The deceptions of Erin Marie, RN explained

Note: as you read this tale, please be aware that I will not be linking to Erin Marie Olszewski’s movie, book, or any interviews she has done. I assume you are here because you have seen something about them.  As such, we do not need to give them more traffic. The point of this blog post is to explain what Erin Marie Olszewski did and why she is so very wrong.  I watched her video myself and the points herein are an aggregate of my thoughts as well as those of others.

 

 

One of the greatest tragedies of the American response to the SARS-COV-2 pandemic (aka COVID19) has been the paranoid pseudoscience crowd’s elaborate cherry picking of science, ideas, and evidence.  One such purveyor of misinformation is Erin Marie Olszewski, a registered nurse from Florida USA. Erin spent weeks at Elmhurst Hospital in Queens New York City, called by some “the epicenter” of the American COVID19 pandemic, as a temporary nurse in various units in that hospital. She originally went because she thought the pandemic a hoax and wanted to expose “the truth” but quickly found the pandemic to be very real. She then changed her focus to be how patients were managed in New York City hospitals. In her documentary, she claims patients were mistreated, to the point of being murdered. COVID19 hit New York City hospitals very hard. By May 2, 2020,  a total of 13,831 laboratory-confirmed COVID-19–associated deaths, and 5,048 probable COVID-19–associated deaths were recorded in NYC.  Hospitals were overwhelmed but there is no evidence supporting Erin’s ideas that patients were mistreated or ignored for profit. Doctors and nurses who traveled to NYC went there to help. Erin is the only one who traveled to NYC to wear hidden camera glasses and make a documentary based on false facts.

With a documentary deal with Journeyman Pictures and a book deal with Skyhorse Publishing on the line, she switched over to using her hidden camera glasses to document what she feels is horrible care received by patients at Elmhurst. She filmed patients, their chart information, discussions with other healthcare providers, and more, without telling anyone what she was doing or asking permission, all to document what she calls murder.  In her mind, patients at Elmhurst were intubated too quickly and put on ventilators only for profit and healthcare providers did not care about the patients at all. She is also highly critical of decisions made by doctors and other healthcare providers at Elmhurst and assumes she knows more about how to treat COVID19 patients than anyone else.  Since the movie and book came out, she has made the rounds of low-brow, conspiracy shows like The Highwire with Del Bigtree.

For several months now, a team of science advocates and I have been combing through her Facebook posts, reading and watching her interviews, watching her film, and following her in the media.  We have carefully compiled information and evidence to show who Erin Marie is and why what she says in her movie and book is dangerous misinformation. This is a long story and this blogpost is just a summary of the basic facts.  More posts, with more details, will follow. *

 

So who is Erin Marie Olszewski and why did she go to NYC?   Why did she make a movie and write a book and what is she accusing Elmhurst Hospital of doing wrong?

Erin Marie Olszewski is a registered nurse from Florida. Public records of her license background show she originally was licensed in Wisconsin and then moved to Florida and become licensed there.  It is unclear how much she has worked as a nurse in Florida.  She is also an Army veteran, having enlisted in 2000 and remaining active for about 7 years.  She spent time in Iraq and became a nurse upon returning to USA.  There is no documented evidence she had any advanced training or experience working in an emergency department or critical care unit.

She is the mother of three young boys, one of whom she claims regressed into autism after a vaccine. She is a passionate antivaxxer and founded two groups: Florida Freedom Alliance and Nurses for Vaccine Safety Alliance, Inc.  Looking at their Facebook activity, FFA’s objective has been to thwart legislative attempts in Florida to pass any vaccine bills and NVSA seems to be a group of people who question scientific consensus. In the past few years, she has attended ACIP meetings, one of which I detail in this post, to ask that the connection between autism and vaccines be studied more.  Of course, savvy readers know vaccines do not cause autism. 

During the height of the pandemic in New York City, Erin contracted with Krucial Staffing to spend weeks in a NYC hospital as a temporary nurse. Krucial is a temporary agency which staffs various professions, including sending medical professionals into areas hard hit by COVID19.  Hundreds of nurses from all over the USA were brought with the promise that they would make up $10,000 a week in hard hit hospitals. Erin was sent to Elmhurst Hospital, considered by many to the be epicenter of the NYC outbreak because of how busy they were and how many deaths they saw. Many doctors and nurses are returning home from spending time in NYC and sharing harrowing and tragic stories of a city overwhelmed by COVID19 and of hospitals struggling to manage a novel disease with all the knowledge they could muster.  Most stories are supportive of the hospital system and acknowledge the complexity of the disease.

“It was definitely overwhelming, nothing like any health care provider has seen in their lifetime,” she said. “I’ve seen death constantly, I’ve seen death frequently, but to this magnitude? Never.”

