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Kindness & Civility Matter

Democrats, Republicans, Libertarians, Socialists, are all labels we give ourselves and apply to others based on political leanings. They are just labels. They do not determine our character or morality.

I am an ardent believer in having lawful elections. Tuesday night in my state, the polls had closed only a minute or two and the election was called. I was stunned because the votes could not have been counted. Watching the election be called by the media today was tough, not because of who was called the victor; but because not all ballots have been counted. The process of lawful elections matters, even when it is inconvenient.

It was as if over night a decision was made to have all the media call the projected winner at almost exactly the same time (while the President was on the golf course) and change the news cycle, to begin the transition before a single state had certified the election.

Maybe the outcome will not change. What happens if it does?

There is a part of me that wants to rail and scream because of the media manipulations, the big tech controlling of free speech all of which played a role in this election cycle. There is a part of me that has serious concern about the forward marching of agendas that I believe undermine our democratic republic; and there is a part of me that just wants to see it all be over.

Watching all the celebrations in the streets I can’t help but wonder if there will be a spike in COVID cases and lockdowns mandated. I wonder if magically there will be no COVID spike even though thousands of people are shoulder to shoulder in the streets for hours on end.

I’m curious if the Massachusetts Governor will appoint Joe Kennedy to replace Elizabeth Warren if she gets a cabinet position. I wonder if Sen. Coons and Sen. Sanders will get a cabinet position. I worry about the price of oil skyrocketing. I wonder about the AOC and her Squad versus Speaker Pelosi battle that is sure to come. And I wonder who the Governor of California will appoint to replace Sen. Harris if she is indeed sworn in as Vice President.

In the next week or so, the newly elected will arrive in Washington and get new legislator training. The annual lottery for office space will take place and a majority of legislators’ offices will be moved between now and the start of the new Congress.

Whatever your feelings about the November 2020 elections; about what will happen in the legal challenges, please remember to be kind to one another. I feel like maybe at the start of each day everyone should watch a rerun of a Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood episode.

I do know I’m tried of people making negative comments about our President – like him or not, he is President; and has done a lot of good things. Two peace deals in the Middle East among them. I worry how the next administration will handle Iran. And now that it has been shown that GMO crops are losing their pesticide resistance (Thank you NPR for the story), I wonder how a return signing onto agreements that were pushing GMOs on the world will be affected.

But tonight, I’ll simply focus on trying to keep my own advice and be kind and civil!

In the words of the Dali Lama – “Be Kind Whenever Possible. It is Always Possible.”

In the words of Mother Theresa, “Kind words can be short and easy to speak, but their echoes are truly endless.”

And finally, in the words of Beth Clay, “Love in the most power energy on the planet, Kindness emanates from a place of love within; and Civility is always appropriate!”

My hope and prayer for the United States of America and all her people is that truth, justice and liberty will prevail; that we can remember kindness and civility along the way, even though it will be a challenge; and that whatever your belief system, you lean into it to see you through the coming weeks and months.

Always,

Beth

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A Memorable Memorial Day – 2020

Memorial Day, the unofficial start of the summer break, is truly a sacred day. It is a day we honor the men and women who gave their all – literally – in defense of our great nation, in defense of our liberty and freedoms. Many in our country have lost all of their rituals and ceremonies. Memorial Day began as Decoration Day – and grew up spontaneously in many communities around the United States. On this day, Americans would visit the burial sites of their loved ones who had died during the Civil War, and decorate their grave stones. Eventually there were local parades, and as time went by it became a national day to honor all who have died in service to the nation.

This year we are facing a different war – not the war of the unseen enemy – a virus, not the war between the US and our adversaries, but a new civil war. Over the last 20 years I have watched as public health authorities have sought to take away parental decision making related to health (vaccinations); and seen a continued slippery slope in publicly policies and actions related to religious and personal liberty.

Over the last couple of years we watched a member of Congress (Rep. Adam Schiff) encourage social media CEOs to curtail freedom of speech and expression on their sites when it came to vaccines. When another member of Congress (Rep. Bill Posey) pointed out to them the errors in Rep. Schiff’s claims, they were ignored – because the bigger goal was it seemed to control the flow of information and what the public would see if they typed words like vaccines, measles, MMR into a search engine on Facebook on Google, etc.

