Category: Blog

America’s New Normal: Propaganda About the Unhealthiest Generation

My son started to have migraines when he was about 11 years old.

Must be stress, BPA, poor eating habits, all of the screen time, or vaccines, right?

“Americans spend the least on food, the most on health care, have the most highly vaccinated kids, and have the sickest kids of any industrialized country. More kids than not are now chronically ill, developmentally delayed, and eating or injecting prescription medications from cradle to grave – which is going to be a quicker trip for them than it was for their parents, according to data on life expectancy in the US. We are inured to childhood autism, epilepsy, allergy, asthma, diabetes, obesity, Crohn’s disease and cancer. We are dying younger. We are going backwards.”

Judy Converse on America’s New Normal: Chronically Ill Kids

That likely seems like a young age to get migraines and would fit well with the narrative that kids today are part of the unhealthiest generation ever.

Except that I started to get migraines at about the same age, and so did my mother. Like many of the other conditions that seem to be ballooning today, migraines have a genetic component.

The Unhealthiest Generation?

The CDC has long kept statistics on everything from asthma and cancer rates to diabetes and life expectancy rates and helps folks see how healthy kids really are today.
The CDC has long kept statistics on everything from asthma and cancer rates to diabetes and life expectancy rates and helps folks see how healthy kids really are today.

Who says that today’s kids are part of the unhealthiest generation ever?

Mostly anti-vaccine folks who blame vaccines for making kids unhealthy and alternative medical providers who think their holistic remedies will fix all of the problems they see in our unhealthy kids who they claim are full of “toxins.”

Toxins? If you are going to believe that our kids are all sick, then you have to buy into the narrative that toxins are everywhere, especially in vaccines, and they are making kids sick.

Of course, none of that is true.

Vaccines are safe and work to prevent us from getting sick and there are 2 to 3 million fewer deaths in the world each year because people are vaccinated and protected.

“From developing groundbreaking treatments for deadly chronic diseases to saving babies who are born premature, pediatric researchers have increased the ability of children to live full and fulfilling lives that only a few decades before would have been tragically cut short.”

Sandra G. Hassink, MD on the 7 Great Achievements in Pediatric Research

And today’s kids, all 73.6 million of them in the United States, aren’t the unhealthiest. They are actually a very healthy generation, being born with the lowest child and infant mortality rates ever, low rates of hospitalizations, and one of the highest life expectancies in history.

Our Healthy Kids

How do we know today’s kids are healthy?

One easy way is to compare them to kids in the past…

If you have only been listening to the alarmists who talk about the unhealthiest generation all of the time, you likely wouldn’t know that:

  • while 2.6% of kids were thought to be in fair or poor health in 1991, that is down to just 1.8% today (2015)
  • fewer kids today (4.5%) report having had an asthma attack in the previous year than they did in 1997 (5.4%), and that fewer kids have asthma today (8.5%) than in 2003 (8.7%)
  • since 1997, fewer children, whether or not they have insurance, are visiting the emergency room
  • fewer children are requiring overnight hospital stays, down from 5.5% to just 2.1% today (2015)
  • rates of hay fever or respiratory allergy are down since 1997, from 17.5% of kids to 15.6% of kids today (2015)
  • rates of epilepsy have been stable in children for at least 40 years
  • fewer kids have multiple ear infections since 1997, when 7.1% of kids had 3 or more ear infections, to just 5% of kids today (2015)
  • fewer kids are being prescribed antibiotics
  • cancer rates have been stable in kids, although mortality rates have been declining
  • suicide rates are rising, but only from historic lows – they used to be about the same or higher in the early 1990s

Of course, some conditions are on the rise, including ADHD, type 1 diabetes, food allergies, eczema,  obesity, and most autoimmune diseases.

“A few conditions have decreased because of prevention (eg, lead encephalopathy), a few represent relatively new conditions (eg, human immunodeficiency virus type 1 infection), and some have increased after dramatic improvements in survival for individually low-prevalence childhood conditions that previously had high fatality rates (eg, leukemia, cystic fibrosis, congenital heart diseases). Most growth, however, reflects dramatic increases in incidence of a few high-prevalence conditions.”

James M. Perrin, MD on The Increase of Childhood Chronic Conditions in the United States

And autism rates have been up, but we mostly know why.

“…the numbers of people born with autism aren’t necessarily increasing dramatically. It’s just that we’re getting better and better at counting them.”

Emily Willingham

Although we don’t know why most other conditions are trending up (it isn’t vaccines), we will hopefully continue to develop new theories and reverse those trends.

