They say that a gaffe is when a politician accidentally tells the truth.
If that’s the case then anti-vax charlatan Dr. Bob Sears has committed the ultimate anti-vax gaffe. He unwittingly acknowledged that unvaccinated children are exquisitely vulnerable to vaccine preventable diseases.
Join me in Mission Viejo tomorrow night for a town hall meeting on SB 277. There will be several speakers. I will discuss navigating and circumnavigating the current language of the bill and what it means for parents and kids now and in the future. 7 to 9 pm…
Note: no recently-vaccinated kids allowed. We wish to take precautions against viral shedding. (my emphasis)
What does Dr. Sears mean by vaccine shedding? He’s apparently referring to a theory, popular among anti-vax advocates, that unvaccinated children can acquire vaccine preventable disease from vaccinated children. How? According to the “theory,” the virus in live attenuated vaccines can survive to infect an unvaccinated child who is exposed to it.
Inadvertently, Dr. Sears has acknowledged not merely that vaccine preventable disease pose a deadly threat to unvaccinated children, but that unvaccinated children are especially sensitive to that threat.
We fight off disease by making antibodies to the bacteria or virus that causes the disease. We’re not born with those antibodies, though. We make them in response to a threat. For example, we are not born with antibodies to the chickenpox (varicella) virus. When exposed to the varicella virus, though, we can learn to make antibodies to it. It takes time, but gradually we can produce enough antibodies to fend off the disease.
Unfortunately, we don’t always get the time we need. We can make antibodies to smallpox, for example, but many individuals are overwhelmed and killed by the virus long before they could make enough antibodies to fend it off. Imagine, though, if you could learn to make the protective antibodies without actually getting sick. That’s the theory behind vaccines.
In order to make antibodies to a virus (or bacterium) the body needs to “see” the virus. In other words, it needs to have direct exposure to the virus, but that virus doesn’t have to be functional, and it doesn’t even have to be whole. A virus can be inactivated (live attenuated) or killed and still produce an immune response. It can also be broken down into its constituent parts and the parts can produce an immune response. Any future exposure to the live virus (though contact with others who have the disease) will be met with rapid and massive production of antibody, preventing the individual from getting sick at all. A vaccine is merely an inactivated or dead form of the virus, letting you learn to make antibody without getting sick in the process.
How many children have you known that have acquired a vaccine preventable disease through shedding from a vaccinated child?
Zero, right?
To the extent that vaccine shedding of live attenuated virus poses any threat, it threatens children who are immuno-compromised. Immune competent children make antibodies and don’t get the disease at all. That’s the whole point of the vaccine.
So when Dr. Sears bans recently vaccinated children from his meetings (as if their parents would have any interest in listening to his nonsense), it’s because he believes that not only do live viruses pose a deadly threat to unvaccinated children, but even inactivated viruses pose a threat to them. They aren’t protected by breastfeeding, or healthy eating, or vitamins and supplements. The immune systems of unvaccinated children can’t even fight off inactivated viruses, let alone fully functioning viruses.
I commend Dr. Sears for taking steps to protect his followers. Their children aren’t merely vulnerable to deadly vaccine preventable diseases, he believes they are MORE vulnerable than average children.
But if Dr. Sears were honest with the parents who follow him, he would do more than protect them from inactivated viruses; he would protect them from fully functioning viruses.
How?
By vaccinating them of course.
