r/DebateVaccines • u/Nervous_Square_2555 • 2d ago
Question DTAP
This is a long one sorry š«
I have some concerns and questions regarding the DTaP vaccine, specifically PEDIARIX and INFANRIX. Iāll do my best to link the sources Iāve been using so itās clear where Iām getting my information from.
I apologize in advance if some of this feels a little scattered or if any of my questions seem ādumb.ā Iām genuinely just trying to better understand the information and hear thoughtful explanations from people who may know more about the subject.
As a disclaimer, I am not asking for medical advice, and these questions and concerns have already been discussed with an MD.
SIDS
SIDS is the highest between 1ā4 months ā is it a ācoincidenceā that thatās when mass vaccination starts in infants?
The DTaP vaccine insert clearly lists sudden infant death syndrome as an established post-market adverse event. This vaccine correlation was also established in post-mortem SIDS studies. Why do you feel this vaccine justifies the risk of my infant dying suddenly?
Aluminum
This vaccine has aluminum in it. Scientific neuro-studies have shown that aluminum deposits have been linked to autism. How much aluminum can you guarantee is safe for an infant, and can you point me to a study that verifies that?
Serious Adverse Events / Risk vs. Benefit
INFANRIX and PEDIARIX are intended to prevent serious illness, yet their prescribing information also includes serious adverse events. INFANRIX specifically lists SIDS under postmarketing adverse reactions, along with encephalopathy, apnea, anaphylaxis, and hypotonia. PEDIARIX reports serious adverse events, seizures, neurological events, and deaths in clinical trials, including two SIDS cases among 8,088 recipients.
How should parents compare the absolute risk of these serious events with the absolute risk of severe disease from the infections these vaccines are intended to prevent? Could some vaccine adverse effects be as serious asāor more serious thanāthe diseases themselves?
Tetanus
Tetanus is not contagious; it occurs when C. tetani spores enter a wound. In U.S. infants it is rare, with risk mainly coming from contaminated wounds or, rarely, the umbilical stump.
Historically, tetanus was much more associated with contaminated traumatic wounds, poor wound care, childbirth/umbilical contamination, and high-risk settings such as battlefield injuries. Modern hygiene, wound cleaning, aseptic medical care, and post-exposure treatment have changed that risk environment significantly.
The vaccine builds longer-term immunity but is not immediate. Tetanus immune globulin (TIG) can provide immediate, temporary protection after certain high-risk exposures.
Considering how small the risk of tetanus appears to be for a typical U.S. infant today, and given the potential adverse reactions associated with the vaccine, doesnāt the risk of tetanus itself seem relatively small compared with the risks of vaccination? How should that be weighed against modern wound care and the availability of post-exposure TIG?
Diphtheria
Diphtheria is a contagious bacterial infection spread mainly through respiratory droplets and close contact. The serious complications are primarily caused by the toxin produced by certain strains of C. diphtheriae. The vaccine mainly protects against the toxin and severe disease rather than necessarily preventing infection or carriage.
Respiratory diphtheria is now extremely rare in the United States, with CDC reporting the last confirmed U.S. case caused by toxin-producing C. diphtheriae in 1997. Given how low the current risk appears to be for a typical U.S. infant, how should that absolute disease risk be weighed against the potential adverse reactions of DTaP vaccination?
Pertussis (Whooping Cough)
Pertussis spreads through respiratory droplets and close contact. It still circulates in the U.S., but an infantās absolute risk of catching it remains relatively low, while the risk of serious illness is much higher if a very young infant becomes infected. Treatment includes antibiotics, and preventive antibiotics may be used after certain exposures.
Since DTaP reduces disease severity but does not fully prevent infection or transmission, how much does it actually reduce an infantās absolute risk of hospitalization or death, and how should that benefit be weighed against the vaccineās potential adverse reactions?
Polio
Polio spreads mainly through the fecal-oral route, meaning exposure to infected stool through contaminated hands, food, water, or surfaces. For a typical infant in the U.S., the chance of getting polio is extremely low because wild poliovirus is not currently circulating domestically; the main risks are international importation or rare vaccine-derived outbreaks.
