Classic: Vaccines: Fact vs. Fiction

Through the process of vaccination, millions of people have avoided serious (at times fatal) medical conditions, but opposition to the practice began almost immediately after vaccinations became widespread. And in the modern day the anti-vaccination movement has seemed to gain more ground than before -- so what's going on here? Join the guys as they dive into the history of vaccination, the claims of the anti-vaxx movement and why some people insist there's a conspiracy afoot. Side note: we recorded this in 2019... right before the Covid pandemic rocked the globe.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Are we going to do it?

Speaker 2 (00:04):
Are we going to do the vaccine episode as a
classic tonight?

Speaker 3 (00:07):
May?

Speaker 1 (00:07):
Maybe we should just Yeah, I hope it aged well.
That's that's all I'm going to say.

Speaker 3 (00:11):
I think it did well. Let's say this original episode
came out in July twenty nineteen. Yeah, it near months
before a pandemic rocked the world and vaccinations became the topic.

Speaker 1 (00:26):
D jore all right, but an issue. We have to
say this.

Speaker 2 (00:31):
We get accused of preseats not infrequently, usually when we're
when we're exploring something, it's because our research has indicated
what do we call it, a statistical inevitability, sure or certitude.

(00:51):
This is very interesting. I love the point about how
well or not well this has aged.

Speaker 3 (01:00):
Do you guys remember how pro vaccination we are in
this Nope, We're a crazy pro vaccination is And in
a way that is like us trying to be helpful
because we're trying to go with the science and we're like,
this seems like a really great thing on the whole.

Speaker 2 (01:15):
Guys, I think we also correct, we course correct the
popular misconceptions about Tuskegee.

Speaker 1 (01:22):
This might be the one.

Speaker 2 (01:25):
Where, of course, people would be anti vaccination knowing that
horrid piece of history. But we share this together, fellow
listeners as a sort of time capsule.

Speaker 3 (01:36):
Time capsule that you may or may not want to
inject into your ears.

Speaker 1 (01:41):
Or right into your neck.

Speaker 2 (01:42):
Yeah, let's roll it.

Speaker 4 (01:44):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of iHeart Radios How Stuff Works.

Speaker 3 (02:07):
Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
my name is Noel.

Speaker 2 (02:11):
They called me Ben. We were joined as always with
our super producer, Paul Mission Control Deca. Most importantly, you
are you. You are here, and that makes this stuff
they don't want you to know, and it is a doozy.
But first, as we've been doing recently, let's let's check
in Noel, how are you doing.

Speaker 1 (02:30):
I'm doing okay. I'm still kind of nursing this scooter
injury to my arm, but I'm at about seventy five
percent maybe last time I was at sixty five. Show
steadily on the men.

Speaker 2 (02:40):
Yeah, yeah, you've been shaking hands with your right hand.

Speaker 1 (02:44):
Yes, but it really sucks when someone has a really,
really powerful handshake. It sets me back a couple of
percentage points. My recovery.

Speaker 2 (02:51):
Powerful handshakes are such a literally a weird flex.

Speaker 1 (02:56):
I think so too.

Speaker 2 (02:57):
What about you, Matt, how's it going.

Speaker 3 (02:59):
I've been practicing my power shakes, my power handshakes. You know,
I'm great. Everything's Everything's good.

Speaker 2 (03:06):
There's a new Magic the Gathering set coming out one
of our one of our SuperMods. I believe it was
Zach who recently had a birthday, So happy birthday to
you u. Zach just pointed it out. We were talking
on our behind the scenes chat.

Speaker 3 (03:21):
Nice. I'm still behind on all that I need to
catch up again, but happy birthday, Zach, and thanks for
letting us know.

Speaker 2 (03:27):
And your birthday's coming up as well, so act surprised
and don't buy any magic cards.

Speaker 1 (03:31):
Oh you know what. We all have the same birthday month, right,
except for Paul. Except for Paul on now Paul mission control.

Speaker 2 (03:39):
Paul I believe is in September. Paul, how are you doing?
Thumbs up, thumbs down, thumbs up, fu.

Speaker 1 (03:46):
Speaking thumb yes, he does well.

Speaker 3 (03:49):
Speaking of birthdays, we're going to talk about something that
that occurs on well around your first birthday and in
theory and then continues to happen to you and in
scheduled times throughout your life, depending on where you live
and if you decide to do it, if you can
or cannot.

Speaker 2 (04:08):
Again depend on where you live, because in some places
it is mandatory no if sands or butts.

Speaker 1 (04:13):
And perform and tell you the episode.

Speaker 2 (04:15):
For everyone who doesn't read the titles before they before
they listen, what we're exploring today is going to be
a bit of a hot topic, even for us, not
the store. So as you're listening along, don't hesitate. If
you have input, feel free to just pause the podcast
and give us a call.

Speaker 3 (04:34):
Yeah one std w TK.

Speaker 2 (04:40):
You have three minutes. You can call back if you
need to expound further, but make the best use of
your time, and most importantly, let us know if you
do not want us to air what you said.

Speaker 1 (04:51):
We're not going to stop the show to take your call,
but we will get it eventually and then you know,
use that on a later call in show.

Speaker 3 (04:58):
That's right. And by the way, we have entirely too
many messages right now for me to go through all
of them, so we might have to divide that up.

Speaker 2 (05:04):
That's right. Yeah, Matt, that's on my list. I will
I will take some of this burden off you and
thank you for being a one man army.

Speaker 1 (05:11):
There, yes a lie. Just give me that Ring Central
log in and I'll get the app and have it
on my phone so it wakes me up in the
middle of the night too, all right, And.

Speaker 2 (05:19):
Speaking of speaking of waking up or being woke, we
are finally doing it, folks, fellow conspiracy realist, true believers
and hardcore skeptics alike. This is the episode on vaccination. Paul,
can we get a dramatic sound cue?

Speaker 1 (05:39):
Perfect?

Speaker 2 (05:41):
Depending upon who you ask, vaccines are either absolute life
savers human lives, not the candy which is awesome favorite
flavors cherry obviously, or if you ask someone else, they
may be something sinister pushed upon the population through false
and misleading information. For our part here, we want I
wanted to explore this by looking at the history of vaccination,

(06:04):
the history of anti vaccination movements, sort of the shadow
of vaccination that has been there for as long as
widespread vaccination existed, and the current state of health today,
with a little bit about the trends going into twenty
twenty and the near to mid future spoiler alert, we
do not get to everything. There will probably have to

(06:25):
be later episodes about this, related both to feedback from
our fellow listeners and different topics such as forced vaccinations
in the military or in prisons and so on. However,
at the offset, we need to be very, very crystal
clear here we do have an agenda. We have a

(06:46):
single agenda the four of us in today's episode, and
that is tracing the causes and motivations behind various allegations
of conspiracy in this subject. We were not prevented from
making this episode, nor were we worn against it. We
were not told to find some specific conclusion by any
third party. I know a lot of folks have written

(07:07):
to us and said, iHeart is making you do things guys,
our show.

Speaker 1 (07:13):
They don't even listen to it. Yeah, I heeart does
not care what we do. They've got big fish to fry,
exactly exactly. To be completely clear, we've never been told
what to do or not to do ever, no matter
what the parent company, and this is absolutely no exception.

Speaker 2 (07:29):
Right right. A few years back, I think we mentioned
this previously. A few years back, we were asked by
Discovery Communications to do one thing and I talked about
this on Here's where it gets crazy. We were asked
to do a They put out this fairly exploitative, manipulative
thing purporting to be a documentary about the discovery of mermaids, right,

(07:53):
and they asked us to do an episode as if
it were a real thing, and we refused.

