herd immunity
Vaccine safety has been making major headlines lately, and for good reason. More and more people are starting to recognize the risks associated with vaccines, particularly with some of their more dangerous ingredients like mercury and aluminum. However, many still argue that we're better off getting vaccinated than not, so much so that children are ostracized from their schools if their parents decide they don't want them to be vaccinated.

People all over the world have voiced their opinions on this topic, many of whom seem to think that their children will be in danger if they're in contact with other children who aren't vaccinated. Do unvaccinated children really pose a threat to society, or is this just something Big Pharma and the government have conditioned us to believe?

Because of a concept called "herd immunity," many people believe that through the widespread implementation of vaccinations, we can completely eradicate the spreading of disease. However, this commonly used term is vastly misunderstood and is, as a result, used misleadingly to support the pro-vaccine argument.

What Is Herd Immunity?

Herd immunity, or community immunity, is a theory stating that a pattern of immunity amongst a group of individuals should lead to a decline in incidence of infection. This term is often associated with the pro-vaccine movement, as it's said that the more individuals vaccinated in a given population, the less likely that population is to spread disease. Contrary to popular belief, there are actually many holes within this argument.

Let's start with the origin of the term "herd immunity," during the pre-vaccine era. Herd immunity was first discussed in the 1920s, but the researchers at the time were actually referring to naturally-occurring herd immunity. These researchers discovered that a number of children at the time had naturally developed immunity to the measles virus, as the amount of new cases lowered, even among children living in higher risk conditions (source).

Naturally-occurring herd immunity takes time to appear in a population. For example, when measles first enters a population that has never been exposed to it before, herd immunity is zero. Measles can be transmitted from person to person, so it's easy to imagine how quickly it could spread during the pre-vaccine era.

Fast-forward a few years, to when measles has circulated the general population a few times, and natural exposures will eventually lead to long-term immunity. It's pretty incredible to think that our bodies can adapt and evolve just to keep us healthy. The developing immune system contracts a disease, mounts an immune response, resolves the illness, and is left with lifelong immunity to a specific virus.

Essentially, it wasn't uncommon at the time for someone to get it, get better, and then be immune to it for the rest of their life. Death via measles was rare, which remains true to the present day, yet people largely attribute this to vaccination. The truth is, measles vaccine failures have been documented for a quarter of a century around the world. One study even found that individuals who had been vaccinated twice for measles could still contract the virus. You can read more about that in a CE article we published about it here.

Gastroenterologist and vaccine expert Dr. Andrew Wakefield explains that naturally-occurring herd immunity will develop in natural disease cycles within unvaccinated populations after going through 2-yearly epidemics. Wakefield maintains that with each rapid spread of disease, herd immunity rates increase significantly. As he explains:
"As a consequence of natural Herd Immunity, in the developed world measles mortality had fallen by 99.6% before measles vaccines were introduced." (source)
Of course, not every single person will reap the benefits of herd immunity. If your immune system isn't strong, which is often the case with newborn babies, seniors, and cancer patients, it's far more difficult to generate immunity.

So, somewhere between now and the 1920s, society started to correlate herd immunity with vaccines. Big Pharma and immunization supporters took the concept of naturally-occurring herd immunity and used it to market vaccination programs. All of a sudden, people started to believe that mass vaccinations equated to mass disease eradication and that vaccines were better for our bodies than its natural ability to strengthen our immune systems and fight off diseases.

How Herd Immunity Relates to Vaccines (Sort of)

When it comes to vaccinations, what many scientists are concerned about is the "herd immunity threshold," or the percentage of the population that needs to be vaccinated in order for herd immunity to occur.

According the the College of Physicians of Philadelphia, as low as 40% of the population would need to be vaccinated in order for herd immunity to be achieved. However, for many contagious diseases, the government maintains that the herd immunity threshold lies more around the 80-95% range.

What many of these scientists and government officials seem to forget to mention in their "herd immunity" arguments is that there is a significant difference between naturally-occurring immunity and vaccine-induced immunity. For starters, when immunity occurs naturally, it lasts a lifetime, whereas vaccines can only really protect you from anywhere between two and ten years.

So, we're expected to pump ourselves full of mercury and other chemicals as frequently as every two years, getting our "booster shots," instead of trusting our bodies to do this for us for free? Many of these vaccines are actually marketed as providing lifelong immunity, when in reality you only reap their benefits for a much shorter timeframe. However, this was realized long after vaccines were already being implemented widespread.