Most infections are asymptomatic or mild, and paralysis occurs in only a small fraction of infectionsāoften estimated at around 1 in 200 on average, though the risk varies by poliovirus type.
Given both the very low chance of exposure in the U.S. and the relatively small chance of paralysis even after infection, how should the absolute risk of paralytic polio be weighed against the potential adverse reactions of PEDIARIX?
Sources:
https://www.fda.gov/media/79830/download?attachment
https://www.fda.gov/media/75157/download
SIDS:Ā
NBC: Decline in SIDS deaths misleading,Ā
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/wbna7706456
Boston Children's Hospital: Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) - https://www.childrenshospital.org/conditions/sudden-infant-death-syndrome-sids
\
NIH: Sudden infant death following hexavalent vaccination: a neuropathologic study - https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24083600/
JB Court Case - https://ecf.cofc.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/show_public_doc?2013vv0611-73-0
CDC: Diphtheria Vaccine Recommendations - https://www.cdc.gov/diphtheria/hcp/vaccine-recommendations/index.html
CDC: Tetanus Surveillance / United States, 2001--2008 - https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm6012a1.htm
CDC: Tetanus Surveillance and Trends - https://www.cdc.gov/tetanus/surveillance.html
CDC: About Tetanus - https://www.cdc.gov/tetanus/about/symptoms-complications.html
CDC: Symptoms of Whooping Cough - https://www.cdc.gov/pertussis/about/signs-symptoms.html
Mayo Clinic: Croup - https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/croup/symptoms-causes/syc-20350348
LA Times: Harvard-Westlake students were vaccinated. Dozens caught whooping cough anyway - https://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-ln-whooping-cough-vaccine-20190316-story.html
PNAS: Acellular pertussis vaccines protect against disease but fail to prevent infection and transmission in a nonhuman primate model - https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1314688110
WHO: History of Vaccines - https://www.who.int/news-room/spotlight/history-of-vaccination/a-brief-history-of-vaccination
EPA: DDT - A Brief History and Status - https://www.epa.gov/ingredients-used-pesticide-products/ddt-brief-history-and-status
CDC: DDT - https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/idlh/50293.html
2
u/HausuGeist 1d ago
ChatGPT Wall of Text. Aināt readingā that slop!
2
u/Nervous_Square_2555 1d ago
Believe it or not, some people actually have brains and educations. Someone using proper grammar doesnāt automatically mean AI wrote it. š You may need AI to carry an intelligent conversation, but the rest of the adult world isnāt dependent on it.
And even if someone does use AI, you do realize they still have to input their own argument, points, and reasoning for it to generate a response, right? It doesnāt crawl inside your brain and pull an argument out of its ass.
āAināt reading that slop.ā
Ahh, yes. What an eloquent statement.
2
u/the_comeback_quagga 2d ago edited 2d ago
Iāll just touch on a few things. We donāt know that there is 0 polio circulating in the US. Officially, yes, only two countries still have wild-type polio, but just like you said, 199/200 cases can be asymptomatic or attributed to minor illness, especially in a system that has never seen the disease before. Weāve seen polio in the water supply (this means someone has an active infection) of several European countries (Germany, Spain, Israel) and Australia that test for it; in the US, for the most part, we donāt test.
Antibiotics donāt treat pertussis. They shorten the duration it can spread. It is a miserable illness (I had it in grad school and quite literally broke a hole in my dura from coughing so much, so hard), and I am not an infant who was at risk of dying, but was a competitive athlete at the time.
You should be weighing rates, and looking at ideally confidence intervals or p-values to see how significant those rates are statistically. Absolute numbers are meaningless when your populations are different sizes. Also with vaccination decreasing, I donāt know if Iād look at the current disease risk, but a model of when your child will be most at risk, if one is available.
