Vaccine News – This is the Best Explanation of the Vaccine/Autism Connection I’ve Ever Heard!

The Only Vaccine Guide a New Parent Will Ever Need
BY J.B. HANDLEY
First, a disclaimer: I’m not a doctor, and the final decision about vaccinating your child should take place between you and your healthcare provider. I’m not giving you medical advice; I’m stating my opinion.
I am a dad. And, I write this without benefitting in anyway from what is said here. I have no book to peddle, no profits to protect, and there’s no doubt that writing this will result in some amount of hate directed in my general direction for challenging a popular narrative that vaccines are only safe and effective and should be administered the same way to all children without consideration for the unique biology of each and every child. So be it.
Do your own research. Understand the risks and benefits of everything you are putting into your child.
Find a healthcare provider who doesn’t believe “one size fits all” when it comes to vaccines

The Vaccine Studies That Have Never Been Done.
1. Study Proving the Existing Vaccine Schedule Is Safe – NEVER DONE
2. Study Proving Safety of Childhood Vaccines For Children – NEVER DONE
3. Study Proving Safety of Infant Vaccines For Infants – NEVER DONE
4. Study Proving Vaccines Safe for Pregnant Women – NEVER DONE
5. Study Proving Vaccines Safe For Unborn Fetus – NEVER DONE
6. Study Comparing the Health of Vaccinated vs Un-Vaccinated – NEVER DONE
7. Study to Prove Combining Several Vaccines at One Doctor’s Visit Is Safe – NEVER DONE
8. Study That Exposes Vaccinated People to Targeted Virus (to see if they get sick or not) – NEVER DONE
9. Study That Proves Vaccinated People Don’t Acquire the Targeted Disease – NEVER DONE
10. Study Proving Thimerosal (mercury) or Aluminum Are Safe to Inject Into Children – NEVER DONE
Read # 8 again and then read it again…….and then think about that.
These are the studies the average person assumes were already done decades ago and they have NEVER been done. If you’re not concerned, you’re not paying attention.
~ Chris Kirckof

Disturbing tape-recording of an immunologist having a laugh over the numerous and useless vaccines they inject for a child’s first year of life, in order to keep parents compliant and unquestioning of what is being done to their baby. Research is KEY and education is empowerment

Pro-Vaccine Immunologist Admits a Shocking Truth About Vaccines
For several years, until April of this year, I had been lecturing nationally to health professionals about the great vaccine hoax. Attending one such seminar was a board member of an association of health professionals, who invited me to speak on this subject at their national conference. I did, and had 90 minutes to present the most salient points from my 7-hour seminar. It caused quite a stir, and several clinicians thanked me for having the courage to speak the truth about this controversial subject.
Later that day, I sat on a panel of four experts to answer questions from conference attendees. Many of the questions were directed at the PhD immunologist on the panel, asking if the statements I had made in the morning presentation were true. To my surprise, the immunologist confirmed every assertion I had made.
The first was that it is pointless to administer drugs intended to stimulate antibody production to babies who are too young to produce antibodies. Infants in their first year mostly depend on generalized, non-specific immunity, including (hopefully) immunoglobulins from breast milk, to protect their young bodies from infection. They do not produce antibodies of their own until about age one. Despite this basic fact, the medical establishment insists administering a total of 19 shots, containing 24 vaccines, to infants on the 2, 4 and 6 month pediatric visits (Source: cdc.gov). Somehow, the basic facts of human physiology and development do not apply to vaccines.
You can listen to an audio file of an exchange between an attendee and the immunologist about this question. She declined to be identified in my presentations, including this post, perhaps because she knows that anyone who speaks the truth about vaccines is savaged by the medical establishment and their compliant lapdogs in the mainstream media. It is professional suicide for anyone in conventional medicine to question the unquestionable (yet unproven) assumptions about vaccines: that they are effective, safe and necessary. I have stopped lecturing publicly on this subject for the same reason, because the attacks in recent years have become particularly vicious; and because my main message in my teachings is about personal responsibility, innate wholeness and opening to the largeness of who we are, not just vaccines.