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Elmhurst Hospital, where Erin was sent, is located in the Queens Borough of New York City. Queens struggles with not enough health resources to meet needs.  Queens is a very diverse borough, with almost half of residents being foreign born.

“Queens has 1.5 hospital beds per 1,000 people, compared to 5.3 in Manhattan. Typically serving what the health care industry calls an “unfavorable payer mix” and as a result dependent on government funding, public hospitals often lack the resources of the parallel nonpublic hospital system in New York City.”

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“Yet health care workers and community leaders say it is indisputable that the pandemic has disproportionately affected the Hispanic day laborers, restaurant workers and cleaners who make up the largest share of the population in an area often celebrated as one of the most diverse places on earth. Latinos comprise 34 percent of the deaths in New York City, the largest share for any racial or ethnic group, according to data released by state officials on Wednesday.

The neighborhoods also have large communities of Indian, Bangladeshi, Chinese, Filipino and Nepali people, and a score of other ethnicities that have been devastated by the pandemic.

The city-run Elmhurst Hospital Center was one of the earliest and hardest-hit by the virus. Dozens of Covid-19 patients have clogged hallways as they wait for beds, terrified, alone and often unable to communicate in English.”

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No one doubts that Elmhurst, amongst other hard hit hospitals in less areas of USA, struggled with COVID19 patients during a time when little was known about the novel coronavirus and personal protective equipment (PPE) was in short supply.  No one doubts they struggled with so many patients that they sometimes had to bring in doctors and nurses and other health professionals who did not have the experience or the advanced training in infectious diseases or intensive care units.  No one doubts that they struggled with whether and how and when to intubate patients and whether or not to use drugs like hydroxychloroquine (HCQ).  Doctors and nurses struggle with making the right decisions for patients on an average day. To be working during a pandemic, when the hospital is full of patients who almost all have a NOVEL (new) kind of virus, makes the job even harder.  But, they still try hard to keep their patients alive. Erin spends the entire film arguing that HCQ should be given to patients, even arguing with doctors about it, and that patients were being intubated too fast for nothing more than simple anxiety.  No one, no doctor on earth, would put a patient on a ventilator for anxiety. Erin obviously does not understand the SARS-COV-2 (COVID19) virus and how it presents. 

To quote ZdoggMD, from his excellent analysis of her video, what Erin did with her video and book is become a “criminal, unprofessional con artist” in spreading misinformation and lies, to fit her predetermined agenda, in a time when people are getting sick and dying because they refuse to follow medical advice to maskup and practice social distancing. Her video and book have the purpose of instilling doubt in the minds of people who are already very concerned about the quality of medical care in America. 

So, here are her points:

• She claims people who test negative to COVID19 are put in same area of the hospital as people who test positive, thereby exposing them to COVID19 and making them more sick.  In reality, up to 40% of negative COVID19 tests will be false. When a person comes into a hospital with symptoms of COVID19 and the test comes back false, they are often indicated as a presumptive covid patient because that leads their treatment plan. If 40% of negative tests are actually positive, you need to treat the symptoms not just the test results. If the symptoms match COVID, of course the patient is going to be put in a covid unit, particularly when the hospital is full to bursting. Erin’s claim that the hospital negligently gave people covid is a conspiracy theory not backed up by actual evidence.

 

• She claims the hospital is coding patients as positive to make money off them.  Erin claims Medicare pays the hospital $29,000 for each patient who is diagnosed as positive for COVID19 and placed on a ventilator. She seems to believe $29K is enough money for Elmhurst to be coding them this way on purpose to make a profit. However, a patient in ICU will cost the hospital much more than $29,000 in care. For example, after 62 days in the hospital with COVID19, a Washington man’s bill was $1.1 million. Erin fails to mention what an actual COVID19 patient costs the hospital because this is merely a conspiracy theory of hers. Again, this idea is not backed by real evidence.

 

• She claims the doctors and residents are incompetent.  At one point in the movie, Erin is heard arguing with a cardiac critical care fellow, a medical school graduate who is spending a year learning advanced care in Cardiac Surgery, Pulmonary & Critical Care Medicine, Anesthesiology and Surgical Critical Care. Meaning Erin tries to argue about what patients need with a person in training to be an expert.  The doctor is heard patiently explaining to Erin why her ideas are not valid but instead of learning, as one would hope a nurse with no documented experience in critical care would do,  Erin continues to berate and harass this fellow, as well as other doctors in the hospital. It is remarkably unprofessional to harass people with more expertise than you. Instead of making a film and writing a book, if Erin were truly concerned about patients she could have taken her claims to the media or the federal government, as a true whistleblower. There are actual standards for how to take care of COVID19 patients, but Erin does not present that information in the film. Erin’s goal was not to save lives, however, but to manufacture a controversy. Both of these screenshots are from very early into her NYC stay.  As you can see, she went to NYC with a clear agenda to defame and libel the hospital and doctors and not with the intent of helping people.