It should be reassuring that many of the trends do show that our kids are indeed healthy.

What to Know About Our Healthy Kids

From gun violence and climate change to the threat of emerging infections, out children do face many threats and are certainly under a lot of stress. There is no evidence that this is the unhealthiest generation though. If anything, they are on track to be one of the healthiest.

More on Our Healthy Kids

Misdiagnosis of Kids with Autism and Vaccine Injury

Awareness of autism has greatly increased in recent years.

Some people are even suggesting that we have gotten to the point where autism is being over-diagnosed.

Remember when folks got upset because Seinfeld said that he might be on the autism spectrum?

Misdiagnosis of Kids with Autism and Vaccine Injury

Although autism might be over-diagnosed in some situations, it is just as likely to be under-diagnosed in others. That’s especially true when you hear about misdiagnosed autistic adults. No, not adults who were misdiagnosed with autism, but adults who are actually autistic, but were misdiagnosed with other conditions, like schizophrenia, anxiety, or personality disorders.

It is also probable that autism is actually sometimes misdiagnosed. That’s right, there are some other conditions that can be confused or misdiagnosed as autism.

“Generation Rescue believes that childhood neurological disorders such as autism, Asperger’s, ADHD/ADD, speech delay, sensory integration disorder, and many other developmental delays are all misdiagnoses for mercury poisoning.”

When Generation Rescue, Jenny McCarthy‘s autism organization, was founded, they believed that autism was caused by mercury poisoning. Actually, not just caused by, but that autism actually was a “misdiagnosis for mercury poisoning.”

No one really seems to believe that anymore, but there are some other conditions that can legitimately be misdiagnosed as autism.

Many people see Jenny McCarthy battling doctors to save or recover her son as being anti-autism.
Some people say that Jenny McCarthy’s son might have been misdiagnosed with autism and might actually have LKS instead.

Consider Landau-Kleffner syndrome (LKS), which is also known as Progressive Epileptic Aphasia or Aphasia with Convulsive Disorder. Children with LKS develop normally, but then have:

  • a severe regression in language functioning, with a progressive loss of speech, especially receptive speech or understanding what other people say
  • seizures, including focal motor seizures, focal seizures that become tonic-clonic seizures, atypical absence seizures, and atonic seizures.
  • behavioral problems, including having poor attention, being hyperactive and aggressive, and having anxiety

LKS can be difficult to diagnose because the seizures can be subclinical (only recognized on an EEG) at first, so the child may have already regressed by the time they have obvious seizures. And they might improve as the seizures are treated.

“After 35 years as a speech pathologist, I’ve seen many children with a diagnosis of autism that turned out to be a combination of language delay, sensory issues and apraxia.”

What If the Diagnosis of Autism Is Wrong?

Other conditions can have signs and symptoms that overlap with autism too (although they also sometimes occur with autism), making a misdiagnosis possible, including:

  • anxiety
  • childhood apraxia of speech – children with this motor speech disorder have a hard time talking
  • language delays
  • selective mutism – only affects children in some situations, like at school, but they talk well at home with close family
  • sensory issues
  • 22q11.2 deletion syndrome – a chromosomal disorder that causes many signs and symptoms, including some that resemble autism

But how can a child be misdiagnosed with autism?

“…inexperienced professionals, with narrow, preconceived notions of what ASD is, may place too much weight on symptoms that although associated with ASD, are not necessarily definitive of ASD. In other cases, and as noted above, problems in social relatedness and social interaction observed during the diagnostic process, may be artifacts of the unfamiliarity and artificiality of the setting itself.”

Barry M. Prizant On the Diagnosis and Misdiagnosis of Autism Spectrum Disorder

It shouldn’t be hard to imagine that a child could be misdiagnosed with autism, especially as there are more children with suspected autism, including children getting screened at an earlier age, meaning that there is a big demand for autism evaluations.

“Ideally, the definitive diagnosis of an ASD should be made by a team of child specialists with expertise in ASDs.”

AAP on the Identification and Evaluation of Children With Autism Spectrum Disorders

Unfortunately, that can mean that some of those evaluations are being done by health care providers without any added expertise in formally diagnosing autism, including some pediatricians, neurologists, counselors, and social workers, etc.

While many health care providers can evaluate and diagnose autism, from a child neurologist, developmental pediatrician, and child psychiatrist to a child psychologist, speech-language pathologist, pediatric occupational therapist, and social worker, they should all have expertise in autism spectrum disorders (ASDs).