Study – A modified self-controlled case series method to examine association between multidose vaccinations and death
Abstract
The self-controlled case series method (SCCS) was developed to analyze the association between a time-varying exposure and an outcome event. We consider penta- or hexavalent vaccination as the exposure and unexplained sudden unexpected death (uSUD) as the event. The special situation of multiple exposures and a terminal event requires adaptation of the standard SCCS method. This paper proposes a new adaptation, in which observation periods are truncated according to the vaccination schedule. The new method exploits known minimum spacings between successive vaccine doses. Its advantage is that it is very much simpler to apply than the method for censored, perturbed or curtailed post-event exposures recently introduced. This paper presents a comparison of these two SCCS methods by simulation studies and an application to a real data set. In the simulation studies, the age distribution and the assumed vaccination schedule were based on real data. Only small differences between the two SCCS methods were observed, although 50 per cent of cases could not be included in the analysis with the SCCS method with truncated observation periods. By means of a study including 300 uSUD, a 16-fold risk increase after the 4th dose could be detected with a power of at least 90 per cent. A general 2-fold risk increase after vaccination could be detected with a power of 80 per cent. Reanalysis of data from cases of the German case-control study on sudden infant death (GeSID) resulted in slightly higher point estimates using the SCCS methods than the odds ratio obtained by the case-control analysis.

The Top 10 Reasons To Never Take A Vaccine
There are many, many good reasons to never take a vaccine. Whether you want to protect yourself against carcinogenic hidden ingredients, disallow toxic adjuvants into your body, defend your immune system against a chemical onslaught or refuse to be part of any sinister schemes of sterilization-depopulation agenda, this information is vitally important.
More and more, we are learning the truth about vaccines, what they are really composed of and what they really do to the human body – and the more we learn about them, the more we see just how dangerous and harmful they are. Whatever they may have been or could be, as it stands, they are a weapon of medical destruction that makes billions of dollars for the Rockefeller Medicine Big Pharma cartel. Here is my list of the top 10 reasons for an ordinary person to never take a vaccine, unless they were in a life-threatening situation where somehow the benefit outweighed the risk.

Reason #1 to Never Take a Vaccine: Toxic Ingredients – Formaldehyde, MSG, Antibiotics, GMOs, Polysorbate, Mercury, Squalene and More
Reason #2 to Never Take a Vaccine: Toxic Adjuvants – Aluminum
Reason #3 to Never Take a Vaccine: Hidden Ingredients – Immunity-Destroying Nagalese
Reason #4 to Never Take a Vaccine: Injection of Human and Animal Cells
Reason #5 to Never Take a Vaccine: Blood Sludge, Hypoxia, Ischemia and Localized “Strokes” in Your Body
Reason #6 to Never Take a Vaccine: The Herd Immunity Myth Busted
Reason #7 to Never Take a Vaccine: Viral Shedding
Reason #8 to Never Take a Vaccine: Possible Side Effects of Paralysis and Death
Reason #9 to Never Take a Vaccine: Insufficient Legal Recourse
Reason #10 to Never Take a Vaccine: The Vaccine-Sterilization-Depopulation Connection

Remember that Bill Gates himself, point man for the NWO agenda, has slipped up and admitted there is a vaccine-depopulation link on at least 2 occasions:

“… if we do a really great job on new vaccines … we could lower that (i.e. population growth) perhaps by 10-15% …”
“… the benefits (of vaccines) are there in terms of reducing sickness, reducing population growth …”

