There is a wealth of reputable peer-reviewed studies which have confirmed the very small risk of complications from vaccines is far outweighed by their benefits of protection from either infection, or serious complications and even death from vaccine-preventable illnesses.
There is growing evidence that COVID-19 is not ‘just a cold/flu’, even if now less acutely dangerous than the earlier variants. Multiple exposures of our children (and all of us) to its infection, due to the current ‘let it rip’ public health policy worldwide, appear to have serious negative impact on the immune system, leading to increasing rates of other diseases post-COVID-19 infection, as well as increased incidence of long COVID-19. I fear that we will look back with significant regret at how little we protected our children, via vaccination, masking, improvement in indoor air quality and ventilation in high-risk settings. Pregnant women and babies in utero are still at much higher risk of poor, sometimes devastating, outcomes from COVID-19 infection. In the UK and some EU countries in 2022 – 2023, there were unusual outbreaks of, and death from, severe invasive Group A strep, scarlet fever, RSV and fungal infections in (largely C19-unvaccinated) children. There is growing evidence that this may be due in significant part to COVID-19’s negative effect on the immune system, or ‘immune dysregulation or dysfunction’ (nature.com). Children can be COVID-19 transmission vectors to more vulnerable family members at home, especially with so many Bajans being at high risk of COVID-19 complications, having one or more of: high blood pressure, diabetes, obesity, cardio-vascular disease and asthma.
A 2024 international study reveals that ‘the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein remains in brain-protective tissues and skull bone marrow for years after infection, potentially driving long COVID-19’s neurological symptoms’. The mRNA COVID-19 vaccines were shown to reduce this spike protein accumulation by 50 per cent (neurosciencenews.com). Globally, 50 – 60 per cent of the population has been infected with COVID-19, with 5 – 10 per cent, approximately 400 million, experiencing long COVID, a huge long-term societal cost.
The increased incidents in many countries of strokes, heart attacks and other sudden medical crises, often from blood clots, including in younger people, are being linked by reputable research as significant evidence that COVID-19 is a vascular disease – and not that the COVID-19 vaccine is the cause, as some anti-vaxxers believe. Instead, it is estimated that 63 per cent, or nearly 20 million, in total global deaths, from COVID-19, were averted during the first year of C19 vaccination ending December 2021 (The Lancet).
If Robert Kennedy Jr, perhaps the most famous antivaxxer, is confirmed as head of the US Health and Human Services Department (HHS), it is frankly terrifying to contemplate the ‘credibility’, global power and platform that that position will give: the turbo-boosting of the toxic combination of anti-establishment, antivax, pro-conspiracy and anti-real science perspective. It ‘validates and enshrines public mistrust of government health programmes’ (Dr Paul Offit, paediatrician, Director of Vaccine Education Center, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia). Kennedy said in 2024 “There’s no vaccine that is…safe and effective” and that he opposes mandatory school-entry vaccinations, as he believes ‘parents should have the right to choose’. He thinks that COVID-19 was racially genetically engineered, the result of a global conspiracy. He has repeatedly claimed that vaccines are linked to autism, part of another global conspiracy. He has long questioned vaccines’ efficacy in protecting against diseases — statements that have been consistently refuted by decades of overwhelming scientific evidence. He has argued that 5G towers lead to cancer and are designed to collect user data and control behaviour. He promoted unapproved medicines – eg Ivermectin – for COVID-19. He does not think HIV causes AIDS.
Executing RFK Jr’s antivax views as new US public health policy, with the influence that will have in Barbados, and globally, on public health, threatens to undo one of the greatest successes of modern medicine: childhood vaccinations and their eradication (smallpox) and near-eradication (polio) of diseases which used to kill millions, leaving even more to suffer. When we recall the massive 2019 measles epidemic in Samoa which killed more than 80, many babies and toddlers, due to parental antivax fears amplified personally by Kennedy, it is no surprise that a former US FDA Commissioner, Scott Gottlieb has said that Kennedy will ‘cost lives’, if he leads US HHS.
Antivaccine activism accelerated during the COVID-19 era and has spilled over to childhood immunisations. The US is a cautionary tale: 2022 – Poliovirus detected in NY State’s wastewater; 2023-24 -5x rise in pertussis; 2024 – 16 reported measles outbreaks; 2021-22 saw approx 200,000 needless deaths from refusing COVID-19 immunisations. (Professor Peter Hotez, paediatrician, advocate, global health, vaccinology).
Barbados, a small open society with a high degree of international travel by locals, so heavily dependent on international tourism, with an under-resourced public health system, is particularly vulnerable to the importation of measles and other contagious diseases. We have endured the annual flareup of COVID-19 during our busy winter tourism season; it is very unfortunate that our government has apparently ceased its COVID-19 vaccination programme. Many of us still wish to protect ourselves, particularly given our significant numbers and percentage of the elderly and those with NCDs. The public also knows little about the antiviral options available.
Public health officials need a targeted, sustained, persuasive and yes, aggressive, multimedia communication campaign, if the antivax messaging war is to be won. This must occur, backed by the power of the state, its vaccination surveillance and enforcement programmes, to ensure that parents cannot successfully decline to protect their children for non-medical reasons, especially as part of our school entry requirements. We must have a multipronged communication strategy to provide real scientific facts from reputable sources, to regain public trust in government authority figures and the medical community.
We pray it is not too late.
The post Protecting our children: The danger of the Anti-vax movement – Part 2 appeared first on Barbados Today.
