TCA, vol. 75: Swine flu part 3
Carnac the Magnificent saw this one coming.
I’ve been absent for many weeks. To be honest, the constant barrage of bad news on the public health front has really gotten the best of me. More layoffs at the CDC, an expanding measles outbreak, whooping cough cases on the rise, vaccine nonsense in Florida…..not to mention the insane Tylenol/autism/circumcision thing. I just couldn’t for a while.
But I’m back. Resting is ok. Quitting is not. One of their strategies is to barrage us with so much that we feel as if the only thing to do is lay down and take it. But if you remember my sad story about the dogs and the electric cages, the answer is not to lay down and take it but to remember the things that you do have under your control and assert that control.
My stories are under my control.
Part 3 of the Pandemic that Never Happened.
To refresh your memory (part 1 and part 2 of the story can be found here)…. In 1976 there was an outbreak of flu at Fort Dix leading to the death of one healthy soldier. Because of the similarity to how the 1918 “Spanish” flu pandemic started, the US government decided to throw everything plus the kitchen sink at this virus. After some back and forthing with the insurance and pharmaceutical companies, it seemed as if the vaccine campaign was off. But in mid August, President Ford got on TV and laid the blame squarely on Congress. If they didn’t appropriate the correct funding and indemnify the vaccine manufacturers against lawsuits, it would be their fault if any American died of the swine flu.
And it worked.
On August 12th, Congress passed a bill and Ford signed it into law…. it had a goal of vaccinating 80+% of all Americans, it indemnified the vaccine companies and it removed any limits on how much profit the vaccine companies could make.
But there were problems on the manufacturing side.
2 million doses of flu vaccine were inadvertently made with the wrong strain and had to be discarded. Additionally, when testing the correct strain vaccine in children they found that the amount of antibody produced was sub-par for good immunity. The vaccine wasn’t working as well as they hoped it would. Manufacturers created a new vaccine with a new formulation called X53A, but this one was never tested in large trials in humans…. and time was running out.
That vaccine, the untested one, was the one that was eventually released for American innoculations in October.
“It is the easiest thing in the world for a man to look as if he had a great secret in him.” (Herman Melville, Moby Dick)
When people began getting vaccinated on October 1, they received a consent form with details about the vaccine. The form stated that the vaccine had been field tested, but that was not true since it was only the previous version of the vaccine that had actually been tested…. not X53A. Additionally, the consent form stated that there might be side effects of the vaccine, but it did NOT list one known side effect of influenza vaccination: Guillian-Barre Syndrome (GBS). This is a type of auto-immune disorder that affects the nerves and causes paralysis.
When CDC director David Sencer was interview by Mike Wallace on 60 minutes, these two issues were addressed.
Wallace: Was X53A ever field tested?
Sencer: Uh, I… I can’t say… I would have to…
Wallace: It wasn’t!
Sencer: Wah…. Well, I don’t know.
Wallace: Well, I would think that you’re in charge of the program….
Sencer: Well, I would have to check the records, I haven’t looked at this in some time.
Later in interview….
Wallace: Did anyone ever come to you and say…. there’s the possibility of neurological damage if you get into a mass immunization program?
Sencer: No.
Wallace: No one ever did?
Sencer: No.
Cut to Mike Wallace interviewing Dr. Michael Hartwick, director of the surveillance team for the CDC Swine Flu Vaccine Program.
Wallace: Did you know ahead of time that there had been case reports of neurological disorders…apparantly associated with the injection of the influenza vaccine?
Hartwick: Absolutely.
Wallace: So you told your superiors, the men in charge of the swine flu vaccination program, of the possibility of neurological disorders?
Hartwick: Absolutely.
Wallace: What would you say if I told you your superiors say that you never told them about the possiblity of neurological complications?
Hartwick: That’s nonsense. I can’t believe that they would say that they did not know that there were neurological illnesses associated with influenza vaccination. That simply is not true. We did know that.
To watch the interview yourself, see the video below. Minutes 7:06 to 9:15.
To make matters worse, shortly after the vaccination program began, 3 elderly recipients died shortly after getting vaccinated. It was discovered eventually that the deaths were due to heart attacks unrelated to vaccination but it got people spooked. An unofficial “body count” began as the press publicized any case of a person dying soon after receiving vaccination. By October 22, the body count was up to 41.
