Shedding and Transmission

If you haven’t read my herd immunity blog post, please read that here, and I talk about the guilt trip and manipulative (not to mention false) “greater good” line here. I encourage you to read both of these posts before reading this one, because I will be building on the knowledge shared there as I talk about this topic here.

In this post, I would like to prove to you that unvaccinated children pose less of a threat to society than vaccinated children do, and that vaccines do not contribute to herd immunity in any way better than natural infection.

To begin with, I just want to point out that if you actually have any of the 16 infections we vaccinate against, there is no law to keep you away from school, daycare, or any other public space. There seems to be a greater fear of the label “unvaccinated” than of the infections themselves. For example, do you have chronic Hepatitis B? Please come to school, we will not discriminate against you. Your medical information is private and protected. You are welcomed with love. But wait. You’re unvaccinated? STAY AWAY! YOU’RE COVERED IN PLAGUE!

Also, I want to note the contradiction between travelling to a place that doesn’t vaccinate and how you can be persuaded to trust in the bubble of your vaccine’s protection even if you’re the only one in that bubble, but be made to suspiciously eye your possibly unvaccinated neighbor in a society that is 90-98% vaccinated and fear that they will expose you to some nameless disease.

I’m going to go through each one of these infections as quickly as possible and end with measles, since I’ll probably spend more time there.

Hepatitis B. I discuss this in more detail here, but as it pertains to herd immunity, the vaccine does nothing. Number one, because (as mentioned above) a child with the actual disease is welcome in all public spaces, and number 2 because it is a blood bourne illness and cannot spread in a community setting unless risky behaviors are taking place. Hep B is an STD and is not a concern for children except for newborns whose mothers have the infection while pregnant.

Polio. The eradication of polio is attributed to the oral polio vaccine which has been discontinued due to safety concerns here in the US but is still in the process of “eradicating” polio in third world countries. We now use the inactivated polio vaccine and it is meant to protect the person getting the vaccine, not to contribute to herd immunity. Here is proof of how ineffective it would be if polio were to ever “come back”:

“This table documents that 91% of children receiving no IPV (control group B) were colonized with live attenuated poliovirus upon deliberate experimental inoculation. Children who were vaccinated with IPV (groups A and C) were similarly colonized at the rate of 94-97%. High counts of live virus were recovered from the stool of children in all groups. These results make it clear that IPV cannot be relied upon for the control of poliovirus.” —Harvard Immunologist

If you’re worried about polio making a come-back, I would like to ease your mind. There hasn’t been a case of wild polio in the entire United States since 1979. In 2017, there were only two cases of wild polio in the entire world.

Tetanus: not contagious. It is acquired from a wound (usually poorly sanitized) with any item covered in C tetani spores. The vaccine is given for personal protection only. Read more here.

Diphtheria: contagious. But the vaccine targets the toxoid, which gives personal protection, but does not inhibit the spread of diphtheria. And this is another one that is so rare, I don’t think anyone is worried about it.

Pertussis: This is where things get tetchy, so please read carefully. Not only is the vaccine targeting a toxoid (just like tetanus and diphtheria) and thus only protects the person getting the vaccine, it also makes you a silent carrier. [1]

With this evidence, telling people to cocoon newborns with vaccinating all close contacts, you’re actually in more danger of exposing that newborn than if people would be unvaccinated. In the event of a whooping cough outbreak, would you not want people to have a cough and thus know they are ill instead of being symptom free, trusting in the vaccine’s protection and still possessing the ability to spread the infection to your newborn?

The DTaP is the one we get 6 times and then a booster every time we get a cut (for tetanus), every time we’re pregnant (for pertussis), and every 10 years regardless. It’s arguably almost as ineffective as the flu shot (and that’s saying something).

It actually wanes within 2 to 4 years, not 10. [2]

The FDA did the study above with baboons and they’ve published the following: “This research suggests that although individuals immunized with an acellular pertussis vaccine may be protected from disease, they may still become infected with the bacteria without always getting sick and are able to spread infection to others, including young infants who are susceptible to pertussis disease.” in a press release, but the CDC keeps recommending it to grandparents and anyone visiting a newborn. Maybe they don’t know about the FDA’s study and press release? I guess it was only 6 years ago. I’m sure these things take time.

