Maine CDC reports that there was a "travel related" case of measles that visited several places in Maine and Canada June 15th to 18th.  They will not confirm anything about the case, but Maine is a small town, so it is my understanding that this was an adult female Canadian citizen who visited Maine after being infected, went back to Canada, then returned to Maine where she was diagnosed.  It is also my understanding that the symptoms were very mild.  It is not unusual for Canadians just north of the border to drive a few hours south to Farmington, Maine to go to the hospital, as it is actually closer than driving to the nearest facility north of them.

It would have been nice if Maine CDC actually told us if the person involved was a Mainer, being influenced by Maine vaccine policy, or a Canadian, not subject to vaccine mandates, before the case was used to try to influence vaccine policy in Maine. 

What we can know for sure now is that Maine CDC has confirmed that no measles transmission took place, there was no outbreak, and the time for any transmitted cases to appear expired two weeks ago.  This is the second time in the past three years someone has come to Maine with measles, without a single transmission.  Which means Maine's current vaccine policy, with all three vaccine exemptions, works to prevent outbreaks of measles, while respecting the rights of families to have their children attend school regardless of vaccine status.  

However, I doubt that this will be the last we hear of this non-event from PPH, as they continue their fictitious fear campaign to keep all eyes off the current scandals that plague the vaccine program.

The Portland Press Herald does love its fantasy.


Subject: Your op ed on vaccination
Date: Mon, 24 Jul 2017 18:38:40 -0400
From: Ginger Taylor <[email protected]>
To: [email protected] <[email protected]>

Mr. Nemitz,

It was difficult to read your piece from last week. It is full of misinformation, the most important of which are the "whys" of parents choices to decline one or more CDC recommended vaccines. It is understandable that you know so little about the problems in the vaccine program, as the media does not report them, rather merely repeating the false claim that a 20 year old retracted paper is to blame for vaccine rejection.

This January, the Johns Hopkins journal, Narrative Inquiry in Bioethics dedicated their issue to discussions on vaccine choices, and published my piece on why we no longer participate in the National Immunization Program. I hope you will read it carefully and with fresh eyes, so you can understand that vaccine skepticism is not based on unfounded fears, and are because families ARE dealing in reality, while those espousing your views are not.

The full article is behind a pay wall, so I have attached it here, or you can read it on our web site so that you can have easy access to the links provided for the supports for the arguments.

I have made the point repeatedly to the media both in and outside of Maine, that the failure to take vaccine injury seriously, and calling vaccine injury families "anti-vaccine" merely drives down vaccine uptake, as pieces like this one only prove our assertion that the vaccine program is broken and will not address its myriad of safety and credibility problems. I hope that if you truly want a functional vaccine program, you will stop insulting families who know more than you do about the program, investigate their concerns, and join them in reality.

One of the most ironic things about your article is that you quoted Mr. Michaud fretting over falling uptake, when he is directly responsible for some of the loss in confidence in the vaccine safety because of his public testimony in the vaccine hearings in 2015. [Age of Autism readers will remember the representative of the Maine chapter of the American Medical Association for his absurd testimony, from the video we ran two years ago.] Mr. Michaud testified against LD 1076, asserting that MMA physicians should not be required to be educated on the federal Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, then when asked by a legislator about the program, he said he didn't know anything about the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program. Proving that the MMA must be forced to be educated on the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program. Why exactly should parents be confident in the safety of the program when medical professionals know nothing about vaccine risk, and yet are confident that they know everything about vaccine risk?

You should also know your claim that the film "Vaxxed" has being discredited is a false one. Dr. Thompson and a colleague at CDC were deposed by the House OGR Committee earlier this year, and Thompson has been subpoenaed by the judge in Hazelhurst v. Jackson Clinic (Jackson TN) to testify to his claim that CDC hid MMR autism links later this year. It is the first vaccine injury case to be heard in civil court, before a jury, in more than 30 years in the US, as well as THE first vaccine induced autism case heard in the US. CDC is currently trying to block him from testifying.

It does not serve the vaccine program, or children, to keep a corrupt and unnecessarily risky vaccine program in place. Reform needs to take place, up to date screening needs to become the norm, vaccine industry liability needs to be restored, and the longer the fraud and injuries are denied, the greater the harm to confidence in the program and vaccine uptake will be. Because the current claim of those in your corner is the surrealistic stance that the US vaccine program is the ONLY program in government or medicine that works perfectly and has no need of reform after 30 years of completely liability protection, and that the only problem with the program is that not 100% of Americans are fully participating by receiving approximately 170 doses of vaccine over their lifetimes, sometimes 8 at once.

If you are interested in learning more about the problems in your op ed, please let me know.

Sincerely,
Ginger Taylor, MS
Director
Maine Coalition for Vaccine Choice
207-200-8469