Getting the Diagnosis Right

Why is it so important to get the diagnosis right?

Most importantly, a correct diagnosis means that a child will get the right treatment as early as possible. Also though, in an age when some parents still try to associate vaccines with autism, a misdiagnosis can be especially problematic, perhaps leading to a vaccine injury story.

Remember back in the 1970s when many parents blamed the DPT vaccine for causing their kids to have seizures and brain damage? We now know that some, if not many, of them had Dravet syndrome, a genetic condition (SCN1A mutation) in which children develop severe, fever-related seizures before their first birthday.

“We present here the cases of 5 children who presented for epilepsy care with presumed parental diagnoses of alleged vaccine encephalopathy caused by pertussis vaccinations in infancy. Their conditions were all rediagnosed years later, with the support of genetic testing, as Dravet syndrome.”

Reyes et al on Alleged cases of vaccine encephalopathy rediagnosed years later as Dravet syndrome

In addition to the seizures, these children have developmental delays and autism-like characteristics. They don’t have a “vaccine encephalopathy.” Just like autistic kids don’t have mercury poisoning or any kind of vaccine damage.

What to Know About the Misdiagnosis of Kids with Autism and Vaccine Injury

To help avoid a misdiagnosis, if possible, a team of child specialists with expertise in evaluating kids with autism spectrum disorders should see your child with suspected autism.

More on Misdiagnosis of Kids with Autism and Vaccine Injury

What Are the Demands and Goals of the Anti-Vaccine Movement?

So what exactly do anti-vaccine folks want?

What are they trying to do?

Are they trying to scare parents away from getting vaccinating and protecting their kids, hoping to drag us back to the pre-vaccine era?

What Are the Demands and Goals of the Anti-Vaccine Movement?

Of course, some of the folks who are anti-vaccine don’t actually like to be called anti-vaccine. Instead, they prefer to say that they are pro-safe vaccines. So for them, it is rather obvious – they want safer vaccines without toxins.

Now, since vaccines are already safe and don’t contain any toxic ingredients, it would seem like their work is done already, right?

Another goal is having fewer vaccines on the immunization schedule. Jenny McCarthy often pushes the Turn Back the Clock immunization plan, wanting kids to only get vaccines that were on the 1983 immunization schedule, back when kids still died of meningitis, pneumonia, blood infections, severe dehydration, epiglottitis, and cancer from Hib, pneumococcal disease, rotavirus, hepatitis B, hepatitis A, chicken pox, HPV, and meningococcal disease, which are now vaccine preventable.

Other members of the anti-vaccine movement talk about vaccine choice. They want to be able to choose whether or not they should have to vaccinate their kids.

Again, done. No one is forcing parents to vaccinate their kids. We may not have a choice on whether or not your unvaccinated child gets sick and puts someone else at risk for getting a vaccine-preventable disease because they were too young to be vaccinated, had a medical exemption, or their vaccine didn’t work, but you can certainly make the choice to skip or delay any vaccines you want.

“I also warn them not to share their fears with their neighbors, because if too many people avoid the MMR, we’ll likely see the diseases increase significantly.”

Dr. Bob Sears in The Vaccine Book

What are other goals of the anti-vaccine movement?

Johns Hopkins Medicine, which includes the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and the The Johns Hopkins Hospital and Health System went out of their way to correct this anti-vaccine misinformation.
Johns Hopkins Medicine went out of their way to correct this anti-vaccine misinformation about shedding.

Have you heard about the anti-vaccine folks who want to quarantine all kids who have recently been vaccinated for at least six weeks? Why quarantine kids who have been vaccinated? They are worried about shedding…

Would anyone go so far as wanting to ban vaccinations? Yup. So much for vaccine choice.

Some others want to rescind the 1986 National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act, which they think will help make it easier to sue vaccine manufacturers. That’s one of Andrew Wakefield‘s demands in his movie VAXXED. He and others never mention that if you are suing in civil court, then you must meet a higher burden of proof for vaccine injury than you do in Vaccine Court.

Remember when Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. thought he would be appointed to some special Trump commission on vaccines?

“We want safe vaccines, robust transparent science and an honest and independent regulatory agency focused narrowly on public health rather than industry profit.”

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. on Mercury, Vaccines and the CDC’s Worst Nightmare

Kennedy’s vaccine commission never happened, but that hasn’t stopped him from pushing for an independent regulatory agency.

I’m not sure who would run or be a part of Kennedy’s independent regulatory agency though, as he believes that “Congress, the regulatory agencies, FDA and CDC, the IOM, the NIH, the AAP, the science journals, the university science departments and the press” have all been compromised by Pharma.

