Bait on a Plate

Many will have seen and heard the verbal antics of bioevangelist Dr Lance O’Sullivan, along with the media salivating on his bone, followed by Toby Manhire’s rant called “Dangerous tripe of the anti-vaxxers”.

Bioevangelists believe that medical science has an exclusive mortgage on answers to public health issues. They go about proselytizing all and sundry to their causes… and persecuting anyone who dares even question their beliefs.




"Either you are with us, or you are a terrorist!” is their new mantra.'

What a shame, that apart from one TVNZ journalist who watched the film, the rest sat back and repeated the words of a man who refused to watch the movie, saying that VAXXED is all about Andrew Wakefield, when it’s nothing of the sort. Some could argue that there would have been less wind in the media rhetoric if Del Bigtree had directed the film himself. After all, he was once a sought-after, talented “reputable” medical journalist. Except that most journalists watched Del looking at the science and asking questions, and saw him get dropped into mainstream oblivion along with his golden-boy reputation. That is enough to make journalists think, “yeah, well if I say there is something to this, I could lose my job as well.” It takes a really tough journalist to break a “Watergate”.

So exactly what is journalistic honesty? In 1967 this is what honour meant:



Obviously they threw that code of ethics into the waste paper basket.

Even worse, it seems their version of research is to take short cuts, or indulge in mind-numbing parrotage.

On 26th May 2017, Checkpoint ran an item, which was very pro-vaccine. In an attempt to sound like they had done their research, Checkpoint  downloaded one document from ESRand stated that over 1,700 cases of vaccine-preventable diseases had been notified in 2016, a third of which were under 19 years of age.

Radio NZ obviously wasn’t thinking carefully, because they didn’t notice that this excel document doesn’t include Influenza, which is okay, because that’s a crap vaccine and only 27% of the population even bothered with it last year.

If it had included all the influenza-like infections they could have blown the data up ever so much bigger. But I notice since ESR has been doing the SHIVERS influenza project they have stopped making their atrocious, lying statements about tens of thousands of influenza cases and 400 deaths per year—because their own research has shown that the vast majority of what they once called “influenza” wasn’t influenza at all.

That is why they have to rely on individual stories of heart-wrenching tragedy to motivate people to go and get a flu shot. Fortunately most people are too smart to take the bait off the plate.

Plainly Radio NZ didn’t think this through at all. Perhaps they were short of time. Paid-by-the-minute, you know. And what does it matter? 1,700 sounds BADDDDD, and they know that most people will think that the 1,700 cases just means, “a vaccine would have prevented all of those diseases!”

To analyse this data correctly, we need the raw data, and the analysis of who got the disease and whether they were vaccinated. ESR has some data on that, but it’s pretty much bare bones, because ESR only uses the data that is put into its EPISURV database.

For whatever lunatic reason, they don’t use the National Immunisation Register, where ALL vaccines are logged in under a person’s name. Seems to me there is no point in having the NIR if you never use it to check vaccine efficacy. Maybe that is deliberate.

So our mission-almost-impossible today is to compare the raw data, with the under 19’s vaccination status. Downloading the same excel as Radio NZ did , we see that there are indeed a total of 1,875 TOTAL cases of vaccine-preventable diseases in all ages, and 710 cases under 19.

Now, we have a slight problem because in order to work OUT which cases are vaccinated and which are not, we have to consult the 2016 ANNUAL report. And so far, there is NO 2016 annual report.

BUT we can do an analysis on 2016 Invasive Pneumococcal Disease (IPD), because their data is up-to-date and reported separately. Lance made much of a seriously sick baby in his arms flown to Starship, who could have had meningococcal disease, but he didn’t say what sickness the child had. Since Northland down to Counties Manukau is indeed the capital city of both IPD and meningococcal disease, it is instructive to look a bit closer at IPD for 2016.

What we have to do is download the four quarterly reports of 2016 for Invasive Pneumococcal disease = IPD.

So what we are looking at is vaccine impact on the age groups listed as eligible for invasive pneumococcal disease childhood vaccines from 2008, as well as vaccine impact on the disease itself. Is it reducing the disease? That includes the 0 – 10 year old children, and their rate of IPD is still very high compared to the children “not eligible”.

January to March

61 cases total. They plainly have some data confusion going on, because they had changed from Synflorix (PCV-10) to Prevenar 13, so their comparative ability is a bit stymied and they don’t actually talk about vaccination status at all.

As to the influence of any vaccine, they just say that IPD caused by the strains of pneumococci represented in the vaccine PCV-10, went DOWN by 19.1%. A sparse report.

April to June

121 cases total.

The number of IPD cases attributed to PCV-10 decreased 15.4% Again, no vaccination data given. A sparse report.

July to September

179 cases total. And this time, data is slightly more complete.

