The first thing to understand is that when folks like Rob Schneider talk about medically fragile children, they are using the term differently than when medical professionals and most parents do.
“Medically fragile” means having an acute or chronic health problem which requires therapeutic intervention and skilled nursing care during all or part of the day. Medically fragile problems include, but are not limited to, HIV disease, severe lung disease requiring oxygen, severe lung disease requiring ventilator or tracheostomy care, complicated spina bifida, heart disease, malignancy, asthmatic exacerbations, cystic fibrosis exacerbations, neuromuscular disease, encephalopathies, and seizure disorders.
2005 California Health and Safety Code Sections 1760-1761.8 FACILITIES HEALTH AND SAFETY CODE SECTION 1760-1761.8
The medically fragile kids as defined by the California Health and Safety Code, who require skilled nursing care, are not typically the kids who are getting routine medical exemptions.
Sure, some of them might need one. A child with severe HIV disease or a malignancy being treated with chemotherapy would likely get a medical exemption for live vaccines, etc.
A child with an acute encephalopathy or uncontrolled seizures would also qualify for a medical exemption.
And since vaccines aren’t 100% risk free, there might be some kids with a vaccine injury among these medically fragile kids. It is likely not a high number though, as severe reactions to vaccines are very rare.
“CMC {children with medical complexity} are likely increasing in prevalence because of increased survival rates of infants born prematurely, those born with various congenital anomalies, and/or those with chronic conditions, as well as improved treatments for acute illnesses in fields such as intensive care and oncology.”
Cohen et al on Children With Medical Complexity: An Emerging Population for Clinical and Research Initiatives
In most other cases, medically fragile kids wouldn’t need a medical exemption and would greatly benefit from being vaccinated and protected!
The California Assembly Appropriations Committee votes Friday on SB276. Today anti-vaccine folks in Californians who oppose this bill gathered at the state capitol encouraging legislators to continue to allow doctors to write fake medical exemptions.
There was plenty of violent imagery on display at the V for Vaccine rally. How many times did RFK, Jr mention guns and homicide?
“They are saying that… any child who is unvaccinated has ever passed measles to another child in a school since 1963. No evidence.”
Robert Kennedy, JR
What?
Although the first measles vaccine was introduced in 1963, it took some time before measles was brought under control and the endemic spread finally eliminated in the United States (2000).
Who was his pediatrician?
No evidence indeed!
He goes on about the MMR being a failed vaccine and that no one should be worried about the unvaccinated if they are vaccinated and protected.
Kennedy even claimed that he read a protocol from Johns Hopkins and not only does it not say anything about immunocompromised people staying away from the unvaccinated, but he says it warns about shedding from the recently vaccinated!
“The increased risk of disease in the pediatric population, in part because of increasing rates of vaccine refusal and in some circumstances more rapid loss of immunity, increases potential exposure of immunodeficient children. The immunosuppressed subject is particularly at risk in crowded living conditions because of the spread of these diseases by aerosol droplets or through the oral-fecal route.”
Medical Advisory Committee of the Immune Deficiency Foundation. Recommendations for live viral and bacterial vaccines in immunodeficient patients and their close contacts
I don’t know what protocol from Johns Hopkins he might have read, but maybe he should have read the Medical Advisory Committee of the Immune Deficiency Foundation. Recommendations for live viral and bacterial vaccines in immunodeficient patients and their close contacts. It clearly warns about the risks of being around someone who is unvaccinated.
Next up was Joshua Coleman.
“These are all undisputed facts. Everyone should know these things.”
4 Billion Paid by Us Government for Vaccine Injuries and Deaths – yes, $4,060,857,713.42 has been paid by the Vaccine Court for 6,355 compensated claims for vaccine injuries since 1989, during which time billions of doses of vaccines have been given
Vaccines Are Made With Aborted Fetal Cells – a cell line whose descendant cells has been copied over and over for over 50 years and are removed before the final vaccine is produced.
US Law Classifies Vaccines As Unavoidably Unsafe – but that legal term doesn’t in any way mean that vaccines are dangerous or extra risky!
