The Truth About Vaccines, page-8316

Where's the "Voice of Reason" when you need him, Right here, as

There is another 'virus' we have to deal with, says vaccine expert Ian Frazer

If you want to take your guide from someone on how to handle the virus behind COVID-19, why not the world-famous immunologist Professor Ian Frazer?

This is an Australian of the Year who helped create the HPV vaccine that now saves millions of women from cervical cancer around the globe each year.

This world-famous scientist, whose has snared almost every big science prize, spends his days tutoring students, guiding research and overseeing new ways to reduce the savage burden waged by cancer.

And at a closed meeting of Sydney businessmen and women, he explained how he saw the unfolding mayhem.

Indeed, he told those at the talk that there were two viruses at play here: one was SARS-CoV-2, which causes the disease COVID-19; the other was panic and “the insanity surrounding it".

“We do not have nor will have anything practical to stop its spread probably for the next 6-12 months," he said.

That means no vaccine. That means no drug. By that stage, by Frazer's reckoning, the virus will have run its course – or it will still be hanging around, like a bad smell, targeting the elderly and those with poor immune systems.

Containment had to occur before the virus entered the country – and we now know that’s too late now.

Professor Frazer’s plea was for a fact-based public education campaign that did not involve fighting in the toilet paper aisles or stealing sanitiser out of someone else’s trolley or a media obsession bordering on hysteria.

In his view, we need to acknowledge that most of us will be exposed to it, and many, many, many will contract a mild version of it.

His point is that the spread of COVID-19 is inevitable, but not deadly.

This will not end the world.

The challenge, as he sensibly sees it, are for both the healthcare system and the aged care sector – and how they try to curb the number and seriousness of cases.

Professor Frazer’s talk was delivered under Chatham House rules, but has been relayed on social media and yesterday he confirmed his views remained the same.

It’s clear he’s not out on Thursday night shopping stocking up on toilet paper; he’s going about his job, with clean hands and a dose of extra hygiene.

We are now all receiving notes at home showing how schools are gearing up to implement critical-incident scenarios – and a peek into how teenagers are coping in Italy is worth considering here.

In one family, a mum is in hospital with an unrelated condition. But her family is banned from seeing her or visiting the hospital because of COVID-19.

This family, whose children were our exchange students, will be in quarantine until April to minimise infection of those in the township around them.

“We feel like we are in an apocalyptic film," one of the teens told me.

“The government is working to create a different way of living daily life."

Police cars are patrolling the town, and “red areas" are in lockdown. That includes museums, libraries, gyms, theatres, churches and schools – the heart and soul of these towns.

“We have a new way of schooling. On Skype. In two days I will have an exam on Skype. It’s a very, very weird situation."

It is.

And it might soon be ours, too.

Before that, though, perhaps we should all inoculate ourselves with Ian Frazer’s prescription of a good dose of common sense.

Madonna King is author of Ian Frazer: The man who saved a million lives.



As the day unfolded: Global COVID-19 cases surpass 1 million, Australian death toll hits 30

We're wrapping up the blog for the night

Summary

• There are more than 1 million known cases of COVID-19 worldwide and more than 58,900 deaths, as of 3pm AEST. But the Johns Hopkins University tally says more than 226,000 people have recovered from the disease
• Thirty people have died in Australia and there are 5544 confirmed cases of COVID-19 nationwide. Twelve of these deaths were in NSW
• Fifty Qantas and Jetstar workers have tested positive for COVID-19
• NSW Health Minister Brad Hazzard has defended the handling of the Ruby Princess cruise ship by health authorities, which allowed 2700 passengers - some infected - to disembark
• New orders for funerals, caravan parks, truck stops and auctions are in place for NSW

By Sarah Keoghan


That's all for Saturday's coronavirus coverage.

Here's what you need to know from today:

• There are more than 1 million known cases of COVID-19 worldwide and more than 58,900 deaths. But the Johns Hopkins University tally says more than 226,000 people have recovered from the disease

• Labor MP Ged Kearney has asked Australian to "not become immune to the statistics" revealing that Australia's 30th COVID-19 related death was her father-in-law

www.brisbanetimes.com.au





The rise of vaccine hesitancy and the anti-vaxxer movement

Welcome to Good Weekend Talks, a weekly chance for our audience to luxuriate in a long-form story from the magazine, read by an actor and followed by a discussion with an editor, a writer and an expert.


