Stats on Diseases and Vaccines and when to vaccinate

The sad truth is that there is not hard core statistics on vaccines or the diseases so that you can easily make a decision on whether the risks / benefit ratio for a particular vaccine or even all vaccines in general because the reporting mechanism is subjective. May minor reactions to vaccines go unreported because they are assumed to be caused by something else or because psychologically doctors subcontiously (like all humans) see things through the filters of the thing they believe most. Consider that most doctors are in favor of vaccines. This means that when presented a symptom that could be from a reaction to a vaccine or something else they will likely say it was from something else and not report it. Why, because it supports their beliefs. I don't fault them, it is human nature, but it is something to consider. The same thing would be true for parents against vaccines. They would tend to lean the other way and blame more things on a reaction to a vaccination.

The question then comes for long term effects that may not be noticed and cannot be measured easily. Considering this, the risk of vaccines could actually be higher than is thought. On the other hand it may not, so you have to decide which side makes more sense. The problem that goes along with this is that vaccines do have the same testing requirements that drugs do. They don't have to go through long term testing or even a few years. There seems to be no way to easily do the testing than to compare against previous batches of vaccines and observe through this subjective system described above. To me, it makes more sense to error on the side of caution and history. History has taught me that we don't understand the harmful effects of things we produce until it is too late and the damage is already done. The human body is no exception to this; we hardly understand how it works and reacts to everything.

Dr. Sear's stats that he come up with (some where guesstimates because hard numbers were not available). There are several ways that he looked at the stats. The important thing to realize is there is a clear line between diseases that are likely before age 2 and those that are after. Risks do vary greatly between diseases and vaccines. However, believe it or not, the data available is not really by vaccine or disease because many of the vaccines are combo shots and can't be traced because of that. But we can generalize the risk

Combines / copied from The Vaccine Book on pages 170 and 176. The first number is the number of severe cases from the disease itself for children 12 and under. The second number is for the general population (including children 12 and under).

Chances of getting a disease

• HIB: 25 / 25 hospitalizations
• Pc: 10,000 (very approximate) / 30,000 hospitalizations
• Diptheria: 5 / 5 hospitalizations (yearly max, some years are 0)
• Tetanus: 5 / 100 hospitalizations
• Pertusis: 1500 (very approximate) / 1500 (very approximate)
• Hepatitis B: 130 (all severe) / 7500 cases
• Rotovirus: 50,000 hospitalizations (approximate) / 50,0000 (approximate)
• Polio: 0 / 0
• Measles: close to 0 / close to 0
• Mumps: 10 (approximate) / 20 hospitalizations (during a recent outbreak)
• Rubella: 3 babies for with defects / 3
• Chickenpox: 200 (approximate) / 1000 (approximate) hospitalizations
• Hepatitis A: 20 (approximate)  / 200 (approximate) hospitalizations
• Flu: 20,000 (approximate) / 100,000 (approximate) hospitalizations
• Meningococcal disease: 2,750 hospitalizations / 3000 cases
• HPV: 0 / 20,000 new cases of cervical cancer each year and (very approximate) number of problematic genital wart cases each year.

As you can see many of these diseases are not tracked exactly and Dr. Sears had to guesstimate many of the numbers. Nonetheless, you can see that some diseases like Polio and Measles (almost) don't exist in the US anymore. Rubella doesn't really exist anymore either. Other diseases such as HPV are not a risk for children until they are sexually active. Some like the HIB, Pertusis, Rotovirus and Diptheria, and Meningococcal disease (for the most part)  are common in children only.

So, you may want to take your childs age into account when decided whether to get a particular vaccination or not. Keep in mind the Rotovirus vaccination can't be started after 15 weeks since its effects are unknown with those parameters.

Some stats from the The Vaccine Book pages 176 and 177.

Reaction Stats

• The risk of a reaction (mild and severe) from a single vaccine seems to be about 1 in 1000 (.1% of a reaction or 99.9% of no reaction)
• The risk that any one child will suffer a SEVERE reaction over the ENTIRE 12 year vaccine schedule is about 1 in 2600 (.0385% or 99.961% of no reaction)

Disease Stats

• The risk of any one person (child and adult) suffering a SEVERE case of a vaccine preventable disease each year in our entire population is about 1 in 1500. (.0667% or 99.933% of no disease or a mild case of the disease)
• The risk of a child (no adults) having a SEVERE case of a vaccine-preventable disease is about 1 in 600 (.1667% or 99.833% of not getting a disease or getting a mild case of it.) each year for all childhood diseases grouped together. This risk varies widely depending on the disease. Some disease risks are close to 0. Infant diseases are more risky than childhood ones.

For comparison of risk, check out these risks in life that we accept.

• Dying from Prostate Cancer (Male): 2.75%
• Dying from Testicular Cancel (Male): .02% (This is the only one that is even close to these other stats we are concerned in this post)
• Dying from being struck by lightenting: .000792%
• Dying from falls: .294
• Dying in a car incident: .92%

 Dr. Sears assumes that the risk of a SEVERE reaction is the same regardless of the number of vaccines you get at the same time. In particular, he assumes either one shot at a time, but then revises it to say most people get 3 at a time. However, this study shows that there is a linear relationship between risk of SEVERE reaction and the number of shots given at the same time. This means the risk is likely MUCH higher when getting combo shots at one time. My thought is to spread it out as much as possible to give the body a chance to process the toxic elements in these vaccines. Using Dr. Sears alternate vaccination schedule is a good start. If you want to fully vaccinate this schedule should at least minimize the risks. He does also have a selective schedule (see page 223 of The Vaccine Book) that he considers the minimum. Personally, I want to be more selective on what vaccines will be given so I will likely be coming up with my own schedule that keeps the same considerations in mind.

Risk and Time
Most of the diseases have times where the risk is substantially higher for an age group. The age of two is one of those lines. Sometimes this is just because the infant body can't protect itself well enough during this age. It does not mean that the disease only affects that age group, but in some cases that is the case.

Diseases that are of concern below or at age 2

• HIB
• Pc
• Pertussis
• Rotavirus
• Flu
• Meningococcal disease

Diseases that are of concern after age 2

• Hepatitis B
• Chickenpox
• Tetanus
• Diptheria
• Measles
• Mumps
• Rebella
• Hepatitis A
• Polio
• HPV

Other diseases the United States does NOT vaccinate for
Yellow Fever

Why? I assume because it is not in our country. Then why vaccinate for diseases such as polio that have no cases in our country. It seems the same logic should be applied to both diseases. Yellow Fever was in the US at one time. Maybe it is because it had to continually be imported in, but were would polio come from if not imported. I give up. Anyone?

 I still find the major problem with all these vaccines to be that one vaccines is for babies of all sizes, yet that is not how toxicity works. The larger the baby, child, or person, the less toxic a substance will be because it is deluted more and it is more likely the body will be able to deal with it. My baby is in the 5th perceptile, so I all vaccines have too much nastiness to them for her size. The problem is that most of the diseases are the highest risk before age 2. That is the youngest age I would think I would want to subject her body to toxins of this toxic level.

My likely choices:
This makes the decision very difficult. My preference is to reduce the bad stuff put in her body until she is of sufficient weight an can handle the toxins better. So, diseases (Measles, Polio, Rubella) that are low risk of getting because they don't exist in the country anymore, I'll probably skip because the health benefit for her is not there and the risk is too high. Rotavirus is easy for me as well since we are past the 15 week mark and thus cannot get the vaccine even if we wanted tox. The rest are less clear and I'll evaluate on an individual disease / vaccine basis.