Vaccine Madness
A million years ago, in the Pleistine era, I left residency and started into practice (August of 2000) – which was even then awfully expensive. Tables, doo dads, sutures, stuff. All expensive. I was therefore quite shocked when I had to order tetanus vaccine for the upcoming rush of 12-year-old physicals. Shocked in a good way.
I was able to order the td .5 ml vaccine for 26 dollars. 26 US dollars. For TEN doses. But then, tragedy of all tragedies, there came up an unexplained and nationwide shortage. I could not find any td. Not any for three years. And then the Great Pharma came to the rescue with the better, the further protecting, and the amazing Tdap. True, it was ONE HUNDRED and THIRTY DOLLARS. A DOSE!!!
I was a liberal arts undergrad major in college, so math is not my strong suit, but I am fairly certain that 1\10th of 26 is a whole heck of a lot less than 130. So, is that shortage really unexplained? Or explained by price fixing, illegal deals, bribing of FDA officials, and duping the incredibly useless ACIP which has never ever ever said no to big Pharma?
And we continue to use the same 10 year repeat recommendation for dosing this shot – because (and this should sound familiar) the titers fall. Fauci and his accomplices used that quasi-scientific lie over and over these last few years. I truly desired to kill a pet of every FDA and CDC official every time they boldly lied in this vein. Titers is a phrase that a tiny percentage of people in the world understand, so it needs to be never repeated to non-medical people. And I, who does understand the term, need to hear more and better too. Do not tell me. dear CDC, what titers are doing. Tell me is there ANY person ANYWHERE less likely to get the illness, be hospitalized from the illness, or die from the illness with the proposed intervention? I don’t care if my titers to tetanus are falling – titers represent a tiny portion of the immune cascade that vaccines or natural illness represent – they are just the easiest to measure.
In specific – tetanus. We give it because we are medicolegally obligated to every 10 years. Ask your patients – have you ever even heard of someone getting tetanus? Ever? I did, once, as a child in the 1970s, in the Philippines in a completely unvaccinated person. Once. I strongly suspect that tetanus vaccination gives lifetime immunity – but where is the war profiteering in that? Where is the fun is researching giving less vaccines and fewer doses? So we blithely continue to stab our trusting patients with vaccines that have gone way past medicine and way into wall street. The tetanus vaccine I gave in 2000 was not manufactured by a charitable trust. They were making a profit at 2.60 a dose. Then TDAP came and started the craze. Newer, combined, new age groups – the vaccine explosion started. We gave Prevnar 13 to kids with no real evidence. Then we gave it to over 65 with really no evidence – the most successful vaccine financially until Covid. We gave it for years, until it turns out it helped absolutely no one (except the manufacturer and their shareholders.) Again, the idiot ACIP could not wait to break out their rubber stamp to approve Prevnar 20 (which completely coincidentally was ready to launch right as Prevnar 13 was shown to be sugar water useful.)
Even if the vaccine is useful the costs are prohibitive. Costs of eroding trust in the healthcare world giving vaccines (I will have to return 3\4 of the flu vaccines I ordered this year) and costs in lives (flu is and will be awful this year) and costs in money.
Shingrix is a great vaccine. I can only give it to my under 65s as I am not Medicare part D certified. If I have a patient fail to pay for a vaccine, or I fail to code, bill, or collect correctly, I am out over 200 dollars. As I make about 10 dollars a dose on that vaccine I have to give two boxes of meds to make up that one loss. That’s four thousand dollars to recoup the one shot – and that is about 6 months to give that many doses. It makes no sense any longer to give vaccines – particularly since the pharmacies are so aggressive at marketing their vaccine services. Recently I asked a group of doctors what they thought of my plan to use up my vaccines and then give it over to the pharmacies. They all stared at me blankly – then asked, “Wait, you still give vaccines? Stop!” It will cost me the option of seeing babies for normal exams and vaccines, so my practice will continue to age, but hey, so am I.
Everything is a BUSINESS MODEL…. MEDICINE, GOVERNMENT, MILITARY, RELIGION, MANUFACTURING, MARRIAGE.. PART OF THE HUMAN CONDITION. We just need to do it
the right way, openly,honestly, but that is very hard for Human people to do. We will Charge
whatever the traffic will bear.. Unless there is a higher price,accountability of pharma,CDC,
Various medical organizations, state governments,leaders,politicians.. Do not hold your breath
But don’t forget our amazing legal system that is 10 times more expensive than any other country in the world and their ability to file multi-billion-dollar lawsuits over any medication that fails their junk science mathematics. If one person out of a million is harmed all 1 million need compensation. And everyone will pay for it.
Pretty funny article.
I once saw an elderly man in America 30 years ago recovering from tetanus. I doubt he ever was vaccinated.
My favorite vaccine to hate is prevnar. When prevnar-13 was recommended for adults, Pfizer promoted it as a great new vaccine even though it was a re-purposed old vaccine. Acip pushed it as the initial pneumonia shot. I never knew what the big deal was with a pneumococcal vax with few fewer strains than the Merck Pneumovax, but what do I know. Well, don’t you know, they have pulled it from market because it didn’t really add anything. Now they have a new improved prevnar. Fool me once….
Excellent points.
Patients have good reason to mistrust the healthcare world, and I don’t blame anyone for refusing the flu vaccine after the monstrous lie we’ve been pushing the past 18 months.
Nor do I. We as a healthcare community have a lot of work to do to regain that trust.