Why You Shouldn't Listen to Ashley Everly Talk About Measles and the MMR Vaccine
She's the 'toxicologist' that created a widely panned vaccine guide...
Do you remember Ashley Everly?
“In summary, the Vaccine Guide is nothing more than a collection of screenshots of cherry-picked studies and articles, many the typically bad science used to justify antivaccine beliefs an many just abstracts (which makes it difficult to interpret them).”
Vaccine Guide: A “guide” to cherry picked antivaccine pseudoscience
She created the so-called vaccine guide - a binder of anti-vaccine misinformation.
Why You Shouldn't Listen to Ashley Everly Talk About Measles and the MMR Vaccine
Understanding that, hopefully you will ignore her latest post about measles and the MMR vaccine.
A post that is filled with anti-vaccine talking points that have been refuted a thousand times already.
How bad is her presentation?
Considering that she starts with a clip from the Brady Bunch measles episode to depict life before vaccines, how good could it be?
And like every other anti-vaccine influencer, she doesn’t mention any other TV show or movie that depicted measles as parents really
Remember when Timmie nearly died when he developed measles on the show Lassie?
Why You Shouldn't Listen to Ashley Everly Talk About Measles Statistics
Next, Ashley Averly goes on and on about measles statistics.
Is the death rate 1 in 10,000, 2 in 10,000, 1 in 8,000, or 1 in 1,000?
Is it 1 in 500,000 people?
“From 1950 to 1960 it was at 0.2 per 100,000 and that works out to one out of every 500,000 people living in the US died of measles before there was ever a vaccine. Okay, so there were 187 million people living in the US without any vaccine to kind of prevent measles. It was just, you know, five million people contracted it every year, 500 died. That again is a one in 10,000 risk of dying from measles. And, you know, when you look at it this way, it's not nearly as worrisome.”
Ashley Everly on Measles & the MMR Vaccine
While working to confuse and distract you with a lot of numbers and statistics, she tries to slip an important point past her followers. That’s the simple fact that about 500 people died with measles each and every year in the pre-vaccine era.
And while that might be not worrisome to Ashley Everly, that’s an awfully lot of people dying.
It’s an especially large number of children dying each and every year!
Why You Shouldn't Listen to Ashley Everly Talk About Measles Deaths
Can you guess what Ashley Everly has to say about measles deaths?
“But you know, I think it's interesting that they chose to label this a measles death when you know, most people would be able to survive measles.”
Ashley Everly on Measles & the MMR Vaccine
She wants you to think that healthy people don’t die when they get measles, even though an unvaccinated child without other medical problems just died in the Texas measles outbreak.
She also ignores all the measles and SSPE deaths that we have been seeing the last 15 years and worst of all, she claims that even if we did start seeing a lot of people die with measles, we shouldn’t be concerned because so many more people die from things like car accidents, falls, and the flu!
Why You Shouldn't Listen to Ashley Everly Talk About Vitamin A
Like other anti-vaccine influencers, Ashley Everly has a lot to say about vitamin A.
She even says out loud what most of them just hint at!
Ashley Everly claims that vitamin A can prevent measles.
“And vitamin A sufficiency, there are studies that show that even if you have enough vitamin A, it can prevent measles infection altogether. Okay, and a lot of people don't know that, but it actually can prevent you from even catching measles, okay.”
Ashley Everly on Measles & the MMR Vaccine
It doesn’t.
What about the studies she cites?
They were on cells in petri dishes. Not on people. There are no studies that show that vitamin prevents real people from getting measles.
“It should be noted that vitamin A does not prevent measles. It is not appropriate for parents to use vitamin A as a preventive measure.”
Vitamin A for the Management of Measles in the US
Getting vaccinated with two doses of the MMR vaccine is the only way to prevent measles.
Now whose with a vitamin A deficiency are more likely to have even more severe measles and a higher death rate, and even with normal levels of vitamin A, you can get measles and you can die.
Why You Shouldn't Listen to Ashley Everly Talk About the MMR Vaccine
Not surprisingly, after trying to minimize how serious measles can be, Ashley Everly is now going to move on and scare you from wanting to get an MMR vaccine.
“Unfortunately, DNA fragments from these fetal cells actually end up in the vaccine solution, okay? So the DNA fragments from these fetus cells end up in the vaccine injected into the body, okay? So an independent research has found that these DNA fragments can spontaneously integrate into the host genome. It's called insertional mutagenesis, okay? And unfortunately Right below that it says carcinogenesis mutagenesis impairment or fertility MMR2 has not been evaluated for carcinogenic or mutagenic potential or potential to impair fertility.”
Vitamin A for the Management of Measles in the US
Now, except for the part where fetal cells were originally used to make the MMR vaccine, none of this is remotely true.
The cells used today are descenant cells, copies of the original cells, and they are removed before the final vaccine is produced.
And even if there were DNA fragments left over, they would not be able to “spontaneously integrate” into our genome. If that was a thing, that we would have to worry every time we got sick with a DNA virus!
She even pushes the myth about vaccines not being evaluated for carcinogenic or mutagenic potential or the potential to impair fertility…
Why You Shouldn't Listen to Ashley Everly Talk About the Effectiveness of MMR Vaccine
It also shouldn’t be surprising that Ashley Everly doesn’t even think the MMR vaccine works!
“So, so, so, so many people have told me that their child contracted essentially measles shortly after the vaccine, or that they themselves contracted measles after the vaccine, and then they tried to tell their doctor this, tried to go in, and their doctor said, no, no, no, no, no, that's not possible. It must be something else. Ha, ha, ha. They laugh it off, what often happens, unfortunately. They just believe that vaccinated patients can't contract measles and actually.”
Ashley Everly on Measles & the MMR Vaccine
In addition to likely mistaking the immune system reaction you can commonly get after being vaccinated, a rash and fever, for measles, she pushes misinformation about:
low antibodies after vaccination, neglecting to mention the anamnestic effect which likely means these folks are still protected
a lot of the drop in cases has been because doctors don’t believe that vaccinated people can get measles
outbreaks in “fully vaccinated populations,” but before we gave two doses of MMR and when unvaccinated still had higher attack rates
vaccine induced measles, claiming that 5% of people get measles from the vaccine!
something about a third dose, which is not actually a recommendation for measles
a lot of the cases of measles in an outbreak are the vaccine strain
That’s a lot of misinformation!
“The only reason why we don't have more outbreaks happening is because of all the baby boomers who are older who had measles naturally and have lifelong immunity. “
Ashley Everly on Measles & the MMR Vaccine
Why didn’t the folks with natural immunity prevent the millions of cases we used to see each year in the pre-vaccine era?
And it is nothing new.
They are all basically the same anti-vaccine talking points you will hear and see from every other anti-vaccine influencer.
Ignore them, get educated and get vaccinated if you want to help #StopTheOutbreaks and keep your family protected from measles.
References
Vitamin A for the Management of Measles in the US. https://www.nfid.org/resource/vitamin-a-for-the-management-of-measles-in-the-us/
Biggest reason. She is a SOCIAL WORKER. She has no training whatsoever in medicine, infectious diseases or infection control. She has no training in Critical Appraisal of the Medical Literature. Thus she is INCAPABLE of correct interpretation of data. Throughout the pandemic UNQUALIFIED and UNLICENSED people have been allowed to give advice unchallenged by medical boards.
Aren’t viral infections supposedly the source of all the junk DNA in our genomes acquired throughout human evolution? I know this is all “non-coding”, but it clearly got there somehow.