On page 3 it says that IPD due to PCV-13 was DOWN 10.1% (217 – 195 – down 22), but IPD cases due to non PCV-13- targeted strains went UP 21.8%. (214 – 264 up 50 ) Down 22 and up 50. Does that sound good to you?

For the first time there is vaccination data for 16 cases eligible for vaccination. No age appropriate data is given, but ALL SIXTEEN CHILDREN were vaccinated. Six cases were non PCV-13- targeted strains.

October to December

116 cases total.

PCV-13-targeted strains showed a 12.5% decrease, but non-vax IPD strains showed a 23.4% increase. More serotype replacement . . .

Seems to me, the new swings are worse than the old roundabouts.

Twelve were eligible to be vaccinated. Again, no month-appropriate data, but 10/12 were vaccinated, with 6 cases due to non PCV-13 strains.

So there is your IPD vaccine-eligible data extracted from the 2016 Excel sheet, matched with the quarterly reports.

475 cases of IPD and a total of 28 cases eligible for vaccination, and 26 of them were vaccinated.

But I hear you say, there would have been more if the children weren’t vaccinated. The trouble with that statement is that that isn’t obvious from the decline graphs included. The rate per 100,000 is still vastly higher than the older non-vaccinated age groups. Yes there is a slight decline on the graph, but look at the 2015 annual report and you will see similar decline graphs over the same time period, for infections which there are no vaccines against. So according to ESR, of the 28 vaccine-eligible children they listed, only 2 were not vaccinated. You have to ask yourself why, of the total 475 cases, the other 449 “not-eligible-for-vaccine” were not worthy of a campaign to get adults to take the vaccine, since these vaccines are so good?

It’s best not to talk about the fact that all the Cochrane reviews and this recent article (Htar 2017) simply confirm that the Pneumococcal vaccines for adults, are a whistle in the wind and akin to taking your chances with witchcraft.

However, if you want to do a really valid comparison of the OTHER vaccine-preventable diseases in under-19’s mentioned on TVNZ checkpoint, you would have to take the 2015 excel spread sheet for notifiable diseases and compare them with the 2015 Annual report. 

We can leave out the IPD comparison, since we have an analysis for 2016 already. So without IPD, we print out the 2015 Excel sheet and see a total of 1,577 supposedly vaccine-preventable diseases, and 616 cases in under 19’s.

Opening up the Annual report, alongside the excel sheet, let’s start with:

Diphtheria: There were two cases in under 19-year-olds. They were newly-landed Pakistani refugees with no listed vaccination status. (There were a total of 42 isolates, 5 toxigenic—no discussion of vaccination status at all in the remaining cases either, which is pretty slack. So lets be generous and add them to a running total.

Total = 2.

Haemophilus influenza B. 3 cases, European, 2 unvaccinated confirmed cases from a non-vaccinating community and the other was a non-confirmed case. All survived with no complications.

Total = 5

Hepatitis A. 12 cases in under 19-year-olds. Even though there is no vaccine in the schedule, lets count them in just to be generous. After all, technically they ARE preventable with an elective vaccine.

Total = 17.

Hepatitis B. There were 2 cases, one under 1, and one 15 – 19. No details are given of their vaccination status, or outcome. If they had died we would have never heard the end of it.

Total = 19

Measles. 6 cases under 19, 5 cases were eligible for vaccination but were not vaccinated. No complications or deaths mentioned.

Total = 25.

Mumps: 8 cases under 19, and of them, 6 were vaccinated. Great vaccine. Let’s add them in.

Total = 33

Pertussis. 550 cases under 19 yrs. As anyone who has read the literature will know, the vast majority of pertussis is in the vaccinated, because the vaccine does NOT and never HAS given good protection against whooping cough, AND the current vaccine ensures that the vaccinated carry and spread the disease. On page 45 is their analysis of the vaccination status from Episurv. (Not the NIR) I’m only going to analyse the cases up to 11 year old’s data, because anyone over 11 was lumped in with the one-hundred-and-one year-olds.

29 cases happened before the first vaccination at 6 weeks.

Of the 19 cases in the 3-4 month olds, 15 were fully or appropriately vaccinated, 4 unvaccinated.

Of the 126 cases from 5 months to 3 years, 5 were partially vaccinated and 83 fully vaccinated, with 32 unvaccinated.

Of the 215 cases in 4 – 10 years, 123 were appropriately vaccinated, 10 partially and 43 not vaccinated.

There were no deaths or complications discussed.

Now if we were to nitpick, we would have to remove the 221 fully vaccinated under 11 year olds, out of the 360 under 11 yr old children who still got whooping cough don’t you think? But I won’t. Let’s be generous and add them all in. Let’s ignore the fact that, pertussis and mumps vaccines don’t work beyond a few years. The flu shot is a far worse bet than even mumps or pertussis. All the mumps outbreaks in USA are in fully-vaccinated people in schools and universities… and it’s the unvaccinated who are locked out of school. Droll, don’t you think?

