This is a kind of a shocking finding to me and I want to be fact checked on what I wrote below. I would like to be proven wrong.
In 2021, vaccination of infants massively decreased in Florida due to “vaccine hesitancy”. Along with decrease in childhood vaccinations, all cause infant mortality ALSO MASSIVELY DECREASED, in a perfect lockstep!
The changes are very significant and can be considered an unintended experiment.
Say what?
What I found is that in 2021, parents of newborns in Florida were much more “vaccine hesitant”, for reasons obvious to my readers, and therefore childhood vaccinations decreased from 93.4% previously to only 79.3% in 2021. During the same time, all cause infant mortality under 1 year of age in Florida also DECREASED by 8.93%.
Both changes are huge.
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Details
This comes as a result of a Twitter conversation about an interesting article about SIDS and childhood vaccines. I posted a link to that article and received a reply, and also replied:
Since nobody looked up the numbers, I decided to look them up by myself.
After an hour of duckduckgo-ing, I found two webpages with relevant numbers:
The first document states that immunization coverage for childhood vaccines (not Covid vaccine) decreased by 14.1 points, from 93.4% to 79.4% statewide. It is, strictly speaking, for under-two-year-olds, but, obviously, the same thing happened to under-one-year-olds.
The second page shows corresponding decrease in childhood mortality in 2021:
Please note that “Infant Mortality Rate” is defined as the number of deaths of all infants, from 0 to 365 days of age, from ANY causes, per 1,000 infants. (visit that page and click on “?”)
So, what do we have?
Infant Vaccination decreased by 14.1% in 2021.
All cause infant mortality decreased by 8.93% in 2021
Decrease in infant mortality happened as deaths of other age groups increased significantly
This is very puzzling. I have to admit that I, a parent of two fine young men, agreed to give my children all “required shots” without even a second thought. I always supposed that “shots” are done to protect them and it was not a big deal. The only exception was flu shots, which we skipped, just to be completely forthright.
And yet, here we have a very strong alarm signal. Why does a massive decrease in childhood vaccination rate coincide with a massive decline in infant mortality?
Can we think of Florida in 2021 as one big experiment? In 2021, parents who were alarmed by general social developments, randomly decided to NOT give their babies the “scheduled shots”. Coincidentally, mortality among precious Florida babies actually DECREASED very significantly.
14 percent decrease in vaccination coverage, is associated with 9 percent decrease in infant mortality.
In plain language, it means that ABOUT HALF THE INFANT DEATHS IN FLORIDA MAY BE CAUSED BY VACCINATIONS.
For example, in 2020, 1,356 infants died in Florida. If the hypothesis is true and about half of these deaths were caused by vaccination, it means that 678 Florida infants died due to childhood vaccination in 2020.
Note that Florida is a new hotbed of “vaccine hesitancy” and other states are not nearly so affected. Not surprisingly, in the entire US, infant mortality in 2021 only declined by modest 1.18%, in line with a long term healthful trend.
Additionally, whereas in 2021, infant mortality in Florida decreased by 8.93%, in 2020 it increased by a modest 0.67%. So 2021 was a truly remarkable year that “broke the trend”.
Disclaimers
The most obvious objection is that coincidence is not causation. There could be another reason to cause a massive -9% decline in infant mortality in Florida. For example, perhaps Floridian mothers paid much more attention to their babies in 2021 compared to 2020, or there were less car crashes in 2021 that killed infants, compared to 2020?
All of the above mentioned “alternative explanations” make little sense. Still, remember that I only found an “alarm signal”, but not a definite proof.
The definite proof would be the gold standard of medical evidence, which is a randomized controlled trial. While some infants would be given childhood vaccines, other would not, on a random basis. A year later, mortality could be compared. All medical authorities, for decades, steadfastly refused to do so.
Since this post discusses dangers to infants, PLEASE SHARE IT WIDELY!