Pneumococcal Vaccine: 4 Deaths in Japan, 849 Reported Deaths in United States

By Norma Erickson

Japan recently halted the use of two vaccines manufactured by Sanofli Adventis and Pfizer after four young children died. The two types are the Hib vaccine to prevent bacterial meningitis and a vaccine to protect against streptococcus pneumoniae. These vaccines will not be used until investigations are completed to determine whether they are safe.

According to an article in Reuters, “U.S. health officials said they were aware of the deaths in Japan but have not seen any such safety concerns in the United States.”

U.S. Health officials obviously have not looked at the reports to VAERS, the Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System. According to VAERS, there have been 849 events where the patient received PNC vaccine and subsequently died. 805 of these reports were children under the age of three.

How is it possible for any U.S. health official to say this does not represent a safety concern? Are these reports based on distributed doses? If so, how many of those distributed doses have actually been administered?

How is an American medical consumer supposed to determine whether the risks outweigh the benefits of this particular vaccine when they cannot determine what percentage of their children may die after receiving the vaccine?

The SaneVax Team wants to know how many deaths does it take after a single vaccine to indicate a health concern may exist. Is 849 enough? Perhaps 8490 assuming 10% were reported? Or, maybe 84900 if only 1% were actually reported?

Even the FDA and the CDC admit VAERS is a passive system and has some flaws. No one knows what percentage of adverse events after vaccination are actually reported. There are no legal requirements to file a report. There are no consequences if someone fails to file a report of injury or death after vaccination. The best estimates to date indicate only 1-10% of adverse events are actually reported.

There is no guarantee that the reports filed represent injuries and death caused by vaccines. On the other hand, there is no guarantee that the reports of injury and death reported to VAERS were not caused by vaccines.

The SaneVax Team seriously doubts American medical consumers would agree with the U.S. health officials who said they “have not seen any such safety concerns…”

Safe, Affordable, Necessary and Effective vaccines. It is not too much to ask.