This week, Nic English will bring to life Good Weekend senior writer Tim Elliott's June 2019 cover story – “Oh baby: How one hippie town became the anti-vaxxer capital of Australia” – about the small town of Mullumbimby, which has become ground zero for the anti-vaxxer movement in Australia.

Tim will then be joined by Good Weekend editor Katrina Strickland, along with Sydney Morning Herald health editor Kate Aubusson, to discuss the issue of vaccine hesitancy and the long road to a potential coronavirus vaccine.

How one hippie town became the anti-vaxxer capital of Australia

Anti-vaccination fervour has taken off around the globe, with dire consequences for public health.

Ground zero for this kind of thinking in Australia is Mullumbimby, where it’s best not to discuss it.

Despite overwhelming and incontrovertible evidence that vaccines are safe and effective, an increasing number of parents in the Northern Rivers region, which includes Mullumbimby and the nearby towns of Bangalow, Nimbin and Byron Bay, are choosing not to vaccinate their children.

According to the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, only 52 per cent of five-year-olds in the Mullumbimby area were fully immunised in 2015-16, compared with 92.9 per cent nationally.

This infuriates vaccinating parents, who are inclined to regard anti-vaxxers as selfish and ignorant, and their children as walking petri dishes.

The anti-vaxxers, meanwhile, regard the vaxxers as naive and sheep-like, blithely submitting their kids to unnecessary and potentially dangerous medical interventions.

Jeffery knows people on both sides of the divide. She is, herself, a big fan of mainstream medicine.

"I had a grade-three pre-cancer removed from my cervix in 2012, so modern medicine saved my life." At the same time, she didn't vaccinate her kids. "It was a long time ago," she says. (Both her daughters are now in their 20s.)

"But at the time I thought, 'I had rubella and measles as a kid and, yeah, I was sick, but I came through okay.'

" She also visited her local doctor, in Myrtleford, who told her that vaccination was essentially a lottery.

"He said, 'If you vaccinate them and they have a bad reaction, you'll feel terrible, and if you don't vaccinate them and something happens, you'll also feel terrible.'"

She remembers looking at her first-born baby girl, "just a little jelly roll", and deciding not to go ahead. She did the same with the second.

Today, her daughters are very much alive and well; in fact, one of them is a midwife who fully intends to vaccinate her own children. "Still," says Jeffery, "sometimes I look back and wonder if I did the right thing. And I'm certainly not sure what I'd do today."

Jeffery says many locals who don't vaccinate their children are equally equivocal. "Some of [the anti-vaxxers] are nutcases, but many of them are very well informed." She shrugs. "It's a complex situation."

Vaccination is one of the most successful public health measures in history, one credited with saving hundreds of millions of lives worldwide. Since the introduction of the first vaccine, for smallpox, by English scientist Edward Jenner in 1796, governments have used immunisation programs to eradicate lethal diseases such as smallpox and rinderpest, a virus that once devastated livestock.

And yet the past decade has seen an increase in what experts call "vaccine hesitancy".

This term covers a range of behaviours, including those of parents who vaccinate despite substantial concerns, or who postpone vaccination, selectively vaccinate, or don't follow the vaccination schedule. Some parents oppose vaccinations for political reasons (they don't like the government telling them what to do), or because of misguided medical beliefs.

Whatever way you look at it, vaccine hesitancy is a bad thing.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) recently nominated it as one of the top 10 threats to global health in 2019.

Anti-vaxxers, those who refuse to vaccinate, have been around for as long as vaccination.

Among the first anti-vaxxers were bishops and priests, some of whom accused Jenner and his ilk of thwarting the will of God. (Some countries still allow vaccine exemptions for religious reasons, sometimes referred to as conscientious objection.)

But the anti-vaxxers' principal concern, then as now, was the safety of the vaccines.

In the 1800s, opponents believed, incorrectly, that vaccination caused deformities; these days, some anti-vaxxers believe, also incorrectly, that vaccines cause everything from anaphylaxis to autism. Indeed, some anti-vaxxers believe that vaccines can cause autism in their pets.

