Edited on 4th September 2013.
You will better understand these blogs if you study each link. In a letter dated 18 May 2012, the Ministry of Health wrote:
The pertussis containing vaccines are effective but do not protect all babies. The pertussis vaccine currently used in New Zealand and other developed countries offers protection of around 84 percent after three doses….. Adults immunisation is recommended for those who have contact with babies or someone who has an underlying respiratory condition.
Pertussis incidence and mortality have declined in the last 50 years in many places around the world mainly as a result of immunisation activities. However, the incidence of pertussis disease has increased in countries where pertussis immunisation rates decreased in the past for example Japan, Sweden and United Kingdom. When immunisation programmes were re-established the rates of disease decreased again.
So lets look at the comment about how mortality has decreased as a result of vaccination because once again, not all is as it seems.
As this article Begg 84 points out - in New Zealand, in the years when the number of vaccines was dropped from three shots to two, while the number of cases increased, the deaths declined from the tiny number it was, to an even tinier number. According to the Ministry of Health comment, you'd expect the opposite.
Now, in 2013 in New Zealand, we have the highest number of vaccines, ever, and the highest rate of whooping cough ever, and the death rate has increased slightly above what it was during the two shot regime.Doctors are now publicly talking about a single whooping cough vaccine to be given to adolescents and adults every four years, because the increase is whooping cough is now blamed in decreased herd immunity. In reality the increase in whooping cough can be laid at the door of the fact that natural immunity duration is around 30 years, and vaccine immunity duration is around three year if you're lucky.
The drop in mortality regarding whooping cough was independent from the use of any vaccine both in New Zealand, and anywhere overseas. This was more extensively explained in McKeown 79
Dr Fine 84, also sheds light on clear anomalies in UK data, as shown in the IMMUNITY section.
Clearly, the rise is not an increase in cases - the prior decrease was caused by doctors refusing to report cases even though they knew that the vaccine used in the 1960's had a 20% effectiveness:
I’ve also included the following articles which talk just a little bit about the media induced hysteria (Barrie 83), surrounding the dropping of the vaccine in the UK in 1974, as well an analysis and refutation of as some of the highly doubtful statements made by the medical profession in UK by Professor Stewart 76; Stewart 77 and deaths Stewart 81.
As far as I’m concerned, the data in UK cannot be simplistically interpretted the way the Ministry of Health choses to use in their letter.
Even today, the reporting of whooping cough in UK is woeful; misdiagnoses continue unabated. Crowcroft 2002 pointed out that deaths to pertussis are vastly under-reported, which is still the case... Crowcroft 2003, concentrated in refusal of doctors to report even obvious cases admitted to hospital and the inability of coroners to accurately state death, which is still the case. Crowcroft 2006 reads like the justifications and ramblings of someone who cannot possibly admit that things aren't what the journal article says, yet the author lets just enough drop between the lines to create disquiet, while fulfilling the mantra that the vaccine protects against both death and hospitalisation, which is patently untrue.
Outside of the medical journals though, I hear from doctors on the ground in the UK, that most of the doctors with ears listening and eyes seeing, can see exactly what the situation is with regard to the pertussis vaccine..
It’s just about impossible to say with any degree of scientific accuracy what the situation was, or is, in Japan, Sweden or the UK - - - for the simple reason that the science is anything BUT accurate.
But one thing I can say is that the published medical literature clearly shows that "facts on Ground Zero" are highly unlikely to be the same as the Ministry of Health infers.
