We Need a Balanced View of Vaccine Policy, Not Just Pro-Vaccine Zealotry

Written by James Lyons-Weiler and Diana Lutfi on December 8, 2023. Posted in Current News

A rational critique of “Vaccines in the Courts: A COVID-19-Induced Litigation Influx“. Product litigation has led to safer products. The 1986 Act has created judicial tyranny

Manufacturers, distributors, shops, hospitals, and medical providers are not able to evade liability for harms resulting from their products.

Pharmaceutical companies are also liable for harm from their drugs.

The legal process ultimately encourages these products to be safer – often with only a few lawsuits and some math demonstrating that the total cost would be too much if the products are not pulled from the market and made safer.

Why should this process not apply in the context of vaccines?

In the realm of public discourse, particularly concerning vaccine policy and litigation, it is crucial to approach the conversation with a balanced perspective that weighs the benefits of costs of alternative viewpoints.

A Health Affairs Forefront article, “Vaccines in the Courts: A COVID-19-Induced Litigation Influx,” presents us with an opportunity to examine the assumptions and representations that influence the understanding of issues in vaccine-related legislation.

It also allows us to consider the presumption of public health authority as an obvious necessity that is so essential that individual rights can – and as implied by the article authors, should be – tread upon with hardly a second thought.

In this article, we examine these issues, and indeed whether The National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (NVICP) and the Countermeasures Injury Compensation Program (CICP), both administered by the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), should exist at all.

Revisiting the Premise of Vaccine-Related Bills

The authors of the Health Affairs Forefront article assert that recent state legislature bills before the COVID-19 pandemic were designed to undermine public confidence in vaccines. This bold assertion warrants a critical examination.

Contrary to this claim, a closer look reveals that many of these bills were, in fact, aimed at preserving individual rights to make informed choices regarding vaccinations in response to bills aimed at stripping those rights away.

These legislative efforts sought to uphold and reinforce the freedom to accept or decline vaccines based on valid medical, religious, or philosophical reasons, rather than to impede access or erode public confidence.

I know this first-hand because in 2017-2019 I traveled to many states to testify on the balance of the science on vaccine safety to legislative bodies contemplating bills designed to strip away rights people granted themselves for protection of body, mind, and soul against the effects of vaccination.

The Language of Legislation and Public Perception

The language used to describe vaccine-related bills is of paramount importance. Labeling bills that protect the right to informed vaccine choice as “anti-vaccine” is a distorted misrepresentation that carries significant emotional weight and is an attempt to skew public perception.

The article title itself is misleading: “Vaccines in the Courts: A COVID-19-Induced Litigation Influx” should be “Vaccines in the Courts: A COVID-19-VACCINE Induced Litigation Influx”.

The article’s very first sentence also contains the falsehood:

“Every year, in the decades before the COVID-19 pandemic, tens of bills were introduced in states legislatures aimed at undermining public confidence in and access to vaccines…”

Their language misrepresents the intent of the bills.

The bills are not “aimed at” limiting access of others to get vaccines, nor is their aim to “undermine public confidence in vaccines.” The bills are, actually, aimed at ensuring the right of individuals to have free choice over what is injected into their bodies, specifying valid medical, religious, or philosophical reasons to disagree with government recommendations.

A bill protecting consumer rights to know about Toyota’s previous failed brake issues and choose what car to purchase (or to avoid cars altogether) would not ever be misrepresented as “undermining public confidence in automobiles.”

Bills passed to improve the safety of infant car seats would never have been represented as “anti-car seat”; they are, instead pro-child safety.

The first article they cite in support of their distortion does not note any intent on the part of the bill writers/supporters to “undermine public confidence and access to vaccines,” as the authors wrongfully claim.

Reassessing the Safety and Efficacy of Vaccines in General

The assumption that all CDC-recommended vaccines are sufficiently safe and effective to warrant mandates is far from universally accepted and represents a point of contention.

The recent experiences with COVID-19 jabs, which have faced severe challenges in terms of efficacy and safety, underscore the importance of maintaining a no-vaccine-mandate policy. It is reasonable to question whether other vaccines have been subject to similar overestimation of their benefits and safety.

Workplace mandates of the COVID-19 jabs fell apart due to clear evidence of no protection against transmission. The article in question also misrepresents facts of childhood vaccine efficacy and the concept of herd immunity, and thus these topics also requires scrutiny.

The history of vaccines, including those for COVID-19, pertussis, and influenza, has shown that the prevention of infection and transmission is not absolute. For instance, the chickenpox vaccine, while reducing the incidence of chickenpox, does not confer herd immunity, and has been associated with shingles in some cases.

Even with 100 percent vaccination, as the vaccine is a live-virus vaccine, and children who have received it can still develop shingles down the road — which would make them contagious for chicken pox.

While a study published in AAP may claim that the risk of shingles is lower in vaccinated children, there are some very troubling facts surrounding this finding:

(1) The lead author plus two others disclosed that they received funding from Merck, manufacturers of the chicken pox vaccine.

(2) There is no way to know whether the vaccine truly reduced the future risk of shingles because most people who get shingles are typically over 50, while the chickenpox vaccine was not introduced until 1995, making the first cohort of children who got the vaccine only 28 years old today.

(3) In some cases, there is documentation that chickenpox vaccination has caused shingles.

