The Myth of Pertussis Herd Immunity and the Corrupt Australian Government

Image Credit RealFarmacy

"Parents who do not vaccinate their children will lose welfare payments of up to $2100 per child under a federal government policy set to be announced before the [2015] May budget."

Australian parents who don’t vaccinate with the required schedule now lose up to $15,000 a year under the recent No Jab No Pay laws enforced in 2016. That’s the country I live in, and those are the payments my three children aren't allowed to benefit from. A further No Jab No PLAY bill has passed in many states too, soon to hit mine as well, banning unvaccinated children from daycares (with a strong opposition to allowing no-vax daycares to exist).

Since this bill has been in place, I’ve overwhelmingly seen the media report on it as a public health measure – if you won’t protect the public, you don’t get to benefit from public money (why they're handing out such a large amount of other people's tax money to middle class families who don't need (or who wouldn't need it if they could just pay less tax to begin with it is another issue. All about redistribution and control).

I don't think the federal government was that pure in their motives with the campaign, otherwise this would have targeted non-vaccinators across the whole of Australia, not just the poorer pockets. The above article said “the change has been discussed as a future budget measure” and the measures “could save more than $50 million a year”. It did actually raise rates for those too lazy to vaccinate before and it also raised rates for those too poor to argue (which violates the Australian Immunisation Handbook's right to informed consent (section 2.1.3). It states free and informed consent must be given “voluntarily in the absence of undue pressure, coercion and manipulation”). So now the vast majority of anti-vaxxers in Australia are well-educated, rich parents.

What was interesting is that the No Jab No Pay idea didn’t come from the government. It came from the Murdoch media. They coined the No Jab No Pay idea. What’s interesting about that is that James Murdoch was sitting on the board of GlaxoSmithKline, a major producer of DTaP and many other vaccines. He was there to "review…external issues that might have the potential for serious impact upon the group's business and reputation" (in fact within a fortnight of his appointment, Murdoch owned company, News International, had published at least 5 articles attacking MMR researcher Andrew Wakefield’s integrity).

A horrible whooping cough death in a 4 week old baby boy called Riley in 2015 sparked the (already drafted) No Jab No Pay bill introduction. This was the perfect heated opportunity: the government waited for the rage against non-vaxxers to rise to proportions of hate higher even than that against Muslims at the time of a recent terror attack (hey at least the Muslims got an “I’ll ride with you” hashtag from the lefties – no one will ride with unvaccinated ferals), then they stepped in quickly like a superhero with their freedom impinging plans, winning the support of righteously indignant pro vaxxers everywhere to 'get tough on vaccination laws', rather than in a cooler political climate when perhaps more people may have questioned the removal of a right to accept or refuse medical procedures.

The government is essentially now saying the government decides what health care individuals receive rather than the individuals themselves. We're seeing this in the hospital system too - you can feed and treat your children for illnesses any way you like at home, but once you're at hospital, you give up all rights. It's their way or state child removal. I shudder to think what other decisions they’ll have the right to make for me in the future. Hopefully they will never be able to legally imprison and murder my sick child like a hospital was granted the right to do in the UK last week.

When vaccines are mentioned, no matter what dangers are being discussed, the baby herd immunity card trumps all. No one is going to argue against the highly emotional subject of a dead baby, are they (unless that baby died from a vaccine-injury, we don't acknowledge that, so something that 'didn't happen' can't get too emotional, can it?). But you must get vaccines (and boosters every 5 years) to provide herd immunity to babies too young to get the vaccine or they die. The debate is won.

But the whooping cough vaccine can’t provide herd immunity. The CDC says in their Pertussis FAQs that unvaccinated children are not the driving force in epidemics and that since “vaccine protection decreases over time, and acellular pertussis vaccines may not prevent colonization (carrying the bacteria in your body without getting sick) or spread of the bacteria, we can't rely on herd immunity to protect people from pertussis." (emphasis added). Baby Riley’s death is being made a mockery of – in my opinion, using a death to spread misinformation is insulting and not at all respectful to the baby’s lasting memory.

Image credit NRVS

It is interesting that before Baby Riley, the government already knew pertussis couldn't be controlled by the vaccine. In 2012, a Canadian study suggested there was little to no benefit of cacooning (where everyone around the baby gets vaccinated to protect the baby). Australia pulled their cacooning programs in response, so parents and extended family were no longer eligible to get free pertussis vaccines.

