14 November 2024 | Atlanta / Geneva – Worldwide, there were an estimated 10.3 million cases of measles in 2023, a 20% increase from 2022, according to new estimates from the World Health Organization (WHO) and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Inadequate immunization coverage globally is driving the surge in cases. Measles is preventable with two doses of the measles vaccine; yet more than 22 million children missed their first dose of the measles vaccine in 2023. Globally, an estimated 83% of children received their first dose of measles vaccine last year, while only 74% received the recommended second dose. Coverage of 95% or greater of two doses of measles vaccine is needed in each country and community to prevent outbreaks and protect populations from one of the world's most contagious human viruses. "Measles vaccine has saved more lives than any other vaccine in the past 50 years," said Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director- General. "To save even more lives and stop this deadly virus from harming the most vulnerable, we must invest in immunization for every person, no matter where they live." "The number of measles infections are rising around the globe, endangering lives and health," CDC Director Mandy Cohen said. "The measles vaccine is our best protection against the virus, and we must continue to invest in efforts to increase access." ¹

January 13, 2025 - After years of holding steady, American vaccination rates against once-common childhood diseases have been dropping. Nationwide, the rate of kindergartners with complete records for the measles vaccine declined from around 95 percent before the pandemic to under 93 percent last year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Immunization rates against polio, whooping cough and chickenpox fell similarly. Average rates remain high, but those national figures mask far more precipitous drops in some states, counties and school districts. In those areas, falling vaccination rates are creating new pockets of students no longer protected by herd immunity, the range considered high enough to stop an outbreak. For a community, an outbreak can be extremely disruptive. For children, measles and other once-common childhood diseases can lead to hospitalization and life-threatening complications. Immunization rates fell in most states early in the pandemic, and continued to fall in the years that followed... There are now an estimated 280,000 kindergartners without documented vaccination against measles, an increase of some 100,000 children from before the pandemic. “These pockets are just waiting for an introduction of measles,” said Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious disease specialist at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. “It’s trouble waiting to happen.” ²

November 29, 2024 - Almost five years after Covid blew into our lives, the main thing standing between us and the next global pandemic is luck. And with the advent of flu season, that luck may well be running out. The H5N1 avian flu, having mutated its way across species, is raging out of control among the nation’s cattle, infecting roughly a third of the dairy herds in California alone. Farmworkers have so far avoided tragedy, as the virus has not yet acquired the genetic tools to spread among humans. But seasonal flu will vastly increase the chances of that outcome. As the colder weather drives us all indoors to our poorly ventilated houses and workplaces, we will be undertaking an extraordinary gamble that the nation is in no way prepared for... Just a few weeks ago, a pig in a backyard farm in Oregon was found to have bird flu... Last week, the virus was found in a flock of ducks at a pet fair in Hawaii, the one state that hadn’t previously found a case — probably transmitted by wild birds... A teenager in Canada was infected, and the virus showed some key mutations that bring it closer to adapting to spread among humans... There’s also an infected child in California who was not known to have come into contact with any sick animals at all, which raises the terrifying possibility that he got it from another human being... I can only hope we continue to get lucky. We don’t have much else going for us. ³

It would seem reasonable, in the light of the recent global, five year "pandemic overload," to presume that the current attacks on scientific and medical "expertise" and its official institutions and practitioners is a recent phenomenon. Further, it seems equally reasonable to conclude that there is, more or less, justification for at least some aspect of the argument that this is a dilemma brought upon itself by the scientific/medical community for their arrogant exclusion of the contribution of the "alt-science" community - data and reports of alternative treatments that demanded the same rapid "emergency" approval afforded traditional care. This, in turn, ignited social media wars that reached the highest ranks and governmental offices in this country; provoking congressional hearings; invoking political "outrage"; and creating similar demands. Nevertheless, the reality of the matter is that attack on expertise is hardly recent, and we would offer several examples to demonstrate our point.

First, we would note that the World Health Organization announced that "polio has been eradicated from the Western Hemisphere, and the World Health Organization (WHO) has targeted polio to be the next disease after smallpox to be effaced from the entire world."⁴ The last known case of polio in the United States was in 2000. Further, the World Health Organization reports that polio remains endemic in only two countries in the world, Afghanistan and Pakistan, where there is a greater genetic biodiversity in polio strains circulating in outlying districts.⁵ By comparison, however, it was not unusual, for example, that 25-years ago, upwards of 35,000 children were struck with paralytic polio in multiple districts in Pakistan, compared to post-vaccination reports of 6 children struck with paralytic polio in 2023.⁷ Obviously, the WHO is always fighting to stay ahead of the "re-introduction" of polio into areas where formerly, it had been believed to have been eradicated.