• Erin presumes hydroxychloroquine (HCQ), along with zinc and vitamin C, should be given to all patients. Having spent time reading her posts on Facebook now for several months, I understand she got some these ideas from disgraced former researcher Judy Mikovitz. Mikovitz came out with her own conspiracy video about COVID19 before Erin’s came out but the theme is similar: conspiracy, cherry picking evidence, treatments being hidden from public. We know, from reading many of Erin’s comments on her Facebook page, that she reveres Judy and spends time talking with her almost daily. We also know Judy espouses some crazy ideas about COVID19, all of which are easily debunked. HCQ is not currently recommendedfor COVID19 treatment, after a great deal of research done this spring, but Erin is unaware of that fact.

 

• She also claimed patients were sent to nursing homes with active COVID19 infection and that led to high death rate in those places. However, as has been said time and again by Governor Cuomo, nursing homes were refusing to receive healthy and stable patients at a fear of COVID outbreaks in their facilities. so New York State made it so that patients who were stable and past the window of transmission of COVID were to be accepted by nursing homes. This was very important because we needed to keep the beds in the hospital free to take care of new and acute patients. There was a report recently done that showed that the patients who left the hospital to go into the nursing homes were not the cause of the nursing home outbreaks.

 

• The most egregious of her actions, portrayed in the film, is the filming of patients and their medical records without permission. This is a clear violation of the health privacy law, HIPAA, and she has been reported by multiple people for having done so.  Only someone without a conscience could film people at their most vulnerable, without permission, and film their medical records for her own use. Her goal was to make herself fame and make money. Her actions should, we hope, lead to a huge fine and the loss of her nurse license in all states. That she could violate her patients’ privacy in such a way proves her motives were purely selfish.

 

• Again and again, Erin demonstrates that she came to NYC with her own ideas about the virus and treatment and refuses to learn anything new. If she had been truly concerned about patient safety, there are not only reporting capabilities in place for situations where patient safety is a concern, but by law and ethical guidelines all licensed medical personnel are required to report patient safety issues to hospital administration and in some situations local law enforcement—and she did neither of those things. She cherry picks studies that make her points rather than stay up to date with current science. She spreads misinformation rather than listen to what people with greater expertise are telling her. Worst of all, she is instilling fear in people at a time when people need to be listening to healthcare professionals. She is even anti-mask.

 

Thankfully, Erin Marie Olszewski was found out as the disingenuous person she is and fired from Elmhurst.  I know people have been in contact with the hospital’s attorneys about Erin but I am not sure what is happening. Attorneys often take a long time to establish a case and are not exactly going to share their thoughts with us.  She has been reported for her HIPAA violation and that action is moving forward.

Thank you to everyone on Facebook who has helped organize details used in this blog post. I did not compile or analyze all the facts herein myself. A dedicated group found most of them so that we could compile them together into a generalized area.  Their help was invaluable.

Please stay tuned for more to come. We have accounts from nurses and doctors who worked with Erin Marie Olszewski at Elmhurst we hope to share next.

Remember to #maskup!

 

Kathy

 

What is the vaccine guide?

I have been seeing more and more of the “Vaccine Guide” in social media and decided to take a look at it. What is it, who made it, what does it have inside of it?  As I am fond of doing, I am taking one for team pro-vax here by reading it myself.

The “Vaccine Guide” is a very slick, well-made looking website with a guide supposedly to everything you need to know about vaccines. You can browse the information online by clicking on the colored sections below or you can download it and take it to a printer to be printed. People also sell them, already printed, online for about $170 a pop in full color.  The guide was created by Ashley Everly Cates, an Idaho woman with a bachelor’s degree in environmental toxicology from University California Davis. She currently runs a group called  Health Freedom Idaho and, as near as I can tell, has never actually worked in toxicology nor written any papers. It should be noted that it is usual practice to only call those with a Ph.D. in toxicology a “toxicologist” but Ashley continually markets herself as a practicing toxicologist. As she has never had any experience beyond the undergraduate degree, this is misleading.

Note: I am going to address a recent comment made to me. Please note there are three reasons I am specifying that Ashley is not a toxicologist. She has only a BS in the field, has never worked in the field, and has published no papers in the field. The BS alone is not the only factor. 

I am a very visual person so I will be referring to every color by it’s Crayola name.

 

First up, yellow-orange section or VAERS, etc.  I notice that Ashley has linked to some good information on the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act (NCVIA) until I realize she has only put up screenshots of pages, not actual links to the actual data. Furthermore, none of the screenshots come with explanations of why they were chosen. There is also a screenshot of a report from Harvard Pilgrim medical group on VAERS reports but the report is not explained in any detail. I feel it would be difficult for the average person to understand the implications of the report and the validity of the data. In actuality, Harvard Pilgrim is a Vaccine Safety Datalink member and they are charged by the US government to monitor vaccine safety. Within their system, they found some underreporting of vaccine adverse events but it is not clear, by reading the study, if this underreporting has any significance on public health, is an artifact of just their system, or is perpetuated by other VSD members.  I feel strongly it is disingenuous to post this study without clarification.

