Claire Harvey: Taylor Winterstein, please just shut up

Taylor Winterstein’s comments about vaccination are shameful, wilfully ignorant wickedness, writes Claire Harvey. It’s time she stops endangering the lives of innocent children.

Shut up, Taylor Winterstein.

Please, just stop talking about vaccination. Stop making people scared of the injections that can save their children’s lives. Stop endangering the children of Samoa.

More than 60 unvaccinated babies and toddlers have died in a measles epidemic that has been fanned and facilitated by anti-vaccine activists on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. Isn’t that enough?

For years now, Taylor — who became famous because her husband Frank plays rugby league, and is now more ­famous than him because she talks rubbish on Instagram — has been waffling about the “dangers” of vaccination.

Instagram, owned by Facebook, has done precisely nothing to shut her down. Now, she’s getting even more attention for her posts comparing with Nazism Samoa’s frantic attempts to vaccinate kids to save their lives.

Taylor Winterstein, wife of Manly Sea Eagles player Frank Winterstein, runs an anti-vax blog. The mum of two runs $200pp workshops on the dangers of vaccinations. Photo: Instagram

Samoa is in a state of emergency, with at least 4000 people out of a population of 200,000 infected. Most at risk are babies, including the unborn, and toddlers. At least one funeral home has run out of children’s coffins.

I’m hesitant to give Winterstein any more publicity. But I also feel an obligation — as someone who has campaigned hard in favour of vaccination — to stand up for the truth.

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Why is this happening to Samoa? In part, it’s because two nurses made a mistake. In July 2018, two one-year-old Samoan babies died after being injected with the same batch of the Measles, Mumps Rubella (MMR) vaccine.

That’s the one anti-vaccine activists falsely claims causes autism and other mysterious “vaccine injuries”, despite there being no evidence to sustain this.

After the babies’ deaths, Samoa temporarily suspended the vaccination program as anti-vaxxers used the tragedy to spread terror and discourage parents from immunising.

Taylor Winterstein with anti-vaxxer Robert F Kennedy Jr in Samoa in June.

One of the loudest voices was the American organisation Children’s Health Defense, led by Robert F. Kennedy Junior, whom Winterstein has hailed as a hero.

Health experts at the time warned that most deaths associated with vaccination are in fact caused by medical error – that is, a vaccine being improperly mixed with some other substance, or a vaccine which is supposed to be refrigerated being left at room temperature for a long time.

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And after a police investigation, special inquiry and trial, now we know that is exactly what happened to those two babies: a medical error. Two nurses are now serving five-year prison sentences after pleading guilty to negligence causing manslaughter. One of the nurses confessed to mixing the MMR vaccine powder with expired muscle relaxant anaesthetic, instead of the vial of water supplied with the powder.

7-month-old Tiresa Muliselu receiving a Vitamin A supplement in a Samoan hospital. Picture: UNICEF

The nurses, Luse Emo Tauvale and Leutogi Te’o, were both sentenced to five years’ imprisonment. Since then, New Zealand has sent delegations of nurses to retrain all vaccinating nurses in Samoa.

But the damage was done: not just to the devastated families who lost their babies, but to an entire nation’s faith in the safety of vaccines, which have saved millions of lives around the world. Medical experts are in unison: vaccines are safe. They save lives.

Now Samoa’s government is running a door-to-door vaccine program and Taylor Winterstein’s take is: “If you want to be injected with vaccines, GO AHEAD, inject away but UNDERSTAND there are DISTRESSED PARENTS in Samoa who DO NOT want their children injected with this toxic MMR vaccine and are LITERALLY HIDING in their homes to avoid Govt authorities who are forcing a one-size-fits-all medical procedure … hmmm Sound familiar?” She reposted the hashtag #naziSamoa.

This is shameful, wilfully ignorant nonsense, and Instagram and Facebook are directly culpable.

Originally published as Claire Harvey: Taylor Winterstein, please just shut up