But we’re not going to learn from that I guess and just do it again with Long Covid.
This comes up a lot lately where people don’t know that it was anti-vaxxers that actually tanked us having a viable Lyme vaccine. I know someone who got vaccinated for Lyme decades ago, and when I found out I’d looked into why it was done away with, and it’s of course, anti-vaxxers to blame.
IFLScience June 19, 2023 A Lyme Disease Vaccine Existed Until Antivaxxers Killed It The ticks carrying this disease are spreading to higher latitudes and altitudes due to climate change. Dr. Alfredo Carpineti The FDA reconvened its advisory panel on January 31, 2001. There were people from both sides of the debate as well as independent advisors. Following the many testimonies, the FDA agreed that the benefits of the vaccine continued to outweigh the risks and no changes were needed for the labeling. The press coverage led to a dramatic drop in vaccine uptake. The manufacturer, now GlaxoSmithKline, decided to withdraw LYMErix™ from the market in February 2002. As reported in a paper in the journal Epidemiology & Infection, in 2003, the company settled the lawsuit by paying over $1 million in legal fees for the prosecuting lawyers. The “vaccine victims” did not receive a single dime.
The interesting part is that history just keeps repeating itself. There are Long Covid researchers and Long Covid sufferers who blame the covid vaccines for Long Covid, even though Long Covid cases existed before the covid vaccines, and even though similar cases happened after SARS, and even though post-infection conditions are actually not that uncommon after things like EBV, influenza, c.difficile, or sepsis. They can always fall back on the tactic of general population anti-vax people and say it’s vaccines that cause all these things, throw it all at the wall and see what people will fall for. And after all, some unvaccinated Long Covid sufferers, who never even got vaccinated, blame other people getting vaccinated as the cause.
This is from 2014:
Thank Anti-Vaxxers for Lyme – Kent Sepkowitz – Sun, April 13, 2014 at 9:13 AM EDT The intense controversy may seem odd, especially since we have had a trustworthy and no-big-deal Lyme vaccine for dogs for awhile now; but the leap from man’s best friend to man proved complicated. The vaccine somehow was forced to swim against the riptide caused by both the pro-chronic Lyme crowd who regard the vaccine to be as bad as the disease, and the equally forceful anti-any-vaccine contingent. The story, briefly, is that, in the late 1990s, a pretty good (not great) vaccine demonstrated a real reduction in Lyme cases. But rather than being greeted as liberators, the vaccine and the scientific community found themselves entangled in an impressive mess: vaccine recipients, egged on by TV reports of aches and arthritis as well as a fleet of well-turned-out lawyers who were very busy but had a little time for you if you had a complaint about the vaccine, soon sank the product under a welter of threats, suits, and people wearing suits. The maker of LYMErix™ tossed in the towel despite no compelling scientific evidence showing any problem with vaccine.
There’s even been a bogus conspiracy pushed by a lab leak truther contingent of Lyme advocates.
There are scientists who’ve been pushing the same theories for a decade who’ve pushed them for long covid, and doctors prescribing anti-parasitic, unproven anti-virals and other treatments who are part of anti-vax organizations, people claiming covid is like AIDS. And I even saw the science director of a chronic illness advocacy organization defend the right-wing quack treatment colloidal silver as a covid treatment, as promoted by a concierge long covid clinic advertised in a lefty zine. That was boosted on social media by a bunch of doctors and public health activists, including a prominent science communications person. And a lot of these people have connections to anti-vax stuff.
Dubious scientists, anti-vax doctors, and quack activists have been coercing and co-opting post-infection chronic illness sufferers and making things worse for public health, or thwarting actual prevention or trying to sell unproven remedies and quack cures, or blaming infections on vaccines. It’s just nothing new, but it’s worth calling attention to and hopefully the inoculated will say no to this bullshit when they see it, even if so many are lost to the bamboozle by now.