I’ll do another post about this sometime in the future. It is incredibly misleading to report the deaths of people receiving a vaccine as related to the vaccine unless it has been proven medically. When you are vaccinating large groups of people, especially if that group contains elderly or medically fragile people, deaths are often seen. You have to compare the deaths in the vaccinated group to the typical rate of death that you would normally see in this elderly/fragile population in order to see if it was caused by the vaccine or is just the normal mortality rate in this group.
Mary Tyler Moore enters the chat.
Public trust of this vaccine was low. Even though 93% of Americans had heard of the Swine Flu, only 53% planned on getting vaccinated. Way short of the White House goal of 80%.
So the CDC began an ad campaign, producing TV and print commercials urging Americans to get vaccinated. One of those ads attempted to allay people’s fears by listing a group of celebrities that had received the vaccine. The idea being if these famous people thought it was safe, so should you.
In the same interview with Sencer…
Wallace: (reading off of a memo with ad script) “The Swine Flu vaccine has been taken by many important persons…. examples: President Ford, Henry Kissinger, Elton John, Muhammed Ali, Mary Tyler Moore, Rudolf Nureyev, Walter Cronkite, Ralph Nader, Edward Kennedy, etc etc”. True?
Sencer: I’m not familar with that particular piece of paper, but I do know that of that particular group President Ford did take the vaccination.
We do know that Ford got vaccinated, because he did it on camera (and there was no AI back then).
Mary Tyler Moore? Never. She was adamant that she did not want the vaccine and never got it. She was worried about side effects and refused it, even though her doctor recommended it (you can see this in the 60 minutes interview at 11:04).
By November, the tide was turning. Sabin published an article in the NYT called “Washington and the Flu” which was critical of the handling of the swine flu vaccination campaign. He believed that the alarm in March was totally justifiable, but considering there was no outbreak of swine flu, that they should have stockpiled the vaccine instead of releasing it and certainly should not have used “scare tactics” in the ad campaigns.
In fact, outside of the first few inital cases at Fort Dix, only a handful of swine flu cases were ever discovered over the course of the next year. They were mostly among farmers or those who had access to pigs and no human-to-human transmission was ever identified in those cases.
“There is no folly of the beast of the earth which is not infinitely outdone by the madness of man.” (Herman Melville, Moby Dick).
In November and December, another tragedy began to emerge. Cases of the rare auto-immune disorder called Guillain-Barre Sydnrome began to appear in vaccinated individuals. GBS is a type of paralysis that is sometimes caused by viral infections and sometimes by vaccinations. It can be fatal, but most cases resolve partially or completely on their own over time.
It had been known before the vaccination campaign in ‘76 that flu vaccination could cause GBS, but that was never disclosed in the consent form for the Swine Flu vaccine. Also, because field tests had not been performed on X53A, it was unknown at the time if that particular type of flu vaccine cause more or less GBS than other types of flu vaccines.
But more and more cases of GBS began to emerge and because of that, the Swine Flu vaccine campaign was suspended in December with 40 million Americans (or 1/3 of the population) having been vaccinated. It was discovered that hundreds of people had GBS caused by their swine flu vaccine, and that this particular vaccine caused more GBS than a typical flu vaccine. The ‘76 vaccine caused GBS in about 1/100,000 doses where a typical flu vaccine causes GBS in 1/1,000,000 doses.
Days after the close of the swine flu vaccination program, the NYT published an opinion piece declaring that “Misunderstandings and misconceptions... have marked Government ... during the last eight years,” and that the swine flu “debacle” was a direct result of “political expediency” and “the self interest of government health bureaucracy”.
And I agree.
I absolutely believe in the science behind vaccine development, testing and surveillance. Despite this story, or perhaps even BECAUSE of this story, I firmly believe that vaccines can be effective and safe when the proper science is performed and followed. This story is an example of what happens when science is NOT followed, when it is rushed or hushed because of a political agenda. When politicians are allowed to control the process based on their own agendas, disasters can happen.
Science is sound. People are not.
By understanding stories like these, we can see that science should be allowed to unfold according to the expertise of scientists, not by the schedules or desires of those in charge. And that scientists should be listened to (thanks Dr. Hartwick!) when they report on their work.
For those keeping score… in 1976:
Number of swine flu deaths = 1
Number of swine flu hospitalizations = 13.
Number of cases of GBS in those vaccinated= 532
Stay happy, healthy, vaccinated (Really!) and informed,
Jessica at TCA