And then there’s the fact that: “pertussis variants (PRN-negative strains) currently circulating in the USA acquired a selective advantage to infect those who are up-to-date for their DTaP boosters, meaning that people who are up-to-date are more likely to be infected, and thus contagious, than people who are not vaccinated.” [3]

I want to keep going on this, to talk about how most pertussis outbreaks occur in the fully (6 vaccines) vaccinated, I want to really hammer this home, but I think I’ve made this very clear, and one must stop somewhere. I have two blog posts on this topic now. Feel free to look them up and read them.

HIB or H influenzae type B: as you might have guessed from the “type B”, there are many types, and the use of the HIB vaccine has shifted the dominance from type B strain influenzae to strains a through f. Just like antibiotics create super bugs through overuse, when you vaccinate against one strain of something, there’s always a risk that a worse strain might take its place. “These types have been causing invasive disease of high severity and increasing incidence in adults in the era of Hib vaccination of children. The general population is more vulnerable to the invasive disease now than it was prior to the start of the Hib vaccination campaign.” [4]

I would venture to say we have bigger problems than an unvaccinated child spreading HIB, but I’ll leave that for you to decide.

Pneumonia: Same strain story, [5] plus the pneumococcal vaccines have been found to be very ineffective. [6]

Flu: I can’t talk about this vaccine without getting angry so I’m going to try and keep this very, very short. Some of them shed: [7, 8 , 9] Which, for the record, is the opposite of herd immunity.

A Cochran review (pretty much the highest standard of science) states, “There is no evidence that influenza vaccines effect complications, such as pneumonia, or transmission.” [10] If a vaccine cannot stop transmission, it will not have any effect on herd immunity except possibly a negative one.

They’re so ineffective it’s hard to imagine why anyone would risk the vaccine and all its possible side effects for such a low chance of protection. The highest coverage has been 60%. That’s only a little higher chance than a coin toss. The lowest is 10%, which honestly means a big fat ZERO to me (they just don’t want to admit it’s zero, in my skeptical opinion). [11] And these are MANDATED for healthcare workers. It just baffles and irritates me to no end.

The more you get, the less they work. [12] If they don’t work for the individual, how are they supposed to protect the herd?

This study found 6 times more viral shedding in participants who had been vaccinated two years in a row than those who were infected but unvaccinated.

I go over this more in my influenza post if you’re interested in more detail.

Rotavirus is a live, oral vaccine. Here is an excerpt from the package insert:

“5.4 Shedding and Transmission
Rotavirus shedding in stool occurs after vaccination with peak excretion occurring around Day 7 after Dose 1.
One clinical trial demonstrated that vaccinees transmit vaccine virus to healthy seronegative contacts.
The potential for transmission of vaccine virus following vaccination should be weighed against the possibility of acquiring and transmitting natural rotavirus.” [13] (I wonder if pediatricians ever go over this when they administer these doses? My kid’s doctor never did when she was trying to push it on my babies.)

Transmitting it through vaccination or transmitting through catching it naturally…sounds like it’s the same risk to those around you either way. Can we really say that vaccines that shed for the first few weeks are any better for the general community than catching something naturally? Especially if you have less symptoms? Having less symptoms may fall into the pro category for the individual, but when we’re talking about “the greater good”, it’s actually a con. Sick people tend to stay home more than those who feel well.

Hepatitis A: I don’t think this is a major concern, and I can find no evidence that the inactivated Hep A vaccine stops transmission. I scoured the CDC website and there is no mention of it stopping transmission. Here is the package insert.

Meningitis: This is actually the description of a set of symptoms, not an actual disease. It can be caused by viruses, bacteria, and fungi. The bacterial forms of meningitis most commonly contracted actually occur through eating contaminated food, according to the CDC, so I’m not sure how big of a concern community spread even is, but in any case, we vaccinate against menigococcal strains A, C, Y, and W, (the B strain vaccine doesn’t work and isn’t recommended here in the US as far as I know) given at 11-12 years of age and again at age 16. This is to prevent college dormitory outbreaks which are actually very rare and the rates of guillan barre from the vaccine are higher and more damaging than that same age group actually suffering the disease. It is serious, and the “outbreaks” are almost always stopped at one patient and do not spread. Please check out this podcast for more info and references.

