Every night, those of us who have a TV are bombarded by a string of pharmaceutical company ads each one more ridiculous than the other. The one saving grace is that at the end of each, we’re at least encouraged to see our doctor to find out if this particular drug de jour is appropriate for us based on our own unique risk factors.

Infectious Illnesses in Today's America: How Concerned Should We Be?

Sadly our children need not be bothered with such drudgery. The government-assigned drug of choice for them, vaccines, provided in endless quantities and combinations, are the right choice for each and every one of them. Every child is the same and the risks to them are equal no matter the unique circumstances facing each one of them. Or at least that’s what the establishment would like us to believe.

Unfortunately for them, this narrative is far from true. The illnesses we’re told are so threatening are actually substantially less formidable than they would be if not aided by a number of accomplices. If those accomplices are not present or allowed to operate in concert with the “bug”, our children are at considerably less risk than the vaccine peddlers would have us believe.

Among the most sinister accomplices are poverty and inadequate nutrition.

Poverty and malnutrition converge upon children in the Third World making statistics derived from that part of the globe meaningless; yet the CDC and other pro-vaccine entities embrace these statistics in order to heighten parental fears. For example in regards to the measles, an illness from which death in developed countries is incredibly rare, the CDC warns:

While measles is almost gone from the United States, it still kills nearly 200,000 people each year around the world.

Ironically, disparate mortality statistics between the developed and non-developed world don’t reveal the power of the bug; rather they demonstrate the bug’s limitations absent its accomplices.

Data from the pre-vaccine era are equally inapplicable to the risks children of today would face. Yet here again is the CDC using numbers from that time to raise anxiety:

In the U.S., prior to pertussis immunization, between 150,000 and 260,000 cases of pertussis were reported each year, with up to 9,000 pertussis-related deaths.

Why is the past different? The circumstances that emerged in the first half of the 20th century were particularly conducive to worsening the effects of infectious illnesses in children.

When economic improvements lead to better sanitation, nutrition and housing conditions, infectious illnesses lose much of their sting. The evidence is clear and comes from all over the world. From Sweden:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6990483

Mortality due to tuberculosis, diphtheria, scarlet fever, whooping cough, measles… started to fall long before the introduction of immunization and/or antibiotics.  The decline was probably due to a great extent to various factors linked to the steady rise in the standard of living: qualitative and quantitative improvements in nutrition; better public and personal hygiene; better housing and working conditions and improvements in education.”

While in America

http://www.vaclib.org/sites/debate/Vaccines.html#edn8

Diphtheria, tetanus, and pertussis vaccine arrived on the scene only after disease mortality rates already had been reduced significantly; measles, rubella, and polio vaccines did not become available until the middle of the 20th century, when most infant deaths were the result of other causes.

And finally, from Europe, we learn:

http://www.vaclib.org/sites/debate/Vaccines.html#edn8

After centuries of hostile encounters, humans and microbes found a new adjustment with little interference from drugs or vaccines.  In some cases the microbe became less virulent (measles and diphtheria) or the human host more resistant (tuberculosis).”

Along with sub par living conditions, another major factor, and one whose destructive influence is not as widely recognized, was the widespread acceptance of smoking – and smoking around children.

The effects of smoking are numerous and start well before birth. Children of smokers are at greater risk of both low birth-weigh and of prematurity - and these two factors increase greatly the risk of pertussis, the illness whose pre-vaccine mortality data was examined earlier in this piece as an example of how one might confuse today’s dangers with those of the past.

http://www.surgeongeneral.gov/library/secondhandsmoke/report/chapter6.pdf

Additionally second-hand smoke has been shown to increase the risks of respiratory infections in general and pneumonia in particular.

So remember, when you hear that all kids needs vaccines because of the inherent risks posed by infectious illnesses, keep in mind that your child isn’t all children, America isn’t part of the Third World and today isn’t yesterday. 

Robert Schecter is the parent of a fifteen year old unvaccinated daughter; a stock & commodities investor, writer, founder & editor of The Vaccine Machine: a blog challenging the vested interests dedicated to vaccinating our children by any means necessary.

Visit: TheVaccineMachine.com, and connect with him on Facebook and Twitter.