The consequences of not vaccinating are being seen worldwide, most recently with measles, which can lead to blindness, encephalitis and death. There were 372 cases of measles in the US last year. This year, so far, there have been 940 confirmed cases, with outbreaks in Washington, California, New Jersey and Michigan.

In Rockland County, New York, there have been 254 cases since last September, which authorities traced to the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community. (In March, the New York Times reported that some Rockland residents now wipe public bus seats and cross the street when they see ultra-Orthodox Jews.)

In Europe, where the anti-vax movement has gained political traction in recent years, there were 83,000 measles cases in 2018, and 25,500 in 2017.

In Australia there are anti-vaxxers in some of our wealthiest suburbs, such as South Yarra in Melbourne and the eastern suburbs of Sydney.

But by far the highest numbers are in the Northern Rivers, on the far north coast of NSW.

"I've seen more vaccine-preventable diseases since working in the Northern Rivers than I saw in 10 years of working in remote Aboriginal communities," says Dr Rachel Heap, an intensive care specialist at Lismore Base Hospital, an hour's drive south-west of Byron Bay.

In the past few years, the hospital has seen cases of rare and easily preventable diseases such as tetanus, diphtheria, mumps and epiglottitis. The whooping cough outbreak that spread through Australia in 2009 was reported to have started in the Northern Rivers.

(The epidemic led to 19,000 cases and the death of three babies, including a four-week-old girl, Dana McCaffery, in Lennox Head, just south of Byron Bay.)

"It's become the norm here to shun vaccines," says Heap, who lives in Mullumbimby.

"There's a cultural narrative that says anything to do with the government or mainstream medicine is not to be trusted. And that has left people vulnerable to misinformation being peddled by the professional anti-vaxxers."

In order to counter this, in 2013 Heap helped found the Northern Rivers Vaccination Supporters (NRVS), an advocacy group that provides credible information about vaccines and vaccine-preventable diseases.

But it's been an uphill battle.

The NRVS has just 250 members and struggles to be heard.

"The clusters of unvaccinated kids act as reservoirs of disease," she says. "All you need is one school with a very low vaccination rate and disease can spread like wildfire."

There is an easy splendour to the Northern Rivers, a singular combination of coast and hinterland, of velvety green hills and Federation-era towns that prompts visitors to dream of a second life, of cashing in their city chips, buying a weatherboard cottage and growing pumpkins in the backyard. This seems to apply especially to filmmakers, artists or rich young trustafarians, thousands of whom have poured into the area over the past 20 years.

"There are very few born-and-bred locals left here any more," Jeffery says. "Most have moved away – they got so much for their land it was worth it."

Despite its reputation for sustainability, the Northern Rivers had its beginnings in extractive industries, its wealth born from whatever the first Europeans could chop down, dig up or kill. Following the arrival of cedar loggers in the 1850s, the sugar cane, cattle and dairy farmers moved in.

In the 1930s, a meatworks opened in Byron Bay, and sand miners began stripping the beaches in search of zircon and rutile. In 1954, the Byron Bay Whaling Company landed its first whale, butchering it, according to local lore, right there on Main Beach. By the time the whaling stopped, in 1962, the first wave of surfers was showing up.
Only 52 per cent of five-year-olds in the Mullumbimby area were fully immunised in 2015-2016, compared with 92.9 per cent nationally.
The turning point, however – the region's rebirth, as it were – came in 1973, with the Aquarius Festival.

Held over 10 days in May, the event drew some 5000 free-thinking individuals and alternative lifestylers to the fields around Nimbin, west of Mullumbimby, where they camped out, listened to music, got high and took their clothes off. Some liked it so much they stayed, setting up co-ops and communes and sowing the seeds for what would soon become Australia's counterculture capital.

The first Aquarians were inherently sceptical. "They wanted to break away," Jeffery says. "They were looking for alternatives." Their sources of disaffection were many, from the government and consumer culture to mainstream medicine, the last of which came into particularly sharp focus with the roll-out, in the late 1970s, of a new vaccine for whooping cough.

"It was a bad vaccine, the worst one we've had," says local paediatrician Dr Chris Ingall, who has worked in the Northern Rivers for 32 years.

