Tag: vaccine deaths

Fact Checking What Kids Receive When They Are Vaccinated

A new post is being shared in anti-vax groups that includes two trays of syringes and a long list of scary sounding chemicals, implying that they are all ingredients in vaccines. And that an infant would get them all at a single well child visit.

If you have seen the post and it has you wondering whether or not you should vaccinate your kids, open your eyes! This is classic anti-vaccine propaganda.

Fact Checking What Kids Receive When They Are Vaccinated

How do we know it’s propaganda?

Let’s begin with the fact that these vaccines have been drawn up for more than one child.

We know that because there is no situation in which a child would get 10 separate injections at one time. Even if a toddler was completely unvaccinated and was looking to get started and caught up on his missed vaccines all at once, he wouldn’t get 10 separate injections.

In fact, most of the time, thanks to combination vaccines, infants only get two or three injections at a time.

This post is also easy to recognize as anti-vaccine propaganda because of the way they describe ingredients of vaccines.

  • 2-phenoxyethanol – works as a stabilizer or preservative
  • aluminum – (neurotoxin) –
  • fetal bovine serum – (aborted cow blood) – used as a growth media to provide nutrients to viruses and is removed from the final vaccine
  • formaldehyde – (carcinogen, embalming agent) – formaldehyde in vaccines is not carcinogenic because “carcinogens do not cause cancer at all times, under all circumstances”
  • gelatin – (ground up animal carcuses) – a stabilizer that is formed from the connective tissue of certain animals, usually pigs
  • albumin – (human blood) – most vaccines are now made with recombinant albumin, anyway it is just albumin, a protein, that is in the vaccine, not “human blood”
  • monosodium L-glutamate – (causes obesity & diabetis) – another stabilizer
  • MRC-5 cells – (aborted human babies) – descent cells that have a “distant association with abortion” are mostly removed from final vaccines
  • neomycin –  (antibiotic) – used to prevent bacteria from growing while the vaccine is being developed and is removed from the final vaccine
  • polymyxin B – (antibiotic)
  • polysorbate 80 – (carcinogen) – an emulsifier that “helps ingredients mix together and keep them from separating.”
  • potassium chloride – (used in lethal injection)
  • potassium phosphate – (liquid fertilizer agent)
  • sodium bicarbonate – (baking soda)
  • sodium borate – (Borax, used for cockroach control)
  • sodium chloride – (table salt)
  • sodium citrate – (food additive)
  • sodium hydroxide – (Danger! Corrosive)
  • sodium phosphate – (toxic to any organism) –
  • sodium phosphate monobasic monohydrate – (toxic to any organism)
  • sorbitol – (Not to be injected)
  • streptomycin – (antibiotic)
  • sucrose – (cane sugar)
  • yeast protein – (fungus) – used as a growth medium and removed from the final vaccine
  • urea – (metabolic waste from human urine) – helps to improve temperature stability of some vaccines, but does not come from human urine!
  • other chemical residuals

Although they went out of their way to make them sound scary, it is important to understand that these ingredients are not toxins, at least they aren’t in the doses used in the vaccines.

And while chemicals like potassium phosphate and sodium hydroxide might indeed sound scary to some people, it is also important to remember that we routinely and safely use chemicals every day. As they listed, sodium chloride is table salt!

What about their list of “studies” that followed their list of ingredients? They are easily refuted too – just think cherry picking, VAERS, case reports, and more VAERS.

Basically, the whole post is a collection of PRATTs – anti-vaccine points refuted a thousand times!

Don’t fall for this kind of propaganda anymore.

Vaccines are safe, with few risks, and are obviously necessary.

More on Anti-Vaccine Propaganda

Healthy Kids Can Just Die

No one likes to think about it, but yes, healthy kids can just die.

Tragically, misunderstanding this fact can lead some parents who have lost a child to blame vaccines.

Healthy kids can just die and they are often attacked by anti-vaccine groups who push them to blame vaccines.
The 8 year-old child they are talking about died of SUDEP or Sudden Unexplained Death of Epilepsy.