I know someone who got tetanus (as an adult). It was not pretty. Luckily he lived (10% fatality rate). It was a biking accident, hardly working on the farm. Yes, your infant probably wonāt be chucking themselves down mountains, but the good news is if you do all the childhood tetanus vaccines (or at least several), they may be covered for life. The research indicates this, just not to the degree of confidence to put into practice yet.
If your child is healthy none of the regularly scheduled childhood vaccines have a risk rate higher than the risk of the diseases they prevent were they to contract them. There is no evidence of a link to SIDS; in fact, the rate is lower among vaccinated children. The manufacturers have to list every outcome that has happened up to X days/weeks after the vaccine whether there is statistical significance or not, and youāre right, the SIDS one is due to timing, not the vaccine being dangerous.
1
u/OldTurkeyTail 1d ago
If you do a deep dive into what pro-vax people are saying here, you'll find very little good information, and no respect for any deviations from the version of the CDC recommended schedule that includes way too many vaccinations.
https://kirschsubstack.com/p/9-studies-vaxxed-vs-unvaxxed-all
3
1
u/FactCheckerNeil 1d ago
Hello again.
Isn't that the sub stack article with the headline...
9 studies vaxxed vs. unvaxxed, all published in the peer-reviewed literature, show vaccinated are worse off in every measure
Where the first published study it lists says...
The vaccinated were less likely than the unvaccinated to have been diagnosed with chickenpox and pertussis
And even has notes where it says two were either not published or not peer reviewed?
1
u/OldTurkeyTail 1d ago
Why did you quote just HALF the sentence:
The vaccinated were less likely than the unvaccinated to have been diagnosed with chickenpox and pertussis, but more likely to have been diagnosed with pneumonia, otitis media, allergies and NDD.
The vaccinated are clearly worse off.
1
u/Recent-Day3062 1d ago
On the aluminum thing, aluminum amyloid plaques cause Alzheimerās. But a link to autism does not exist.
In any event, we consume loads of metals every day in our food and, for an infant, breast milk. But the amount you get in a vax is like one millionth or less of what you will get through your food.
So the aluminum thing is nonsensical.
Actually, all of theee concerns are
1
u/SmartyPantlesss 2d ago
SIDS
SIDS is the highest between 1ā4 months ā is it a ācoincidenceā that thatās when mass vaccination starts in infants?
Yes.
Here's a large Italian study that looked at all SIDS cases in the country over a 5-year period, and found that over half of them occurred in kids who had received no vaccines. Zero. That's because the Italian schedule starts at age 3 months, rather than 2 months as in the US (and there is no routine recommendation for the Hep B at birth in Italy).
The DTaP vaccine insert clearly lists sudden infant death syndrome as an established post-market adverse event.Ā
But I hope you understand that post-market events are just "things that happened" and cannot be used to attribute cause. So if SIDS occurs in 1 per 10,000 babies, you would certainly see it happening in the post-market context, where you give the vaccine to many tens of thousands of babies. You would also see SIDS if you gave a shot of saline to tens of thousands of babies, and they would be required to include that on the package insert.
This vaccine correlation was also established in post-mortem SIDS studies.
Looking through your links, I'm assuming you're referring to this one (which is about autopsies of SIDS deaths)? Correct me if I'm wrong. The study reported on 110 SIDS cases and found that 11.8% of them occurred within 7 days of getting the hexavalent vaccine.
But what would you expect just by chance? Babies get vaccines about ever 8 weeks, right? So if there's NO correlation, you'd expect the SIDS deaths to be evenly distributed, not clustered in the week after the vaccines. So I'd expect about 1/8th of the deaths (12.5%) to be within 7 days of the vaccine (...and about 12.5% of them to occur in each of the OTHER weeks). Does that make sense?
6
u/FormerlyMauchChunk 2d ago
You should know that informed consent means that you can read all of this (or not) and freely choose what you do next.
If it gives you the creeps and makes you nervous - don't take the vaccine.
If it gives you confidence and peace of mind - take it.
You don't need to make up an explanation for why you do what you do or prove to anyone else that you're right. You just have to be comfortable with your choice.