At what point did the public become so complacent that they find it okay that you are forced to a government website for information? Why is the Grey Lady – the New York Times, and the paper that’s tagline is ‘democracy dies in the dark’ the Washington Post are not objecting and informing the public. Why is Congress and the White House so silent on the matter?

Did the men and women who died on battle fields or from the wounds they received in Vietnam, Korea, Iraq, Afghanistan and so many other places around the world die in vain?

This year, without a single bullet being fired, without a single Congressional hearing, without a single town hall, government leaders after listening to public health officials, all of whom have been entrenched in government for decades, all of whom have been party to the curtailing of family liberties and often religious liberties directly or by the giving of recommendations have taken unprecedented actions and because we as a nation were afraid or felt we had no choice, we complied. Two weeks of stay at home orders turned into two months. Schools were shut down over night, with no plans in place to continue education, to provide meals that for some are the only reliable meals they get; and no plans to deliver the legally required IEP agreed upon services to those with special needs. Overnight parents, were expected to stay at home – work or be unemployed – home school, and keep themselves and their families safe and healthy.

Churches were told to close.

Nursing homes locked their doors to visitors – only immediately family allowed in if someone was actively dying. Hospitals did much the same – news articles reporting the anguish of health professionals unable to take the time to be with someone who otherwise was alone as they passed away.

These public health authorities have flip flopped back and forth depending on which way the media is driving the public opinion – don’t wear masks – they do no good if you aren’t sick – and then a few weeks later not just a recommendation to wear masks – but mandates.

Governors and local authorities making major decisions based on arbitrary information.

For 20+ years, I have heard these public health authorities extol the importance of evidence-based medicine – and the setting of public policy based in science. This is usually said to discount parents, or those in the complementary and alternative health world (as if there is no science – when in truth there is in these fields).

Since March, we have been subjected to national and state declarations of emergency (which actually is simply a mechanism to turn on the spigots of federal funding), and forced limitations on personal movements and even speech limitations on line. High regarded scientists whose comments different from the agenda have their you tube videos taken down, and any dissenter is attacked or shut down. And now there are active measures being taken to do conduct nationwide (even global) ‘contact tracing’ – which if that doesn’t send shivers up your spine its because you don’t now what it is.

How can this be where we are as a nation in 2020?

I have said before that there is always a tug of war that goes on between the public and the public health sector in regard to personal liberty. Public health always want to count everything, track everything, force everything. Their focus is not personal privacy or individual liberty. They are part of the ‘state’ and ask such want compliance, and mandates, and control. And because their is big money in these venture, government and corporate are joining forced, pulling us closer and closer to that mud pit of oppression, socialism, even communism.

We need some strong men and strong women to join forces on our side, to yank that rope back, to bring us back from the brink of total loss of liberty, to the collapse of the Constitution. Republic, libertarian, democrat, liberal – it doesn’t matter. If you are an American, and you care about liberty, don’t let all the deaths of the men in women in the military be in vain…..together we become unbeatable. Together we protect and preserve liberty and freedom.

Don’t be asleep at the switch about your liberty – take some time today to give thanks to those who fought for it, and gave their lives so that you could be free. And then come tomorrow – take stock, get engaged, and demand your freedoms be protected and restored.

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What a Recent FOIA Court Case Really Says

March 8, 2020: On March 5, a nonprofit organization made public their court filing regarding the failure of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to produce information relevant to their Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) Request. I’m very familiar with the topic, with people involved, and with FOIA (having used it myself many times over the last 20 years). Because I am not directly involved, but realizing the importance of the process and the outcomes; I wanted to give a Hawk’s views – that of the 3,000 feet up and zeroed in.

The Case itself: The Informed Consent Action Network (ICAN) made requests of the CDC through the FOIA process. In the press release, ICAN notes the CDC after many months failed to respond to FOIA requests to provide “All studies relied upon by CDC to claim that the DTaP vaccine does not cause autism.” ICAN also made the same request for HepB, Hib, PCV13 and IPV vaccines. They further asked that the CDC provide studies to support the claim that “cumulative exposure to these vaccines during the first six months of life do not cause autism.”