Live Virus Vaccines Shed and Spread – while some live vaccines can shed, shedding is not the problem that these folks make it out to be, often going so far as describing a shedding season among other things
“My concern with this bill, is that it’s going to take every exemption I’ve ever done under those guidelines, which are not restricted to CDC contraindications – under those old guidelines, they can now review every single one of my exemptions I’ve done and disqualify each and every one of them and kick those kids out of school. They are sort of retroactively changing the guidelines – so all of the exemptions that I’ve ever done, and other physicians have ever done, and to me that’s a very very concerning precedence for a government to go back like that and negate years of medical care that’s been done legally and properly under the guidelines of 277.”
Bob Sears SB 276 Assembly Health Committee Testimony
SB276 is needed because too many doctors took advantage of SB277.
The Catholic Church teaches that it is lawful to get vaccinated to protect “our children, public health, and the common good” and that we have a “moral obligation to protect the life and health of their children and those around them.”
Nazis and Nazi symbolism have been in the news a lot lately.
Surprisingly, it isn’t all coming from rallies at Confederate statues.
Some of it is coming from the modern anti-vaccine movement.
Vaccines and the Holocaust
Most people understand what the Holocaust was.
Or do they…
The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum defines the Holocaust as “the systematic, bureaucratic, state-sponsored persecution and murder of six million Jews by the Nazi regime and its collaborators.”
As often as folks in the modern anti-vaccine movement use the word Holocaust, it makes you wonder sometimes if they really understand what it means.
Among the most recent (2015) to demonstrate “the violent rhetoric of the anti-vaccine movement” has been Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., when he said that:
“They get the shot. That night they have a fever of 103. They go to sleep, and three months later their brain is gone. This is a holocaust, what this is doing to our country.”
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr
Kennedy certainly isn’t the only or even the first to describe a vaccine holocaust though.
That wasn’t even his first time…
As the keynote speaker at the 2013 Autism One conference, Kennedy reportedly compared Dr. Paul Offit to a Nazi war criminal and said that “To my mind this is like the Nazi death camps.” He was reportedly referring to kids who he and others thought developed autism after being vaccinated.
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr implied that Paul Offit is a Nazi and should be in prison at the 2013 Autism One conference.
Actually, after calling Dr. Offit a liar, he talked about how his father would talk to him about Vietnam:
“He used to talk about Vietnam and about how we were dropping napalm on villages and he said, ‘what’s the difference between us and the Nazis. What is the difference between us and the Nazis…’
And these people, these people should be in prison…
I would do a lot to see Paul Offit and all of these “good people” behind bars.
…Is it hyperbole that I think these people should be thrown in jail?
They should be thrown in jail and the key should be thrown away.”
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr
And yes, in the Q&A, when asked “why hasn’t the CDC acknowledged autism as an epidemic,” even though he said in his speech that they had admitted that it was, he replied that he couldn’t get into someone else’s head to tell why they were doing something.
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr describing how ‘this is like Nazi death camps’ when talking about kids getting autism because the CDC didn’t take thimerosal out of vaccines.
Kennedy also went on and on about science and research that supports a link between vaccines and autism and continues with the idea that kids get just as much thimerosal as ever because of the thimerosal in flu vaccines, leaving out the fact that thimerosal flu vaccines are a thing…
But before Kennedy, in 2010, Claire Dwoskin of the NVIC, CMSRI, and the Dwoskin Family Foundation wrote that:
“At least his daughter is alive, smiling, educated and enjoying life. That cannot be said for the hundreds of thousands of vaccine injured children in the US. What his daughter went through is NOTHING compared to what the families of autistic children go through every day of their lives. No disease can match this record of human devastation. Vaccines are a holocaust of poison on our children’s brains and immune systems. Shame on you all.”
Claire Dwoskin
Dwoskin and Kennedy haven’t continued to say vaccines are a holocaust, at least not in public.
The one person that most commonly uses holocaust imagery when talking about vaccines, and who will likely never stop, is the Health Ranger – Mike Adams.
Adams has used the “vaccine holocaust” term for years and has now created a dedicated website exposing his ideas of a conspiracy of a “media cover-up of vaccine violence against children.”
Adams has also called for making a “Nuremberg List” of all of the people working in Big Pharma, Big Food, and Big Biotech, with individuals from “mass media, politics, government regulation bodies, finance, and from wherever appropriate,” including their names and “their observed crimes against humanity.”
Surprisingly, using the term even draws some disagreement among folks who think that vaccines do cause autism and that we are in an ‘age’ of an autism epidemic.