This means that for years people were receiving vaccines that they thought would be effective for life, when in reality they held an expiration date. Prior to this discovery and the development of "booster shots," there weren't any wide-scale epidemics or disease outbreaks, so what does this say about herd immunity and vaccines? Dr. Russell Blaylock, an American neurosurgeon and author, explains:
That vaccine-induced herd immunity is mostly myth can be proven quite simply. When I was in medical school, we were taught that all of the childhood vaccines lasted a lifetime. This thinking existed for over 70 years. It was not until relatively recently that it was discovered that most of these vaccines lost their effectiveness 2 to 10 years after being given. What this means is that at least half the population, that is the baby boomers, have had no vaccine-induced immunity against any of these diseases for which they had been vaccinated very early in life. In essence, at least 50% or more of the population was unprotected for decades.
Blaylock isn't the only scientist to come forward and question the effectiveness and safety of vaccines. More and more researchers are coming forward every year. For example, according to Lucija Tomljenovik, a post-doctoral research fellow in the department of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences at the University of British Colombia:
The statement that high levels of vaccination prevent disease outbreaks is not accurate as infectious diseases do in fact occur even in fully vaccinated populations as well as individuals. The likely reason for this is that vaccines primarily stimulate humoral immunity (antibody-based or Th2 responses) while they have little or no effect on cellular immunity (cytotoxic T-cells, Th1 responses), which is absolutely crucial for protection against viral as well as some bacterial pathogens. This may be the reason why vaccine-induced immunities are transient, requiring booster shots, while naturally acquired immunity conferred by the cellular immune system in the absence of vaccination tends to be permanent. Taken together, these observations may explain why outbreaks of allegedly vaccine-preventable diseases do occur in fully vaccinated populations and why, immunity (or its absence) cannot be reliably determined on the basis of serologic determination (measure of antibody levels) [137], which is the most common measure of vaccine efficacy in clinical trials. (source)
Dr. Larry Palevsky, a board-certified pediatrician who studied at the New York School of Medicine, has also voiced his concerns on vaccines and the lack of transparency regarding the safety of immunizations.

When it comes to herd immunity specifically, he says:
This whole concept of herd immunity is very interesting, because we were taught that herd immunity occurs because a certain percentage of a population gets an active illness. Therefore by a certain percentage of getting the active illness, they impart a protection onto the remaining part of the population that has not gotten the illness yet. And so the herd that is getting the illness is shedding the illness and protecting those who have not gotten it.

In vaccine science, we are extrapolating or concluding that if we vaccinate a certain percentage of people, we are imparting protection on those who have not been vaccinated. And that has NOT been shown to be true, because the true herd immunity in theory is based on an ACTIVE DISEASE, and we know that despite what we're taught, vaccination does not mimic the natural disease.

So we cannot use the same model of herd immunity in a natural disease in the vaccination policy. But unfortunately, we do use it even though it cannot be used because it doesn't have scientific backing. What's most interesting to me is that the entire concept of herd immunity fails to acknowledge that there is a life cycle of the viruses and the bacteria all on their own, and that what turns them on and off may have nothing to do with the percentage of people who have been infected.
It's also important to note that the safety of vaccines is completely unknown. There is not enough research performed on vaccines, in particular on ingredients like aluminum and mercury, and even the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) was caught falsifying information on vaccine safety. The vaccine-autism link has been completely dragged through the mud in mainstream media, treating the subject as if it's a joke, when in reality there are numerous studies proving there may be a correlation.

CDC scientist Dr. William Thompson publicly apologized for falsifying research, much of which is considered "pro-vaccine."

Dr. Thompson explained,
"The CDC has put the research 10 years behind, because the CDC has not been transparent. We've missed 10 years of research because the CDC is so paralyzed right now by anything related to autism. Really what we need is for congress to come in and say, give us the data." (22)
He then pointed to a specific CDC study he co-authored in 2004 that determined:
"The evidence is now convincing that the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine does not cause autism or any particular subtypes of autism spectrum disorder." (21)
In regards to the 2004 study, he said:
"I regret that my co-authors and I omitted statistically significant information in our 2004 article. . . . I have had many discussions with Dr. Brian Hooker over the last 10 months regarding studies the CDC has carried out regarding vaccines and neurodevelopmental outcomes, including autism spectrum disorders. I share his belief that CDC decision-making and analyses should be transparent." (24)
In an attempt to right his wrongdoings, he stated:
"It's the lowest point in my career that I went along with that paper and uh, I went along with this, we didn't report significant findings. I'm completely ashamed of what I did, I have great shame now that I was complicit and went along with this, I have been a part of the problem." (22)
Final Thoughts

To be clear, I am not telling you not to get vaccinated, nor am I recommending your children don't get vaccinated, either. I believe that everyone should be entitled to make their own decision regarding vaccinations and that everyone has a right to be fully informed on the risks associated with them.

You may be wondering why mercury and other harmful ingredients are added to vaccines in the first place, but that's like asking why certain chemicals are in the flu shot, supplements, or pharmaceutical drugs: The obvious and extremely sad answer to me is that they're added in order to keep us sick. Most of the drugs and treatments prescribed to patients have some sort of adverse effect, which makes sense from a business perspective; how else would Big Pharma continue to make money if they actually successfully treated illnesses?

Don't be afraid to question everything, including the medical industry. When it all comes down to it, Big Pharma is a money-making machine that couldn't be successful if everyone were healthy. They do an excellent job of overstating the benefits of drugs and vaccines and understating the risks, so the best you can do is complete your own research and make informed decisions. I don't care if you're pro- or anti-vaccines; my sole mission here is to shed some light on the other side of vaccines, the one that is rarely shared with the public.

If you'd like to learn more, I'd highly recommend you check out CE's other articles on vaccines!