Why would ICAN do this? After all, its been 20 years of drama around this topic and the government says its ‘settled science’ that vaccines do not cause autism. Having become involved in this issue in 1999 while working for Congress, I realize exactly why and thought I would explain from my perspective. The data the CDC posts on their website, the studies they have conducted and funded, do not truthfully provide a scientific underpinning for their claim that ‘vaccines do not cause autism.’ Just because they say it does, does not make it so. If I look up at the sky and say it is lime green, just because I say it is, does not make it so. If I write on this page that President Trumps’ hair is his natural color and it not chemically enhanced, that does not make that a factually accurate statement.

Zeroing in on ground level: The facts are that the CDC has only investigated and published studies on MMR, thimerosal, and a couple of other ancillary topics (and in my personal view, done that poorly – but that would be a digression). The CDC and their colleagues – have not shown that all vaccines given in the first six months of life individually or as a group have no connection to the epidemic increase of autism rates or the dramatic increase of chronic health conditions in children born since 1988. They have not shown this, because they have not studied this. If CDC had, the document they submitted to the court in response to the court filing by ICAN would be very different. What did the CDC provide in response to the federal court’s stipulation order? They provided the same series of 20 papers and reports they always provide or post, none of which are actually responsive to the requests. To take a page out of former Congressman Trey Gowdy’s recent news interviews, related to political activities, I’ll draw a picture – after 21 years of funding, after 9 months of waiting for the FOIA response, after going to a federal court, the non-profit organization ICAN was handed a basket of stale, moldy apples when it had asked for a basket of fresh peaches.

In the2012, publication by the National Academy of Sciences, Ellen Wright Clayton, Chair Committee to Review Adverse Effects of Vaccines wrote, ” The Institute of Medicine (IOM) was charged by Congress when it enacted the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act in 1986 with reviewing the literature regarding the adverse events associated with vaccines covered by the program, a charge which the IOM has addressed 11 times in the past 25 years. Following in this tradition, the task of this committee was to assess dispassionately the scientific evidence about whether eight different vaccines cause adverse events (AE), a total of 158 vaccine-AE pairs, the largest study undertaken to date, and the first comprehensive review since 1994.

The committee had a herculean task, requiring long and thoughtful discussions of our approach to analyzing the studies culled from more than 12,000 peer-reviewed articles in order to reach our conclusions, which are spelled out in the chapters that follow. In the process, we learned some lessons that may be of value for future efforts to evaluate vaccine safety. One is that some issues simply cannot be resolved with currently available epidemiologic data, excellent as some of the collections and studies are. ” They go on to provide more scientific guidance, ” Some adverse events caused by vaccines are also caused by the natural infection. These effects often cannot be detected by epidemiologic methods, which typically cannot distinguish between the adverse events that are caused by the vaccine itself and the decrease in adverse events due to the decreased rate of natural infection. In addition, even very large epidemiologic studies may not detect or rule out rare events. Subgroup analysis or more focused epidemiologic studies, informed by as yet incomplete knowledge of the biologic mechanisms of vaccine-induced injury, may be required. Examining mechanistic evidence to assess causation is also challenging. Many of the case reports the committee reviewed simply cited a temporal relation between vaccine administration and an adverse event. Association, however, does not equal causation. More is required. The proof can be relatively straightforward, as when vaccine-specific virus is recovered from the cerebrospinal fluid of a patient who develops viral meningitis a few weeks after receiving the vaccine. Alleged adverse effects that appear to be immune-mediated, as many of them are, are more challenging, in part because the biology is not completely understood.