Running Total 393 Moving on from the stupid to the ludicrous, lets include Tuberculosis, since Lance O’Sullivan did a big crow job about how wonderful that vaccine was, when we don’t even use it in this country any more.

Tuberculosis. There were a total of 297 cases of all ages. (31 cases under 19) They were mostly from overseas and of the total cases, 160 provided vaccine records showing BCG. Okay, so those of us who have read the medical literature, which shows that the BCG vaccine doesn’t work, know that is why BCG was stopped in New Zealand. But let’s just pretend that BCG is SUPPOSED to work. Are you shocked at the rate of failure? 160 people who came here with documented BCG vaccines landed up being treated for TB. Nice.

Of the 31 cases under 19, the 6 under five years of age were not vaccinated. Presumably that means that the 25 over 5 were vaccinated. Shall we be nice and say that all 31 cases were “preventable”?

Total = 424 under 19-year-olds with supposed “vaccine-preventable diseases”—many of whom were vaccinated.

Now, just out of interest, I checked meningococcal invasive disease. There were a total of 75 cases with four deaths. 61 were laboratory confirmed and of those, 41 were Meningococcal type B. The other cases were scattered through other types. There were 45 cases under 19. Surprise, surprise and yes, topping the list was Lance O’Sullivan’s stomping ground = 8 cases.

So why did I not hear Lance O’Sullivan whine about the MenZB vaccine having been dropped from the schedule, all those years ago? Oh right. I forgot. It was stopped because the antibodies only lasted about 6 months and basically the vaccine was a bag of hot air. But we aren’t supposed to remember that.

Now have another look at that excel sheet and the 2015 Annual report and look at what New Zealanders are REALLY getting sick and dying from.

It’s pretty self-evident don’t you think? It sure isn’t “vaccine-preventable” diseases. We do have a major health crisis in this country, 99.9% of which is NOT caused by the 424 so-called vaccine-preventable diseases. And . . . over half of the confirmed cases of vaccine-targeted diseases occur in vaccinated people, and can’t be blamed on the TB or meningococcal vaccines not being given.

The fact is that the vast majority of people who require the expensive hospital care in this country, are fully vaccinated, and are there because of other things . . . and sometimes . . . because their vaccines haven’t worked. As you have seen above, a very large percentage of vaccinated people got whooping cough, mumps and TB. So right there, you have three vaccines of dubious worth, along with the flu and IPD vaccines.

Now, I know you will say that we don’t have huge deaths from tetanus and all these other diseases because of the vaccines, and the cases are low because of the vaccines. The problem with that argument is that deaths fizzled out long before the vaccines. For some infections, cases fizzled out before vaccines, and other infections, cases fizzled out without vaccines.  The health department knows that.  It is their data, after all.  So they concentrate on cases, complications, and the rap that being vaccinated means you just get a mild case, not a nasty one. Yes, the measles vaccines have disrupted the circulation of measles in the name of "herd immunity" . . .



. . . but it has come at a cost. I have the annual deaths and cases data for New Zealand dating back to 1872, so I’m in a position to compare pre-vaccine deaths and cases with post vaccine figures. The comparison would surprise and shock you.

We also have a conundrum, which is that doctors are very reluctant to diagnose clinical disease in a vaccinated person. For decades, they plain refused to diagnose whooping cough in a vaccinated person until it became too obvious to deny any more.

As an interesting discussion point, there should have been a case of tetanus in the 2016 data, of a 20 year old girl. But it’s not there. Why? Because . . . she was fully vaccinated, boostered and reboostered at the time of her injury. BECAUSE she was more than fully vaccinated, Middlemore hospital diagnosed her as dystonia, not tetanus. Subsequent doctors and neurologists have diagnosed her as generalised tetanus, but I won’t hold my breath for her case to appear in any database. In 2012 another woman I know who was also fully vaccinated was admitted to Waikato hospital to reside there for a month. Despite all the classic symptoms for tetanus, the hospital refused to diagnose it correctly as well, which meant they couldn’t treat it correctly either.

It’s called indoctrinated deafness.

Those of you who are 60 years old and older, I would ask you a question. What was the health of other children like when you were a child? What was it generally like when you had children? When you look at your grandchildren, what do you see? Are children today, made healthier overall by vaccines? Do you think the children of today are healthier in terms of overall health to you, when you went to school? I think that when we consider this question, we need to think very deeply about this issue. Way back in 1986, when the Herald was brave enough to actually do a reasoned thinking article on measles (link to it.), I said something that I still stand by and that is that, “we have essentially traded our acute epidemic diseases of the past century for the far less curable chronic diseases of the present.” And what I see today, is far worse than what I saw nearly 30 years ago.

Too bad Lance is too short sighted to do some real good. It’s too bad that Lance seemingly doesn’t understand the real factors which complicate infections, and the ways in which he could educate his people, and stop the problems which plague his Northland community.

To be continued.