Was Philadelphia’s Measles Outbreak from the Measles Vaccine?
In January of this year, the Philadelphia Department of Public Health began putting out frightening press releases about a measles outbreak that had been seen in several children and adults. The information was vague, but it was reported that the outbreak was centered on a daycare center in North-East Philadelphia. The PDoPH and the local media raised the alarm, and the calls for vaccination with the MMR shots were repeated on a daily basis for two months.
Alarmingly, the messaging put out by public health officials was that children as young as 6 months should get the MMR shots, which are not recommended to be administered before the age of two because of their association with higher rates of adverse reactions, specifically brain damage. In black boys, this risk is higher. Nowhere in any press release or media accounts did the number one treatment for measles, vitamin A, ever get discussed. In fact, the CDC has in recent years removed any reference to vitamin A treatment, a method known broadly in medicine since a paper published in the Lancet in 1983 showing a huge decrease in mortality from measles if an intervention with this vitamin was promptly made.
Three weeks after the last reported infection, the Philadelphia School District sent out a robocall, email, and text alert to the parents of the approximately 10,000 unvaccinated children in public schools in Philadelphia that if their child did not receive an MMR vaccination in two weeks, their child would be excluded from school. It is true that schools can bar students who are not vaccinated or have not proved immunity to diseases when an outbreak is reported in the school the child is attending. However, the Philadelphia School District falsely communicated to parents that their child would be kept from attending school despite no evidence of an outbreak in any district school or charter.
The Pennsylvania Chapter of Children’s Health Defense sent a letter to Dr. Kendra McDow, Chief Medical Officer for the District, demanding they correct the record and follow up immediately to inform parents of the “mistake” in the messaging. PA CHD was informed by Dr. McDow that they would send a follow-up. The following week another district email was sent that linked to a revised PSD webpage that made mention of the ability to avoid the vaccine requirement by submitting an exemption letter. A correction of the false information about exclusion from school was never corrected.
In the wake of the much-publicized daycare outbreak, PA CHD submitted Right-to-Know requests for information regarding what the Philadelphia Department of Public Health and the Philadelphia School District knew. The PDoPH asked for a half dozen time extensions for responding to the request, but ultimately the City of Philadelphia and its agencies have very little respect for the state’s mandate for governmental transparency and redacted all pertinent information from their emails discussing the outbreak and response. Additionally, public health officials can keep secret any information concerning a disease outbreak because of exemptions allowed under Section 521.15 of the Disease Prevention and Control Law of 1955 (DPCL).
Recent FOIA disclosures requested by the Informed Consent Action Network from Maine’s CDC exposed a similar policy of deception concerning information deliberately used to drum up fear and MMR vaccination rates. A child presented with a case of measles, and just as in Philadelphia, a chain of press releases and a flurry of media accounts were pressed into action to inform the public that they need to get their children up to date on the MMR shots ASAP. What was never disclosed was that the infected child was suffering from a case of measles they acquired via their MMR vaccination.
Authorities in public health continue to complain about the lack of trust in their mission, but they also continue to boldly lie without any consideration of how this undermines the possibility of being trusted by the public. PA CHD requested any information relating to the strain(s) of measles found during the Philadelphia outbreak. Was this a case of vaccine-induced infection? Public health authorities in Philadelphia do not want the public to know these details.
The appeal to fear in driving public health messaging is now taught in medical schools despite its very questionable ethics. It became the principle method to drive the COVID crisis policies. It appears this focus will continue under the current regime in public health. Below is an excerpt from the CDC coaching on the use of anxiety and fear in marketing their promotions.
CDC marketing presentation, which states that the perfect “recipe” for creating demand for vaccines “requires creating concern, anxiety, and worry” by, for example, having medical experts and public health authorities “state concern and alarm (and predict dire outcomes)” and show “[v]isible/tangible examples of the seriousness of the illness (e.g., pictures of children, families of those affected coming forward) and people getting vaccinated (the first to motivate, the latter to reinforce).”