It certainly doesn’t help that anti-vaccine folks are targeting families who have recently lost a child, pushing them to blame vaccines…

Healthy Kids Can Just Die

Speaking of vaccines, that leads us to one group of healthy kids who can die suddenly – those who die with a vaccine-preventable disease.

All of those kids who die with the flu each year? Many are healthy. And many are unvaccinated.

Infants who die with pertussis.

Teens who die with meningococcemia.

They were all typically healthy – at least they were before they got sick.

And then some of them died.

Of course, vaccine-preventable diseases are not a common way for children to die in developed countries anymore – thanks to vaccines.

Healthy Kids Dying is Not a Vaccine Injury

Again, although no one likes to think about it, healthy kids can just die.

Surprisingly, about 10% of deaths in children over age 12 months are classified as sudden death, including many in healthy kids with no explanations for how they died.

These types of sudden, unexplained deaths are actually the 5th leading cause of death in children between the ages of 1 and 4 years. That adds up to about 400 deaths a year in the United States alone!

Were some of these kids recently vaccinated?

Of course.

Just like some infants who die of SIDS were recently vaccinated.

That doesn’t mean that the vaccines caused the deaths though.

“Dealing with the sudden, unexpected death of a baby to any cause is devastating – but in the case of a death for which no specific cause can be found, the lack of answers about why your baby has died can be overwhelming.”

Surviving the Sudden Death of a Baby

So why do some people blame vaccines?

“The parents’ need to understand why their baby died came across very strongly in most interviews despite parents not being asked specifically about this.”

Garstang et al on Parental understanding and self-blame following sudden infant death: a mixed-methods study of bereaved parents’ and professionals’ experiences

Few people like the idea that there isn’t a known reason for why a child died.

“Our results suggest that most parents really want to know why their baby died; not knowing why their baby died may cause further distress to parents, whether this is due to long waits for the results of postmortem examinations or because deaths remain unexplained. An unexplained death by its nature is an unpredictable event rendering the parents powerless to prevent future tragedies, thus increasing the anxiety and grief; having as much information as possible should help parents to emotionally accept and make sense of the death to themselves.”

Garstang et al on Parental understanding and self-blame following sudden infant death: a mixed-methods study of bereaved parents’ and professionals’ experiences

Saying it was vaccines gives people an answer.

“The aggregated theme, We Feel Like We’re to Blame, was composed of three categories: (a) Not where s/he was supposed to sleep, (b) Naming the cause of death increases my guilt, and (c) It was our fault. Mothers often felt that they were being told that the baby’s death was their fault.”

Stiffler et al on When Baby Stops Breathing: Analysis of Mothers’ Interviews

And in the case of SIDS, especially if the baby was in an unsafe sleeping environment, it is easy to see that blaming vaccines might help those who were made to feel that the death had been their fault, even though bedsharing is widely pushed as a safe alternative to roomsharing in many parenting circles.

It isn’t.

“The mothers talked about how difficult it was trying to move on after an unexpected infant death. They expressed that they are not only dealing with the grief of losing a child, but they are dealing with the feelings of guilt, despair, and regret. In this aggregated theme, there were three categories: (a) I can’t talk about it, (b) One step forward, and (c) Support helps me get through.”

Stiffler et al on When Baby Stops Breathing: Analysis of Mothers’ Interviews

One thing should be clear.

Seeking support in anti-vaccine Facebook groups is not healthy and will not help parents deal with their feelings of guilt, despair, or regret.

Shaming was described from the mothers’ perspective “ . . . it sounds so blaming and makes me feel like they think we killed our baby.” Parents were dealing with the grief of losing children, but they were also exhibiting feelings of guilt and responsibility for the deaths. The mothers did find support and eventually moved forward emotionally. In the end, as one mother succinctly expressed, “I am pregnant now . . . we are happy, but are scared, too.”

Stiffler et al on When Baby Stops Breathing: Analysis of Mothers’ Interviews

These parents instead need support and doctors, nurses, first responders, child protective service workers, and medical examiners that don’t worsen their grief and guilt.

If you need to blame vaccines, then go ahead and do so, but please also get some extra help from the resources below.