Kennedy also wants thimerosal out of vaccines, which, as most people know, is already out of all vaccines on the immunization schedule, including about 100 million doses of flu shots this past year. But like others, he seems to be moving on to aluminum as his new target.

What else?

Fortunately, it is easy to see why the demands and goals of the modern anti-vaccine movement are dangerous, unethical, and unnecessary, and like parents who decide to skip or delay vaccines, will simply put us all at risk for more outbreaks of vaccine-preventable disease.

What to Know About the Demands and Goals of the Anti-Vaccine Movement

Whatever their demands and goals of the anti-vaccine movement, the effect is that they are scaring parents away from vaccinating and protecting their kids from life-threatening vaccine-preventable diseases for no good reason.

More on the Demands and Goals of the Anti-Vaccine Movement

How to Avoid a Quarantine During an Outbreak at Your School

Believe it or not, hundreds of kids get caught up in quarantines for vaccine-preventable diseases in the United States each year.

Quarantines were routine in the pre-vaccine era.
Quarantines were routine during pre-vaccine era epidemics.

Wait, what?

Caught up in quarantines for vaccine-preventable diseases?

Then why do we have vaccines?

How to Avoid a Quarantine During an Outbreak at Your School

Is it fair that unvaccinated students need to stay home when there is an outbreak of a vaccine-preventable disease?
Is it fair that unvaccinated students need to stay home when there is an outbreak of a vaccine-preventable disease?

As you have probably already guessed, these aren’t usually vaccinated kids that are getting sick or quarantined in these outbreaks of measles, meningococcemia, and chicken pox, etc.

That’s right, they are unvaccinated.

Typically intentionally unvaccinated, although they are sometimes too young to be vaccinated or may have a medical exemption.

And that brings up to a few very easy ways to avoid getting quarantined during an outbreak:

  1. make sure you are always up-to-date on all of your vaccines
  2. if you think that you have natural immunity (already had the disease) or were vaccinated, but don’t have your immunization records, then getting a titer test might keep you out of quarantine if you can prove that you are immune
  3. get vaccinated, if possible, at the first sign of the outbreak, which might help you avoid quarantine in the case of measles and chicken pox

“Persons who continue to be exempted from or who refuse measles vaccination should be excluded from the school, child care, or other institutions until 21 days after rash onset in the last case of measles.”

Manual for the Surveillance of Vaccine-Preventable Diseases

That’s right, especially in the case of measles, you can often avoid being quarantined if you simply get vaccinated.

Unvaccinated children exposed to measles are quarantined for at least 21 days.
Unvaccinated children exposed to measles are typically quarantined for at least 21 days.

Why are quarantines important?

Can’t you just isolate yourself if you get sick?

The problem with that strategy is that you are often contagious before you develop symptoms. That’s especially true of measles, when you likely won’t even realize that you have measles until you get the measles rash, after having a high fever for three to five days. That’s why people with measles are often seen at clinics and emergency rooms multiple times, exposing many people, before they are finally diagnosed. It is the classic signs of a rash with continued fever that helps to make the diagnosis.

Without quarantines of unvaccinated people, especially those who are known exposures to other cases, today’s outbreaks would be even bigger and harder to control.

If you don’t want to take the risk of being quarantined and missing weeks or months of school or work, then don’t take the risk of being unvaccinated. Tragically, that’s not the only risk you take when you skip or delay your vaccines. In addition to getting sick, you also risk getting others sick, including those who didn’t have a choice about getting vaccinated yet.

What to Know About Avoiding Quarantines During an Outbreak

The easiest way to avoid getting caught up in a quarantine for a vaccine-preventable disease is to simply make sure your kids are up-to-date on all of their vaccines.

More on Avoiding Quarantines During an Outbreak

 

What Is Vaccine Injury Denial?

Few people deny that vaccine injury is real.

Vaccine injuries, while rare, are certainly real.

That’s why we have table injuries, the Vaccine Court, and the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program.

What Is Vaccine Injury Denial?

Again though, vaccine injuries are rare.

“Vaccine Injury Denialism is rampant across the mainstream media, where child-abusing vaccine pushers like the New York Times, Washington Post and CNN deliberately contribute to the holocaust of vaccine injuries now devastating humanity’s children. Sadly, the same denialism about the alarming growth in medical injuries caused by vaccines is also endemic across universities, science journals and medical schools, where doctors are indoctrinated into a kind of “Flat Earth” denialism of vaccine injury reality.”