Speaker 3 (07:58):
That's right, We just made one about the folklore about
surrounding mermaids.

Speaker 2 (08:02):
Yeah, right, we were super We were super shady to
our pary company the entire time.

Speaker 1 (08:09):
And that's where the line between like sponsored content and
fake news kind of comes in to play, right, Like,
It's one thing to do kind of a hoax show
to try to prop up some kind of like you know,
big event television thing, but it's another thing to say, well, hey, okay,
y'all do your thing, but we're going to do something
that maybe is in the same vein as this, But
we're not going to be your Patsy's and pretend like

(08:30):
mermaids are real.

Speaker 2 (08:31):
Yeah, you want to talk about mermaids, Okay, Well we
would have anyway, but we're not going to we're not
going to actively lie to people.

Speaker 1 (08:39):
And we're definitely not talking about mermaids today.

Speaker 2 (08:42):
No, no, not unless there's a big plot twist that
comes in while we're recording. So the only people who
matter to us in terms of this show are going
to be the people listening. So the only folks who
ever told us they'd like to hear this topic on
air were your fellow listener and our own. So let's
get started. The human species here, we are picturess in

(09:05):
your head. The human species has a long, long history
of distrusting vaccines, and in recent years, especially in the West,
this has become a hot button issue all over again.
Mission Control wrote to us off air, wanted us to
want to make sure we mentioned Jessica Biel is a
new I guess they're called anti vaxers now, yeah, don't.

(09:30):
I don't know about that kind of labeling as a
thought terminating cliche, but yes, a lot of celebrities are
picking this up, similar to the way that many celebrities
in years past fell for the propaganda about flat earth
propagating on Twitter. It's so look, you know, it's it's
a hot button issue now. Regardless of where you fall

(09:50):
in the in the conversation, a few people have probably
already pulled up their email or paused the recording to
dial our phone number start writing to us. So this
leads us to the question, what the hell has been
going on here and for how long. To answer that question,
we have to define what a vaccine is. So here
are the facts.

Speaker 1 (10:11):
A vaccine is a substance that's used to stimulate antibodies
or the production thereof, and it's meant to be a
guard to increase immunity or provide immunity to prevent diseases
that are able to be prevented by these vaccinations. And

(10:34):
they are prepared from basically a little piece of that disease.
That's the idea.

Speaker 2 (10:41):
Yeah, yeah, exactly, We're creating an antidote from the original poison.
Essentially to quote our asscience from dilated peoples, or to paraphrasem.
So this is treated. Vaccines are treated just as you said, nol.
They act as an antigen without inducing the actual disease.
And antigen is a toxic or other foreign substance which

(11:03):
creates an immune response in the body and helps your
body teach itself to fight a disease. So I was
thinking about awkward comparisons or analogies to this. Imagine if
you could be shot with a rubber bullet that would
function like a bullet but not kill you, and then
later it just made you immune to bullets. WHOA, that's

(11:24):
kind of that's very imperfect, but it's kind of similar thinking,
except in this case vaccines actually work, and it's a
powerful it's a powerful thing. The question is what are
they meant to do and how do they work? The
concept of vaccination is old.

Speaker 1 (11:41):
Old, old, old old.

Speaker 2 (11:42):
Several years ago we had a animated show for children
called Stuff of Genius, where when we looked at great
inventors and inventions, and we learned that in school, many children,
especially in the West, are taught that the first vaccinations
occurred due to the efforts of a man named Edward Jenner.
Edward Jenner, according to the story, learned to successfully inoculate

(12:05):
people against smallpox by infecting them with another related disease, cowpox.
In seventeen ninety six, he inoculated a thirteen year old
boy with vaccina virus cowpox and then demonstrated that this
immunized the kid to smallpox. In seventeen ninety eight, the
first smallpox vaccine hit the mainstream. Right was developed, and

(12:30):
it is okay, I don't want to dismiss this guy.
It is true that Edward Jenner changed the world. It
is true that he is responsible in a very large
and profound way for widespread smallpox vaccination. However, a lot
of people are taught and have been taught that he
was the first person to figure this out. That is
categorically untrue. Vaccines and vaccination techniques are much much, much older.

Speaker 3 (12:55):
Yeah, you go back to Buddhist monks who would actually
take some snake venom into their body, like they would
drink it just enough to get or to confer immunity
to it, or at least to get some immunity to
this to a snake bite while they're walking around. And
then you can also look back even well even back
to the seventeenth century in China, when there was a

(13:15):
thing called variolation where they would actually smear like cowpox
on their body, like they would just put it on
their body and then they would be immune to smallpox
in the same way that Edward Jenner used, or a
similar way that Edward Jenner used.

Speaker 1 (13:30):
It makes me think of like, who's the first one
to decide it. I'm going to eat this mushroom, and
you know, see what happens. Yeah, it's it's it's genius,
but it's also so risky, you know, because I mean yet, like,
if you're doing this thing with a snake venom, surely
someone took too much and died and someone had to
try it again take just the right amount to get
the immunity. It's it's like a weird kind of like
blunt instrument version of science, you know, but with human

(13:53):
lives kind of as the collateral damage.

Speaker 2 (13:55):
Yeah, it's sort of it's brute force hacking with high attrition.
You talked about this too with an episode we did
earlier on heroin and opium. You know, heroin and opium
have done horrific things to the world wide community, but
you have to at some level just respect the ingenuity.
It's impressive how somebody figured out they saw a poppy

(14:20):
plant and then ultimately they said, you know what, I
bet there's a way to invent syringes to distill this
into something else.

Speaker 1 (14:30):
It's gonna milk that poppy, right, something like that. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (14:34):
So, so there's this huge, this huge swath of human
experience that has lost the time. When we talk about this,
accounts from the fifteen hundreds describe what is clearly smallpox
inoculation in both China and in India. There's a guy
named Joseph Needham who wrote a book called Science and

(14:56):
Civilization in China, and he talks about this in volume six.
In the Life and Death of Smallpox, it's noted that
in the late sixteen hundreds, an emperor named Kang Shi,
who had survived smallpox as a child, had his children inoculated.
He was an early proponent of this and the Yeah,
the method that he used was pretty gross. They would

(15:17):
take they would take actual smallpox scabs, they would grind
them up like mortar and pestle style, and then they
would blow that into people's nostrils.

Speaker 3 (15:26):
Well, yeah, and hence the inoculation you can get by
spraying in your nose.

Speaker 1 (15:31):
Now insulflation.

Speaker 2 (15:33):
Right. It's difficult to pinpoint when this actually began, and
some sources will date this back as early as two
hundred BCE, but that's still I mean, that's debatable. Nobody
nobody was really saying, hey, let's record this for posterity.
It's going to change the world, at least not to
the degree that you know historians would hope nowadays. But whatever,

(15:55):
and whenever the origin of this technology. Over the eighteenth
and nineteenth centuries, systematic implementation of mass smallpox immunization eventually
led to the eradication of smallpox in nineteen seventy nine.

Speaker 1 (16:09):
In the nation. That was a doozy of a senate's ben,
I love it.

Speaker 2 (16:13):
It was across the world.

Speaker 1 (16:15):
No, no, I know. But you had a lot of
like immunization, vaccination.

Speaker 2 (16:19):
Implement Yeah, it was good. Sometimes they get carried away.