(Although the Australian government was happy to let the ‘herd immunity’ myth continue. No statements were issued to warn people that cacooning didn’t work (they just quietly updated pregnancy vaccine recommendations in the next few years), and vaccination for older children and adults remains as a secondary suggestion to protect babies on the official NSW Health website to this day. Instead of correcting the herd immunity myth and dampening the furor against anti-vaxxers, the government happily lets anti-vaxxers take the full brunt of mob hate and blame.)

After the cacooning failure discovery, it was found many people who had long lasting coughs actually had pertussis. In 2012 a fifth of coughs in UK school children lasting over 2 weeks were whooping cough, and most were vaccinated. Waning protection of the vaccine was blamed – they were finding it only lasted 1-5 years for many children (and it didn’t work in about 1-2 in 10 to begin with).

Whooping cough was rising, particularly in highly vaccinated areas. It was on the decline from the 1930s (bear with me for a little history). The whole cell DPT vaccine was introduced in 1953 and pertussis continued to decline, quicker than before as DPT worked quite well, but began to very slowly rise again towards the 1980s.

Image source CDC (Australia's incidence is much higher)

The DTP vaccine may also have contributed to the breakdown of long term immunity. Natural immunity is good for over 30 years, and it is quite possible, according to mathematical models in this study, that re-exposure to the disease boosts that immunity a further 30-40 years for protection of the elderly. It might explain the original success of the DTP vaccine as pertussis continued to decline for 30 years - the vaccine reduced cases in children both in symptoms and transmission and the other half of the population had natural immunity, so weren’t spreading it, until those with natural immunity began to die out or weren't getting immunity boosted plus vaccine induced immunity waned, and pertussis slowly began to increase again.

(I think we see this a lot with vaccines (ones that work, not DTaP) - an original sharp decline in incidence, riding on the back of the majority of the population's natural superior immunity, but once that's gone, incidence starts to rise slowly. It's okay though, the vaccines are never blamed, just the unvaccinated. And everyone else just has to get way more boosters than originally thought. Easy fix.)

Anyway DPT was a particularly dangerous vaccine compared to the others, responsible for many deaths and lots of brain damage, and was replaced with the acellular version, DTaP, in many countries in the 1990s, where pertussis began to rise more noticeably.

Following outbreaks and the failure of cacooning strategies, the FDA (U.S version of Australia’s TGA) conducted a study in 2014 to test pertussis transmission with baboons (baboons have similar DNA to human and react very similarly to pertussis both in antibody production and symptoms), which showed the pertussis vaccine did not in fact prevent transmission, only symptoms. The FDA concluded in a press release “that although individuals immunized with an acellular pertussis vaccine may be protected from disease, they may still become infected with the bacteria without always getting sick and are able to spread infection to others, including young infants who are susceptible to pertussis disease.”

This explained the rise in whooping cough cases, particularly in highly vaccinated areas, and the scientific community agreed that the whooping cough resurgence was thanks to the vaccinated not knowing they were asymptomatic carriers of the illness.

This all should have been enough to dispel any myths about the need to get vaccinated against pertussis for herd immunity, and yet it remains one of the most common media arguments to support vaccination. Pertussis is probably the disease parents are most scared of their newborn catching – as it is severe and one of the most common vaccine-preventable diseases around. The big-pharma-influenced media/social media continues to play on parents’ fears and perpetuate myths about herd immunity, inspiring thousands of parents and close friends and family to get unnecessary Tdap boosters (which only protects 3-4 out of 10 adults after 5 years anyway) to protect newborns.

Unfortunately, that's not even the worst of the vaccine's problems. There is also concern that the mass use of pertussis vaccines has already led to vaccine-resistant strains that are evolving more rapidly.

The vaccine doesn't just 'not affect' circulation, it INCREASES circulation.

The Conversation reported that the prolonged whooping cough epidemic in Australia that began during 2008 has been mostly caused by a new genotype of B. pertussis. These new strains are deficient in pertactin, a component of the pertussis bacteria used in the DTaP vaccine. The strain was responsible for 31% of cases from 1998 - 2008, but accounted for 84% from 2008 - 2012 - a nearly three-fold increase.