"It wasn't very effective, and it had marked side effects, like high-pitched crying and fever. The parents would take their children back to the doctor, and say, 'My child has had a bad reaction,' and the doctor would disregard them.

They told them it must be a virus, and that it couldn't possibly be the vaccine. It alienated a lot of people."

Though the whooping cough vaccine was used Australia-wide, the blowback was most keenly felt in the Northern Rivers.

"It was a tinderbox effect," says Ingall.

"People here were already suspicious of government, and vaccines were seen as a government intrusion."

Researchers developed a far better vaccine in the 1990s.

"But by then, we had created a whole group of parents up here who were disenfranchised by the medical system."

Anti-vaxxer groups sprung up around the country, spreading doubt about the science behind vaccines and, in some cases, harassing medical staff at clinics that offered shots. With the advent of the internet and social media, anti-vax myths have been disseminated with terrifying ease, like spores in a tornado.

(Under pressure from health authorities, social media giants such as Twitter and Facebook have recently committed to stopping the spread of misinformation around vaccines, and to prioritise credible sources when it comes to online searches.)

Facebook removes anti-vaxxer's coronavirus video

An anti-vaxxer who unsuccessfully ran for a seat in the 2019 federal election has come out with a video downplaying the risk of coronavirus and encouraging Australians to ignore social distancing guidelines.

The video has been removed from YouTube for violating the site's guidelines and has also been taken down from Facebook.

"The only way that you can catch a virus is by having it injected into your bloodstream."

Mr Barnett recommended people stop social distancing and washing their hands. "Pull your finger out, get outside and do normal things," he said in the video.

The footage exploded online and was viewed more than 186,000 times on YouTube before they took action.

One place it found support was on a Facebook page linked to the far-right group Reclaim Australia, where followers claimed the virus is a conspiracy orchestrated by governments to force people to get flu shots. Zero evidence is offered to back up this claim.

Health authorities across the world, including the Australian Department of Health, have outlined how the virus spreads from person to person through contact with an infectious person or infected surfaces.

In the video, Mr Barnett tried to back up his assertions by boasting of his intelligence. "When I did my last IQ and aptitude tests, I was taken into a separate room and I was interrogated to see if I cheated," he said.

The outlandish conspiracies espoused by Mr Barnett have found support among anti-5G communities too. On March 28, the Facebook page 'We Say NO To 5G in Australia' launched a campaign encouraging people to email their local politicians and news outlets to outline their concerns towards the supposed links between the coronavirus and the rollout of 5G in the country.

Their email claims that 5G will lead to a spike in "electromagnetic radiation" and endanger people with compromised immune systems, the same cohort who are in the high-risk category for developing COVID-19.

Again, there is zero evidence to support this claim.

During the 2019 election, Mr Barnett campaigned against mandatory vaccinations and water fluoridation, but didn't have too many people who agreed with him, receiving only 1.2 per cent of the vote in the NSW Richmond constituency.




www.dailyexaminer.com.au/news/anti-vaxxers-sick-virus-claim/3988370/


One of the things you often hear in Mullumbimby is that if you eat organic food and exercise regularly, you will stay healthier and therefore won't need vaccines. A woman I talk to in The Patch cafe, diagonally opposite the Middle Pub, tells me that ever since moving up from Sydney four years ago, she has become much more aware of what she puts in her body.

"I don't take any pharmaceuticals at all," she says. "Not even antibiotics. And I haven't even taken one headache pill since I've been here." When she gets sick – colds, coughs – she simply "fights it off".

The idea of developing "natural immunity" has huge appeal. Many locals believe that not vaccinating has made the whole community healthier.

(This is incorrect: figures from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare show that life expectancy, child mortality and rates of all cancers are worse in this region than the national averages.)

People used to hold "pox parties", where parents would deliberately expose their children to infection, so as to "build up their resistance".

In the Northern Rivers, there are still Facebook groups – most of them members-only – where parents encourage one another to visit their chickenpox-infected friends.

Nosodes, or "homeopathic vaccines", have also become popular. The go-to man for nosodes, which are taken orally, is Isaac Golden, a homeopath in Gisborne, north-west of Melbourne.

