Are you surprised that an ACIP (Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices) committee member is posting anti-vaccine memes about the Amish?

The Amish live in relatively closed communities. The limited interaction with outsiders helps to decrease their exposure to vaccine-preventable diseases and is one of the main reasons that they don’t get sick even more often. It didn’t protect them during COVID though…

And not just any ACIP committee member.

Robert Malone is co-chair of RFK Jr’s new ACIP committee!

Why is an ACIP Committee Member Posting Anti-Vaccine Memes About the Amish

And yes, he recently posted an anti-vaccine meme about the Amish on the site most of us still call Twitter.

An anti-vaccine meme that has already gotten over 3 million views!

An anti-vaccine meme that implies that the Amish do not get sick with vaccine preventable diseases, even though they supposedly do not vaccinate their families.

So, what’s wrong with Robert Malone’s meme?

Well, for one thing, the Amish are not completely anti-vaccine. Traditionally, many Amish folks have gotten some vaccines, at least they do some of the time.

And this leads to the second problem with Robert Malone’s meme…

“Clinical abnormalities for the 11 infants with CRS included congenital heart disease (nine), deafness (six), purpura (four), long bone radiolucencies (four), cataracts (three), thrombocytopenia (three), hepatosplenomegaly (two), intracranial calcifications (two), encephalitis (one), microcephaly (one), failure to thrive (one), seizures (one), and disseminated intravascular coagulation (one).”
Congenital Rubella Syndrome Among the Amish -- Pennsylvania, 1991-1992

Although it hasn’t “wiped them out,” that the Amish are often unvaccinated or incompletely vaccinated does lead to their suffering with a lot of vaccine-preventable diseases.

The real question should be, do you remember all the unvaccinated kids who suffered and/or died with vaccine-preventable diseases?

Want some examples?

in 2016, an unvaccinated Amish woman in Kentucky developed “facial numbness and neck pain, which progressed over 24 hours to stiff neck and jaw and difficulty swallowing and breathing” about nine days after “she delivered a child at home, assisted by an unlicensed community childbirth assistant.” She was hospitalized for a month with obstetric tetanus, during which time she had seizures and was on a mechanical ventilator to help her breath for a “prolonged” amount of time.
there was the measles outbreak in Ohio in 2014-15. It started when two unvaccinated Amish men returned from the Philippines after doing typhoon relief work and ended up getting nearly 400 people sick.
three Amish children with invasive Hib in Missouri in 2014, including an unvaccinated 2-year-old with epiglottitis who died.
a pertussis outbreak in 2005 got nearly 350 pre-schooled age children sick in Delaware
six cases of invasive Hib in Amish children in Pennsylvania in 1999
an unvaccinated 12-year-old Amish boy in Pennsylvania contracted tetanus in 1997
in 1991, eleven Amish babies in Lancaster County were born with Congenital Rubella Syndrome and nine were miscarried/stillborn during a large rubella outbreak
in a 1979 outbreak of polio that occurred in unvaccinated Amish persons living in Iowa, Missouri, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, there were at least 10 paralytic cases among unvaccinated Amish persons
in 1942, a smallpox epidemic hit Amish communities in Pennsylvania!

Examples of outbreaks that were ultimately controlled as vaccination rates increased in these communities.

“We found that Amish children were more than twice as likely to experience a VPD requiring hospitalization as non-Amish children.”
Vaccine-Preventable Diseases Requiring Hospitalization Available

At least for a little while…

So yes, I remember all the vaccine-preventable diseases these unvaccinated Amish children have had to suffer through.

And with which some had to die.

Apparently Robert Malone doesn’t.

Or he does and doesn’t care about them.

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References

Gastañaduy PA, Budd J, Fisher N, Redd SB, Fletcher J, Miller J, McFadden DJ 3rd, Rota J, Rota PA, Hickman C, Fowler B, Tatham L, Wallace GS, de Fijter S, Parker Fiebelkorn A, DiOrio M. A Measles Outbreak in an Underimmunized Amish Community in Ohio. N Engl J Med. 2016 Oct 6;375(14):1343-1354. doi: 10.1056/NEJMoa1602295. PMID: 27705270.

Congenital Rubella Syndrome Among the Amish -- Pennsylvania, 1991-1992 https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/00017145.htm

Pertussis Outbreak in an Amish Community --- Kent County, Delaware, September 2004--February 2005 https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5530a1.htm

Fry AM, Lurie P, Gidley M, Schmink S, Lingappa J, Fischer M, Rosenstein NE. Haemophilus influenzae Type b disease among Amish children in Pennsylvania: reasons for persistent disease. Pediatrics. 2001 Oct;108(4):E60. doi: 10.1542/peds.108.4.e60. PMID: 11581468.

Myers AL, Jackson MA, Zhang L, Swanson DS, Gilsdorf JR. Haemophilus influenzae Type b Invasive Disease in Amish Children, Missouri, USA, 2014. Emerg Infect Dis. 2017 Jan;23(1):112-114. doi: 10.3201/eid2301.160593. PMID: 27983486; PMCID: PMC5176238.

Williamson G, Ahmed B, Kumar PS, Ostrov BE, Ericson JE. Vaccine-Preventable Diseases Requiring Hospitalization. Pediatrics. 2017 Sep;140(3):e20170298. doi: 10.1542/peds.2017-0298. Epub 2017 Aug 2. PMID: 28768853.

Why is an ACIP Committee Member Posting…