Tiny Coffins Across America

Do you like your children to be alive? Evidently the new ACIP does not.

Today the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) completed the second day of it’s planned 2-day June meeting. ACIP is a committee of external experts convened by the CDC to make evidence-based recommendations about vaccines. These recommendations are used by health care providers to advise their patients and by insurance companies to determine eligibility for reimbursement, and so they determine access to vaccines for all Americans.

Unfortunately, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. fired the prior ACIP two weeks ago and replaced them with a much smaller roster of noted anti-vaxxers. Today, ACIP Chair Martin Kulldorff gave a presentation on the measles, mumps, rubella, and varicella (MMRV) vaccine. The MMRV is a 2-dose combination vaccine that includes both MMR and varicella (chickenpox). Although the existing ACIP recommendation notes that there is a slightly increased (but still very small) risk of febrile seizures on the first dose, the MMRV is considered roughly equivalent to getting the MMR and the varicella vaccine given separately. Either are good options for protecting children from the much higher risk of contracting these viruses. Given that there is currently a explosive outbreak of measles occurring in multiple states that has already claimed 3 lives (2 of whom were unvaccinated children) that has likely been accelerated by vaccine refusal, ready access to these vaccines is more important than ever to prevent the suffering and deaths of children across America.

However, that was not Kulldorff’s assessment. He proposed a recommendation that the MMRV vaccine not be administered to children under 47 months of age, which is when children need to be protected most. Measles is not a virus that just causes a rash. It can be deadly and is most likely to kill or permanently disable children under the age of 5. Measles can also “hide out” and cause a lethal encephalitis that can appear decades after the initial infection. It also causes “immune amnesia,” which essentially wipes out any prior immune memory and renders a person vulnerable to other infections they previously had immunity to.

A strong indication that there will be millions of infants and toddlers who are unprotected against measles, mumps, rubella, and varicella viruses in the coming months…after the next ACIP meeting

Apart from being scientifically unsupported, this proposed recommendation is a harbinger of very bad things to come for America’s kids. Although ACIP did not vote on this proposal at this meeting, I expect it will be on the agenda for voting at the next meeting in the fall. With this ACIP’s composition of amateurs who were chosen for their anti-vax ideology rather than their expertise, this proposed recommendation is almost certain to be approved.

Note that this proposed recommendation is justified by the existence of “a safer, equally effective alternative”: the MMR plus the varicella vaccine. That gives the appearance that there will be no loss of access. However, that is simply not true. In some places, the availability of the MMRV might make the difference in children completing their vaccination schedule. Fewer vaccines, even when alternatives exist, will certainly reduce access and result in fewer kids being protected.

Even worse, I suspect that this is a trial balloon for what has been Kennedy’s goal for years: removing the MMR vaccine from the market. If the public accepts having the MMRV withheld for invented or exaggerated safety concerns, then it’s not much more of a stretch to do the same thing for the MMR. With no vaccines against these deadly viruses available for parents to protect their kids, child mortality will soar. And if this sounds hyperbolic, bear in mind that’s exactly what Kennedy contributed to when he funded and amplified anti-MMR campaigns in Samoa in 2019, resulting in a measles outbreak that killed 83 people, mostly children under the age of five. Even more horrific, Kennedy evidently believed that this measles outbreak would serve as a completely unethical “natural experiment” to see what would happen in the absence of vaccination. He got the answer anyone who knows the slightest things about vaccines would expect: scores of dead babies.

Efforts to withhold these vaccines will turn America into Samoa at scale. Removing access to the MMRV is the first step down a slippery slope that leads to a charnel pit filled with the corpses of our children. This is a hideous view of what will make America healthy again and it is time for us to speak out against what can only be described as mass murder through negligence. This is not about dissenting views or “concerns.” This is about preventing widespread suffering and death of our children. This is about keeping them happy, healthy, and out of an early grave.