Herd Immunity: A False Rationale for Vaccine Mandates

Herd immunity is a largely theoretical concept, yet for decades, it has furnished one of the key underpinnings for vaccine mandates in the United States. The public health establishment borrowed the herd immunity concept from pre-vaccine observations of natural disease outbreaks. Then, without any apparent supporting science, officials applied the concept to vaccination, using it not only to justify mass vaccination but to guilt-trip anyone objecting to the nation’s increasingly onerous vaccine mandates. Apparently, herd immunity bullying sometimes works: A review of 29 studies showed that “willingness to immunize children for the benefit of the community” was a “motivating reason” for about a third of parents. There is one problem with using herd immunity as a motivator, however—the theory of herd immunity relies on numerous flawed assumptions that, in the real world, do not and cannot justify compulsory vaccination policies. In a 2014 analysis in the Oregon Law Review by New York University (NYU) legal scholars Mary Holland and Chase E. Zachary (who also has a Princeton-conferred doctorate in chemistry), the authors show that 60 years of compulsory vaccine policies “have not attained herd immunity for any childhood disease.” It is time, they suggest, to cast aside coercion in favor of voluntary choice.

Have Failed Vaccination Programs Caused the U.S. to Lead All Industrialized Nations in Infant Mortality Rates?

The US leads all industrialized nations in the rates of deaths of infants on the first day of life. Starting in 2011, there were more fetal deaths than infant deaths in the United States (National Vital Statistics Report, CDC), and the rate of maternal death during pregnancy is skyrocketing, beyond all western countries. One study in the Lancet reported a rate of 26 deaths per 100,000 pregnancies in the US. We have also learned that the vaccine industry, including the CDC, will continue to allow society to expend time, energy and resources on demonstrably failed vaccine programs, ambivalent to the risks of adverse events associated with each and every vaccine, and that they will desperately try to move the goal post of performance, or ditch their vaccination efforts onto another unsuspecting segment of the population without sufficient safety testing.

Herd Immunity Theory Has Been Repeatedly Disproven

Nearly every year, there are outbreaks of infectious diseases in the U.S. in which the communities involved were highly vaccinated and, thus, supposedly immune. In each of those situations there was an illusion of protection. It wasn’t real. There was no herd immunity. This has certainly been true for pertussis. In science, when a theory is disproven, the scientific thing to do is to put it aside and develop a new theory for explaining something. That is not what doctors, public health officials, legislators, and the media are doing. Instead, they are clinging to a disproven theory and using it to justify mandating vaccination for everyone and shaming those who choose to exercise their informed consent rights and reconsider this medical intervention.

If Only Half of America is Properly Vaccinated, Where are the Epidemics?

In 2014, an outbreak of whooping cough (pertussis) broke out in the San Diego area. Of the 621 individuals who were infected, nearly all of them were completely up to date on all preventive vaccinations. If vaccines are given to protect from disease, how could this happen? San Diego public health official Dr. Wilma Wooten argued that the cause was related to a decrease in the protection offered by vaccines after the first year. This answer is most revealing, in that it speaks to the actual efficacy of vaccines. It also shows that the concept of herd immunity is largely myth—and completely misunderstood. The theory of herd immunity states that when a critical mass of the population (usually stipulated at 95%) is vaccinated against a disease, the possibility of outbreaks is eliminated. This is the main argument that is used to shame parents who wish to refuse certain vaccinations for their children: by not vaccinating, they put the health of the “herd” at risk. However, if vaccines start losing effectiveness after the first year, as Dr. Wooten says, then constant revaccination would be required, since the immunity offered is only temporary for most vaccines. Achieving the required rate of protection is virtually impossible under this paradigm. Of course, if we look back over the decades and note the lack of rampant epidemics in our nation, while remembering that vaccine protection is in perpetual decline, the myth of herd immunity quickly unravels. Our society has never achieved this level of herd immunity, yet not a single major outbreak of disease has occurred.

Vaccines Provide Herd Immunity?

