to vaccinate would drive vaccine completion down to just half of children. The researchers did not observe that decline or establish that our policy would cause it. Yet the Times obscures that assumption while amplifying the alarming prediction it produces. […]
The 50 percent rate is not actually a particularly wild assumption, as a lot of people very much believe that the only way to get HVB is through sex and drugs, thus all of the snarky comments from idiots about how their babies are not sluts or junkies. Additionally, RFK Jr. himself has repeatedly implied that giving newborns the vaccine is some kind of money-making scheme from pharmaceutical companies.
He said:
Most of the vaccines after 1989 were added, not for public health reasons, but for profit — pharmaceutical profit reasons.
So why are we vaccinating one day old babies for Hepatitis B when the only way they’re gonna get Hepatitis B is … you know, the Hepatitis B is sexually transmitted. You get it from having sex with, you know, with, from multiple partners and gay sex or, from sex workers or intravenous drug use.
Why would you give that to a baby?
It’s clearly the only reason. In fact, Merck, when it developed the drug, was told by FDA and CDC, “We want you to develop this for those vulnerable populations,” and the populations, when they didn’t buy it, Merck went back to the agencies and saying, “you told us to develop this vaccine, nobody’s buying it,” and CDC said, “Don’t worry, we’ll just recommend it for children, we’ll force everybody to buy it.”
So that’s how it got on the schedule, there is no medical justification. It’s true that you can get Hepatitis B from an infected mother. But every mother in every hospital in the United States is tested for Hepatitis B, so you can identify the kids who would benefit. You don’t give it mass population-wide.
So, he’s saying that the only babies that should get the vaccine at birth are the children of infected mothers, while also claiming that it’s ridiculous to assume that only 50 percent of parents would choose to do so. I mean, I would personally hope that more than that would choose to, but unless people really understand why it’s necessary, it is something that is going to sound ridiculous to a lot of them.
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In better Hepatitis B vaccine-related news, The Guardian reports that an extremely unethical, CDC-funded, RFK Jr-backed study on it meant to have been done in Guinea-Bissau will not go forward after all. The plan had been to do a double-blind study in Guinea-Bissau, a country with an extraordinarily high rate of HVB and which, sadly, does not have the same level of access to the vaccine that we do, in which half of the babies would be given the vaccine and half would not. The hypothesis of the study was that “giving live vaccines, like the Bacillus Calmette-Guérin (BCG), may have an overall mortality benefit beyond simply preventing illnesses like tuberculosis — but giving another vaccine like Hepatitis B alongside it could dampen that effect.” It also would have studied whether or not the vaccine seemed to cause other side-effects, like skin conditions or neurodevelopmental issues … like autism. Which we damn well know it does not.
The theory was described as “fanciful” by Paul Offit, a vaccines expert at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, who explained to The Guardian that the vaccine is “a single protein among billions encountered by the immune system each day.”
Offit, however, did suggest that the nation take the money from the CDC and go and buy as many vaccines as they could with it and then tell the researchers to go screw. And that’s (hopefully) similar to what they’re doing, as the government now has possession of all of the vaccines the researchers intended to use, which they apprehended when they searched their offices earlier this week.
He also pointed out that there are already children out there who have not been vaccinated (particularly in Guinea-Bissau, so they already have a comparison available to study without needing to put any children in danger.
“We have millions and millions, arguably hundreds of millions, of children in this world who have gotten that vaccine as a birth dose or haven’t. If there was any evidence that this was problematic, you would know this by now,” Offit explained.
The nation hopes to have a universal birth dose available by 2028. We should consider ourselves lucky that we already have/had it and stop being stupid about this.
PREVIOUSLY ON WONKETTE!
I understand that historians are moving away from the notion of a Medieval Dark Age, but it feels like we are entering a New Dark Age now with religious fanaticism, science denial, and the notion that empathy is a bad thing.
my first jerb was working with kids who had mental and physical disabilities.
I have few non comments about this asshole that aren't gonna get me slapped up side the head with the banhammer.
This fucker needs to be under the fucking jail.