WEM NÜTZT DAS IMPFEN?
Zeit für einen Shitstorm gegen die Impfstoffhersteller! In deren Prospekten stimmt kein einziger Satz, schwere Nebenwirkungen werden mit Hilfe einer Armada von Lobbyisten verschwiegen, damit der Rubel rollt. Es ist Zeit, den Verletzungen an Körper, Geist und Seele, die von Impfungen verursacht werden, ein Ende zu bereiten!
Impfungen haben keine einzige Seuche ausgerottet – das zeigen Statistiken des Bundes. Jede Seuche war aufgrund des wachsenden Wohlstands nach dem 2. WK schon so gut wie verschwunden, BEVOR die entsprechende Impfung auf den Markt kam!
Schluss mit den Lügen der Pharma-Industrie und staatlich organisierten Subventionen wie bei den “Schweinegrippe-Impfstoffen”!
Konkret sind im ersten Lebensjahr von der Lobbygruppe “StIKo” empfohlen:4 x 6-fach-Impfung, 4 x Pneumokokken, 1 x MMRV (4-fach), dazu kommen optionale Impfungen wie gegen “Rotaviren” oder Influenza, die viele Ärzte zusätzlich verimpfen. Macht maximal 34 Impfungen im ersten Lebensjahr. Und im 2. Lebensjahr wird dann munter weitergeimpft…
FÜR EINE FREIE ZUKUNFT GESUNDER MENSCHEN! IMPFEN MUSS FREIWILLIG BLEIBEN!
http://www.facebook.com/FIEGZ
http://www.freie-impfentscheidung.blogspot.com

Study – What is regressive autism and why does it occur? Is it the consequence of multi-systemic dysfunction affecting the elimination of heavy metals and the ability to regulate neural temperature?
Abstract
There is a compelling argument that the occurrence of regressive autism is attributable to genetic and chromosomal abnormalities, arising from the overuse of vaccines, which subsequently affects the stability and function of the autonomic nervous system and physiological systems. That sense perception is linked to the autonomic nervous system and the function of the physiological systems enables us to examine the significance of autistic symptoms from a systemic perspective. Failure of the excretory system influences elimination of heavy metals and facilitates their accumulation and subsequent manifestation as neurotoxins: the long-term consequences of which would lead to neurodegeneration, cognitive and developmental problems. It may also influence regulation of neural hyperthermia. This article explores the issues and concludes that sensory dysfunction and systemic failure, manifested as autism, is the inevitable consequence arising from subtle DNA alteration and consequently from the overuse of vaccines.

Study – A two-phase study evaluating the relationship between Thimerosal-containing vaccine administration and the risk for an autism spectrum disorder diagnosis in the United States
Abstract
Background
Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is defined by standardized criteria of qualitative impairments in social interaction, qualitative impairments in communication, and restricted and stereotyped patterns of behavior, interests, and activities. A significant number of children diagnosed with ASD suffer a loss of previously-acquired skills, which is suggestive of neurodegeneration or a type of progressive encephalopathy with an etiological pathogenic basis occurring after birth. To date, the etiology of ASD remains under debate, however, many studies suggest toxicity, especially from mercury (Hg), in individuals diagnosed with an ASD. The present study evaluated concerns about the toxic effects of organic-Hg exposure from Thimerosal (49.55% Hg by weight) in childhood vaccines by conducting a two-phased (hypothesis generating/hypothesis testing) study with documented exposure to varying levels of Thimerosal from vaccinations.
Methods
A hypothesis generating cohort study was undertaken to evaluate the relationship between exposure to organic-Hg from a Thimerosal-containing Diphtheria-Tetanus-acellular-Pertussis (DTaP) vaccine in comparison to a Thimerosal-free DTaP vaccine administered, from 1998 through 2000, for the risk of ASD as reported in the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) database (phase I). A hypothesis testing case–control study was undertaken to evaluate the relationship between organic-Hg exposure from Thimerosal-containing hepatitis B vaccines administered at specific intervals in the first six months of life among cases diagnosed with an ASD and controls born between 1991 through 1999 in the Vaccine Safety Datalink (VSD) database (phase II).
Results
In phase I, it was observed that there was a significantly increased risk ratio for the incidence of ASD reported following the Thimerosal-containing DTaP vaccine in comparison to the Thimerosal-free DTaP vaccine. In phase II, it was observed that cases diagnosed with an ASD were significantly more likely than controls to receive increased organic-Hg from Thimerosal-containing hepatitis B vaccine administered within the first, second, and sixth month of life.
Conclusions
Routine childhood vaccination is an important public health tool to reduce the morbidity and mortality associated with infectious diseases, but the present study provides new epidemiological evidence supporting an association between increasing organic-Hg exposure from Thimerosal-containing childhood vaccines and the subsequent risk of an ASD diagnosis.