Speaker 1 (16:23):
No, no, it was. It was was brilliant. I had
to hind it within the nation. But as you say, Ben, no,
this is not just national, this is global. It's so
crazy to actually kill a disease. Bill Gates is actively working. Well,
that's what he says on this sort of stuff. And
then we have several other big highlights for the pro
vaccination community. Right then you have Louis Pasteur, who was

(16:45):
working live, as we say, with attenuated live attenuated cholera
vaccine and inactivated anthrax vaccines, working with human subjects in
eighteen ninety seven and nineteen oh four, respectively, for each
of those vaccines. Then there was plague vaccine. Big deal
was also invented in the nineteenth century. Between eighteen ninety
and nineteen fifty, we started to see bacterial vaccine develop

(17:09):
and that included the basilis kalamat Goren BCG vaccination. I'm
perhouncing that right, which is very much still in use today.
That's the thing about a lot of this stuff, right,
it doesn't get much better once you figure it out,
like that's the puzzle piece, you know.

Speaker 2 (17:25):
Well there, I mean, there are there are some things
we got wrong or.

Speaker 1 (17:28):
Along one hundred percent.

Speaker 2 (17:30):
Yeah, but yeah, these are incredible breakthroughs. I mean, I
don't know. I'm maybe there's a hot take, and this
is just my personal opinion. I try to keep my
personal opinion out of the show for big deal issues.
But I would say I'm anti plague and I'm glad
that I don't have it.

Speaker 3 (17:48):
That's a good idea.

Speaker 1 (17:49):
I think that that's a very respectable position. Maybe that's
a hot take.

Speaker 2 (17:53):
Nineteen twenty three, guy named Alexander Glenny perfects a method
of inactivating tetanus toxin with formaldehyde. Formaldehyde is bad for you.
So that's one of our first dings against the vaccine.

Speaker 1 (18:08):
There.

Speaker 2 (18:09):
The same method that he used was used to develop
a vaccine against diphtheria in nineteen twenty six, the same
year that this building where we record the podcast was constructed.

Speaker 3 (18:21):
Oh yes, by a man named mister Sears.

Speaker 2 (18:25):
Yes.

Speaker 1 (18:25):
True.

Speaker 2 (18:26):
And then there was the Pretussis vaccine development. It took
a lot longer, and the first the first good vaccine
version of that was legal to use in the US
in nineteen forty eight, but the development was a lot tougher.

Speaker 1 (18:43):
In between nineteen fifty nineteen and eighty five, we had
lots of developments, advancements and viral tissue culture methods that
led to the advent of the polio vaccine, the salk Or,
an activated polio vaccine, and the saban which which is
a live attenuated oral polio vaccine. Polio was a ravaging disease.

(19:06):
I mean, it was such a problem for children. It
was very communicable. Clothes had to be burned. It was
just absolute, almost its own kind of mini plague.

Speaker 2 (19:14):
US presidents had it.

Speaker 1 (19:15):
That's right. No one was safe because there was no
way around it. And now it's sort of like a
distant memory.

Speaker 2 (19:21):
In most of the world, hopefully. Yes, let's look at
the other side of this. While we talked briefly about
the history of vaccines and You can find some wonderful
work on this and other podcasts which we're glad to
recommend if you're write. There is also a history of
vaccine resistance, or what is sometimes called vaccine hesitancy, or

(19:43):
what is sometimes called anti vaccination movements. It's tough to
conjecture how local populations felt about ancient vaccination attempts. What
you want my scabs, grind them up, blow them in.
Who's knows why? These are good questions, But more modern
vaccination technology has met some form of organized resistance since

(20:06):
literally the early eighteen hundreds, right when the first widespread
vaccination about smallpox came out. For some parents, the smallpox
vaccination process itself induced just horror and terror and protests.
And it's no wonder because Matt, you had mentioned this before.
Could you describe the method a little?

Speaker 3 (20:28):
Uh? Sure? So the first thing you do is you
take a child's arm and then you cut into it
so that there's open flesh there. Then you take the
the limph, kind of the seepage out of somebody who
had a blister of small yah. Someone else in person too,
who has smallpox. You take that stuff, that liquid, and

(20:50):
then you put it into that person's arm.

Speaker 2 (20:54):
Yeah, and this person their only qualification needs to be
that they are alive, and they were vacated about a
week earlier, so it gave blisters time to form. This
means that the person could be a stranger, They could
be someone who is a different religion, ethnicity, or community,

(21:14):
all three of which were huge deals back then and
for some people still are today. And then now that
person's blood or their bodily fluids are literally going to
be in your child. Phrase it that way. That's how people.
That's how people felt about it, and a lot of
folks who objected to this, including local clergy, believed that
the vaccine was Unchristian because it came originally from an animal.

Speaker 3 (21:39):
Yeah, definitely. And well, but thinking about all of that stuff,
it really gives you a picture of the concept of
herd immunity, which is the whole point of a vaccine. Right.
You were literally sharing from one person to the next
to make sure that we're all going to be immune
to a disease.

Speaker 2 (21:53):
I don't even like to drink after people, you know
what I mean? On a fundamental level. I get this.
One time I was out with a family member and
they were thirsty and they drank some water and I
was like, burn it down, that's yours. Now I'm not.
I don't care how related we may or may not be.
For other people who are against this movement. Originally, right

(22:15):
when it was still very new, they didn't trust the
smallpox vaccine because they were in a way they were
they were skeptical of the science as it was at
the time, because they said, you know, doctors, what do
doctors know? It's not so long ago in this part
of the world, when being able to cut hair meant

(22:36):
that you were also qualified to perform amputations.

Speaker 1 (22:40):
Because you had, you know, cutty tools already just laying around,
and you understood how the body works.

Speaker 2 (22:44):
And as we'll get more bang for your buck with
your cutting tools exactly. And so they objected to Edward
Jenner's ideas about how smallpox spread. They said, no, you're
being foolish. This is fake news, unproven science. We all know,
based on our personal feelings and our personal opinions, that

(23:06):
this spreads because of quote decay in the atmosphere. It
does not. Lastly, many people objected to the vaccination process
because they thought it violated their personal liberty, their individual rights,
and this just became worse as the government of the
time developed mandatory vaccine policies. Because if you want to

(23:28):
make anyone hate anything, just make it mandatory. Right, there's
going to be at least one person who was like,
this is bs the revolution begins. Now, it does not
matter what it is.

Speaker 1 (23:39):
That's when you get the Vaccination Act of eighteen fifty three,
which ordered mandatory vaccinations for infants up to three months old,
and then you had the Act of eighteen sixty seven
that extended the age requirement to fourteen year olds, and
it added some penalties for refusal to do so.

Speaker 2 (23:57):
Right, and these laws were met with immediate and sciferous
resistance from citizens who demanded not only the right to
control their own bodies, but those of their children. And
they said, you know, big government has no place telling
me what to do with my family. The Anti Vaccination
League and the Anti Compulsory Vaccination League formed in response

(24:18):
to these mandatory laws, and a lot of journals popped
up that were touting the advantages of avoiding vaccines and
the disadvantages of having them, and these marches were huge.
There was one in March of eighteen eighty five in
Leicester which was the most notorious of its time, eighty

(24:39):
thousand to one hundred thousand protesters. They were They had
an effigy of Edward Jenner, they had a bunch of
fake baby coffins as these carrot top style props. And again,
this is like one hundred thousand people in eighteen eighty
five when there were way fewer people in general. So
that's that's fascinating. This was huge issue. But this so

(25:02):
far has all been Europe. We're talking Europe. Now, let's
talk about the Anti Vaccination Society of America, which was
founded in eighteen seventy nine and was founded because there
was a guy who was a sort of a polemical,
controversial medical figure, a guy named William Tebb. He was
from Britain, and he visited the States, and then after

(25:23):
he visited people really took up the torch. And then
this was far from the only anti vaccination league.