“I haven’t read it yet, but it looks very much like the view shared by most of our readers and myself – corruption at the CDC and big pharma leading to a vaccine-induced catastrophe – a holocaust…”
Dan Olmsted on The Autistic Holocaust – The Reason Our Children Keep Getting Sick
In discussing the book, The Autistic Holocaust – The Reason Our Children Keep Getting Sick, Dan Olmsted found that one participant had “a strong view that the choice of the word “Holocaust” is not appropriate and does not serve the interests of our children.”
Another thought that “Holocaust is a word with too powerful associations to be of much use describing anything other than the crimes of the Nazis.”
And still, the site he founded continues to publish articles like:
A Dozen Things We Can Do RIGHT NOW to Help Stop the Vaccine Holocaust
Rabbi Handler on Vaccines, Politics and the Autism Holocaust
Yes, they interviewed an anti-vaccine Rabbi who is upset with the CDC and NYC health department over their warnings about metzitzah b’peh (oral suction) during traditional bris milah (circumcision). The concern is that oral suctioning can spread herpes (cold sores) to the newborn baby, which can be fatal. And it still does…
“Webster’s dictionary defines a holocaust as follows: “great or total destruction of life, especially by fire.”
Yes, there is a vaccine-triggered holocaust of autism and autoimmune diseases, like asthma, diabetes, Crohn’s disease, and various forms of ADHD and brain damage.
As one of the last living survivors of Hitler’s Nazi Holocaust, I am outraged that the Anti-Defamation League and other politically-Liberal Jewish organizations have claimed exclusive ownership of this very powerful English word and blocked its use by Autism activists.”
Rabbi William Handler
Rabbi Handler has been called out for other controversial opinions too, including that he supported a Rabbi who molested his own daughter and that he is against child protective services investigating and the state prosecuting those who physically abuse or sexually abuse children in the Orthodox Jewish community, instead advocating that a rabbinical counsel should do it instead.
Dr. Bob has even gotten in on the Holocaust imagery to scare parents about California’s vaccine laws:
“…So I tell them they don’t have to whisper. They can say it loud and clear, with confidence. Ya, I guess you don’t want to advertise it around the neighborhood – that will come soon enough. Scarlet “V” anyone? No, not scarlet. Let’s make it yellow. And not a V – a star would be better. That way everyone can know at first glance who is safe to be around and who is not. That way, if your old doctor and his children are walking down the street, they can easily identify your kids and quickly cross to the other side before they get too close.
Ask your Assemblyperson which color and shape they think would be most appropriate.
Disclaimer: This post is not intended as a reference to a holocaust. Rather, it’s intended to raise the issue of prejudice and discrimination. Others have likenend vaccine injury to a holocaust. Instead, we are talking about families who choose to not vaccinate. No holocaust here.”
Dr. Bob Sears on The Vaccine Whisperers
And unbelievably, there are others.
Also in California, Wakefield‘s anti-vaccine movie Vaxxed was introduced at a screening in Roseville by a speaker who said that:
“It is WE who are going to have to work non-stop to put an end to this ever-increasing medical tyranny, this abominable Vaccine Holocaust, this present evil…
For those who think “holocaust” is too strong a word, I assure you it is not.
“Holocaust” is defined as “destruction or slaughter on a mass scale”, and that is indeed what vaccinations are doing to those who receive them, which can often be observed in the short term, always in the long term, and for generations to come as you will learn as you study these issues more.”
Laura Hayes
And if it isn’t the Holocaust, many anti-vaccine folks still find ways to invoke Godwin’s Law – “as an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler rapidly increases.”
There is even a band about refusing vaccines with a song called Vaccine Gestapo.
Rob Schneider calling California lawmakers Nazis after they passed a vaccine law that didn’t even involve mandates that kids be vaccinated…
Schneider also talked about the Nuremberg Laws. That one was surprising, as most other folks who are anti-vaccine invoke the Nuremberg Code instead.
Of course, both are offensive. As is bringing up the Holocaust when talking about vaccines, vaccine mandates, or autism.
What to Know About Vaccines and the Holocaust
That they would invoke the Holocaust when talking about vaccines and autism, and compare doctors and lawmakers to Nazis, tells you a lot about the modern anti-vaccine movement.