Mike Adams on Vaccine Injury Denialism is the denial of fundamental human dignity

Claims of vaccine injury denial come when we are skeptical or don’t believe that anything and everything is a vaccine injury.

Barbara Loe Fisher's NVIC even claims that Shaken Baby Syndrome can be a vaccine injury.
Barbara Loe Fisher’s NVIC even claims that Shaken Baby Syndrome can be a vaccine injury.

For example, in some circles, if you point out that vaccines do not cause asthma, ADHD, autism, Celiac disease, diabetes, eczema, food allergies, infertility, multiple sclerosis, POTS, SIDS, or transverse myelitis, etc., then claims of vaccine injury denial begin to fly.

That shouldn’t be surprising, as these and other so-called vaccine induced diseases make up the bulk of the vaccine injury stories that scare many parents.

“IMAGINE YOU LIVE IN A COUNTRY in which a minority of people are taken in the middle of the night, and beaten, kicked, poisoned, half-drowned… they are crippled for life, maimed, and they are expected to accept a doctor’s or a judge’s view that “It wasn’t the Gestapo” or “It’s not even an injury”.

Imagine that minority amounted to tens of millions of people.

Now imagine that these victims are lured into traps by their own doctors with promises of medicine that will prevent illness – but in reality the doctors are paid for every patient they manage to convince to show up – and the doctors determine which injuries they caused and which were just “coincidences”.

Now imagine the media is primed to tell the world that no such injuries ever occur. Now your neighbors are denying it, calling you crazy for thinking there is a link…”

James Lyons-Weiler on Should Vaccine Risk/Injury Denial Be Prosecutable Offenses?

But doctors and the media, and your neighbors for that matter, don’t deny that claims of vaccine injury are real because of some grand conspiracy or simply because they want to.

It is because of research and science, understanding the difference between correlation and causation, and more research. And we understand that vaccines are both passively and actively monitored for side effects.

Vaccine injuries, although real, are rare.

The only denialism about vaccines that is important, is among those who deny that vaccines work and that they are safe and necessary.

What to Know About Vaccine Injury Denial

Anti-vaccine folks like to claim that anyone who doesn’t believe that vaccines cause all of their vaccine-induced diseases are part of a conspiracy of vaccine injury denial.

More on Vaccine Injury Denial

Would a Doctor Ever Say These Things About Vaccines?

More and more people are beginning to realize that it is getting harder and harder to easily identify satire, as folks say ever more outrageous things.

And it isn’t limited to politicians and celebrities.

#SaidNoDoctor

What unbelievable things have doctors said?

#SaidNoDoctor, except Dr. Jay Gordon, who made this statement about the HPV vaccine on the Ricki Lake Show.
#SaidNoDoctor, except Dr. Jay Gordon, who made this statement about the HPV vaccine on the Ricki Lake Show.

A pediatrician making a recommendation against a vaccine that can prevent cancer?!?

What about a pediatrician telling folks that measles isn’t deadly in the middle of a large measles outbreak? Yeah, that happened too…

Dr. Bob Sears actually reassured parents that measles wasn't deadly in developed countries, neglecting to mention the dozens of people who have died in outbreaks in Europe - another well-nourished population with lower vaccination rates than the U.S.
Bob Sears actually reassured parents that measles wasn’t deadly in developed countries, neglecting to mention the dozens of people who have died in outbreaks in Europe – another well-nourished population with lower vaccination rates than the U.S.

Not surprisingly, you can easily find “doctors” that hit on these and every other anti-vaccine talking point that put some parents on the fence about vaccines.

Kelly Brogan, a holistic psychiatrist, doesn't seem to think that vaccines fit into a paleo lifestyle...
Kelly Brogan, a holistic psychiatrist, doesn’t seem to think that vaccines fit into a paleo lifestyle…

Would you laugh at the notion of getting tetanus from a deep puncture wound?

Apparently some doctors would…

Dr. Blaylock misses that you aren't worried about tetanus organisms in the wound, but rather their spores, which you aren't going to easily clean out, not even if the wound bleeds a lot - common myths about tetanus.
Dr. Blaylock misses that you aren’t worried about tetanus bacteria in the wound, but rather their spores, which you aren’t going to easily kill or clean out, not even if the wound bleeds a lot – common myths about tetanus.

Do you know why most people don’t get tetanus or die of measles in the United States?

Because most people are vaccinated.

And they don’t listen to these kinds of doctors.