One potentially useful line of inquiry as science advances is to assess whether the vaccine recipient who suffers harm had a preexisting susceptibility to that particular adverse event as such studies may provide insight into the mechanisms by which such events occur. The committee is aware of the work funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to study such individuals and looks forward to their findings. Most individuals, for example, who develop invasive infection from live vaccine viruses have demonstrated immunodeficiencies. Our work was also complicated by the wide variation in the case reports regarding what other tests had been done to rule out other potential causes. To improve the utility of these reports, periodically convening a group of experts to suggest guidelines, based on the best available science, for providing mechanistic evidence that a particular adverse event was caused by a vaccine may be useful. These guidelines could be made available on the Web, and perhaps more important, shared with clinicians who report cases to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System so their reports can be as complete and useful as possible. ”

The Committee published these findings:

The framework allows the committee to “favor rejection” of a causal relationship only in the face of epidemiologic evidence rated as high or moderate in the direction of no effect (the null) or of decreased risk and in the absence of strong or intermediate mechanistic evidence in support of a causal relationship. The committee concluded the evidence favors rejection of five vaccine–adverse event relationships. These include MMR vaccine and type 1 diabetes, diphtheria, tetanus, and pertussis (DTaP) vaccine and type 1 diabetes, MMR vaccine and autism, inactivated influenza vaccine and asthma exacerbation or reactive airway disease episodes, and inactivated influenza vaccine and Bell’s palsy. The evidence base for these conclusions consisted of epidemiologic studies reporting no increased risk; this evidence was not countered by mechanistic evidence.

The literature supporting several of the causality conclusions discussed
in the previous section indicates that individuals with certain characteristics
are more likely to suffer adverse effects from particular immunizations.
Individuals with an acquired or genetic immunodeficiency are clearly recognized as at increased risk for specific adverse reactions to live viral vaccines such as MMR and varicella vaccine. Age is also a risk factor; seizures after immunization, for example, are more likely to occur in young children.

The report is thorough and massive. The Cliff notes section, i.e. the chart of vaccines, suspected adverse events evaluated in the data and their findings is more than 600 pages into the report. On page 684, the National Academy of Sciences’ prestigious panel reported that in looking at autism as an adverse event from DTP, DTaP, or TT, the epidemiological assessment was “insufficient”, the mechanistic assessment was “lacking’ and the causality conclusion was “inadequate”.

As an aside, in the same table, the panel finds the mechanistic assessment for MMR and autism “Lacking’ but uses the epidemiological assessment to reject causation.

If you do nothing more than read the chart TABLE D-1 Causality Conclusions Organized by Chapter and Adverse Event which begins on page 674 of the report, your eyes will be opened. When you read how many suspected events have not been studied by the CDC (or anyone else) even with all of the billions of dollars since 1989 that have been directed towards this. The list of suspected events are not isolated incidences, but adverse events reported often enough to raise the red flag and warrant the committee investigate.

Having read this finding, the tenants of evidence-based reporting that the CDC is obligated to follow; the statements on their website AND their public information campaign should have changed in 2012 (and it did not). The CDC, Dr. Sanjy Gupta, and everyone in public health should not be able to say (since 2012) with a straight face that the question of autism and vaccines is settled science (which is a ridiculous unscientific statement anyway). To do so is simply a false statement when the preeminent committee within the scientific community published a report in 2012 which concluded that on one set of vaccines (Diptheria, pertussis, and tetanus) given multiple times to infants the question of causation remains unanswerable because the scientific evidence is lacking. Who will be held accountable? If Congress does not engage in oversight, these misdeeds will continue.

According to the law, if the CDC had data on the vaccines in question they were obligated to provide it. They did not, so, in short, but not providing any relevant studies, and providing the National Academies 2012 report they have shown themselves to be misrepresenting the facts of autism and vaccines to the public. They have by default admitted their data are insufficient to answer the question.

Why does this matter? Setting aside the parent bully technics that have taken place over the last 20 years by public health agencies and officials, as well as social media; setting aside, the miscarriage of justice in the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, let’s pull the lens back out to 3,000 feet – if the CDC has intentionally or by neglect posted scientifically invalid information on their website about this topic, what else on their site is inaccurate?

If there is any take away from the current infectious disease drama playing out daily in the media, the information posted on the CDC website is the ‘trusted source’. It is where doctors, nurses, families, and policymakers and the world go for information about coronavirus, measles, autism, HIV, and the flu. They have a duty to the public to have only fact-based, scientifically substantiated information on their website. We are not Cuba or Russia, or Venezuela – the agency has a legal obligation not to get caught up in politics or propaganda and stick with the tenants of fact-based, scientifically substantiated information on all topics on their webpages.