#VaxXed #medical #Oregon
Dr Paul Thomas interview with Polly Tommey
June 17, 2017

The Shift Episode 8: Del Bigtree
Join host Doug McKenty as he discusses the controversial movie Vaxxed with producer Del Bigtree. Listen in as the conversation includes the real story behind Dr. Andrew Wakefield’s study of the MMR vaccine that started it all, the realization that regulatory agencies have been corrupted at the highest levels, as well as the real reasons behind the mainstream media’s complicity in covering up the actual science behind vaccine safety. Find out more about it at http://www.vaxxedthemovie.com, and as always help out at http://www.patreon.com/theshift or visit http://www.theshiftnow.com for more information about making The Shift.

Billy D Live with Del Bigtree
Watch Billy D and Del Bigtree talk about vaccines
Go to https://caljamnetwork.org/ to watch Jeremy’s Stretch video series.

Follow Billy D. on
facebook – https://www.facebook.com/billy.demoss1/
website – http://www.californiajam.org/

Vaccine’s Safety: A Crime Against Humanity
Dr. Sherri J Tenpenny warns about the perils of vaccination

This is the Best Explanation of the Vaccine/Autism Connection I’ve Ever Heard!
Dr. Stephanie Seneff discusses the potential connection between vaccines and autism. It’s a hotly-debated topic. Here she gets specific into what ingredient in the vaccine may be linked to autism and other conditions. Find out what her research has found. You may think differently after watching this!

Trace Amounts: Ethyl Mercury | Educational Documentary
Has Ethyl Mercury Caused One of the Worst Health Crises in American History? During the past 20 years, the frequency of autism occurring in children has .
This video shares facts about the devastating mercury based preservative, thimerosal, used in vaccines. .
For this EP of Zero Doubt Zone, host Dane Sorenson, circles back to the subject of vaccines. On the heels of viewing the documentary, ‘Trace Amounts’, .
Courtesy of AAE tv Documentary filmmaker and researcher, Eric Gladen. Ethann and Eric discuss his new film “Trace Amounts”. They talk about the scientific .

Shots In The Dark: Silence on Vaccine
Following the increase in cases of autism and other immune disorders among some particularly vulnerable people, several recognized specialists are questioning the safety of large-scale vaccination. Despite the serious side effects, pharmaceutical companies, the medical profession and government authorities continue to bury their heads in the sand, refusing to see a serious problem. In Quebec, the United States and France, as in most industrialized countries, victims are almost without recourse despite the high toxicity of substances such as mercury and aluminum contained in vaccines. With this hard-hitting documentary, Lina B. Moreco highlights a very worrying public health problem.
Since they were introduced in the early 20th century, vaccines have been a tremendous medical and scientific success. Today perceived as a necessity, they are so familiar to us that their potential risks are rarely mentioned.
However, the stakes are significant. Based on recommendations of health agencies, North American children receive about 48 doses of 14 different vaccines before the age of 6 — double the amount prescribed 25 years earlier. Despite this extraordinary increase, few studies independent of the pharmaceutical industry have been conducted into their long-term side effects. This is a disturbing situation given the numerous toxins, including mercury and aluminum, contained in some commonly administered vaccines.
Several worried pediatricians and scientists are sounding the alarm. Some of the research underway indicates that vaccination is directly responsible for immune or neurological disorders among certain people genetically or neurologically predisposed to react badly to vaccine components. Cases of autism, multiple sclerosis, Guillain-Barré syndrome, macrophagic myofasciitis, encephalitis, paralysis and neuropathies indicate the seriousness of the situation.
Despite these findings, the pharmaceutical industry and government authorities deny there is a serious problem. Relying on perfunctory studies, some of which date back to the late 1920s, they reject out of hand any cause-and-effect relationship. Given the known fact that adding preservatives such as thimerosal (mercury) helps reduce production costs, the reaction of the pharmaceutical industry is at the very least puzzling. Preferring not to question a system that has proved its worth, a majority of the medical profession’s members reject any potential toxicity in vaccines.
http://films.nfb.ca/shots-in-the-dark/
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The truth about vaccines and Big Pharma, and info on GMO foods