But wait, there’s more…

Dr. Jerry is a pediatrician who practices Translational Medicine and wrote the forward to Jenny McCarthy's autism book.
Dr. Jerry is a pediatrician who practices Translational Medicine and wrote the forward to Jenny McCarthy‘s autism book.

Of course, these aren’t the kinds of things that a doctor should say, at least not a doctor who understands vaccines, vaccine-preventable disease, and anything about science.

What to Know About Outrageous Vaccine Quotes from Doctors

Vaccines are safe and necessary and they work, but you wouldn’t know that after listening to what some of these doctors have to say.

More on Outrageous Vaccine Quotes from Doctors

I Refuse to Listen to Bad Advice About Flu Shots, and I Won’t Apologize for It

The only thing that seems to be more rampant than the flu this season are the articles pushing people to skip a flu shot.

POPSUGAR moms will hopefully go somewhere else for advice about flu shots.
POPSUGAR moms will hopefully go somewhere else for advice about flu shots.

They. Are. Everywhere.

I Refuse to Listen to Bad Advice About Flu Shots

Why are we seeing so many folks attacking flu shots lately?

It’s simple. A bad flu season reminds people that they should get vaccinated and protected. We see the same thing when there are outbreaks of measles, mumps, and pertussis, etc.

And then those folks who are truly anti-vaccine have to come out and justify why they still don’t believe in vaccines.

That leaves us with arguments like this:

“Whenever I start to get worried that I’ll end up with the flu if I don’t get the shot, I remember that it isn’t always effective.”

Jen Glantz on Do You Need To Get A Flu Shot?

It is true that the flu shot is not always effective, but if you are only going to use things that are 100% effective, then why would you take “lots of vitamins and natural supplements” when you have the flu, things that have been shown to be ineffective?

“Side effects can include soreness around the injection side, a low-grade fever for a few days, and muscle aches. Now, I know that this may seem like a small price to pay to avoid getting the full-blown flu, but if I can avoid any sickness at all, why not try?”

Jen Glantz on Do You Need To Get A Flu Shot?

Uh, if you want to try and avoid any sickness, why not get a flu shot? Even when it isn’t as effective as we would like, a flu shot can help reduce your chance of hospitalization, serious flu complications, and of dying with the flu.

“Have you ever taken a step back and learned more about what the heck is actually inside the flu shot? ”

Jen Glantz on Do You Need To Get A Flu Shot?

I know exactly what’s in the flu shot.

Does anyone at POPSUGAR?

Got something you want published online? Head over to POPSUGAR...
Got something you want published online? Head over to POPSUGAR…

Even with a disclaimer from an Editor, POPSUGAR should be ashamed of themselves for publishing an article that says the flu shot is filled with toxins. In addition to an ingredients list, the CDC explains that “all ingredients either help make the vaccine, or ensure the vaccine is safe and effective.”

Flu shot ingredients are not toxins!

“Instead of injecting myself with toxins, I do things like practice good hygiene, take lots of vitamins and natural supplements, and rely on my body and it’s strength to fight off any unwanted bacteria. The human body is an incredible thing, and I trust it. I also like it to ride out things naturally.”

Jen Glantz on Do You Need To Get A Flu Shot?

The flu is a virus, not a bacteria, but I get the point that the author is attempting to make. The thing is though, that while the human body is certainly incredible, relying on it to get you over the flu is not always an easy ride. We often have to pay a high price for natural immunity.

And the people who die with the flu don’t die because of poor hygiene or because they don’t take enough vitamins and supplements. They die because they have the flu. And more often than not, especially in the case of children, because they are unvaccinated.

“For some people, getting the flu shot is at the very top of their to-do list, but for me, it’s something I refuse to do. And that’s OK too.”

Jen Glantz on Do You Need To Get A Flu Shot?

It is certainly OK that Jen Glantz doesn’t get a flu shot each year. At least it is OK as long as she doesn’t get the flu and give it to someone else.

It is not OK that POPSUGAR gives her a voice on such an important topic. Don’t listen to them.

It’s not as big a deal when she writes about the “importance” of drinking both hot and cold water each day, drinking apple cider vinegar for bloating, the best baby names of the year, or how to pee when wearing a wedding dress. That’s the kind of clickbait type content you expect from a POPSUGAR type site.

But scaring people and making them think that there are toxins in flu shots?

Save it for GOOP.

What to Know About Bad Flu Shot Advice

This year’s bad flu season wasn’t limited to folks getting sick… There was also a lot of bad flu shot advice going around.

More on Bad Flu Shot Advice