Speaker 3 (25:30):
It is, and we're also going to see, weirdly enough,
that echoed in the modern era where a British scientist
who's working in this area goes to the United States
and starts a.

Speaker 1 (25:43):
Movement foreshadowing Yes, indeed.

Speaker 3 (25:46):
Yeah, you got two other leagues, the New England Anti
Compulsory Vaccination League. These names are pretty great. You've also
got the Anti Vaccination League of New York City, so
that's eighteen eighty two and then eighteen.

Speaker 2 (26:00):
Which also the New York one has some modern successors
today it does.

Speaker 3 (26:05):
So the American anti vaccinationists, they were, you know, they
were engaging in court battles. They were trying to repeal
a lot of these laws. There were the compulsory ones
that they named their institutions after, and in several states
they're working, including California, Illinois, and Wisconsin. And you would
see it just continue to grow there, the anti vaccination movement.

Speaker 2 (26:27):
Yes, and then in the nineteen seventies and eighties there
was a period of increasing litigation regarding vaccines, and this
also led to decreased profitability, or it occurred concurrently in
step with decreased profitability for vaccine manufacturers, and this led
to a decline in the number of companies producing vaccines. Yes,

(26:50):
Big Farma is already very deeply in ployee here or
whatever you want to call it, right, profit motivated medicine
one of the some we'll call it necessary evil, some
will call it one of the greatest missteps.

Speaker 1 (27:02):
Of our species.

Speaker 2 (27:03):
That's it's definitely going to be on us at some
point the bill comes due. So this leads to what
could have been a very dangerous time for people who
are pro vaccination or you know, as they would phrase it,
anti disease. However, the decline gets mitigated because something happens
in the US in nineteen eighty six. It's called the

(27:26):
National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program. And that's this was made
because it is true that in some cases this is
according to Health Resources and Service administration of the US,
in some cases, vaccines can cause very serious problems. The
one most often cited on their side is the severe

(27:49):
allergic reaction that can affect some people, depending on the
vaccine and their personal reaction to it. In these cases,
this compensation program may provide financial compensation to people who
file a petition are found to be injured by a
vaccine that is covered by this stuff. And this doesn't

(28:09):
cover all vaccines, but it did stop that decline. People
felt a little less unsafe. The legacy of this era
lives on in the present day in supply crises and
continued media efforts by a incredibly dedicated anti vaccination lobby.
Anti vaccination groups continue today. Twenty eighteen survey by Zogbie

(28:34):
Analytics found that nearly twenty percent of Americans, about one
in five people, believe vaccines are inherently unsafe. So what gives?
Why are some people convinced there's something more to vaccines
than saving lives and preventing disease? Will tackle the answer
after a word from our sponsors. Here's where it gets crazy.

(29:01):
So there's a root to this issue, and it's threefold.

Speaker 3 (29:05):
Right, Yeah, First, you're going to get into some kind
of religious objection to doing this, whether it's something that's
actually written in a scripture and a text somewhere that
just talks about putting other people's blood into your body
or just you know, some small thing like that. And
also just you know, into specific religious reasons for not wanting.

Speaker 2 (29:27):
To do this, or even even the idea that this
is an attempt to shirk a duty or a trial
sent by a religious authority. It is not our place
to go against the judgment of God.

Speaker 3 (29:43):
Yeah, God has a plan and if I am to
be sick, I will be sick and He will make
me better as well. Then you've got concerns about personal liberty,
which is, you know, I think that's right on the
face of it, as we talked about with anything being mandatory,
like if I do not have a choice to do this,
then I'm not going to agree with it, or at

(30:04):
least I'm going to object to it. And then the
third ist skepticism or just all out rejection of the
benefits that we all humans get from vaccination. And it's
also accompanied by the belief of vaccines, you know, have
harmed people over the course of the history of using them,
and specifically though the belief that vaccines in general hurt

(30:25):
people more than they help them.

Speaker 1 (30:27):
And more so, I mean, that's the one that really
leans more into the conspiracy realm, where there's this perceived
agenda that vaccines are used as some sort of controlling
factor or some sort of this whole mandatory idea is
the government, you know, it's it's just the thing they
don't want us to know, you know, what the vaccines
are actually doing.

Speaker 3 (30:46):
It's the one that's stuck around for the longest.

Speaker 2 (30:48):
At least, Yeah, it has the most staying power by far. Now,
those first those first two objections still exist, and you
can see modern cases of religious objections and you can
see modern cases of you know, forget the science. This
is a matter of personal philosophy, and your control ends

(31:09):
where my personal space begins. An argument of liberty. And
these objections, the ones from the stain power, the skepticism
about the science, they go through a gamut of responses.
Some will purport to be based on science, and we'll

(31:29):
look at that more in a second. To some that
would be you know, be called more conspiratorial in the
mainstream media. In the nineteen seventies, the diphtheria tetanus and
produces or DTP vaccine was blamed for neurological conditions in
some British children, even though numerous other studies and subsequent

(31:51):
studies indicated there was no close association with their quote
brain disease.

Speaker 1 (31:57):
That's what they call them.

Speaker 2 (31:58):
They said it just biologically wasn't possible for the method
or the mechanism that the vaccine used to cause malfunctions
in neurological systems.

Speaker 3 (32:09):
And even though historically that was what was found when
that nineteen seventies DTP vaccine saga that was occurring, you
will still have groups who believe that, you know, this
concept that there was no association coming from studies performed
by doctors, and this is one of the you know,
as we get into the more conspiratorial things, people will
outright reject that conclusion and continue to believe that, no,

(32:34):
that is an example of vaccines being harmful.

Speaker 1 (32:37):
Or question the source.

Speaker 2 (32:39):
So now you know, history doesn't repeat, but it does rhyme,
as it's so often said. Let's look at the concept
of mercury health effects allegations of neurological damage. In nineteen
ninety eight, a British gastro enterologist named Andrew Wakefield published
a report that linked the combination measles, mumps and rubella

(33:06):
or MMR vaccine to autism and bowel disease in infants.
This vaccine had been more or less routinely distributed since
the early nineteen seventies. First things first, if this is true,
if the science bears out, then this is a tremendous
problem because tons of people have had this vaccine. This

(33:28):
needs to be solved yesterday, you know, before this thing publishes.
But the problem here is that subsequent researchers, nearly all
of them, were unable to reproduce Wakefield's results. And that's
very important in studies. In two thousand and four, an
investigation by The Sunday Times revealed that he had in
fact fabricated his research. So the Lancet where this was

(33:53):
published with Drew's report and Wakefield was barred from practicing
medicine in the United Kingdom. That's when he moved to
the US and he doubled down on his claims. He
said that, you know, he alleged there was a conspiracy
by the Academy or the powers the be to shut
him down.

Speaker 3 (34:11):
And this is where the echo of William Tebb.

Speaker 1 (34:13):
Comes in exactly.

Speaker 2 (34:14):
And he directed a film called Vaxed from Cover Up
to Catastrophe in twenty sixteen, which several of us have
probably seen.

Speaker 1 (34:22):
I watched it as well.