Update: It has come to my attention that I missed the word source on each page of Ashley’s guide. My apologies.  Thus, one can, in fact, link out to the original sources if you use her website. However, if you print the guide and/or buy it as a notebook, you will only get the screenshots. I have edited this post to reflect this correction.

Next up, neon carrot section: vaccine inserts.  This is just URLs linking to the inserts without any explanation of their validity or what they really mean. Nothing is mentioned about how inserts are only written about clinical trials and how they do not list proven side effects. With that in mind, here are some great links on how to read vaccine inserts.

Vaxopedia      or     Skeptical Raptor

The third section is mango tango: It is about vaccine ingredients. First off is a list of vaccine ingredients or excipients.  Then, Ashley has put some links to screenshots about specific ingredients. What I notice right away about the screenshots is that there is nothing about why she thinks they are valid?  This is what we call cherry-picking – choosing studies that make your point but not checking them for actual validity. Validity is incredibly important. Maybe Ashley did not learn this at Davis? As an undergraduate at the University of California, Irvine, I certainly learned the importance of judging a study for validity. Here is a very good read on the basics of how to judge a study for validity.

What Ashley has done is list a bunch of studies showing the supposed dangers of aluminum adjuvants but she has not quantified why she thinks those studies are valid nor compared to other literature. This kind of analysis is shoddy and would have earned her a very bad grade in her research methods class.

In reality, aluminum adjuvants are very safe. My scientist friend, Abe, otherwise known as the Blood-Brain Barrier scientist, has done an excellent job of explaining on his blog. Abe gets to actually refer to himself as an expert as he has a Ph.D. in molecular medicine and is a professor at Texas Tech University.  Abe also has a blog where he explains aluminum adjuvants, among other subjects. Herein, Abe discusses junk science (cough what Ashley shares cough) and why it is junk. As I was taught by the esteemed Dr. Linton Freeman, professor emeritus at University California, Irvine, you have to be able to critically analyze pros and cons of studies, validity, and reliability and explain this in detail, if you want to be taken seriously. Anything less is shoddy work and deserves and F. Lint is a hardass, but I got the only As in his classes for a reason. Man is a genius.

The rest of the ingredients section is more negative thoughts on ingredients, screenshots of papers decrying ingredients, and nothing explaining validity at all. It is intellectually dishonest to try to persuade people with an emotional argument and not present valid arguments to make your point. Ashley has presented nothing valid at all. Just screenshots.

For more on vaccine ingredients, I would recommend the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia Vaccine Education website as well as Scientist Abe’s website. Todd has also done a nice job at his blog, Harpocrates Speaks.  I share these links because they are more than screenshots – the explain the ingredients in full and link outside to more information.

The wild watermelon section is called Asymptomatic transmission and shedding.  Again, we have more screenshots without explanations. As the average reader is not trained in how to read studies for validity, I again find this disingenuous.  I am somewhat knowledgeable about how to read studies but I do not have a Ph.D. so I ask for help when I need it. I have resources to help me understand what I am reading. Ashley is relying on the appeal to her authority and assuming readers will simply take her word for why these studies indicate vaccines should be avoided.

Here is the problem with Ashley’s motive: lawmakers and policymakers are going to rely on actual experts in the field to inform them on risks, benefits, and issues therein.  When it comes to understanding the FDA pertussis studies on baboons, many antivaxers assume the two studies indicate baboons shed vaccine-derived pertussis to others when nothing could be further from the truth.  The FDA studies with baboons concluded that vaccinated baboons protected their newborns from pertussis, did not get a severe infection when exposed, did not shed the vaccine, but could colonize pertussis infection in their throats without symptoms. In other words, the worst that can happen with pertussis vaccine is you might get a mild pertussis infection or you might have the bacteria in your throat with no symptoms.  So, being vaccinated doesn’t prevent 100% of pertussis infections but it prevents babies from dying and prevents the 100-day cough. Does Ashley explain these facts?  NOPE!  Bad form!!

Ashley then goes on to cite a very few rare examples of vaccines shedding but does not tell readers how rates chickenpox, flu, rotavirus, rubella, measles, mumps, etc are all extraordinarily low THANKS TO VACCINES. Read The Pink Book for infection data.