All of these heroic gestures, it seems to us, begs two important questions: 1) Why is the nominee for DHHS Director, Robert Kennedy Jr., attempting to "decertify" the polio vaccines, and 2) and why are the "Google scholars" continuing to promote conspiracy theories (with the usual suspects of "Bill Gates, George Soros, Big Pharma, the Global War on Democracy, and Public Health") that the polio vaccines are literally responsible for causing more cases of polio than they are preventing in Africa and in the far East? Both cases, in our estimation, are shameful, ignorant, and factually misguided pursuits. First, the graphic below demonstrate the 1) literal profound effectiveness of the polio vaccines over a protracted 23-years of use; and 2) the number of reported cases of "paralytic polio from vaccine-derived sources,"⁸ which the WHO notably remarks are occurring in areas of Pakistan and Afghanistan where polio is considered endemic and and children are routinely and historically undervaccinated and frequently immuno-compromised.⁹ Rather than suggest a "plague" of death, tragedy, or negligent harm, in consideration of the millions of administered vaccines in an extraordinarily neglected area, it speaks to an extraordinary safety profile:

Nevertheless, Kennedy's attorney demanded that the FDA withdraw the current inactivated polio vaccine, and as Dr. Paul Offit of the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, and a member of the Food and Drug Administration's Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee describes it, "the Salk polio vaccine was subjected to the largest placebo-controlled trial in the history of vaccines and arguably the history of medical products. About 420,000 children received Salk’s vaccine; 200,000 received a harmless placebo; and 1.2 million children served as observed, uninoculated controls"¹⁰. Further, Offit notes, "probably [realizing] he had stepped on a landmine," the lawyer compounded his problem by addressing the Wall Street Journal to claim no opposition to the inactivated polio vaccine's presence in licensed "combination" vaccines e.g. Pediarix (DTaP-IPV-HepB) or Kinrix (DTaP-IPV)¹¹. This, in turn, provoked president-elect Donald Trump to issue a statement from his visitation to Paris on December 7, 2024 that he was a "big believer" in the polio vaccine, having had friends affected by polio, and the "moment they took that vaccine, it ended. You're not going to lose the polio vaccine," Trump said, "That's not gonna happen." ¹² This, likewise, prompted Mitch McConnell (R, Kentucky), himself a polio survivor to say, “Efforts to undermine public confidence in proven cures are not just uninformed—they’re dangerous.”¹³ Obviously, the voracity of the words of the now president remains to be seen as he also said he he is not a proponent of vaccine mandates, and did, in fact, nominate Mr. Kennedy for the position in question. This would appear to be a case where 50% is not exactly 50% in terms of fair wagering...

In the next part of this discussion, we will focus on the similar case of Autism Spectrum Disorder and the misinformation/disinformation/ deception/deceit campaign regarding vaccinations.

¹ U.S. Department Of Health And Human Services. Measles cases surge worldwide, infecting 10.3 million people in 2023. https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2024/p1114-measles-cases.html.

² Paris, F. Childhood Vaccination Rates Were Falling Even Before the Rise of R.F.K. Jr. https://www.nytimes.com. interactive/2025/01/13/upshot/vaccination-rates.html.

³ Tufekci, Z. A Bird Flu Pandemic Would Be One of the Most Foreseeable Catastrophes in History. https://www.nytimes.com/ 2024/11/29/opinion/bird-flu-pandemic.html

⁴ Plotkin, S, Orenstein, WA, Offit, PA. Plotkin's Virology, 7th Edition. Elsevier, Inc, Philadelphia, PA, 2017.

⁶ Global Polio Eradication Initiative: annual report 2023. Geneva: World Health Organization; 2024. Licence: CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 IGO.

⁷ Ibid. p.5.

⁸ Saloni Dattani, Fiona Spooner, Sophie Ochmann and Max Roser (2022) - “Polio” Published online at OurWorldinData.org. Retrieved from: 'https://ourworldindata.org/polio' [Online Resource].

⁹ Op cit., p.2.

¹⁰ Offit, Paul, MD, A Dangerous Time for America’s Children: Part I. January 7, 2025. https://pauloffit. substack.com/p/a-dangerous-time-for-americas-children.

¹¹ CDC: Vaccines & Immunizations: Polio Vaccine Composition, Dosage, Administration, and Administration Error. https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vpd/polio/hcp/composition-dosage-administration.html#:~:text=Some%20combination%20vaccines%20(several%20different,Quadracel%20(DTaP%2DIPV).

¹² Polio vaccine isn't going anywhere, Trump says. Axios. https://www.axios.com/2024/12/16/trump-rfk-jr-polio-vaccine.

¹³ Offit, Op cit.