Thank you to ICAN and the partnering organizations for staying focused on evidence gathering and being willing to take the agency to court when they do not comply with FOIA law. The families of the vaccine-injured need a “Judicial Watch” equivalent to keeping focused on seeking the truth; and not giving up even when the social media giants suspend free speech, bully the parents of injured children, and elected officials ignore their duty to conduct oversight.

At the end of the day, what this FOIA Case Really Says that after more than 20 years, the question of a link between acquired autism and vaccine injury remains an open question. That inconvenient evidence-based truth is not present on the CDC’s website.

Always,

Beth

Disclaimer: This opinion is purely my own personal view and does not represent the opinion or view of any organization, entity, or person that I am currently working with or have worked with in the past.

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Being Like Barnabas in Social Media

This week has been both a joyous and a bit of a sad week for me. Early this week was the first occasion my father’s birthday occurred since his passing last spring. I have a firm faith that what we call death is a doorway from this life to the next; and that since his passing, after years living with Type III diabetes (aka Alzheimer’s), I feel my father’s essence more since his passing. But it was still a bit sad. Everyone who knew my Dad well and anyone who has loved someone who journies this path likely knows what I mean. Dad could transmit more with the tilt of his head and a half-smile than most of us could in an hour-long conversation. Not a perfect man, but when it mattered an encourager.

Yesterday was my mother’s 86th birthday. We spoke at great length and she is feeling so blessed to have lived such a long life; even if these last few years have been with a decline in her physical health. She lives in a skilled nursing facility now, but true to form, she is always working on learning something new. This fall she learned a complicated crochet stitch, more complex because she is left-handed. And now she is learning to paint Mandalas. As someone who lives daily with excruciating pain from the degeneration of her bones, the process of painting a mandala is meditative and helps her focus on something other than the pain. She is focused on living her life to the best of her ability on her terms, and that gives me great comfort. In the last few months as I have taken on a new big project she has been the captain of my encourager squad.

When I am able to, I listen online to my mother’s church service* so that we have something we can talk about together. (She watches it on her Kindle.) This morning the minister spoke about Acts 15 and talked about Barnabas. He talked about how Barnabas was an encouraging force – he nurtured and sought to be a positive influence rather than be a complainer or only point out the negative. This hit home to me in such a way that I felt I needed to stop what I was doing and write.

I could write about the polarization of Washington, but what hit home for me today was how this related to Social Media. On some of the pages and groups, I am on, there is so much focus on the negative; on standing in judgment, and speaking ill of something or someone. There are times my soul just hurts when I see good people going so negative. When we chip away at the underpinnings of a person’s self-esteem or an organization’s growth by focusing on a public forum on the negative, even if well-intentioned, there are lasting consequences that may not be the intent of the writer, but will result.

Can we all try to be more like Barnabas, and encourage and nurture people and organizations in a positive fashion? Will it be easy? No. Getting out of the rut of negativity is hard, but it can be done.

I challenge each of us to try to practice Barnabas-style social media postings for a week.

It is my hope and prayer by bringing this up, that myself and maybe just one other person on the planet will take up the challenge.

Always,

Beth

*Washington Baptis Church http://www.washingtonbaptist.org/ 

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Where is the Moral Outrage? Why are Children in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East Not Given the Safer Polio Vaccine?

A funny thing happened on the way to the loss of religious liberty and parental rights in the United States this spring. The CDC and is public health colleagues kept everyone’s attention firmly focused on Measles, while they quietly published papers acknowledging that the oral polio vaccine continues to spread polio.   

In 2000, the World Health Organization Western Pacific Region declared Papua New Guinea (PNG) free of indigenous wild polio virus. PNG is one of 37 countries or regions with a wild polio-free certification.  As Bauri, et al reported in Notes from the Field (1)  in February 2019, the PNG National Department of Health confirmed an outbreak of poliomyelitis “caused by circulating vaccine-derived poliovirus type 1 (cVDPV1) following isolation of genetically linked virus form a patient with paralysis and non-household community contacts.”  A six- year old boy having received 2 doses of the Sabin oral polio vaccine (OPV), was identified as the ‘index patient’. Six months later, 26 confirmed cases of circulating vaccine-derived polio had been identified in nine of the 22 PNG provinces including 19 in children less than five years of age. 

