We've Got Some Bad News For Anti-Vaxxers
A new MRNA flu vaccine AND yet another study showing the MMR vaccine does not cause autism? Whatever shall they do?
Last week was a rough week for those of us who believe in vaccines and who are not trying to rewrite the history of what happened during the pandemic. Republicans spent hours grilling Dr. Anthony Fauci on a variety of subjects, coming from a perspective of “We all agree and know now that the lockdowns were a bad idea, that masking and social distancing didn’t work, that the vaccine was bad and that it was bad to require people to take it in order to return to normal life or their jobs.” This, of course, is all bullshit, but conservatives have learned over the years that if they just present their bullshit as a foregone conclusion, lots of people will just assume they missed class the day that bullshit was proven correct and go along with them.
Even more stupidly, it was announced this morning that a Senate panel voted to hold Fauci in contempt for asserting his constitutional right to refuse to answer any of their ridiculous questions during his hearing.
But it’s not all bad news! For one, The Independent reported on Wednesday that yet another massive study of 2.5 million children has shown no link between the MMR vaccine and autism.
“These results reinforce existing evidence supporting the safety of MMR vaccination,” the researchers wrote, probably with the full knowledge that there is literally nothing they can say to these people that will convince them that vaccines do not cause autism.
In his interview with Dana Bash this weekend, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. more or less admitted that the MMR vaccine does not cause autism, even going so far as to admit that parents should make sure their children get it. Of course, he followed that up by claiming that it thus must be one of those other vaccines, like DTaP or Hepatitis B, that is causing the uptick in autism diagnoses.
But skipping out on those might actually be more immediately dangerous than skipping out on the MMR — DTaP in particular. While we’ve seen a number of Americans recently claiming to refuse to get tetanus shots, because “only two people die a year” from tetanus in the United States, that’s because of the vaccine. In areas where the vaccine is less accessible, the numbers are a lot more dire. The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control estimates “that tetanus causes 213,000 [to] 293,000 deaths worldwide each year, and that it is responsible for [five to seven percent] of all neonatal deaths and [five percent] of maternal deaths globally.”
But back to the “good news for us, bad news for anti-vaxxers.”
Also on Wednesday, it was announced that mFlusiva, a new MRNA flu vaccine manufactured by Moderna, was approved by the FDA for people age 50 and older, even after they said they wouldn’t approve it (because researchers tested it against the flu vaccine rather than no vaccine at all). Studies show that the MRNA vaccine is significantly more effective than the regular vaccine, and also has the advantage of being faster and easier to adapt to new strains of the virus (as it doesn’t have to be grown in an egg).
Naturally, the reaction over on X the Everything App were all very normal and measured and definitely not full of people absolutely making shit up.
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It’s hard to say whether this next one is good or bad — it’s more just a little too reflective of the times in which we are living. On Wednesday, the New York Times sent out an email blast with the subject line “Breaking News: Childhood vaccine supporter confirmed as CDC director,” to announce the confirmation of Dr. Erika Schwartz to the position.
A similar tack was used on their social media posts:
While, on the one hand, it’s good that she supports childhood vaccines, even though she doesn’t seem too great otherwise, it sure is deeply depressing to think about the fact that we are living at a time during which it is at all notable that the director of the CDC believes in vaccines. What’s next? That she believes in germ theory?
I certainly don’t trust her to stand up to Trump and Kennedy (doubt she would have been nominated if that were the case), but the anti-vaxxers are spinning out over fear that she might.
To be clear, “millions of Americans” were not killed or disabled by the mRNA vaccines. In 2022, one study found that 55 people died after taking the vaccine (although no causal links were actually determined).
Via National Library of Medicine:
There have been 55 cases of death after COVID-19 vaccination reported and a causal relationship has been excluded in 17 cases. In the remaining cases, the causal link between the vaccine and the death was not specified (8) or considered possible (15), probable (1), or very probable/demonstrated (14). The causes of deaths among these cases were: vaccine-induced immune thrombotic thrombocytopenia (VITT) (32), myocarditis (3), ADEM (1), myocardial infarction (1), and rhabdomyolysis (1). In such cases, the demonstration of a causal relationship is not obvious, and more studies, especially with post-mortem investigations, are needed to deepen understanding of the possible pathophysiological mechanisms of fatal vaccine side effects. In any event, given the scarcity of fatal cases, the benefits of vaccination outweigh the risks and the scientific community needs to be cohesive in asserting that vaccination is fundamental to containing the spread of SARS-CoV-2.
I am not a math whiz, but I think 38 might be fewer than “millions.”
Comparatively, 45,000 Americans died from the flu, and 56,000 died from COVID last flu season. Again, not great at math, but it does seem like both of those numbers are a little bit more than 38.
It would be pretty great if people could stop being so very stupid about vaccines, for the sake of all of our health, but that does seem fairly unlikely to happen in the near future.
PREVIOUSLY ON WONKETTE!
"Whatever shall they do?"
They're Republicans. They'll continue lying.
"Comparatively, 45,000 Americans died from the flu, and 56,000 died from COVID last flu season."
About masking and distancing not working. That Influenza number is pretty normal for a US flu season. Typically something like 10x more Americans are hospitalized per year due to Influenza. About half a million.
In the 2020-2021 flu season, when we were masking and distancing and didn't yet have COVID vaccines? 200 Americans died of Influenza, and under 1,000 were hospitalized.
Masking and distancing worked fantastically well. COVID is simply that much more contagious, severe, and deadly than Influenza.