Tag: eczema

Bob Sears Doubles Down Against California Vaccine Laws

Bob Sears wasn’t a fan of SB 277, the vaccine law that removed non-medical exemptions in California.

Not surprisingly, he is actively rallying folks against a new bill that would close a loophole in that law. It seems that some doctors were writing medical exemptions for anything and everything, from eczema to swollen lymph nodes.

Bob Sears is pushing misinformation that SB 276 takes away all medical exemptions.
Bob Sears is pushing misinformation that SB 276 takes away all medical exemptions.

Of course, the new law wouldn’t take away medical exemptions. It would just take away fake medical exemptions.

Is everything a vaccine injury?
Is everything a vaccine injury?

Yes, take a long hard look at their list…

A very few actually are actually standard contraindications and precautions to commonly used vaccines, so could likely get you a medical exemption to one or more vaccines. GBS within 6 weeks of a flu shot, a precaution, not a contraindication, would be an example. But even in this case, the exemption would be for flu shots, not all vaccines.

“Events or conditions listed as precautions should be reviewed carefully. Benefits of and risks for administering a specific vaccine to a person under these circumstances should be considered. If the risk from the vaccine is believed to outweigh the benefit, the vaccine should not be administered. If the benefit of vaccination is believed to outweigh the risk, the vaccine should be administered. “

Vaccine Recommendations and Guidelines of the ACIP

What about all of the rest of the diseases or “severe reactions” on Bob’s list, like pneumonia, palpitations, eczema, hair loss, IBD, difficulty swallowing, skin infections, testicular pain, HSP, Multiple Sclerosis, and Kawasaki disease, etc.

These are not vaccine injuries, even though they are sometimes in a package insert. I’m surprised that he didn’t list SIDS and autism too…

And this is why California needs to fix their vaccine law… Folks, including pediatricians, pushing the idea that everything is a vaccine injury.

More on Bob Sears and California Vaccine Laws

What is Eczema Vaccinatum?

Did you know that having eczema is a contraindication to getting a vaccine?

Which vaccine?

The smallpox vaccine!

Yes, smallpox has been eradicated, but the vaccine is sometimes still used in very specific situations, especially in the military.

What is Eczema Vaccinatum?

Not only is eczema a contraindication to getting the smallpox vaccine, you shouldn’t even get it if a household contact has eczema.

Why not?

Shedding.

Yes, although anti-vaccine folks needlessly worry about shedding when kids get routine childhood vaccines and even talk about a shedding season, with the smallpox vaccine, problems with shedding are really a thing.

Since the smallpox vaccine is a live virus vaccine and since it very commonly causes a skin reaction at the injection site, shedding can spread it to others. While that’s a good thing with some vaccines, like the oral polio vaccine, because it increases herd immunity, it isn’t with the smallpox vaccine.

If the weakened smallpox vaccine can cause a skin reaction on your arm where you got the shot, what is it going to do if it gets on a child’s skin that is irritated all over with eczema?

An 8-month-old boy with eczema vaccinatum.
An 8-month-old boy with eczema vaccinatum. Photo by CDC/Arthur E. Kaye

It’s a good thing that we don’t routinely have to use the smallpox vaccine anymore.

“Because persons with eczema are deferred from vaccination, only a single, accidentally transmitted case of EV has been described in the medical literature since military vaccination was resumed in the United States in 2002.”

Reed et al on Eczema vaccinatum.

And that it doesn’t happen with any other vaccines!

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Learn the Risks of Falling for Anti-Vaccine Propaganda

If you are on the fence or hesitant to vaccinate your kids, it might not be easy to recognize that the vaccine information that you get on some sites is pure propaganda.

That’s unfortunate, because you can’t make an informed choice about vaccines if you are basing that decision on misinformation.

Learn the Risks of Falling for Anti-Vaccine Propaganda

Take the infographic about the number of vaccine doses children in the United States normally get.Learn the risks of following bad advice about vaccines.

It is designed into making you think that kids get 72 doses of vaccines, scaring you and trying to reinforce the myth that kids get too many vaccines.

Have you seen and fallen for that trick? Did you ever think to actually count the total vaccine doses they list? As you can see above, it doesn’t come out to 72 doses…

But why do  they do it? If they really think their “vaccines contain toxic chemicals” argument is convincing, then would it matter if the number of vaccine doses was 11 or 53 or 72? Why inflate it to make it wound scarier?

Still, however you want to count the number of doses of vaccines kids get today, one thing is crystal clear –  they get protection from more vaccine-preventable diseases.

In 1983, kids may have only have gotten 11 doses of vaccines, but many still died from Hib pneumonia and meningitis, epiglotitis (Hib), pneumococcal pneumonia and meningitis, hepatitis A, hepatitis B, rotavirus, chicken pox, and meningococcemia, etc.

“for those trained in pediatrics in the 1970s, Hib (Haemophilus influenzae type b) was a horror.”

Walter Orenstein, MD

Today, unless you decide to skip or delay your child’s vaccines, they are protected from these diseases.

What about the flu? Kids still die with the flu, but it is important to keep in mind that most kids who die with the flu are unvaccinated.

That’s why it is important to get your kids vaccinated. Don’t take the risk of following bad advice.

What to Know About Learning the Risks of Anti-Vaccine Propaganda

It is important to to learn the risks of falling for anti-vaccine propaganda – leaving your kids unvaccinated, unprotected, and at risk for vaccine-preventable diseases.

More on Learning the Risks of Anti-Vaccine Propaganda

Why Are We More Careful About Introducing Baby Food Than Giving Vaccines?

The rules about introducing baby food have changed a lot over the years.

Believe it or not, instead of rice cereal, when your baby is ready for solid foods, you can now give her fruits, veggies, meat, or even peanut butter. That’s right, infants can have peanut butter!

baby boy cake child
Let them eat cake, but don’t let that be your baby’s first food… Photo by Henley Design Studio on Pexels.com

In fact, if your baby has eczema, your pediatrician will likely encourage you to introduce peanut butter early, by four to six months, as a way to hopefully avoid peanut allergies later in life.

Why Are We More Careful About Introducing Baby Food Than Giving Vaccines?

Those are some big changes, aren’t they.

Still, a lot of other things stayed the same, including that parents should:

  • wait until at least four months, and often until six months, before they think about starting solid foods
  • only give one new food at a time

So while there are few restrictions on which foods to give now (still no honey before age 12 months and no choke foods), you still want to introduce one new food every three or four days to watch for a reaction.

Why is that different than for vaccines?

It’s because reactions to foods are more common, especially non-allergic type reactions (diarrhea, gas, and fussiness, etc), but also because there is basically no risk to delaying the introduction of new foods by this slow method.

There is also no real benefit to going much faster. Do you really want to introduce your baby to multiple new foods a day?

In addition to allergies and intolerances, there is another type of reaction you are watching for too – your baby simply not liking the food. For example, if one of your baby’s first foods is an apple, strawberry, beet combo puree and he spits it out at the first taste, how are you going to know which flavor he didn’t like? Isn’t it better to go through all of the single ingredient first foods before mixing them up?

Now if you did the same thing with vaccines, your baby would be getting a shot every four days! And it would leave them unprotected for a lot longer period of time.

Considering that serious vaccine reactions are rare, it is easy to understand that there is no benefit to only giving one vaccine at a time and we recommend that folks stick to the standard immunization schedule.

What to Know About Giving Vaccines and Introducing Baby Food

Although it is like comparing peas with peach mango and oatmeal cereal, stick to your pediatricians advice about vaccines and introducing baby food.

More on Giving Vaccines and Introducing Baby Food