Again, this is extremely disingenuous! This is borderline lying, in my book, as it is implying vaccines cause disease without explaining the validity of these actual case studies. One study, for example, is about a boy who got chickenpox vaccine, got the very rare pox, and his pregnant mother also got an infection. This could only have happened if she had been touching her son’s pox. This is extremely rare but also very easily avoidable – don’t get your toddlers vaccinated for chickenpox if you are pregnant and, if you are, don’t touch the pox!  There is a very good reason disease rates are low and it’s name is VACCINES.

The fuschia section is called Effectiveness.  This section is, as usual, only screenshots of studies, often just abstracts. Why she thinks abstracts are enough to read is confounding.  Abstracts are tiny summaries. One must read the full study to judge. Again, did Davis not teach her this fact?? This section could easily fool people until they read the full studies and compare to rates of actual disease, look at genotypes and strains, and realize the whole dang section is proof vaccines work! Also, most of the links therein are not vaccine strains anyway.

Ashley also links to information on pertussis outbreaks and herd immunity.  This is a common trope from antivaxers – the idea that if vaccines don’t work 100% then they are useless. For example, she cites a Fordham University mumps outbreak. There were 13 cases, all vaccinated, out of 10,000 undergraduates. Thus, the vaccine had a hugely effective rate and protected most all students. Vaccine win.

Necessity of vaccination, the royal purple section, is Ashley’s attempt to convince people vaccines are not necessary. For some reason, it starts off with a screenshot of a report from the Royal College of Ireland in 1959. Baffling. I guess she feels this is proof measles is harmless?  I prefer to link to this paper by Walter Orenstein, et al, which analyses the death and complications rates in the USA.

Ashley goes on to link to some more papers questioning the contribution vaccines made to history. For example, she links to a paper on the CDC history of drinking water. As measles, diphtheria, flu, and more are respiratory infections, clean water did not affect them.  She further links to mortality (death) statistics without quantifying that while Americans were dying less of preventable diseases, they were suffering more. As the Orenstein, et al, paper indicates, measles rate was higher in 1950s USA than any other decade in the USA. People were dying less because of medical care but they were still suffering.

Another abstract to which she links is entitled “Human milk mucin inhibits rotavirus replication and prevents experimental gastroenteritis.” As the full study is not linked, the implication is that breastfeeding prevents gastro infections. I am here to tell that is 100% false. Read my tale here.

Plus, again, it is not genuinely informative to link only to an abstract. What does the rest of the paper say? Is it valid? Are the methods they used valid and reliable? Ashley does not cover any of these topics.

The rest of this section has some information on how vitamins might help cure diseases like measles and polio but we know that, for example, vitamin A is only used with measles to lower the complication and rate. It does not eradicate the risks. With viral diseases, there is no good evidence vitamins prevent suffering. Vitamin C does not cure a cold.  Vitamin C is not a cure-all.  Pauling was wrong. Just because some guy in the 1930s gave polio patients vitamin C and some of them did not die does not mean vitamin C is a cure-all.

The navy blue section is on adverse reactions.  This is, once again, more screenshots of abstracts with no explanation as to validity. I have been over how autism is not caused by vaccines many times. You cand read more here and here. Ashley is lying to her readers to say vaccines cause autism and not explain the validity of the abstracts she has screenshot or link to more current research. This is unbelievable maddening. Shameful!  This entire section is an embarrassment to the University of California. Honestly, they should revoke her degree. Linking only to abstracts and not explaining reliability is egregious. She lists few, rare side effects documented but does not link to the vast number of positive outcomes from vaccines? Compared to the number of vaccines given, the USA has compensated 0.0000011% of vaccinees for injury. That is an INCREDIBLE safety rate.

Ashley is not sharing with her readers any accurate science. She is lying.  She shares a screenshot of a badly done analysis of SIDS rates without quantifying that SIDS rate is at a historic low in the USA and the more we vaccinate, the fewer babies die.

The final section is pine green and called Incentives.  This is where the conspiracy theories start. There is a link to a HuffPo article SPIDER, a made-up controversy that went nowhere. There is a link to the badly done Cochrane HPV review that led to a kerfuffle and some careers tanking. There is a link about the ICAN HHS lawsuit that went nowhere. I wrote about that here.

She further goes on to discuss provider incentives but does not explain them at all. I explain how they work here and my friend, Vince, does so here.

In conclusion, this is a sad bunch of cherry-picked, screenshots of abstracts with no explanations as to the validity, nothing is given to readers to inform them why what they are reading is important. Ashley is duping her readers and relying on their gullibility. Most parents want their children to be safe and healthy and Ashley is using scare tactics to influence parents into not vaccinating.

 

She should be thoroughly ashamed of herself.

For more on this guide, be sure to read Science-Based Medicine’s post on it.

Remember to always verify claims. This is a perfect example!!

 

 

Mrs Antivaxer goes to Atlanta!

