15A011 One Powerful Vaccine by Jim Davies, 2/10/2015    

Recently there's been a fuss about getting stuck with a needle, and the subject, worked up by the media to gain ratings, has divided the nation. It's quite a useful indicator of how much work is still needed, before we shall be rid of the curse of government.

The theory is that a vaccine "stimulates an individual's immune system to develop adaptive immunity to a pathogen" (so, Wiki.) Give the body a little bit of trouble, and it will rush to ward off a whole heap more of the same kind (my translation.) Some of them (smallpox, polio) have worked well, bringing great benefit, while others (eg measles) have had little proven effect on mortality - even though the referenced Wikipedia article makes no such distinction.

The chart makes my point - to enlarge, click the pic. From 1900 to 1965, several major killer diseases declined steeply in mortality, due presumably to better sanitation, treatment, pharmaceuticals, etc - but the release of vaccines had little or no effect on the rate of decline. There's hardly any correlation, let alone causation. The one for measles for example didn't get released until its death rate was already very close to zero.

Another, recent example is Ebola; the West African outbreak alarmed everyone last Fall, but had peaked by January, after the word got out to avoid physical contact; that must be so, for NBC's Brian Williams, and others, reported it. Yet the Ebola vaccine was not released until February. Maybe it will do good work in the future, but it has had zero effect this time around. Summary: vaccines are a mixed bag. Sometimes very good, sometimes not. And some (including medical expert Barack Obama, when seeking votes) suspect that occasionally, they may do harm. Therefore, caveat emptor: let the patient beware.

Nonetheless, there is one vaccine that's been highly effective: government schools. The indoctrinators recognized in mid-Century that the works of Ayn Rand and George Orwell powerfully undermined the collectivist premise on which government superstructure is built, so they made kiddies read them - along with teacher commentary that Rand commends a selfish society good only for "the 1%" and Orwell's vision has never come to pass in the democracies of the West; Walter Cronkite said it, so that's the way it is. So all high-school grads can quote those authors' names and repeat those summaries, but few of them indeed relate the novels to what is actually happening all around them. Give the (student) body a little bit of trouble, and it will rush to ward off a whole heap more of the same kind. Quite clever.

Scorn has therefore been poured by collectivists on the Left over parents who do not let their children be vaccinated; they repeat the mantra that "the science is settled" and say that sending an unvaccinated child into a classroom is equivalent to dispatching a bomb. To reasoning like the above, they appear deaf. Vaccines good, refuseniks bad, duh.

I was interested on February 7th to see that this is however also true of the Right. Tom Rogan of National Review went as far as to say that "if a parent is unwilling to vaccinate his child, they should be excluded from educational facilities, from the public arena." Wow! So much for NR's commitment to individual freedom. They are all the same, Left and Right; they are all socialist collectivists. Rogan's remarks deserve a closer look.

First, his position is internally contradictory. The argument is that (eg) a measles vaccine protects against infection (and perhaps it does) and therefore unvaccinated people should be kept out of the public arena such as schools. "Therefore"? Hello? If the vaccine does what is claimed, it doesn't matter if an infected, unvaccinated person should happen by! The only kind of person who might catch the bug is one who is himself unvaccinated! So the whole position taken by the collectivists is false from top to bottom.

But second, suppose they shut their ears to such clear reasoning (as usual) and move to keep unvaccinated children out of schools, etc. Good! Terrific! Wonderful! Let them repeal the laws compelling school attendance, and everyone will be happy! Just one more thing: let them also repeal the laws compelling parents to pay for the school places they they'd then be forbidden to use. In one simple move, the hopes of all who have loathed the government school monopoly for the last half century and more will be realized - on the back of the current hysteria about vaccination. In one simple move, the collectivist fervor against letting everyone choose whether or not to let a government agent stick a needle into his arm, will draw the sting of the powerful vaccine of youth indoctrination that has, ever since 1850, dumbed Americans down so as to reduce their ability to think and act for themselves.

Well, it's a nice dream, that they would in that way shoot themselves in the foot; but it won't happen. They will fabricate some excuse, some distraction, and dodge the trap. Those wishing to end the school monopoly and every other aspect of the government disease have but one option: the one-on-one replicative method inherent in TOLFA to persuade everyone not to work for it. If you read this and aren't on board already, please use the link.