<
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-04-27/vaccine-nation-public-health-gains-warning-covid-pandemic/105103190>
'Professor Raina MacIntyre was waiting quietly in the emergency department of a
busy hospital last year when she overheard a conversation she'll never forget.
The patient in the cubicle next to hers had been scratched and bitten by his
cat but was flatly refusing the tetanus booster his doctor was recommending.
Couldn't he just have some antibiotics and be on his way? The doctor told him
that wasn't necessary and asked why he didn't want a tetanus shot. "I know 30
people who dropped dead. I don't want it. I'm not having it," he said. "Thirty
people I know died after getting COVID vaccines."
Instead of correcting him — instead of explaining that there had been 14 deaths
from COVID vaccines in Australia, all before 2022, and 13 of them after the
AstraZeneca shot which had since been withdrawn — the doctor gave the man the
antibiotics he was demanding, likely only reaffirming his beliefs.
"Privately, many doctors and health leaders bemoan falling vaccination rates
and stay silent while anti-vaxxers claim the stage, free to make whatever
outlandish … claims they wish," MacIntyre writes in her new book,
Vaccine
Nation: Science, reason and the threat to 200 years of progress. "At the same
time, many fail to provide the role modelling needed for change, stricken by
the same fear as politicians" who avoid speaking about COVID because it is
"triggering" for so many people.
That emergency department exchange epitomises the public health challenge the
world is now facing, and which MacIntyre, who researches infectious diseases,
bioterrorism and vaccines as head of the biosecurity program at the Kirby
Institute, examines in
Vaccine Nation. In it, she steps through the history
of vaccines and the transformative public health benefits they've delivered,
the rigorous safety and efficacy trials they undergo, the dangerous ways
they've failed on rare occasions, and how mRNA technology is leading to
breakthroughs not just in the fight against infectious diseases but potentially
cancer, too.
But
Vaccine Nation is also a warning about the acceleration of the
anti-vaccination movement during the pandemic and worrying declines in
vaccination rates around the world, which MacIntyre links to a broader backlash
against science and medicine, including from within the medical profession
itself. It is a precarious situation given the looming threat of a bird flu
pandemic — one experts fear could be deadlier than SARS-CoV-2 — though it's
already a live and urgent issue, particularly in the US, where a measles
outbreak in Texas has infected at least 646 people (most of them unvaccinated)
and killed two children.'
Via Violet Blue’s
Threat Model - Covid: May 1, 2025
https://www.patreon.com/posts/covid-may-1-2025-127880470
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
