Media lies hit a whole new level when it comes to vaccine industry’s promotion. All mainstream media outlets and countless other sublets of propaganda are put to work tirelessly to promote vaccines and encourage vaccination while hiding the disturbing truth about the same.
Vax Before Travel is a such a site that attempts to promote vaccines and actually lets visitors make vaccination appointments via a page on the site. On August 21st, the site posted a story Poliovirus Outbreaks Declared in Africa. Citing the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, or CDC, the story alerts visitors to the recent outbreaks of poliovirus in Angola, Benin, Central Africa, Ethiopia, and Mozambique. The site writes:
These polio outbreaks are caused by vaccine-derived poliovirus (VDPV), a sign of low oral polio vaccine coverage.
This sentence is the classic example of denial post-confession. The first part confesses the disturbing truth: “These polio outbreaks are caused by vaccine-derived poliovirus (VDPV).” And then in the same breath, in the same line, the statement blames “low oral polio vaccine coverage” for the outbreaks. Telling people that the virus in the vaccine causes these polio outbreaks but the outbreaks indicate that people there have not taken enough of the same vaccine?
The site further quotes CDC as:
These vaccine-derived polio outbreaks cannot spread in the United States because the US has high vaccination rates against polio and the oral polio vaccine is not used here, says the CDC.
So the cause of the polio cases is admittedly the vaccine and US doesn’t use the oral polio vaccine to prevent polio incidence in the country. As long as they were using the oral polio vaccine, polio cases were not going away. See the 2014 post on Virology Blog.
The Vax Before Travel story doesn’t omit the causal connection between the oral polio vaccine and resulting outbreaks which is fair reporting. But their story offers lame denial of this causal connection and promotes the vaccine by underscoring that al travelers to these countries need to be fully vaccinated against polio. Interesting! All travelers? Adults?
Polio has been known as a disease affecting children and in current day vaccinated children also frequently get the disease in backward countries. If the vaccine worked it won’t just protect children in develop world but in these third world countries as well. It’s not vaccination that defeats polio, as many anti-vaccination experts and critics explain; it’s other things boosting immunity, namely hygiene, nutrition, and healthy living conditions.
The Vax Before Travel story on the whole leans toward vaccine-promoting propaganda and ranks 8/10 on the Skepticle Scale.
Ernie's Take 