Incentives: CNN versus Moms

The corporate media needs to keep its advertisers happy.

Moms are moms. They are usually trying to keep their family happy.

So, some moms notice their kids react badly to vaccines. They feel bad about it, and sometimes one of them has an existing platform, or takes to blogging in order to let people know that vaccines might not be good for their children.

Now, this doesn't have to be about vaccines. There are mommy bloggers out there who do a grain-free diet and swear up and down their child's autism, eczema, or tendency to walk like a duck cleared right up after they took cereals out of their diet.

But it is about incentives. Moms may be wrong, but their incentives align with the damn point of freedom of speech, and freedom of the press- i.e. freedom to publish, which is precisely what CNN and the rest don't want. They don't want the competition.

Meanwhile, CNN's incentives are to make fun of the moms, and protect the interests of their advertisers. They'll talk about herd immunity without bothering to check if has ever been found in a population of vaccinated people. They'll talk about laws, they'll trash people who call for research, and won't do any reading into the research that does exist.

My understanding is that vaccines provide a transient immunity. Statistically it works out to about two years (at least for measles). So, since kids usually get vaccines, kids often are immune at the time they are most likely to get the disease. But if the immunity is transient, then it means mothers are not likely to be able to pass on immunity to babies too young to be immunized themselves.

Doctors do test for antibodies for a particular disease- I believe it is rubella, but I could be wrong- if the antibodies aren't there, they will vaccinate the mother to protect the baby. So, in some cases at least, transient immunity has been acknowledged. Often the response is booster shots for everyone. But, what about the original idea? With an immmune, breastfeeding mom, you can make sure the infants get to share in that immunity until they've grown enough of an immune system to handle things on their own. This beats having to get a shot ever two years for the rest of your life, doesn't it?

Oddly enough, when faced with the picture that vaccinations may have created in this country- one with low rates of these diseases, but a potentially large increase in danger for infants, the appropriate response might be for potential mothers and/or pregnant mothers to get vaccinated- except for the dangers to fertility and immune responses to modern vaccines that may cause harm. The adjuvants, the tendency to have multiple vaccinations at once- these are all bad news. Safer vaccines might bridge the gap.

But we can't get an accurate picture of what's going on. When an outbreak occurs, it appears we can't even get an honest picture. The media will just blame it one moms who don't vaccinate, rather than note the illnesses are coming from immigrants, and that the outbreaks often occur among vaccinated people.

It is simply in the media's interest to stonewall on this and any other subject that would cause problems for advertisers.