Chicken Pox: the varicella vaccine is live and thus it sheds. Here is an excerpt from the package insert:

“5.4 Risk of Vaccine Virus Transmission
Post-marketing experience suggests that transmission of vaccine virus may occur rarely between healthy vaccinees who develop a varicella-like rash and healthy susceptible contacts. Transmission of vaccine virus from a mother who did not develop a varicella-like rash to her newborn infant has been reported. Due to the concern for transmission of vaccine virus, vaccine recipients should attempt to avoid whenever possible close association with susceptible high-risk individuals for up to six weeks following vaccination with VARIVAX. Susceptible high-risk individuals include:
• Immunocompromised individuals;
• Pregnant women without documented history of varicella or laboratory evidence of prior infection;
• Newborn infants of mothers without documented history of varicella or laboratory evidence of prior infection and all newborn infants born at <28 weeks gestation regardless of maternal varicella immunity. [14]

Rubella: live vaccine:

“Excretion of small amounts of the live attenuated rubella virus from the nose or throat has occurred in
the majority of susceptible individuals 7 to 28 days after vaccination.” [15]

Mumps: also a live vaccine that sheds [16] I’m going to do an entire post on mumps in the near future and I don’t want to give away any spoilers, so I shall leave it at that for now.

Measles: The reason they rarely test measles patients for the strain of measles they’re infected with is because it almost always comes back as vaccine strain. [17, 18, 19]

Even the infamous Disney measles outbreak was 38% vaccine strain measles. [20]

Since then, the motto seems to be “If you don’t look for something, you won’t find it.” And that seems to be working, so long as they keep blaming the unvaccinated as loudly as they possibly can.

Until they prove me wrong and do some actual genotyping and publish the results, I will continue to believe that these outbreaks are partly caused by the vaccine.

Something that is so lost in the hysteria is the fact that these infections (or at least the complications we fear) are preventable in other ways (healthy immune system) and treatable if gotten. I’m not going to go into major detail, because that’s not the point of this particular post, but as I cover them all, I will try to explore those options a little more. It seems that once we have a vaccine, the mentality becomes that it’s the only prevention, treatment, and salvation from dying of the disease. That mindset is simply not based in fact, and you don’t have to live in fear, whether you vaccinate (and still fear the unvaccinated AND the disease itself), or don’t vaccinate. Life is risk. But there’s a way of measuring those risks, and it’s not by making blanket statements that aren’t based in actual facts or science. Blaming antivaxxers for the “return” of disease is at the top of a list of very unscientific things to say, and literally has no basis in fact, but they get away with saying it, and I really wish people would question a little more.

As I went over each one of these, I’ve concluded that this herd immunity conversation can be split into two categories. Live vaccines and inactivated vaccines.

Live vaccines shed which is the same as catching an infection and being contagious for a time and then you’re done with it and with natural infection, you’re unlikely to ever be infected or infectious ever again, but with vaccine immunity, there’s a chance you could be. The period of shedding is actually a lot less with some of these for natural infection than for those recently vaccinated. Chicken pox for example, only has a few days where the infection can be transmitted (just ask moms who have tried to expose their children through parties—it’s not as easy to contract as one might think). In contrast, the recently vaccinated are told to stay away from the vulnerable for 6 weeks.

If those vaccinated with live vaccines would stay home for 6 weeks every time they were injected and if their immunity lasted a lifetime (or they figured out when their antibodies begin to wane for each individual and got boosted and then stayed home for 6 weeks again), I would say that herd immunity could be achieved by natural immunity and also by live vaccines since they do stop transmission (once they’re past the shedding stage) as long as they’re working for that individual. However, none of that is actually happening so I don’t think they help with herd immunity very much at all. But if any vaccine could make this claim, it would probably be a live one. They do work better, and they last longer.

The inactivated vaccines do not stop transmission. This is documented fact. Thus, they do not and cannot contribute to herd immunity. If all the vaccine does is make you slightly less symptomatic, all you’re going to be doing is spreading it around more. Not unselfish after all. Oops.

Informed Health

Shedding and Transmission

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