And lets work to figure out why these healthy kids are dying, so we can get better at saving them and preventing these deaths.

More on Healthy Kids Can Just Die

A Toddler Has Died After Being Vaccinated in Cuba

No one expects to hear stories of kids dying after being vaccinated. Fortunately, these types of tragedies are very, very rare.

Still, even one is too many when it might have been prevented. After all, that’s why we vaccinate our kids in the first place. To protect them from life-threatening vaccine preventable diseases.

A Toddler Has Died After Being Vaccinated in Cuba

The Ministry of Health in Cuba released a statement a few days after her death:

“Between October 7 and 8 of this year, three one-year-old children were diagnosed with an adverse event associated with vaccination with PRS, which protects against Mumps, Rubella and Measles, this is applied according to official scheme to children one and six years old.

All had been vaccinated on October 7 at the “Betancourt Neninger” Polyclinic in the municipality of Habana del Este, province of Havana, and immediately after symptoms appeared, they were admitted and received medical attention by professionals of high scientific level in the Pediatric Hospitals ” Borrás Marfán ”and Centro Habana.

Through the active research carried out on all children vaccinated in that Health Area, two more children were detected with symptoms, which motivated their admission.

Painfully on October 9 at night, the one-year-old girl Paloma Domínguez Caballero dies, admitted to the “Borrás Marfán” Hospital as a result of complications. The remaining four children remain admitted: one with intensive attention, which is stable and the others evolve favorably.

The system of active surveillance of the events associated with vaccination carried out in the country has not identified any other children with symptoms.

The PRS vaccine has been used for years in Cuba, imported from India, is endorsed by the World Health Organization and certified by the Center for State Control of Medicines, Equipment and Medical Devices (CECMED).

A Commission of the Ministry of Public Health investigates the causes that caused this unfortunate event.”

Official Note from the Ministry of Public Health on adverse event associated with vaccination with PRS (computer translation)

So what happened?

Tragically, either because of errors or contamination, vaccines can rarely cause people to get sick, either if:

  • a reconstituted vaccine was used much after six hours – live vaccines can quickly become contaminated if they are kept and used for too long a time
  • vaccine diluents were mixed up – some vaccines need to be mixed before use and vaccination tragedies can occur when a dangerous medication is used instead of a vaccine’s standard diluent
  • vaccines were improperly handled – breaking the cold chain – or allowed to expire
  • a vaccine is given to someone with a true medical contraindication

In Samoa, the recent tragedy in which two toddlers died, we know that the vaccine diluent was mixed up with a powerful anesthetic.

It doesn’t sound like a diluent mixup happened in Cuba though.

“The mother told the news portal CiberCuba that the daughter’s arm began to swell the same day she was vaccinated. Then the vomits arrived. Less than 24 hours later I was already in intensive care, from where I did not come out alive again.”

Vacuna en mal estado suministrada en Cuba podría haber dejado 25 niños en estado de gravedad

With reports that the vaccines were possibly expired and the child getting sick later in the day, with swelling in her arm, it is more likely that there was some contamination, maybe in a vaccine vial itself.

A 10 dose vial of MMR from the Serum Institute of India Pvt. Ltd.
A 10 dose vial of MMR from the Serum Institute of India Pvt. Ltd.

Which vaccine?

The report says that it was the PRS vaccine – Parotiditis, Rubéola, and Sarampion – or MMR, which is usually available in 5 or 10 multi-dose vials when one dose vials aren’t available.

It was imported from India, which makes many of the vaccines that are used throughout the world, but any contamination likely would have occurred well after it was manufactured and shipped to Cuba.

In all of these cases, there is typically nothing inherently wrong with the vaccine itself.

“Cuba, a relatively poor and small country (population 11.2 million), has managed to bring about remarkable achievements in health in the past 30 years despite difficult fiscal restraints and limited resources.”

MacDonald et al on Infectious Disease Management: Lessons from Cuba

Interestingly, Cuba actually makes most of their other immunizations.

So why would they be using expired vaccines?

Was it a mistake?