Bauri also reports that the Acute Flaccid Paralysis (AFP) Surveillance system is being improved in PNG and the 2018 surveillance found 7.0 per 100,000 persons under the age of 15 years with non-polio AFP compared with 0.8 in 2017.  Less than 50 percent of the cases of non-polio AFP were further evaluated through stool sampling.  There is also expressed concern due to the discovery of cVDPV1 (the vaccine strain poliovirus) in seven sewage samples in major urban environments in PNG.  CDC issued a level 2 Travel Health Notice for all travelers to PNG to be fully vaccinated against polio.

In March, Mbaeyi, et al, (2) published, Update on Vaccine-Derived Poliovirus Outbreaks – the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the Horn of Africa, 2017-2018. The authors note the use of the live attenuated Sabin oral polio vaccine (OPV) has helped with the global eradication goals while also noted its use is resulting in the person to person transmission of vaccine-derived poliovirus (VDPV) disease. VDPV disease presents with paralysis. 

Two months after this report, Green, et al (3) reported a paper entitled Progress Towards Polio Eradication in which the team recounts the success of the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI).  The program which began in 1988, the authors claim that wild poliovirus (WPV) transmission had been interrupted in all countries except Afghanistan, Nigeria, and Pakistan.  Apparently, there are now 3 Wild Polio Virus types.  WPV type 2 (WPV2) was declared eradicated in 2012 and WPV type 3 (WPV3) had not been detected since 2012.  Eight countries during the study period reported 210 cases of circulating vaccine-derived poliovirus (CVDPV) from 2017 to May 2019.   The eight countries (Democratic Republic of Congo, Indonesia, Mozambique, Niger, Nigeria, Papua New Guinea, Somalia, and Syria).  Through concentrated international efforts, 1.8 billion doses of polio vaccines both oral and injected were allocated for use in 2017.

The authors note that the use of AFP Surveillance systems among children less than 15 years of age is how detection of polio cases occurs.  When a child develops AFP, a stool sample is tested.  If a child with either type of polio (wild or vaccine derived) does not present symptoms that include AFP, their case likely will not be detected or counted.  In 2017, 22 wild polio virus type 1 (WPV1) cases were reported in Afghanistan and Pakistan and in 2018 33 cases.  In the first quarter of 2019, 12 WPV1 cases were confirmed in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

All three of these papers discuss measures to curtail the spread of polio virus through increased immunizations. None discuss public health measures to decrease the risk through improvements in sewer systems and reducing the risk of transmission while the virus sheds, which all three report the discovery of circulating vaccine-derived poliovirus in sewage systems. While vaccines are considered the second most important advance in public health, the first is clean water and effective sewer systems. Sadly these public health experts are ignoring the obvious additional measure needed.

It would seem that the CDC and WHO scientists have chosen not to inform the WHO Director-General because Dr. Tedros is quoted in a WHO bulletin, “My wish for 2019 is for zero polio transmission.” (4)

A time for moral outrage. None of these stories presents any discussion on a conversion to the IPV which is not likely to transmit poliovirus.  

My question is why? Why are we as a global community not willing to promote IPV world-wide?

Why haven’t Bill and Melinda Gates through their vaccine promotions in the Gates Foundation used their influence to help stop the spread of vaccine-derived polio? 

Twenty years ago the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices recommended all polio virus vaccines administered in the United States ““be an inactivated poliovirus vaccine (IPV) beginning January 1, 2000.”(5)  In the 1999 decision, it was reported, “Since 1979, the only indigenous cases of poliomyelitis reported in the United States (n=144) have been associated with use of the live oral poliovirus vaccine (OPV) (an additional six imported cases have been reported since 1979, the last of which occurred in 1993).”(6)  The ACIP suggest the risk for vaccine-associated paralytic polio (VAPP) would be anticipated once in every 2.4 million doses distributed.