Libertarian presidential candidate Gary Johnson recently reversed his opposition on mandatory childhood vaccination. When asked what caused him to make a U-turn and adopt what would seem to be an anti-libertarian position, he said, "I’ve come to find out that without mandatory vaccines, the vaccines that would in fact be issued would not be effective.…It’s dependent [on having]mandatory vaccines so that every child is immune. Otherwise, not all children will be immune even though they receive a vaccine." This line of argument is one of the main pillars behind forcing parents not only to vaccinate their kids but to do so on the government’s schedule, which includes more and more vaccines given on the same day, plus a vaccination at birth aimed to prevent a sexually transmitted illness. But is the herd immunity argument true? No.

Herd Immunity Examined: Natural Immunity in the Pre-Vaccine Era versus Modern Vaccine Immunity

Mainstream media widely reported the shocking news this past week that for the first time, a person in the U.S. has been identified carrying bacteria that is resistant to all known antibiotic pharmaceutical medicines. Health officials are stating publicly that this could mean “the end of the road” for antibiotic drugs. Pharmaceutical products (prescription drugs, vaccines, etc.) are a recent development in human history, and the human race survived thousands of years before they were introduced into the market in modern times. To properly understand how we got to this point in modern times, it is crucial to understand the role of mass vaccination programs, and the whole myth of "herd immunity" as defined by the vaccine extremists. Dr. Andrew Wakefield has examined how "herd immunity" functioned in the pre-vaccine era, compared to how it is functioning today in the modern era with mass vaccination programs. His comments are published on the website, VAXXED the Movie, which is exploding in popularity across the country as more and more theaters decide to show this well-written and well-produced film that the mainstream media and the pharmaceutical industry is trying desperately to censor and discredit.

Media Blackouts Continue Concealing Truth about Vaccine-driven Diseases Destroying Herd Immunity

The way proponents of vaccination are trying to use the herd immunity concept to entice people to vaccinate is false and misleading and simply irrelevant. Even though the medical researchers and the pharma industry are well-aware of the vaccine’s ineffectiveness and real risk of serious damage, the ignorant and inexpert media continue conducting uninformed, but often vicious campaigns of misinformation and demonisation of natural infectious disease and attacking the healthy unvaccinated. They ostentatiously interview young ignorant and unqualified people and celebrities simply expressing their irrelevant opinions and ideas of how good vaccines are and how irresponsible the unvaccinating parents are, and argumentum ad hominem rather than argumentum ad rem. It is well-documented that vaccinees develop vaccine-targeted diseases straight from the vaccines (smallpox, typhoid, polio, pertussis measles), usually after the first dose. Right from the beginning of any mass vaccination, outbreaks of any targeted diseases occurred in the vaccinated. In all countries with national vaccination programs, all vaccine-preventable diseases experienced deranged age distribution. The present situation is that in all developed countries with high vaccination compliance epidemics of pertussis, measles, mumps, etc. occur with increased frequency and magnitude in small babies, and, in the older vaccinated. Natural infectious diseases of childhood (both mortality and morbidity) were on the downward trajectory 50 years before any vaccines were administered in mass proportions. The main reasons were better nutrition (especially better vitamin C status), sanitation, clean water and uncrowded living conditions. The documented fact that even with 100% vaccination compliance major measles epidemics occur means that vaccines are totally ineffective in providing any herd immunity. Quite to the contrary, they destroy it. The observed reality is that infectious diseases targeted by vaccination are far from being widespread in the absence of vaccination, in fact, they are evidently widespread despite and because of vaccination. The only children exempt from this new, vaccine-driven vicious cycle, are the unvaccinated.

Herd Immunity in Vaccinated Populations has been Repeatedly Shown to be a Myth

Mass vaccination advocates rely on ‘herd immunity’ to make their case. But it doesn’t exist. Herd immunity sounds fine in theory. But as Stanford’s Dr. Obukhanych concluded, “As with any garbage in-garbage out type of theory, the expectations of the herd-immunity theory are bound to fail in the real world.”

The Herd Immunity Myth – Treating Our Children Like Cattle

So in actual fact, the vaccinated are the ones who carry the disease and risk infecting the unvaccinated, rather than the other way around.