NVIC has launched new online forums to give the public more access to vaccine information and make it easier to share personal vaccine experiences with others. While we continue to keep NVIC’s state vaccine law pages current and update information on the vaccines and diseases pages, we have also added a few new webpages to our website.
Legislators Often Unaware of Vaccine Failure
Like many parents living in states where the well- organized Pharma-Medical Trade lobby is attacking vaccine exemptions, I was active during this year’s legislative session in my home state of Colorado to protect the personal belief vaccine exemption. What became apparent during my many trips to the state Capitol to meet with Colorado legislators is that they were largely unaware that vaccines pose three specific risks; a risk of injury or death; a risk of failure to prevent disease; and also a risk for live virus vaccines to cause vaccine strain virus infection.
One of the major reasons why the personal belief exemption was protected in Colorado this year was that families used the NVIC Advocacy Portal and actively participated in educating legislators about the failure of the pertussis vaccine to prevent recent outbreaks of B. pertussis (whooping cough). The proposed legislation misled legislators by omitting information from the CDC and Colorado’s own vaccine targeted surveillance data, which showed that the majority of children who got pertussis were up to date on their vaccinations. Families in Colorado succeeded in not only educated their legislators, but defeated proposed mandatory vaccine education designed to restrict a parent’s ability to file and obtain a personal belief vaccine exemption.
Vaccine Failure Stories are Important
Some attenuated live virus vaccines like the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) and varicella zoster (chickenpox) vaccines can cause vaccine strain viral infection in the vaccinated person or a close contact of the vaccinated person. There are published reports of vaccine strain infections after live virus vaccines have been administrated to children and adults for smallpox, polio (oral), measles, mumps, rubella, rotavirus, influenza (nasal spray), chickenpox (varicella zoster) and shingles (herpes zoster) vaccines.
Because of recent B. pertussis vaccine failures, NVIC has created a Vaccine Failure Wall on NVIC.org. It is an online forum for people to publicly report a vaccination’s failure to work as advertised, such as:
- A vaccination that failed to prevent the disease the vaccine was supposed to prevent; or
- In the case of a live virus vaccine, a vaccination that caused a vaccine strain virus infection in the vaccinated person or the vaccinated person transmitted a vaccine strain infection to someone else that made them sick.
If you or someone you know has experienced a vaccine failure, please share your experience with others and help NVIC communicate important information about vaccination to the public. Publicly sharing these experiences will also help protect the human right to exercise voluntary, informed consent to vaccination.
Learn more about vaccine failure and how to post to our Vaccine Failure Wall. You can also learn about other vaccine reporting options offered on NVIC.org such as reporting vaccine reactions or cases of vaccine choice harassment.
NVIC Launches Pinterest Boards
Many of our supporters love Pinterest and it wasn’t lost on us how many of you have been making wonderful pins all on your own! Thank you for your enthusiasm in helping NVIC reach the public with accurate, valuable vaccine information. We are joining in and have launched two Pinterest boards that we hope you will share with your family and friends.
Flu, Vaccine Product Inserts, School Vaccine Laws…OH MY!
| Visit National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC)'s profile on Pinterest. |
Ok, it doesn’t roll off your tongue like Dorothy’s lions, tigers and bears line, but don’t you sometimes feel like you are in the land of OZ when it comes to getting truthful information about vaccines?
With the annual push by public officials for everyone to get their flu shot underway, our Influenza & Flu Shots board was a no brainer. It is a great place to start finding well-anchored information you can trust to make vaccine decisions for yourself and your family that you can also share with your friends. If you want to learn about what is in flu shots, how influenza is spread, or how to find vaccine product inserts - this is your Pinterest board!
It’s no surprise that one of NVIC’s most popular webpage is the U.S. state vaccine law exemption map. Now it is yours for the pinning along with other school related pins we hope you find helpful. Check it out on our Vaccine Laws & Policies board.
We have just begun, so we hope you will join NVIC on Pinterest and start pinning! Our handle is NVICYourChoice. Happy pinning!
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