Speaker 2 (34:24):
This was not a fringe figure at this time, not
near as much as some of us might think just
hearing that information. In fact, he attended the inauguration ball
of the current president in twenty sixteen, So it's not
like he is. It's not like he's being entirely dismissed
in the US, right, correct. And then going back to

(34:47):
the claims of the claims that there is a poisonous
ingredient in vaccines, right that the rubber bullet is still
a bullet. Let's talk about something called fail mercal, theemerosol,
as it's spelled differently in the UK and US. It's
an anti fungal preservative and it's been used in small

(35:07):
amounts in different multidose vaccines, multi dose vaccines. It doesn't
mean that you get dosed for multiple diseases. It means
that the vaccine comes in a container or a vial
and you use it for multiple patients. Right, like a
two liter of soda here, you would expect your friends

(35:28):
have cups. We're not just each guzzling one unless it's
a game night, right. So this stuff, this anti fungal substance,
was included in these vials and these multi dose vaccines
to prevent them from becoming contaminated as they were used
across multiple patients. So it works as a preservative. It's

(35:49):
controversial because this substance contains mercury, which studies do conclusively
show is super bad for you. Don't play like, have
you ever played with aometer? Do you guys ever break
mercury into it? Yeah? Really it's so Coolowah, it's not
a good idea.

Speaker 3 (36:07):
It don't do it.

Speaker 2 (36:08):
It amids poisonous fumes. Don't let it touch your skin,
but man.

Speaker 3 (36:12):
And really don't drink it. Ever. Let's say you're working
with a Flint River, don't don't drink.

Speaker 2 (36:17):
It or you know, even if you watch T one
thousand in the Terminator films, don't try to build one
out of mercury, which is what I did.

Speaker 1 (36:25):
That was liquid medal, Right, liquid medal.

Speaker 3 (36:28):
Without getting off too far out of track here, did
you see with the the Flint River water crisis. Yeah,
there's an update with all that.

Speaker 2 (36:37):
Yeah, the claims got rejected.

Speaker 3 (36:39):
Yeah, they're they're shutting down essentially the prosecution or they're
not going to prosecute anyone, but they're gonna reach, like
I reinvestigate basically.

Speaker 2 (36:49):
The water still burns. Yeah, that's the problem. Yeah, those
people are probably not going to see a day in jail.
The folks who were who were largely responsible, and to
be fair, there's a little we did an episode on this.

Speaker 3 (37:03):
We did.

Speaker 2 (37:03):
It's an important update. Yeah, because once something leaves the news,
it's very easy for the legal shan against to begin
when the world doesn't have its eye on things, right, So, yes,
mercury is terrible. Apologies to Flint, Michigan. We've had and
thank you so much to some of our fellow listeners

(37:23):
who wrote in from Flint and the surrounding area to
let us know that this story continues even if CNN
is not paying attention to it.

Speaker 3 (37:34):
In that case, it was lead. By the way, I
don't know why my tangent went from mercury to lead contamination.

Speaker 2 (37:39):
Yeah, but there you go contamination. And also, yeah, when
I say the water still burns, it's a bit hyperbole.
The places where water tends to burn are places that
have been contaminated by cracking. Yeah, which is a real thing. Still,
back to vaccines. In nineteen ninety nine, the CDC Center
for Disease Control, It's health the subject of no small

(38:02):
amount of conspiracy theories, and the American Academy of Pediatrics
or the AAP asked vaccine makers to remove this theomercal,
from vaccines as quickly as possible. They said, just to
be safe, Just to be safe. Mercury is bad for you.
We all know that. Let's let's get it out of here.
He's out of here three strikes or before three strikes occur.

(38:25):
Let's not hit anyone with this. So now this substance
is absent from the vast majority of vaccines in Europe
and the US, except for some preparations of the flu vaccine,
So make your choice. No, no, no, kitty. There are trace
amounts that are in some vaccines due to production processes.

(38:51):
What that means is that the people actually manufacture the vaccines,
who are not necessarily the people who invented or discovered them,
say hey, we've got the system in place that already works.
It's tremendously expensive and may be dangerous for us to
change it, so we have to keep this in and
for anyone wondering this mercury. Mercury bearing substance occurs at

(39:16):
around a maximum of one microgram in some vaccines. That's
about fifteen percent of the average daily mercury intake in
the US, which is a thing, in case you didn't know,
there's daily mercury intake for all seafood fans out there.

Speaker 1 (39:32):
There's allowable limits of all kinds of toxins, right, arsenic, yeah, rap,
v sason, cereal.

Speaker 2 (39:38):
I mean, that's how it works. That's fifteen percent of
the daily intake for US adults, two point five percent
of the daily level considered tolerable by the World Health
Organization who Yes, Yes, the World Health Organization. The presence

(39:58):
of the this mercury bearing substance in vaccines is one
of the primary reasons that some people and organizations link
vaccines and vaccinations to incidences of autism. What exactly is
autism other than something deserving an episode entirely of its own.

(40:19):
We'll answer this after a word from our sponsors.

Speaker 1 (40:28):
We've returned.

Speaker 2 (40:30):
Autism as it's commonly called, or autism spectrum disorder ASD,
as it's named officially, refers to a broad range of conditions.
They're characterized by challenges with social skills, repetitive behaviors, speech,
and nonverbal communication. According again to the CDC Centers for
Disease Control, autism effects an estimated one in fifty nine

(40:55):
children in the United States today. We know there's not
saying something first off, Autism isn't cancer, But saying something
is autism is a lot like saying something is cancer.
It's sort of an umbrella terms for many different types
of things.

Speaker 3 (41:11):
That's why that spectrum ispects so important.

Speaker 2 (41:15):
And they're most often influenced by a combination of genetic
and environmental factors. Science even now in twenty nineteen, is
still attempting to understand how those factors combine to create
conditions or events on this spectrum, and how best to

(41:36):
help people who live with a condition from the ASD,
whether that's you know, as Berger's or whether it is
some sort of I believe the correct terminology is profound autism.
Is that correct, Matt?

Speaker 3 (41:50):
Yeah, And there's all there's all kinds of things functioning,
non functioning, verbal, nonverbal, all that that we kind of
discussed already.

Speaker 1 (41:57):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 (41:58):
So, multiple studies from various groups like the National Academy
of Sciences in the UK and so on, have not
verified a link between vaccination and this condition. And Wakefield's research,
although it's been soundly dismissed by mainstream medicine, is still
cited by a lot of anti vaccination groups, and sometimes

(42:20):
depending on the group, and depending on the tone of
the group or the agenda of the group, you will
also run into some conspiratorial stuff. Some groups will just
cite it without citing other studies that outnumber it and
contradict it, or some other groups maybe a little further
out there, will say that will intimate or kind of

(42:45):
kind of allude to some great cover up of Wakefield's research.
This leads us to another medical concern, the concept of
vaccine overload, which is something that might not be familiar
to people, but it's an interesting idea.

Speaker 1 (43:00):
So vaccine overload, which is a non medical term, refers
to this idea that giving lots of vaccines in one
go could overwhelm or weaken a child's very you know,
developing immune system and lead to adverse effects. So, for example,
when when my kid got vaccinated, we broke it up
into a couple of different little sessions, and that's pretty common.

(43:24):
So vaccine overload is also a term that's used as
it's often cited as a cause for autism. Again, there's
not much science to back this up. In fact, that
any of the science that exists doesn't really bear this out.
Despite the increase in the number of vaccines over recent decades,
improvements in the designs of these vaccines in the way
they're administered have created serious reduction to the immunologic load

(43:50):
from those vaccines and the total number of these components.
The immunological components in the fourteen vaccines administered to children
in the United States in two thousand and nine is
less than ten percent of what it was in the
seven vaccines given in nineteen eighty.

Speaker 2 (44:06):
So we see we see this tremendous reduction in the
amount of work immune systems are asked to do. Right.
That's that's essentially what we mean when we say immunologic load.
I think immuneologic's a really cool word too. By the way,
it sounds like some West Coast hip hop guy's name.

Speaker 1 (44:26):
I agree.