Some of you may already know that for antivaxers the center of the vaccine universe is the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in Atlanta, Georgia, USA.  The mothership of the pro-vaccine movement is ACIP or the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices. Led by Dr Amanda Cohn, of the CDC, this committee makes the official recommendations on vaccine practices to the US Government.

This week, antivaxers descended on the ACIP meeting, as part of a coordinated effort called Inundate the CDC ACIP meetings. Apparently, they believe if they attend these meetings and wake up the ACIP “sheeple,” then all will be well in the world. A lot of very active antivax mums (and one guy) attended.

 

ETA: Here is one of the videos I watched of their testimony.

 

 

In this picture, you can see Denise Marie, who thinks her daughter’s teenage depression is a side effect of HPV vaccine. You can see Hillary Simpson, the #crazymothers who thinks her son’s tummy troubles are a vaccine reaction. There is Jamie Juarez who thinks her son’s autism is a vaccine reaction. Susie Corgan who also thinks her son’s autism is a vaccine reaction. Jaclyn Gallion, who seemingly has no reason to be in attendance. And so on. This is a gallery of women and one man who is a chiropractor, who decided that they needed to tell the committee their vaccine injury stories. Only, none of their stories are actually vaccine injuries. So, it is highly likely the ACIP committee members half listened politely, knowing these are #crazymothers.

SIGH

So, what did they want? They wanted to tell their stories and ask questions, only ACIP members don’t answer questions during public comment periods. So, what did they say? Well, I watched the video on the Inundate Facebook page and here is what they said:

Susie Corgan, in the sleeveless black dress in back, who is on the board of Informed Choice Washington, spoke about how her son is autistic because of vaccines. Except vaccines don’t cause autism. She asked if the ACIP members are listening to their stories?  My question is why would they listen to something irrational?

Tia Severina also has a son with autism and a daughter on the autism spectrum. She does not believe the rise in autism is due to better diagnosis. She is the mom in the red jacket in front. She believes the bad science in books saying that vaccines cause autism.  She believes genetics cause 1% of autism and the rest is environmental. She believes the vaccine safety studies are missing. She believes the cherry picking.

Next up was Teresa Berg from Michigan. She claims that we, as a society, accept ADHD, autism, ASD, speech delays, cancer, and or as normal. I am not sure where she got this idea. She believes vaccines cause all these childhood issues and doctors ignore vaccine reactions. She believes because there are no safety studies on the entire schedule then vaccines cannot possibly be safe. But there are many safety studies.

LeeAnne Johnson has two “severely autistic little boys.”  One of her children has seizures and the other has GI spasms. Of course, these can be comorbid with autism but they are not symptoms of autism. However, she believes these symptoms  are all vaccine injuries and it is “very unfair.”  She believes her children’s case is exactly like Hanna Poling‘s case and should have been compensated by Vaccine Court.

Jaclyn Gallion, of Washington State, spoke about how suicides are related to unvaccinated children who are excluded from outbreaks due to being unvaccinated. She claims that when children are quarantined they become depressed and attempt suicide.  This is really a stretch.  When you turn in a vaccine exemption form, you read that your child will be excluded during an outbreak. So, it is your responsibility, as a parent, to make sure your excluded child is cared for during the quarantine at home.  Really, her point is completely irrational. She wants us to expose unvaccinated children to outbreaks because it might help their self-esteem to not have to stay home? Good lord.

Erin Marie RN (Erin Olszewski) came from Florida feels ACIP should protect our country as their number one priority.  She was very teary when explaining that she was speaking for vaccine injured who have parents who could not attend this meeting. Her son, at 12 months, regressed into autism after MMR.  She believes ACIP is not helping people, that vaccines are not helping people.

I wonder what we can do, as a society, to help these women understand regression can happen with genetic disorders. I believe these moms need support and we need to advocate for families who are suffering while trying to help a disabled child.  If we truly supported them, perhaps they would not be so angry and blaming vaccines?

Jamie Lynn Juarez testified that her son has severe autism which she believes is really viral encephalopathy and vaccine injury. She claims to have two unvaxed healthy children and another daughter she claims is vaccine injured and recovered. She believes vaccines do injure and she claims to have testified in thousands of legal cases for vaccine injured, as a counselor.  She believes there is fraud in CDC, as per JB Handley’s book. She thinks CDC should do more studies and should prescreen babies for potential vaccine injury.

Lori Ciminelli, a retired medical assistant, spoke about how, in her time, children only got 6 vaccines and now her grandchildren get 72. (Sidebar: I am forever unsure why antivaxers think protecting children from more serious diseases is a bad thing. Also, they are very bad at math as children do not get 72 shots.) She also made some appalling statements about adults with severe needs. She asked why were there no adults in diapers in the malls when she was a child?  Well, Lori, there were few malls when you were a child and the special needs adults were in institutions. Nobody took them on day trips. They were warehoused like cattle. She also asked why there was no special education in her childhood. Well, Lori, special education laws were first enacted in the USA in 1975, that is why.  Before then, no one with any special needs was afforded any rights. Your child who had reading trouble, was failing math, was fitchety and getting sent to the Principal’s office a lot?  None of them were treated with any consideration. Your child who could not keep up with the class?  He repeated the grade or was kicked out of school. Prior to 1975, the schools did not have to teach anyone who could not keep up with their peers.