Se cere demisia ministrului Sănătăţii. Motivul – legea care prevede vaccinarea obligatorie
In nicio țară din Uniunea Europeană nu sunt obligatorii 8 vaccinuri!
In Germania, Austria, Olanda, Spania, Portugalia, Marea Britanie, Luxemburg, Suedia, Danemarca, Italia, Irlanda, Finlanda, Suedia, Croația, Cipru, Estonia și Lituania, părinții decid dacă își vaccinează copiii!
Vaccinul este un medicament, dar poate fi și o armă biologică!
Peste 180.000 de copii vor fi obligați, in primul an de viață, să primească 26 de vaccinuri!
in cazul unui copil contraindicația definitivă la un vaccin sau mai multe se acordă numai la București de către GTCAV!
Pana la varsta de 6 ani un copil trebuie să primească 33 de vaccinuri!
Vaccinurile provoacă boli autoimune: un copil din patru suferă de o boală alergică, iar un copil din zece suferă de astm bronșic!
Asociația Pro Consumatori are o activitate de peste 27 de ani in domeniul apărării drepturilor și intereselor economice ale consumatorilor.

 

Infowars – Vaccinated Population Spreads Mumps Across The Country

Vaccinated Population Spreads Mumps Across The Country
Rob Dew and Alex Jones expose how fully vaccinated individuals are catching the mumps virus.

Stirile PRO TV – SCANDALOS ! Vaccinul BCG (anti-tuberculoza) cauzeaza… tuberculoza
Inclusiv medicii admit ca acest ser, importat de Ministerul Sanatatii din Danemarca, da reactii mult mai severe fata de cel care se producea in trecut la ”Institutul Cantacuzino”.
In plus, ei sunt nevoiti sa le aplice tratamente extrem de dure unor prunci de cateva luni.
Luca are sapte luni si jumatate. A fost vaccinat in a doua zi de viata cu un ser contra tuberculozei produs in Danemarca. Dupa doua luni au aparut primele reactii adverse.
”Am ajuns la pediatru si ne-a zis adenopatie axilara de la vaccin. Un ganglion umflat. Au fost analize la sange, suc gastric, radiografie la plamani. Ne-a trimis direct la chirurg, la incizie. Era plin de puroi”, spune mama lui Luca.
Apoi a urmat un lung tratament pe baza de antiobiotic. Culmea, acelasi folosit pentru tratarea tuberculozei. Mama lui mai povesteste ca la spital a intalnit si alte femei in aceeasi situatie. Copii de numai cateva luni care sufereau teribil, dupa cum recunosc si specialistii.
Zeci de parinti au facut plangeri la directiile de sanatate publica cerand sa fie schimbat acest vaccin.
Raspunsul il dau cei de la Ministerul Sanatatii. Vaccinul BCG cu tulpina Coopenhaga a ajuns pe piata din Romania de mai putin de un an, dupa ce Institutul Cantacuzino a incetat sa mai produca serul.
Ministerul admite ca au fost semnalate peste o suta de cazuri cu reactii adverse, dar sustine ca situatia nu este una grava si ca de multe ori ar fi fost vina medicilor care au gresit dozajul.
Specialistii recunosc ca in cazul vaccinului de la Cantacuzino, incidenta de reactii adverse era de sapte ori mai mica.

