How many lives will it take for anti-vaxxers to give up?
While Samoa battles a devastating measles outbreak, Australian parents attend secret anti-vax propaganda film screenings and point blame at the innocent, writes Lucy Carne.
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If only there was a vaccination against stupidity.
I couldn’t help but think this as I sat through a secret screening of the anti-vax propaganda film, Vaxxed II.
About 200 people turned up to the Jindalee Hotel in Brisbane’s west last Monday for 90 minutes of emotional blackmail, fear mongering and fake news.
Judging by the audience, it’s the white, blonde working class who seem to feel patronised by educated medical experts and instead put their ignorant faith in debunked conspiracy theories.
These are Left-wing voting, alternative lifestylers, who despise Big Pharma’s greed, but don’t seem to mind the money-spinning behind overpriced health supplements.
There were French and South African accents in the anti-vaxxer crowd, and a strong undercurrent of natural earth parenting, like some homicidal spin-off of veganism.
Vaxxed II – a sequel to the banned and panned 2016 film Vaxxed – hinges once again off the bogus claims that the MMR vaccination “caused” autism.
RELATED: Secret screenings of anti-jab film could risk kids’ lives says Health Minister
This originated from a 1998 study by disgraced British former doctor Andrew Wakefield (now Elle Macpherson’s boyfriend). His ‘theory’ – based on the histories of only eight children – was found to be fake. The Lancet journal retracted the publication and Wakefield was struck off the UK medical register on the grounds of dishonesty and ethical breaches.
Speaking to the BBC in 2010, Wakefield said he had never been against vaccination.
The MMR autism fake news has been disproven countless times since. A peer-reviewed study released this year of more than half a million children found the MMR vaccine did not increase the risk of autism, even in children with other autism risk factors or with siblings who had autism. And yet, truth has failed to prevent this dangerous lie from being forced fed to naive parents.
RELATED: Taylor Winterstein slammed for anti-vax comment as deaths climb
Among the absurd fabrications peddled by Vaxxed II is that unvaccinated children “never have ear infections” or need antibiotics. There is also a disgraceful prejudice against autistic children, with constant reference to them as broken and not right.
But it is the film screenings’ organiser the Australian Vaccination-sceptics Network’s (AVN) pathetic attempts to reframe measles as just a “cough, rash and maybe some diarrhoea” that is most disturbing.
We are in the midst of a global resurgence of measles – in Europe, New York and now on our doorstep in Samoa, where the current death toll sits at 65 dead in eight weeks, most of them small children. There are now reports Samoa has run out of coffins for babies.
The anti-vax movement has been blamed, with the World Health Organisation warning “vaccine hesitancy” was one of the 10 biggest global health threats for 2019.
In Queensland, this year will be the worst year for measles cases since 1997, with 67 people diagnosed with the disease.
The anti-vaxxers’ campaign of deliberate misinformation and scare tactics needs to end before more innocent children die and nations are crippled by preventable disease.
The AVN’s Meryl Dorey, who has no medical background or qualifications, claims the measles vaccine caused the outbreak.
She also claimed the catastrophic number of deaths in Samoa were caused not by the deadly disease but by doctors’ desperate attempts to save lives.
“These are not children dying from measles, these are children dying from medical malpractice,” she said.
During Vaxxed II screenings last week, Dorey urged people to hang red fabric from their front doors and fences in solidarity with the anti-vaxxers in Samoa, like some horrific, blood-soaked Christmas decoration.
They should hang their heads in shame. But they don’t.
Even the threat of a social media silence only further encourages them to campaign for volunteers to run as candidates in next year’s Queensland state election under IMOP (Involuntary Medication Objectors Party).
It is time we stood up to this selfish manipulation of people’s fear and play anti-vaxxers at their own game.
Vaxxed II was filled with photos of the faces of dead babies, yet offered no official confirmation, coroner’s report or medical evidence of the cause of their deaths.
Like the successful warnings on cigarette packets, we need billboards with confronting images of children with missing limbs courtesy of meningococcal. We need TV ads with footage of babies with whooping cough. We need older people to remind us of their childhood when kids died from polio and smallpox.
Even some parents in Samoa are now circulating photos of their dead babies to encourage other people to ignore anti-vaxxers in the hope more children don’t die.
In the wake of this measles resurgence, there is a meme doing the rounds that asks how does an anti-vaxxer talk to their kids? By ouija board.
It would be funny if it wasn’t so true.
Lucy Carne is editor of Rendezview.com.au
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