The spread of polio through the oral polio vaccine is well documented.  Burns, et all provide a detailed description of the issues in their 2014 paper, Vaccine-Derived Poliomyelitis. (7) They also note that the OPV can result in chronic polio infection.

In looking at this, I am reminded of the discussions before the Oversight Committee, at the State Department during the Mercury Treaty discussions and at numerous scientific and advisory committee meetings.  When Congressman Burton asked HHS to ‘get the mercury out’ and to set a preference for mercury-free (i.e. thimerosal) vaccines, he was told repeatedly that the United States could not make a recommendation or policy to promote mercury free vaccines in the United States and not do the same world-wide.  And yet, that is exactly what has been going on with polio since 1999.  So, CDC and others at the same time they were saying we must shift from OPV to IPV in the US for safety reasons, were unwilling to use the same strategy to accelerate the removal of thimerosal from vaccines.  And misrepresented this policy of needing to have some recommendations globally as domestically to Congress and the public.

Polio is one of those infectious diseases that freak people out.  The goal for 30 years has been to eradicate polio.  To succeed, maybe it is time to discuss a shift from OPV to IPV vaccines globally. I do not want to see the WHO continue their focus on discussing vaccine hesitancy as a condition to be diagnosed, but rather to talk about how to improve the safety of the vaccines administered globally and to incorporate into this discussion a need to make increased efforts to improve the availability of  safe, clean water and adequate sewage systems to reduce the transmission of all types of polio and other conditions such as cholera.  

Sources Cited

1.     Bauri M, Wilkinson AL, Ropa B, Feldon K, Snider CJ, Anand A, et al. Notes from the Field: Circulating Vaccine-Derived Poliovirus Type 1 and Outbreak Response – Papua New Guinea, 2018. MMWR Morb Mortal Wkly Rep. 2019;68(5):119-20. doi: 10.15585/mmwr.mm6805a6. PubMed PMID: 30730867; PubMed Central PMCID: PMCPMC6366675 potential conflicts of interest. No potential conflicts of interest were disclosed.

2.    Mbaeyi C, Alleman MM, Ehrhardt D, Wiesen E, Burns CC, Liu H, et al. Update on Vaccine-Derived Poliovirus Outbreaks – Democratic Republic of the Congo and Horn of Africa, 2017-2018. MMWR Morb Mortal Wkly Rep. 2019;68(9):225-30. doi: 10.15585/mmwr.mm6809a2. PubMed PMID: 30845121; PubMed Central PMCID: PMCPMC6421971 potential conflicts of interest. No potential conflicts of interest were disclosed.

3.    Greene SA, Ahmed J, Datta SD, Burns CC, Quddus A, Vertefeuille JF, et al. Progress Toward Polio Eradication – Worldwide, January 2017-March 2019. MMWR Morb Mortal Wkly Rep. 2019;68(20):458-62. doi: 10.15585/mmwr.mm6820a3. PubMed PMID: 31120868; PubMed Central PMCID: PMCPMC6532951 potential conflicts of interest. No potential conflicts of interest were disclosed.

4.    Public health round-up. Bull World Health Organ. 2019;97(2):77-8. doi: 10.2471/BLT.19.010219. PubMed PMID: 30728612; PubMed Central PMCID: PMCPMC6357566.

5.     Centers for Disease C, Prevention. Updated recommendations of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) regarding routine poliovirus vaccination. MMWR Morb Mortal Wkly Rep. 2009;58(30):829-30. PubMed PMID: 19661857.

6.    Centers for Disease C, Prevention. Recommendations of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices: revised recommendations for routine poliomyelitis vaccination. MMWR Morb Mortal Wkly Rep. 1999;48(27):590. PubMed PMID: 10428098.

7.     Burns CC, Diop OM, Sutter RW, Kew OM. Vaccine-derived polioviruses. J Infect Dis. 2014;210 Suppl 1:S283-93. doi: 10.1093/infdis/jiu295. PubMed PMID: 25316847.

Always,

Beth Clay, June 27, 2019