Speaker 2 (44:28):
If it's not, then here you go. I think the
only person who will have a problem with you taking
that name will be Logic, who seems like he doesn't
have a problem with other people having names related to that.
But you can't really get mad at someone who has
who shares a component of your name and hip hop?
How many bigs are there? How many littles are there?

Speaker 3 (44:49):
Little?

Speaker 2 (44:49):
How many youngs?

Speaker 1 (44:51):
So many youngs and lil's and bigs.

Speaker 3 (44:53):
Somebody named the Little Skies is putting stuff everywhere still
in Atlanta, Little Skies, Little Skys medorists or no, just
somebody's paying a lot of money, got put up posters.

Speaker 2 (45:04):
Yeah, well you gotta you know, you've got to be
the change. I guess so, Little Skys. If you're listening.
Send us some music.

Speaker 1 (45:12):
Yeah, please be the little that you want to see
in the world. That's what I say.

Speaker 3 (45:15):
So.

Speaker 2 (45:16):
A study published in twenty thirteen found no correlation between
autism and the antigen number in the vaccines these children
were administered up to age two. Again, the antigen is
sort of the broken part of the of the infection
that you're attempting to teach a body to fight. Right.

(45:36):
Of the one thousand and eight children in this study
back in twenty thirteen, one quarter of those diagnosed with
some ASD condition were born between nineteen ninety four and
nineteen ninety nine, and that's when the routine vaccine schedule
for children can contain more than three thousand antigens. That's
a single shot of a DTP vaccine. The vaccine schedule

(45:59):
in twenty twelve has more vaccines, but the number of
antigens the children are exposed to by the age of
two is way way down. It's down to three point fifteen.
So if this correlation is correct, then it would naturally
follow This is just take like, let's just assume for
the sake of argument that the opposition to vaccines because

(46:23):
of that link to autism or perceived link. Let's assume
that bore out somehow. If that was true, then it
would follow that reducing this antigen load right would therefore
result in a decline in people presenting with ASD conditions.

(46:46):
That does not seem to be the case, or at
least there's no literature on the anti vaccination side citing that.
There's another argument too that we could have, which is
that that's a schedule from twenty twelve. It's twenty nineteen now,
so there's not enough time. Arguably, right, you would want
to wait till maybe twenty twenty two or twenty twenty

(47:10):
five or something like that. To be absolutely fair, there
are no publicly available studies based on withholding vaccines from children.
That is because there are tons of laws against unethical experimentation. Again,

(47:31):
my opinion pops up a little bit here. I'm a
huge fan of self experimentation, but even I understand that
you shouldn't. You shouldn't conduct experiments on people who are
not capable of informed consent. There you go, and children
are not. So at this point, it's also fair to

(47:54):
point out that no study directly comparing rates of ASD
or spectrum in vaccinated and unvaccinated children has been done
to our knowledge. If you find one, please send it out.

Speaker 1 (48:06):
And then there are some other conditions associated with vaccination.

Speaker 2 (48:10):
Yeah, yeah, aluminum has been a cause of concern. This
will cause aluminum and things related to aluminum are even
a cause concern for some people. With deodorant. Have you
heard about this?

Speaker 3 (48:21):
Sure? Yeah, when you're using the strong antipersperans when it's
like leeching into your body.

Speaker 1 (48:27):
Supposedly, but the other kind it doesn't work, man, the
hippie crystal deodorant, it doesn't do the job. Yeah, Or
I need heavy metals in my deodorant.

Speaker 2 (48:34):
Yes, I'm a fan of bathing. I don't know. I'm
just full of hot takes today, but I think people
should shower.

Speaker 1 (48:42):
Yeah, I agree, But you know it's hot in Georgia, dude,
and we it's hot in this hot box that we're
sitting in right now. I need my I need my
deodorant to be effective and we all's benefit.

Speaker 2 (48:51):
And the idea is that aluminum might also leach into
people's bodies and unsafe levels affect some aspect of their development. Typically,
the primary concerns for people opposed to vaccination are going
to be focused on neurological aspects.

Speaker 1 (49:11):
What is the aluminum meant to be.

Speaker 2 (49:13):
In aluminum or aluminium for all the fans of Bush
Yes and the band and everyone living in the UK
or people who just prefer that sort of spelling pronunciation.
Aluminum adjuvants are used in vaccines for hep A B,

(49:35):
the diphtheria, tetanus vaccines, and a couple of other things.
They're not used in what they call the live viral
vaccines like measles, mumps, rubella, and rotavirus and so on.
And adjuvant is a part of a vaccine component that
boosts the immune response for the vaccine. Essentially, they allow

(49:55):
you to get more bang for your buck. Lesser quantities
of the vaccine and fewer doses can still have the
same effect of older vaccines.

Speaker 1 (50:03):
Got it, Got it, And like you said, Ben, there
have been other concerns raised about the HEPB vaccine in
relation to a potential link between that and multiple sclerosis.

Speaker 2 (50:15):
Yeah, hepatitis B vaccination and the risk of childhood onset
multiple sclerosis. Right, that's the Pediatric Adolescence Medical Journal. And
there were other things to examining this. The New England
Journal of Medicine did a study on this Hepatitis B
vaccination the risk of multiple sclerosis, and you can find
plenty of literature on this at the CDC, which has

(50:38):
a pretty good website. The problem is, for some people
the CDC is considered a non starter. You know what
I mean, they'll share it's compromised, right, Are you going
to believe big, big disease? You know, aren't they linked
to big pharma.

Speaker 1 (50:53):
So it's true.

Speaker 2 (50:55):
We've mentioned just a few We've mentioned multiple sclerosis, We've
mentioned vaccine overload. We've got a couple of other things
we should mention. First, why anti vaccination remains a hot
topic today? Again, not sold in that store. It's kind
of lazy, it was. I don't know why I cop
using a hot topic. But first, there's a common concern

(51:18):
sited that vaccinations cause seizures. It's very important to very
important to mention this is technically true. All immune responses
which vaccines are purposely created to trigger, have a chance
of causing what are known as febrile seizures also called
fever pits, or seizures associated with high body temperatures. Overall,

(51:43):
you're going to find the risk of these seizures during
vaccination is pretty low, but still very distressing. If you're
a parent and your child is having seizures, it doesn't
matter to you that only three percent of children get them.
It matters to you that one kid in particular has that,
right now, you know what I mean.

Speaker 1 (52:01):
Yeah, And the complication rates of the seizures from the
vaccines are still much lower than the exact same seizures
when caused by the actual diseases that they are meant
to prevent.

Speaker 2 (52:12):
Right, right, disease cause seizures have twenty times the rate
of ICU admission. And this still goes into other We're
talking about medical concerns, but it still goes into other
widespread social concerns, some of which I've dealt with on
the ground, like in the field. So in some countries,

(52:32):
nonprofit and medical personnel, especially if they're in a non
Western country and they're from the West, have been attacked
even killed for attempting to administer vaccines to local populations.
And Pakistan, for instance, some religious and militant groups alleged
that vaccination was a cover story and that the substances
being administered were meant to either sterilize or kill the

(52:54):
local population simply for being Muslim.

Speaker 3 (52:57):
And you know, we've seen that echoed as well, even
in places like New York City and Brooklyn, and a
couple other in groups within that community believe that there
is some type of conspiracy against them, where the vaccines
are being administered specifically to them to cause harm to
their community.

Speaker 1 (53:18):
Call them out of the population.

Speaker 3 (53:19):
There, at least a couple of there are a few
outspoken rabbis there have been holding rallies in twenty nineteen,
twenty eighteen where they're speaking outwardly about that stuff.