Adevarul despre vaccinuri. Fostul ministru al Sanatatii din Finlanda rupe tacerea

90% Of Pregnant Women Refusing Flu Shot
Pregnant women are a demographic that pharmaceutical companies rely on for heavy profits. And whenever they are looking to further enhance their bottom lines, it is one of the first demographics they turn to. Pregnant women are typically keen on doing everything they can to make sure they not only have a healthy baby, but maintain the pregnancy. Interestingly enough, however, most pregnant women feel that the health and maintenance of their fetuses means NOT getting the suggested flu shots. According to Waking Times, “most” means 90% of them. Being honest here, that makes me feel pretty happy. Sadly, Doctors feel they have this control, authority over pregnant women and also feel they can expose their internal fears and intuition. This isn’t every Doctor, clearly, but it does seem a good amount of them push the flu shot onto pregnant patients.
But the flu shot is with complications to fetuses.
Getting a flu shot during pregnancy provides unanticipated risks to the baby. Specifically, one study showed that the H1N1 vaccination during the H1N1 pandemic was associated with thousands of cases of miscarriages and stillbirths which the CDC failed to inform vaccine providers.
Current data from a 3-year reporting base is confirming previous reports that the majority of pregnant women are refusing influenza and other related vaccines that may jeopardize their health and that of their baby.
In 2011, Dr. Alessandro Bertoucci who analyzed the practices of 256 physicians treating more than 600,000 patients, reported that a staggering 91% of pregnant women are declining influenza vaccines due to fears of miscarriage and suspected toxins in the vaccine itself.

Vaccinations as a Cause of Spine, Face & Eye Asymmetry
By Erwin Alber
July 23, 2013
Between May 2003 and May 2006, Germany’s highest health authority the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) conducted a large scale survey named KIGGS to assess the physical and mental health of children and youths up to the age of 17. The study comprised 17,641 children and gathered an enormous amount of data, including their vaccination status.
Private citizens were able to obtain the raw data for a fee, which enabled Angelika Kögel-Schauz (now Angelika Müller) to make a statistical assessment of the information pertaining to vaccination, a topic she has a long-standing interest in. She has published the results in her article ‘Impfen macht krank‘.
The results of her investigation clearly show and confirmed that vaccine-free children are healthier than vaccinated children. A scoliosis, which is an abnormal curvature of the spine, was e.g. found in 5.3% of vaccinated children, while among the vaccine-free children the number of scoliosis cases was zero, which from a statistical viewpoint is a highly significant finding.
Vaccines are neurotoxic, meaning they have a particularly detrimental effect on the nervous system, including the brain. If a nerve or nerves going to the muscles which hold the spine in place are damaged by vaccines, the spine is pulled out of alignment, resulting in an abnormal curvature of the spine (scoliosis).
A collection of images of vaccine-injured children in China shows a severe case of vaccine-related scoliosis.

