Did Del Bigtree catch scientists from the WHO questioning the safety of vaccines at the Global Vaccine Safety Summit?
While Del seems to imply some kind of investigative reporting, can you “catch” someone who readily puts all of their videos online? The Global Vaccine Safety Summit is available for everyone to watch on the WHO website…
What Happened at the Global Vaccine Safety Summit?
That some of the scientists would be questioning vaccine safety should not be surprising.
The purpose of the Global Vaccine Safety Summit is “to enhance WHO’s work on vaccine safety” and “feature the most recent state-of-the-art vaccine safety science as we transition to the next decade.”
It’s a shame that Del Bigtree and his followers didn’t take some time to objectively listen to the Global Vaccine Safety Summit presentations. Instead, he cherry picks out of context quotes to misrepresent what the experts at the Global Vaccine Safety Summit really said.
Del WHO?
To be clear, Del Bigtree was not at the Global Vaccine Safety Summit.
And it’s pretty obvious that all of the folks who have taken up his attacks haven’t even bothered to take the time to watch the video presentations from the Global Vaccine Safety Summit.
If they did, they would soon learn that the presenters didn’t say anything to support their cause.
For example, what did Dr. Heidi Larson have to say?
“The most trusted person on any study I’ve seen globally is the health care provider and if we lose that, we’re in trouble. We haven’t lost it yet, but we talked about it earlier, some of the challenges are when the front line professionals are starting to question or they don’t feel like they have enough confidence about the safety to stand up to it to the person asking them the question.
I mean most medical school curriculums, even nursing curriculums, I mean in medical school you’re lucky if you have a half-day on vaccines. Never mind keeping up to date with all this.”
Heidi Larson on Vaccine safety in the next decade: Why we need new modes of trust building?
This doesn’t mean that doctors and nurses don’t learn a lot about vaccines in school.
The “keep up to date with all this” means that they don’t learn about vaccine hesitancy, vaccine conspiracy theories, and all of the misinformation that is thrown at them when parents question vaccine safety.
“In terms of confidence, HCPs with more knowledge about the vaccine were also more likely to recommend vaccination, although more support is needed, especially for managing difficult conversations with a vaccine reluctant patient or parent. Studies with different HCP groups in multiple settings identified a lack of preparedness for advising patients about vaccination and a lack of training as inhibiting factors for recommending the vaccine.”
Larson et al on Vaccine hesitancy and healthcare providers
More training about vaccine hesitancy would be a good thing!
Did she say that they aren’t using misinformation to influence people to think that vaccines aren’t safe or necessary?
Nope.
At this point in her presentation, she was simply talking about the latest propaganda techniques that might scare parents – billboards.
And how they use techniques to instill doubts about vaccine, even if they don’t include overt misinformation.
“A lot of it is not misinformation, it’s asking questions. The people who are questioning, particularly the ones who are more motivated to disrupt than necessarily asking genuine questions, are putting questions on billboards.”
Heidi Larson on Vaccine safety in the next decade: Why we need new modes of trust building?
While there is certainly nothing wrong with asking real questions, that’s not what is happening here.
These folks are simply JAQing off – they are “just asking questions…”, but aren’t really looking for answers.
It is a propaganda tool.
“One of our biggest challenges I think now is getting rid of the term anti-vax, getting rid of the hostile language, and starting to have more conversations, to be open to questions, to make people feel like they shouldn’t be judged when they are asking questions. As crazy as those questions might seem to you, as stupid as they might seem, or as ignorant as they might seem, we can’t risk losing another person’s confidence in safety right now.”
Heidi Larson on Vaccine safety in the next decade: Why we need new modes of trust building?
That some folks are misusing the things Heidi Larson said to instill doubts about vaccines is quite ironic.
“This is about politics, geo-politics, development and a hyper-connected, anxious populations”
Heidi Larson on Vaccine safety in the next decade: Why we need new modes of trust building?
In the long run, her extensive work on boosting vaccine confidence will help get more kids vaccinated and protected.
More on the Global Vaccine Safety Summit
- How Pediatricians Should Talk to Vaccine Hesitant Parents
- Are You on the Fence About Vaccines?
- Are You Too Scared to Vaccinate Your Kids?
- 10 Reasons You Aren’t Vaccinating Your Kids
- How To Counter Vaccine Hesitancy
- Ask 8 Questions Before You Skip a Vaccine
- More Questions to Help You Become a Vaccine Skeptic
- The WHO Vaccine Safety Summit – from someone who was actually there
- No, WHO scientists did not “question the safety of vaccines” at the Global Vaccine Safety Summit
- Vaccine Confidence Project
- WHO – Global Vaccine Safety Summit Q&A
- WHO – Day 1: Global Vaccine Safety Hearing Meeting
- WHO – Day 2: Global Advisory Committee on Vaccine Safety (GACVS) Symposium
- WHO – Global Vaccine Safety Reference documents and publications
- Vaccine safety in the next decade: Why we need new modes of trust building?
- Underlying issues are key to dispelling vaccine doubts
- How Vaccine Rumors Start — and Why They Don’t Go Away
- Vaccine hesitancy and healthcare providers
- Let’s talk about hesitancy
- Understanding factors influencing vaccination acceptance during pregnancy globally: A literature review
- Strategies for addressing vaccine hesitancy – A systematic review
- Tracking the global spread of vaccine sentiments: The global response to Japan’s suspension of its HPV vaccine recommendation
- Rapid literature review on motivating hesitant population groups in Europe to vaccinate
“I mean most medical school curriculums, even nursing curriculums, I mean in medical school you’re lucky if you have a half-day on vaccines.” PERIOD! Nobody gives a crap about the following sentence that you try to point out and explain what she might mean about it.
“Disease is the test of God and vaccines are gifts from the devil.”
“Gobermint use vaccines to cull its opponents.”
Unfortunately there is a small bit of truth in fears of vaccines. They can be used as weapons by unscrupulous governments. There have been some past incidents in third world nations. In the US the Tuskegee syphilis experiment used fake vaccines etc as just one example.
Fact: Vaccines cause far less damage to populations than the diseases they fight.
However, its also true that does not diminish the tragedy to the small fraction harmed by vaccines (allegeries etc).
But truthfully the harm is generally amplified by those who see themselves and their families as superior – in faith or genetics (e.g. assumed disease immunity). Or demagogues using tragedy to create unrest.
Hardly ever mentioned: The key factor making mandatory vaccination desirable is NOT protecting the individuals. Its slowing the rate of spread during epidemics or even preventing epidemic rates from being reached.
The unvaccinated are potential disease spreaders. The more there are the faster the disease spread. Thus inflicting widespread public endangerment as a matter of personal choice…like terrorist in many ways.
So it seems that asserting personal rights not to be vaccinated should come only at the expense of some other rights to freely interact with the public. Bans on international travel. Automatic quarantine at the beginning of an outbreak. Or for the ultimate simplicity (for the simple answers are the best believers): Tatooed on forehead and shot on sight during outbreaks.