Speaker 1 (53:28):
A buddy of mine lives in a neighborhood in Brooklyn
that the population is very largely made of Asidic devout Jews,
and it's a really interesting community for sure, because they
kind of all hang out together. They go out with
their whole families, kind of like you know, in a group,
and they don't really make eye contact or communicate with,
you know, others that are not in that community. So

(53:48):
it is very much like them looking out for themselves
and each other. It's a very interesting world.

Speaker 3 (53:53):
Just to call out. A New York Times article if
you want to learn more about that, it's called despite
Measles warnings. Anti vaccine rally draws hundreds of ultra orthodox Jews.

Speaker 2 (54:02):
There you go, Yes, do learn about it.

Speaker 4 (54:04):
Now.

Speaker 2 (54:04):
When we're calling out communities as examples for feeling this way,
we're not trying to pick on anybody. The truth is
that this is an understandable thing that occurs, especially in
insular communities. While this might sound the idea of someone
hunting down your specific friends, families, and community members to
kill you via fake vaccines, While it might sound pretty

(54:26):
out there to some of us listening today, we have
to understand that Western NGOs in particular, have an established
history of functioning as covers for all sorts of nefarious activities.
There is no proven case of modern vaccination attempts being
a cover for the spread of disease. In this manner,
it's a leap. It's not as far as a leap

(54:48):
as it might seem, though it's still a leap, but
I'm just saying it's not as much of a jump.
The chasm is not as wide. When I was living
in Central America, this was a very very common belief,
and it was very very much a controversial thing because
people thought that folks were being sent by the US

(55:08):
big business and government, maybe in cooperation with drug cartels
to sterilize their children or to render them somehow mentally inert,
you know. And this goes hand in hand with the
concerns of like the illegal organ trade, right, or that
the idea that children be by vaccinated would be somehow

(55:29):
marked or chipped, and that they could be traced and
their organs later cold. There's a real thing that people believe. Wow,
there are other conspiracies. There's the big business angle, which
is always going to rear its ugly head here depending
on who you ask time. As we said earlier time,
medicine and the health of living innocent human beings to

(55:51):
profit or a financial bottom line is either at best
the necessary evil, or it is one of the great
crimes of modern medicine rights. It's true that many people
have died, are probably dying as you listen to this show,
and will die after you're done listening in this show
because it was no longer profitable for certain pharmaceutical companies

(56:12):
to produce a given medicine, or because they increase the
price of a medicine to the point that other people
could not afford it. India is one of the countries
that's been in increasingly tense conversations and arguments with Western
medicine manufacturers because India as a government made a choice
where they said, look, we're not going to we're not

(56:34):
going to let people die because you think of medicine
should be four hundred and fifty dollars, we can manufacture
it here and we'll give it to them for three
or something like that. You know, I'm pulling the numbers
out of my head, but these are real arguments that
are happening, and you can see why some people might
be opposed to that because of the enormous cost of
R and D. But then also on the other side,

(56:56):
there are people dying. This all to say, it is very,
very easy to see why a lot of people would
not trust these profit driven companies to have the best
interest of patients at heart. I'm not vilifying them. I'm saying,
if you exercise even cursory attempts at empathy, you can
clearly see how this seems like a rational and logical

(57:17):
decision on their part. They're saying, well, these companies that
experimented a marginalized populations in the past, what's to stop
them from doing so again? And if we don't have
enough money, these people don't care about us. There you go,
and this is not look we're talking about right now.
We're talking about largely developing countries when we talk about

(57:38):
those concerns. But the concern of vaccination's population control is
alive and well here in the United States, Matt, you
had the excellent example of the ultra orthodox community again,
factions within the ultra orthodox community in New York. What
about Congressman Louis Gohmert, who voiced his concerns about vaccination
on a broadcast for the Family Research Council. Pretty wholesome

(58:01):
name right. He is convinced that liberal elites are using
vaccination programs to call the Earth's population due to concerns
about the scarcity of natural resources. Very Malthusian population collapse reasoning.
He thinks there is an evil cabal behind this plan
and that they're aiming for a target worldwide global human

(58:23):
population of seven hundred million, very Georgia Guidestone style. But
there's a huge problem with this. The overwhelming massive evidence,
well not perfect right science never is, proves the vaccines
overall tend to save lives. So this means that vaccines,
even if they were more dangerous than they are today,

(58:45):
are increasing the world's population rather than diminishing it. It's
making it much much more likely that we reach nine
billion then go down to seven hundred million. As a
matter of fact, if you wanted people to get closer
to seven hundred million, you would probably just stop vaccinating
anyone and then a ton of people eventually down the
road would die. But the problem with that is that

(59:07):
people are very good at breeding, and it's one of
our favorite things to do. So getting us down to
seven hundred million means you would also need to sterilize
a ton of people or convince them that there are
things that are better than sex.

Speaker 3 (59:20):
Ooh ooh. What if you can convince them that taking
a vaccine is the worst thing you can do because
it will kill you for some reason, or it will
do something bad for you. But you're a state actor
and you want the population to decrease.

Speaker 1 (59:36):
Well, that is a very good segue.

Speaker 2 (59:39):
That because I like that you're talking about geopolitics. There
is one thing we found that is a genuine improvable
conspiracy in the argument about vaccination.

Speaker 3 (59:53):
Yeah, and it has to do again and every time
we talk about a state actor or something like this.
We meant this on the show all the time, but
it's a faction of someone acting within a state government
in this case Russia, or at least someone working even
within a private institution somewhere in Russia. But that's what

(01:00:14):
we're going to talk about. They've been spreading basically propaganda
that is anti vaccination in nature.

Speaker 1 (01:00:23):
Right.

Speaker 2 (01:00:24):
Yeah, So a study by the Journal of Public Health
showed that Russian trolls those are the biological actual people
spreading disinfo, and then Russian bought campaigns those are the
algorithms and fake accounts run by actual people have been
working purposely to spread discord in the West around vaccination

(01:00:44):
attempts or campaigns. According to David Bruniatowski from George Washington University, quote,
a significant portion of the online discourse about vaccines may
be generated by malicious actors with a range of hidden agendas.
They reviewed more than two hundred and fifty tweets about
vaccination from accounts linked to outfit called the Internet Research

(01:01:07):
Agency IRA. Again, as long as you don't look at
the acronym, that's pretty wholesome situation there. It's based in
Saint Petersburg. In February, the agency was named in a
US indictment over alleged election medaling. They use tweets with
polarizing language that linked vaccination to statements about race, class,

(01:01:28):
and the legitimacy of Western governments. According to the research,
we have a couple of example tweets here. Does anybody
want to do a voice?

Speaker 1 (01:01:35):
I could do a voice. Did you know that it
was secret government database of HASTAG vaccine damage child HASTAG
vaccinate US.

Speaker 2 (01:01:44):
Another that argued for vaccination said, listen at the us
kno fixed stupidity, leath them die from measle I am
for vaccination.

Speaker 3 (01:01:53):
Pretty good, guys.

Speaker 2 (01:01:54):
No apologies to our apologies to our Russian friends.

Speaker 1 (01:01:58):
Don't have any Russian listeners, there's no.

Speaker 2 (01:02:00):
I do well, I've got friends who are Russian.

Speaker 1 (01:02:03):
First into this show, right, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:02:05):
So shout out to shout out to Oleg. He used
to live in San Francisco. He lives in London.

Speaker 1 (01:02:10):
Now I remember you've told me about him.