Why vaccinating Children against Chickenpox might give YOU Shingles
After a childhood attack of chicken pox, the virus lies dormant in the nerves until triggered in later life when it flares up as shingles. Children might soon be vaccinated against chicken pox, according to recent reports. But some experts question the need for a vaccine against an infection that’s so mild – especially when it could put thousands of elderly people at greater risk of shingles.
Chicken pox causes up to 50 deaths a year, 40 of them children, and it seems the Government’s Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation is considering adding a vaccine against it to the MMR jab.
But there is widespread concern about this. First because a similar MMR super jab now used in America has been found to double the risk of fits in some children.
Also the jab has raised the rate of shingles among the old – according to one U.S. study, cases have risen by 90 per cent. Here even the Government health watchdog, the Health Protection Agency, has predicted that a vaccine could cause a 20 per cent rise in shingles cases.
But how could a vaccine for children make old people ill? Chicken pox and shingles are caused by the varicella virus – after a childhood attack of chicken pox, the virus lies dormant in the nerves until triggered in later life when it flares up as shingles.
‘Every time adults come into contact with children who’ve just caught chicken pox, they get the natural equivalent of a booster shot of the virus which strengthens their resistance,’ explains Dr Phillip Welsby, an infectious diseases expert who has just retired from Western General Hospital, Edinburgh.
In the past, when a child got chicken pox their mother would invite neighbours’ children to a ‘chicken pox party’ so they, too, could become infected and get it over with.
‘What the parents usually didn’t realise was they were benefiting as well,’ says Welsby. ‘GPs, for instance, are less likely to develop shingles, because they are regularly exposed to children with chicken pox.’
However, a nationwide campaign to vaccinate children against the disease would mean adults would be exposed to fewer children with chicken pox, so they miss out on this natural booster ‘jab’.
While nearly all cases of chicken pox are pretty mild – a slight fever for a few days and small itchy blisters – shingles is often a nasty condition in the elderly. By the age of 85, 65 per cent of us will have suffered this often extremely painful disease.
It begins as a burning sensation along the nerves down which the virus is moving, followed by the rash and fever, usually lasting three to five days. But in some cases – as many as 20 per cent of those over 50 – severe pain will be there six months later.
40 per cent of sufferers will have long-lasting pain due to permanent nerve damage, according to the Shingles Support Society.

Australia Flu Vaccine Disaster
Natasha Bita
The Australian
May 28, 2011
KIRSTEN and Mick Button were looking forward to a family holiday in Bali when the letter landed in their mailbox. From the West Australian Health Department, it urged them to vaccinate their children against the flu. A killer new strain of influenza, a mutant mix of human, avian and swine influenza viruses, had swept the country the previous winter, and WA was taking no chances. It offered the flu vaccine free to all children, the only state or territory to do so. “It encouraged us to protect our children,” Kirsten says of the letter. “Our four-year-old, Cooper, has asthma so we thought it was the best thing to do. When you get that letter, you are in a situation where if you don’t vaccinate, you feel like you’re not doing the right thing.”
Kirsten took Cooper and his 11-month-old sister, Saba, to their local GP for the flu shot at lunchtime on April 19 last year. On the way home in the car, Saba would not stop screaming. Back in their beachside home in the Perth suburb of Watermans Bay, Kirsten gave her little girl some Panadol to soothe her, and “she was fine all afternoon”.
After dinner, Kirsten went out for a pilates class, leaving Mick to give Saba a bottle and put her to bed at 7pm. An hour later, he heard moaning over the baby monitor. When he checked on Saba in her upstairs cot she was, Kirsten relates, “burning hot, limp like a rag doll”. Mick called his wife to let her hear their daughter’s whimpers over the phone. “I’d never heard anything like it,” Kirsten says. “I was hysterical. I couldn’t drive; my dad had to drive me back home.” While her fretful parents waited for an ambulance, Saba’s temperature was 40.2 degrees, a high fever.
“She was lying very still and groaning and moaning,” Kirsten says. “She was so white.” In the wailing ambulance, as diarrhoea seeped from Saba’s nappy, her parents panicked as they listened to the machine monitoring their baby’s heart, racing at 238 beats per minute – double the usual rate. When the ambulance arrived at Perth’s Princess Margaret Hospital, doctors and nurses were waiting out the front. Kirsten remembers hearing one of them remark, “It’s another Fluvax baby.”
Flu pandemic
When swine flu emerged from Mexico in April 2009, initial reports were that it was killing one in every 20 people infected. Within eight weeks the virus had swept across four continents, Australia included, prompting the World Health Organisation to declare the first global flu pandemic of the century. In July 2009, federal health minister Nicola Roxon warned that in a “worst-case scenario” 6000 Australians could die from the new flu that had already infected 10,000 people, killed 22 and landed 60 others in intensive care. It was highly contagious and it was striking in unpredictable ways: fit, healthy young people normally strong enough to fight off the seasonal flu were being taken down. At its worst it was causing organ failure and brain damage and fears were held for pregnant women, the elderly and people with underlying medical conditions.