Elijah Bunch, who’s son Christopher Bunch died recently and he blames HPV vaccine, spoke about his son and Brandy Vaughn, of Learn the Risk, spoke for him. She claims that HPV vaccine is linked to ADEM and paralysis. She claims she has 50 studies that verify her claims. She claims there are serious issues following HPV vaccination, all over the world. She claims there are 432 deaths related to HPV vaccine. She believes that any other pharmaceutical drug would have been removed from the market by now if those many deaths were related to it. She claims that pharmaceutical companies are not studying reports of adverse events and are not studying vaccine safety. She claims that HPV vaccine has caused thousands of deaths. She is a master cherry picker who does not understand chemistry one iota, so I have no doubt there is not much to her “evidence.”

Hillary Simpson, the #crazymothers, believes vaccine injury can be healed without pharmaceuticals. Note that she believes her son was injured by rotavirus vaccine. She asked a few questions. 1. Who thinks it is okay to recommend 72 doses of vaccines without doing a single cumulative study? 2. Who thinks it is okay to not do a vaccinated versus unvaccinated study so they can assess risk? 3. Who thinks it is okay that 54% of our children are suffering from a chronic illness? And 1 in 36 is autistic. 4. What are you, ACIP, doing to protect the children and the vaccine-induced autism epidemic? (note:  Hillary is a former actress and remarkably dramatic) 5. When is ACIP going to start working towards resolution of this massive problem? (big sigh from her) 6. And when are they going to stop hiding behind “we don’t know why?”  Because the #crazymothers know and they are healing their babies.

LeeAnne Anita spoke last, in my viewing. She started off with a quote from Dr Paul Offit about how one cannot really say that MMR causes autism (my take: because that is not the way science speaks) but you should get used to saying that MMR does not cause autism because otherwise, people hear a door being left open when there should not be a door left open. What Dr Offit means by this is telling people the evidence does not support vaccines as causing evidence is confusing to the average person. So, instead of say vaccines do not cause autism.  It is more simple and gets to the point. But, she believes the door has been busted open because only thimerosal has been studied in relation to autism and only MMR has been studied. So, she believes vaccines could still cause autism. She does not understand why aluminum adjuvants are used as a placebo, why hep b is given to babies, why inserts say no safety studies have been done on pregnant women, and why recommendations for vaccines are only based on pharma studies. (of course, that is completely false). She wants an immediate change to the vaccine schedule and believes that Robert Kennedy Jr is correct, as quoted in the JB Handley book, that there is fraud at the CDC.

Another thing that happened this week, in conjunction with this meeting,  is this group approached Dr Paul Offit and somehow convinced him to have lunch with them, off the record. I am shocked he did this but proud of him for making an attempt to hear their concerns.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Of course, they could not resist mocking him afterward and being nasty. They really don’t have any self-control.  During LeeAnn’s testimony, when she was quoting Dr Offit, he was caught on video a “shoot me now” gesture towards his head. #crazymother Hillary, and the others took offense.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It was fascinating reading all their comments to each other, all over Facebook. They eventually recognized that it is likely their testimony did nothing at all to sway the committee but they hope parents will hear them and stop vaccinating. They believe the science is on their side and all provaxers are bought by pharma. It is really quite fascinating to observe them from afar. I am quite glad I was not there in person.

 

 

UPDATE: You can find all the videos to watch here.

 

Remember to think for yourself! Vaccines do not cause autism.

 

 

Kathy

 

Antivaxers bring up Hannah Poling and vaccine safety, AGAIN

Yet again, antivaxers are bringing up the Hannah Poling vaccine injury case as proof vaccines cause autism. This time, it is because JB Handley has published a new book and he has decided that the attorneys for the government admitted that vaccines cause autism and, therefore, all the Autism Omnibus cases are wrong and every child who has autism deserves compensation for a vaccine injury.

Except he is wrong.

 

It all started with JB Handley’s appearance on Del Bigtree’s show last week to promote his new book. I watched this 90 minute episode so you don’t have to. Guests included JB Handley, Jenny McCarthy, Rolf Hazelhurst, Robert Kennedy Jr, with Del Bigtree hosting. I will post some links at the bottom in case you want to learn more about these people. 

Here’s my summary:

JB – my book is revolutionary, blah blah
Jenny – I love JB
Rolf Hazelhurst and RFKjr discuss Poling case.
Del uses paper people to illustrate how Autism Omnibus hearings work.
Rolf says that dept of justice attorneys on his case lied about link between mercury and autism and MMR and that is the fraud. 