Speaker 2 (01:02:14):
Uh, he is going to kill me for that accent.
But you know, accents aside, we're we're uh, we're having
a little fun with it. But accents aside those are
real tweets, and they are certainly not not meant to
be associated with Russia in the environment in which they're published.

(01:02:35):
They're meant to seem like someone you kind of know
or a source you kind of respect that is telling you,
you know, the brass tax real truth about what's going on.
This is totally textbook foundation of geopolitics by Alexander Duken.

Speaker 3 (01:02:52):
There you go, Alexander Duken. It always I always feel
like it's going to be a Star Wars character or something.

Speaker 2 (01:02:59):
It does. And he kind of is, you know, he
got away from his more occult roots and is now
just arguing state policy in Russia. But this leads us
to our conclusion. Currently, several diseases appear to be on
the rise in certain communities in certain global regions due

(01:03:19):
to concerns about the perceived hidden dangers of vaccination. The
BBC sums it up in pretty well in a fairly
troubling way. In Europe, more than forty one thousand people
are infected with measles in the first six months of
twenty eighteen. That's nearly double the number of cases for
the entirety of last year at that point. That report

(01:03:40):
was made in twenty eighteen, thirty seven people had already died.
Measles was on the rise in Serbia, Ukraine, Georgia and
Greece and the US. The number of children being exempted
from vaccines is also on the rise. In Italy, the
upper house of Parliament voted through legislation to abolish the
law that makes vaccines mandatory for children before they start school.

(01:04:01):
Despite this area, despite the media coverage, the only serious
medical condition ever linked to a vaccine was specific to
the virus strain used in the manufacture of that vaccine.
And whenever we talk about this sort of stuff, we
have to treat everyone's concerned seriously. We are talking about
human lives here, right, and both sides of the argument

(01:04:21):
feel like they are either saving lives or saving the
quality of life for people. So these are noble motives, right,
But we also have to ask ourselves about the motivations
behind any possible conspiracy that would exist other than the
Russian disinfo stuff, which is absolutely true. Again, not a
theory that's happening. Be careful who you retweet first. Why

(01:04:43):
would someone want to spread a disease or a medical
condition through the false pretense of preventing another disease. Are
there any proving cases of this tactic being deployed on
a widespread scale, not that we can find. That doesn't
mean they don't exist. That just means that they're hard
to find and they're hard to prove. We do know
that diseases, for instance, have been utilized as weapons of

(01:05:05):
war ever since the days of old, when the bodies
of plague victims were catapulted up over walls during sieges.
This species is not above using disease to kill each
other on purpose, right, But we just haven't seen a
case of people doing that on purpose with vaccines. Because again,

(01:05:26):
the thing with vaccines is, although they are not perfect,
they do tend to save more lives than they take
for sure.

Speaker 3 (01:05:34):
And they're you know that whole point of they're not
using that live. Well, it's a different. The methodology of
creating the disease and using the disease to get someone
else six very, very very different. You have to keep
that in mind when you're thinking about this. And the
third question we have to ask here, have vaccinations ever
actually been used for some kind of nefarious purpose, whether

(01:05:57):
some kind of experimental vaccination or or you know, some
other thing that we haven't even thought about yet, and
that's an episode for another day. When we talked about
this already, we're talking about militaries using vaccines for certain
things that we've actually gotten some we've gotten some email
some responses before from soldiers who have had to get

(01:06:19):
vaccines and they were confused about how many there were,
just so many vaccines. The schedule was strange, talking about
vaccines in prisons, on marginalized populations, and some of the
stuff Ben you were mentioning already about your you know,
your travels and how people feel about vaccines. There's a
lot more here to go into.

Speaker 2 (01:06:38):
Yes, and today for those of us listening. In the US,
all fifty states have some sort of law requiring at
the very least certain vaccines for students. There are exemptions
based on medical reasons, religious exemptions. Seventeen states do allow
parents to opt out based on personal or philosophical beliefs.

Speaker 3 (01:07:02):
And though we mentioned New York already, but just yesterday
as we're recording this, on June thirteenth, New York lawmakers
they voted to end religious exemptions for immunizations, which has
you know, fully fully angered some of some of the
people in those communities that we were mentioning earlier, and
they joined up with several other states right now California, Arizona,

(01:07:25):
West Virginia, Mississippi, and Maine that do not allow exemptions
on religious beliefs.

Speaker 2 (01:07:31):
Which for some people still is you know, it's that
other it's that, don't tread on the idea, don't tell
me what to do with my family. So we reach
our conclusion here. So far as we can tell, and
so far as the bulk of research shows us, the
majority of studies arguing for the efficacy of vaccination as

(01:07:52):
well as the advantages of immunizing people to once fatal diseases,
seem to be largely solid and their findings seem to
be increasingly in agreement confirmed on multiple angles. The studies
are reproducible and so on. And in contrast, the studies
against vaccination overall have been largely debunked and the findings

(01:08:16):
also don't seem to be reproducible, meaning that unrelated objective
researchers with no horse in the race other than the
survival of themselves and their progeny cannot reach the same
conclusions without either purposely or accidentally really screwing something up
along the way. Some studies of specific vaccines in the

(01:08:38):
past did raise valid concerns about their danger right and
their safety, and it appears that the medical community responded
by improving these vaccines, either through new manufacturing techniques like
you mentioned no, or by removing potentially harmful substances. At
this point, we want to hear from you. Thank you
so much for listening to this show. What do you

(01:08:59):
use think about vaccination? As we like to say here
in the South, are you for it or again it?

Speaker 1 (01:09:04):
And why?

Speaker 3 (01:09:05):
I just I'd like to point out here with this
and as you're thinking about your response, we are highly aware,
as you probably are, that the current state of vaccinations
it's not perfect. It is not a perfect system, no
matter what you believe, but that doesn't necessarily mean that
it is dangerous to you. So just you know, just

(01:09:26):
think about that, really think about that.

Speaker 2 (01:09:29):
And also, you know, this this episode really focused on
the West. Outside of some of the ancient history and
some cultural implications, we did not explore how these operations
might be conducted in other countries, right, So it's possible
there's something we need to hear from your neck of
the global woods. Please don't hesitate to tell us, reach

(01:09:51):
out and let us know, especially if you think it's
something that it would be important for your fellow listeners
to learn.

Speaker 3 (01:09:56):
There you go. You can contact us on Twitter or
Facebook or Instagram. We are conspiracy stuff on most things.
Conspiracy stuff show on Instagram. Reach out to us. You
can call us and leave a message. We are one
eight three three s wyk.

Speaker 1 (01:10:13):
If you want to check us out on Facebook. We
have a really exciting pop in Facebook community called Here's
where It Gets Crazy.

Speaker 2 (01:10:18):
I just posted something that blew my mind. I don't
know if you guys saw this, but biologists have discovered
what they're calling an underwater octopus city. What they're calling
it octlantis. Is it an octopus's garden in the shade
they have? Yeah, someone made that joke.

Speaker 1 (01:10:35):
That was me.

Speaker 2 (01:10:35):
No, no, no, it was uh scoop me on it.
It was Alison Willard.

Speaker 3 (01:10:41):
There you go.

Speaker 2 (01:10:42):
The Bethley Gardens are amazing and shady, but I can you.

Speaker 1 (01:10:44):
Came up with it parallel thinking, like the cutover gym.

Speaker 2 (01:10:49):
So if you want to read that story in full,
go ahead and hop on. Here's where it gets Crazy.
Let us know what you think about Lovecraft and if
none of that quite gardens, your octopus, nor bag your
badgers have no You can reach out to us, independent
of social media, independent of your phone. We have an
email you can send us a line directly.

Speaker 5 (01:11:07):
We are conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.

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