Did someone use a leftover vial that had become contaminated with bacteria? Were the vaccines not refrigerated properly? Is it an isolated issue or part of a bigger breakdown in their healthcare system?

With four other sick kids, the use of a contaminated leftover vial that was part of an original 10 dose vial becomes one possible scenario.

We might get some answers if the vaccine vials had not been thrown away after they were used, and are still available for testing.

In Chapias, Mexico, after two infants died in 2015 after getting multiple vaccines, a vial was found to be contaminated with the Staphylococcus hominis bacteria.

A few years later, in 2017, 15 children died in South Sudan when unrefrigerated vaccine was mixed with a syringe that was reused over and over for four days and given to kids by untrained workers.

Again, these are very rare and isolated cases. Remember that billions of doses of vaccines are given each year without problems, saving millions of lives.

Hopefully we will soon learn what really happened to these children in Cuba, especially as that will hopefully help to make sure it doesn’t happen again.

Most importantly, don’t let these very rare tragedies scare you away from vaccinating and protecting your kids.

“The Cuban government has confirmed that five children suffered severe reactions and one of them — a 1-year-old girl — died after receiving a vaccine. The serum came from the same company in India that produced vaccines linked to the deaths of three other children following inoculations administered in Cuba in 2002.”

Child dies in Cuba after receiving vaccine made in India. It’s not the first time

We should remember what happened following the tragedy in Samoa. All vaccinations were unnecessarily suspended in the country for a time and MMR vaccinations were suspended for nine months!

What came next?

A measles epidemic that has already seen the death of one toddler!

The death of the girl in Cuba is a terrible tragedy, but folks shouldn’t make it any worse. There is almost certainly nothing wrong with the vaccines from India or any other vaccines in Cuba or anywhere else.

Vaccines are safe, with few risks.

Hopefully we can continue to work to eliminate even the rare risk of these kinds of awful tragedies too.

And no, this is not the MMR vaccine that is used in the United States in case anyone is wondering.

More on Vaccination Tragedies

About That 4 Billion Dollars Taxpayers Have Paid for Vaccine Injuries…

Why do some folks think that taxpayers have paid 4 billion dollars in vaccine injuries and deaths?

Anti-vax protestors at the Neptune statute in Virginia with misinformation on the 4 billion dollars for vaccine injuries..
How many doses of vaccines have been given during the time that the $4 billion was paid out? How many lives were saved because they didn’t get polio, measles, and Hib, etc.?

Oh, these folks…

About That 4 Billion Dollars Taxpayers Have Paid for Vaccine Injuries…

So, is it true?

Have taxpayers paid 4 billion dollars for vaccine injuries and deaths, like their signs say?

Nope.

For one thing, these anti-vax protestors are mixing together a couple of separate anti-vaccine talking points that are used to scare parents away from vaccinating and protecting their kids.

  1. While the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986 did set up a $0.75 vaccine excise tax to fund the Vaccine Injury Compensation Trust Fund, it is the vaccine manufacturers who pay the tax.
  2. And billions and billions of doses of vaccines (over 3.5 billion just since 2006) have been given since 1989, the time since the $4,060,857,713.42 has been paid by the Vaccine Court. The payment has been for 6,355 compensated claims over those thirty years, most of which are for vaccine injuries, not deaths. Fewer than 10% of Vaccine Court cases are for vaccine deaths.

Does that matter?

Now up to 4 billion dollars for vaccines injuries, the payout is after billions and billions of vaccines have been given.
That’s about 1 compensated claim, the majority of which are settled, in about 775 thousand doses. So not quite 1 in a million…

It does if you consider that many more kids would die if we didn’t routinely vaccinate and protect our kids!

“Analyses showed that routine childhood immunization among members of the 2009 US birth cohort will prevent ∼42 000 early deaths and 20 million cases of disease, with net savings of $13.5 billion in direct costs and $68.8 billion in total societal costs, respectively.”

Zhou et al on Economic Evaluation of the Routine Childhood Immunization Program in the United States, 2009

And it would be far more costly if we returned to an era when epidemics of vaccine preventable diseases became routine.

Too bad I can’t fit all of that on a sign…

More on Vaccine Court Payouts