The pertussis vaccine is widely understood to be a “failed vaccine” because it merely masks symptoms, leading to asymptomatic transmission of the pertussis bacteria by the vaccinated. These nuances are critical to understanding the complex interplay between vaccination and public health outcomes.

Then there is Merck’s Measles, Mumps and Rubella vaccine (MMR and MMRV).

The evidence that the MMR has lost efficacy in preventing the transmission of the mumps became quite clear prior to 2020 as outbreaks were occurring in schools that were fulling vaccinated; recall in 2019 that the USS Fort McHenry was quarantined at sea for months due to a mumps outbreak among the fully vaccinated and up-to-date crew (See AHPR: MMR Vaccine Caused Viral Mumps Outbreak on U.S Navy Warship – Alliance for Human Research Protection (ahrp.org) and CNN: US warship quarantined at sea due to virus outbreak).

The second article the authors cite labels every bill aimed at protecting the right to choose which vaccines, when, how, and why as “anti-vaccine”, which is simply a dishonest presentation.

If someone wants to choose prescription medication for a headache, or acetaminophen or ibuprofen, or even nothing at all, they are not labeled as “anti-pill” or “anti-medication.” There are no valid reasons to apply the pejorative label “anti-vaccine” here; no law professor should deliberately choose emotionally charged language instead of sticking to simple facts.

The well-documented history of the failure of childhood vaccines to prevent infection and/or transmission of Covid19, pertussis, mumps and influenza refutes Reiss’s and Hughes’ claim that the viewpoint of vaccine policy critics would “undermine herd immunity”: vaccinating more people with failed vaccines will not provide herd immunity, and thus just as court ruling after court ruling has found for COVID-19 jabs: vaccine mandates are capricious and arbitrary.

The Integrity of Research

The integrity of vaccine research is another area of concern, especially when financial conflicts of interest are present. Studies funded by vaccine manufacturers, such as those related to all childhood vaccines and COVID-19 injections must be examined with a discerning eye, considering the great potential for bias.

The long-term effects of vaccines, including the risk of shingles post-vaccination, and the public health effects of misguided and failed endeavors like the COVID-19 jabs are now becoming apparent.

Vaccine zealots have grossly impaired the public’s perception of vaccine efficacy and long-term safety, using, exclusively, retrospective studies that are relatively easy to manipulate.

Given especially the unusual methodology in studies on COVID-19 injection safety and efficacy, the claims of safety and the prevention of cases, hospitalizations, and deaths have been soundly challenged: cases, adverse events, and hospitalizations were not counted until two weeks after the second injection, initially five weeks after the first jab, and then, later, eight weeks after the first jab.

Both I (in 2021) and Norman Fenton (in 2023) have published on this cheap trick.

The Authors’ Backgrounds and Clear Biases

The professional backgrounds of the authors of the original article—particularly their affiliations with vaccine manufacturers and policy strategy firms—raise glaring questions about potential biases.

It is essential for readers to be aware of these affiliations as they may influence the framing of vaccine policy and litigation issues.

The first author has been attacking individual rights for a long time, using ad hominem attacks, ridicule of parents of children with severe vaccine injuries, misrepresentation of intentions and facts, and distortions of logic to misrepresent intentions and meanings.

She even wrote a paper that proposed that are “benefits” of Regulatory Capture. (See: Dorit Rubinstein Reiss and the Benefits of Agency Capture: The Latest Vaccine Industry Advocate – AGE OF AUTISM).

Ms. Reiss seems to hold the singular belief that forebears who took the time to specifically place legislation in place to protect individuals from harm from vaccination with philosophical exemptions did not have any reason to do so.

The exemptions came through painful human experiences of people losing children and other loved ones to vaccines: families who have such experiences will never agree to vaccinate other members, no matter what the state or federal laws say, and to expect them to do so it inhumane.

The second author of the Health Affairs article was a former vice president of policy at Moderna, “guiding the company’s policy strategy during the COVID-19 pandemic. Previously, he was managing director at Avalere Health, where he founded and led the firm’s vaccine group.”

Note that Avalere Health is a healthcare business consulting firm; they do not themselves provide health care. Here is a statement on their website:

“Count on us to help you evaluate and manage risk, determine and optimize provider partnerships, expand into new business lines and markets, and prepare for future changes that will impact your business.”

The Legal Landscape and the Future of Public Health Authority

The Health Affairs Forefront article correctly noted that we have witnessed an uptick in vaccine-related litigation. It is indeed crucial to consider the trajectory these cases may take and their potential to reach the highest judicial authority in the United States: The Supreme Court.

The implications of such a development are profound, not only for the immediate cases at hand but also for the foundational principles of public health policy.

According to the authors, recent comments from a Supreme Court justice suggest a judicial appetite for reevaluating the scope of state vaccine mandates and of public health authority which has been debated for over a century.

This can only be good news because distortions of reality over public health issues do not replace the reality of public health issues.

Liability Enhances Product Safety

Litigation over harm has long been a driving force in improving commercial product safety.

It serves as a crucial check on corporations, ensuring they are held accountable for the safety and efficacy of their products.

This legal mechanism often leads to enhanced safety protocols, product recalls, and the development of safer goods for consumers.

The history of product liability cases is rich with examples where litigation has prompted significant improvements in consumer products.

See more here substack.com

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