(Golden mails his nosode kits to clients around Australia.) According to his website, Golden began investigating alternatives to traditional vaccines after a vaccine injured one of his daughters in the late 1970s. He has since become a "world authority" on homeoprophylaxis.

At a talk in Sunbury, Victoria, in 2015, Golden told an audience that it was important to get a nosode booster before going to Byron Bay, which he described as the "whooping cough capital of Australia". He also claimed that diseases like mumps, rubella, chickenpox and rotavirus are "very easily dealt with" by homeopathic treatments.

One afternoon, while enjoying a Dancing Unicorn smoothie at the Rainbow Kitchen cafe in Mullum, I phone Golden to ask him about the ingredients of his kits and their price, neither of which are mentioned on his website.

He says to email him some questions.

When I do so, he writes back to tell me that he can't answer my questions as this would constitute advertising homeoprophylaxis, which is prohibited by the Therapeutic Goods Administration.

I then head to Mullumbimby Herbals to ask if they have any nosodes available.

A woman there says she doesn't want to comment, because she's not the owner and also because vaccinations are "a very controversial issue".

She takes my number and says she'll pass it onto the owner, but I never hear back.


Vaccine hesitancy experts make a distinction between ordinary anti-vaxxers – like Helen, in Byron Bay, and Eve Jeffery, at The Echo – and professional anti-vaxxers, who actively campaign against vaccinations.

There is a long list of professional anti-vaxxers in Australia, including Tay Winterstein, wife of rugby league player Frank Winterstein, who charges $200 a head for her anti-vax workshops, and academic Judy Wilyman, who has promoted the theory that the WHO and the pharmaceutical industry have conspired to create panic around diseases in order to sell more vaccines. Wilyman has also appeared in court as an expert witness for parents who do not wish to vaccinate their children.

But perhaps the most active, and controversial, anti-vaxxer is Meryl Dorey. Dorey, who is 60, was raised in Brooklyn, New York. In 1988, she moved to Australia after marrying a macadamia nut farmer from Newrybar, a small town just south of Mullumbimby.

A year later they had their first child, a boy, who, according to Dorey, had a serious reaction to a vaccination for diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis. "He was arching his back, screaming, and he stopped feeding," says Dorey, who I meet over coffee in Bangalow.

Dorey's son recovered, but her anti-vax fire had been well and truly lit. In 1994, she started the Australian Vaccination Network, an advocacy group for people who believed they had been injured by vaccines.

(In 2013, the Administrative Decisions Tribunal found that the name Australian Vaccination Network was misleading, and ordered Dorey to change it, which she did, renaming her group the Australian Vaccination-risks Network. The group still goes by the acronym AVN.)

The AVN lobbies government, and provides what they call "buddies" who accompany people to doctor appointments to make sure they don't get bullied into being vaccinated against their will.

These days, it maintains several websites and Facebook pages that sell anti-vax books by Judy Wilyman, among others, pamphlets on homeopathy and colon hydrotherapy, and of course, AVN memberships, for $25 a year.

(The AVN has 1500 financial members and 20,000 on its mailing list.) Financial records show that the AVN has, in years past, brought in as much as $160,000 in donations, memberships, and book sales.

Dorey is unfailingly polite, with a vaguely hangdog expression that suggests a weary equanimity in the face of great odds. (One of Dorey's websites suggests that anti-vaxxers are the new Jews, persecuted for their beliefs.)

But once she gets going, she is all but unstoppable, methodically reciting a rap sheet of reality-free anti-vax assertions including, for example, that all vaccines are contaminated; that kids who are not vaccinated are healthier than those who are; and that anti-vax "whistleblowers" are routinely silenced by Big Pharma and the medical establishment.

She also tells me that vaccines cause autism, but that I will not be able to report this because The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age are owned by James Packer (which they aren't), and that Packer is "deeply involved in the pharmaceutical industry" (which he isn't).

According to Dr David Hawkes, director of Microbiology at the Victorian Cytology Service and spokesperson for Stop the AVN (SAVN), a group that campaigns against "anti-vaccine cranks", Dorey has done more than almost anybody to popularise anti-vaxxer myths through her writing and speaking engagements, and by denigrating vaccination advocates, who she has called "rabid" and "vicious".