The end.

 

This is what they are excited about. This is a screenshot from the video. Mr. Matanoski and Ms. Ricciardella are attorneys who were involved in the Autism Omnibus hearings on the government’s side. Wiki actually has a really good explanation of these hearings, if this is new to you.

Del and JB, et al, think Matanoski and Ricciardella were lying when they made the above statement because Hannah Poling’s family was awarded compensation for vaccines injuring her and she is autistic. But, she was not awarded compensation for autism, a fact which Del and JB, et al, clearly refuse to understand. Here is the footnote from a more recent vaccine injury case, that of Brian Hooker:

I am well aware, of course, that during the years since the “test cases” were decided, in two cases involving vaccinees suffering from ASDs, Vaccine Act compensation was granted.
But in neither of those cases did the Respondent concede, nor did a special master find, that there was any “causation-in-fact” connection between a vaccination and the vaccinee’s ASD. Instead, in both cases it was conceded or found that the vaccinee displayed the symptoms of a Table Injury within the Table time frame after vaccination. (See Section I above).

In Poling v. HHS, the presiding special master clarified that the family was compensated because the Respondent conceded that the Poling child had suffered a Table Injury–not because the Respondent or the special master had concluded that any vaccination had contributed to causing or aggravating the child’s ASD. See Poling v. HHS, No. 02-1466V, 2011 WL 678559, at *1 (Fed. Cir Spec. Mstr. Jan. 28, 2011) (a fees decision, but noting specifically that the case was compensated as a Table Injury).

Second, in Wright v. HHS, No. 12-423, 2015 WL 6665600 (Fed. Cl. Spec. Mstr. Sept. 21, 2015), Special Master Vowell concluded that a child, later diagnosed with ASD, suffered a
“Table Injury” after a vaccination. However, she stressed that she was not finding that the vaccinee’s ASD in that case was “caused-in-fact” by the vaccination–to the contrary, she
specifically found that the evidence in that case did notsupport a “causation-in-fact” claim, going so far as to remark that the petitioners’ “causation-in-fact” theory in that case was “absurd.” Wright v. HHS, No. 12-423, 2015 WL 6665600, at *2 (Fed. Cl. Spec. Mstr. Sept. 21, 2015).

The compensation of these two cases, thus does not afford any support to the notion that vaccinations can contribute to the causation of autism. In setting up the Vaccine Act
compensation system, Congress forthrightly acknowledged that the Table Injury presumptions would result in compensation for some injuries that were not, in fact, truly vaccine-caused. H.R. Rept. No. 99-908, 18, 1986 U.S.C.C.A.N. 6344, 6359. (“The Committee recognizes that there is public debate over the incidence of illnesses that coincidentally occur within a short time of vaccination. The Committee further recognizes that the deeming of a vaccine-relatedness adopted here may provide compensation to some children whose illness is not, in fact, vaccine related.”

 

As you can clearly read, the Poling case does not lead to the conclusion that vaccines cause autism.  Therefore, there is no fraud. Vaccines do not cause autism. There is no autism epidemic. There have been many, many vaccine safety studies done in the USA in the last 30 years. There are many vaccine safety studies done with saline placebo.  

 

Remember: Del Bigtree lies. His friends lie. Everything they try to say about vaccines is a lie.

 

The characters

Who is JB Handley? He’s this guy who thinks his son’s autism was caused by vaccines and he never met a bad study he didn’t love. He ignores everything contrary to his view.  Here are a few blog posts about him.

https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/j-b-handley-versus-vaccine-science-again-not-surprisingly-j-b-loses/

https://respectfulinsolence.com/2018/04/06/old-guard-antivaccine-activist-j-b-handley-loses-best-platform/

My friend, the real truther, put together a video on JB

Rolf Hazelhurst is another guy who thinks his son is autistic because of vaccines. He has gone thru vaccine court, and lost, and tried to sue the pharmaceutical company and also lost. Last I heard, he was trying to sue the doctor who gave his son the vaccine and Robert Kennedy Jr was one of his attorneys.

Link to his vaccine court case: https://www.autism-watch.org/omnibus/hazlehurst.pdf

Robert F Kennedy Jr has lately taken up a very distorted view of vaccines and has lumped them together with his environmental causes.  Good read about him here: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-robert-f-kennedy-jr-distorted-vaccine-science1/

Jenny McCarthy is a former actress/playmate who founded Generation Rescue with JB. She claimed her son was autistic but healed but many think she is not telling the truth about his health.

Del Bigtree is, well, Del. I have written about him often. You can read here and here and here.

Remember to always think for yourself. Always verify claims. Never take youtube videos as fact.

 

Kathy