This 2012 Australian finding echoes findings in the U.S. The CDC says “the earliest pertactin-deficient mutant was seen in 1994; the next mutants were seen in 2010. In 2012, 85% of isolates were pertactin-deficient and in 2014, 100% have lacked the protein.” So the vaccine actually did just about eradicate a strain of bacteria in some countries, but it was by making it easier for new strains to take over.

A 2014 study cited by the CDC found the likelihood of having pertussis caused by pertactin-deficient pertussis strains compared to pertactin-positive pertussis (the previously dominant strains) is 3-4 times higher in vaccinated people, (3.2 times higher in partially vaccinated, 3.7 times higher in fully vaccinated) suggesting the vaccine alters the immune response to give this strain a selective advantage within vaccinated people. This was further backed up by a 2014 mouse study that demonstrated the new strains multiplied better in vaccinated mice.

Another problem to add to the existing mountain is the fact that there's another Bordetella organism, parapertussis, that can also cause whooping cough. A study in mice found that vaccinated mice exposed to both pertussis and parapertussis, while they had significantly lower pertussis lung colonies than unvaccinated, had a 40-fold increase of parapertussis colonisation compared to the unvaccinated mice. Basically, getting the vaccine may prime your body to fight off this type of bacteria more slowly than unvaccinated people. Parapertussis shows up in about 40% of tested whooping cough cases (by itself or with pertussis). There is currently no vaccine for parapertussis, but on the plus side, it is less severe than pertussis if found on its own. The selective advantage in vaccinated people for parapertussis and pertactin-deficient strains of b. pertussis has caused quite the increase in overall pertussis cases.

The CDC is currently conducting studies to determine whether pertactin deficiency is one of the factors contributing to the increase in the number of reported pertussis cases. But how much more information do they need?

SO... why is the vaccine even recommended? Well... for personal protection. Generally, the vaccine reduces symptoms. It is about 80-90% effective for a year in children (70% after 5 years, or 30-40% after 5 years in adults), so 4 or more out of 5 children will see some sort of reduced illness – either no symptoms, or a minor cold/cough (although any of those means you can still harbour BACTERIA and spread whooping cough, you just won’t show the symptoms.). The pertussis vaccine also still protects against symptoms of pertactin deficient strains, it just helps them colonise more easily.

So, if you are someone who denies vaccines are causing more reactions than are reported, and are confident they aren't very risky (I'm not convinced, but more on that another time), then you can get a vaccine that's 60-85% effective in preventing symptoms, to make you 4x more likely to get sick or harbour the pertussis bacteria and spread it. This risk/benefit ratio may or may not suit you at this time. For my family, we will follow a high dose Vit C protocol to reduce the severity of pertussis instead of getting vaccinated.

However, if you mainly vaccinate for other people's protection (herd immunity), then to reduce the spread of pertussis, you might actually need to DENY the vaccine (unless you are a pregnant mother, in this case, injecting a vaccine that contains toxins and heavy metals that can pass through your placenta to your baby WILL actually reduce your baby's risk of pertussis death as a newborn. Crazy, huh. But there is no knowing the long term effects this pre-natal cocktail might have on your child in the future - I'd love to provide a link here but there are no long term studies to link to). Protecting yourself and then possibly walking around for 6 weeks spreading pertussis unknowingly is probably more dangerous.

It is telling that behind the new pushes for vaccine mandates and pressures in Australia is a prime minister whose wife sits as chairperson on Prima Biomed - a biotech company that is working closely with pharmaceutical giants GlaxoKlineSmith and Novartis and a Chinese biotech company, Eddingpharm, to develop various vaccines and other biological products, and that the couple were the company's third largest shareholders before Malcolm Turnbull clawed his way into the prime minister's position.

It is telling that a bordering-on-totalitarian public health policy was suggested by a media company invested heavily in the pharmaceutical company that produced the product needed to carry out said public health policy.

It is telling that it was then brought in by a government (who by now knew the role of the pertussis vaccine in the rise of whooping cough) on the back of a death that higher rates of vaccination would not have prevented - in fact they have likely raised the risk for Australian babies.

But it just goes to show, it's not really about protecting the herd.

Keep questioning 😉