In 2009, Dorey unsuccessfully attempted to gain access to the medical records of Dana McCaffery, the four-week-old girl from Lennox Head who died of whooping cough. (Dana had been too young to get vaccinated.)

Following their daughter's death, the McCafferys pushed for greater vaccination awareness, which is when Dorey accused them of making Dana a "martyr because she supposedly died from whooping cough".

The McCafferys have subsequently been attacked as "whining" liars and "media whores"; one message recently posted on Dana's memorial page expressed the hope that they "or their loved ones" suffer "some form of catastrophic vaccine injury … The sooner the better."

Dorey is now so controversial a figure that three of the most highly qualified specialists in vaccine hesitancy refused to take part in this story if I mentioned her name. And yet she is, inevitably, a contact point for other, more moderate voices in the anti-vax space, one of whom is Kerry-Anne Manning. Manning, who is 63, lives in Ballina, south of Mullumbimby, with her 20-something daughter Leah, in an immaculately kept home with clipped hedges out the front and family photos in the hallway. For reasons I can't quite ascertain, Dorey has invited herself to the interview, which she insists on recording.

Manning trained as a nurse but now works as a long-haul flight attendant. Her troubles began in 2011 when Leah, then 14, received Gardasil, a vaccine that protects young women from the human papilloma virus (HPV), which is known to cause cervical cancer. "Within a few weeks, Leah started complaining about stomach pains, dizziness, nausea," says Manning, sitting on a couch in the formal lounge, her springer spaniel, Zoe, at her feet. Manning thought it might be an inner-ear issue, and took Leah to an ear, nose and throat specialist. "He told us that Leah was probably just attention-seeking," she says. The minute Leah walked out, she burst into tears.

So began a medical merry-go-round, with Manning and Leah shunted from specialist to specialist, before finally receiving a diagnosis of postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS), a condition that affects circulation, and lupus, an inflammatory autoimmune disease. What had caused these conditions was unclear. Then one day, Manning was in Los Angeles on a work trip, researching POTS online when she came across a comment on a Facebook page about the condition being linked to Gardasil. "All the hairs on my arms stood up," Manning says. "I thought, 'What have I done?'"

Gardasil has been associated with short-term adverse reactions, such as dizziness and stomach aches. But several studies, including one by the European Medicines Agency, in 2015, have found no connection between the vaccine and POTS.

Still, Manning remains convinced of a link between Gardasil and Leah's condition. "We only have one child, and she had dreams, and all those have been taken away."

Manning doesn't consider herself an anti-vaxxer. "I'm pro-choice." And she regrets that vaccination has become so contentious. "I know people in Brisbane who haven't vaccinated, but they don't tell anyone because they know they'll get grief."

Manning is not a conspiracist. She is careful, considered and well-read, way too smart to be co-opted by anyone. Yet she finds herself shoulder-to-shoulder with the likes of Dorey and the AVN, on what two centuries of science have shown to be the wrong side of the issue.

In 2015, the federal government introduced the "No Jab, No Pay" policy, which blocks welfare payments to parents who refuse to vaccinate their children. (The policy also abolished conscientious objection as an excuse for not vaccinating.)

This was followed, in 2017, by state-based "No Jab, No Play" provisions, which ban unvaccinated children from being enrolled in preschool.

The measures have upped the stakes: I have been told more than once about marriages breaking down when couples couldn't agree on whether to vaccinate their children. I also hear about people setting up "renegade" daycare centres where non-vaccinating parents can place their kids.

The government measures have been a success: as of 2018, vaccination rates across Australia have risen 1 to 2 per cent. There are no specific figures for the Northern Rivers, but if you speak to medical practitioners in the area, there appears to be a backlog of people who are now catching up on their vaccination schedules.

"For some of these people, I think what No Jab, No Pay has shown is that, when push comes to shove, most vaccine-hesitant people don't feel strongly enough about it to actually sacrifice financially," says the Victorian Cytology Service's David Hawkes.

www.smh.com.au

Food for thought

Stay Safe, Stay Sanitized, Stay 2 metres away

Especially if you're from the Northern Rivers

Frank