Epidemiologist and biosecurity expert, Professor Raina McIntyre, has written a terrific new book, Vaccine Nation, which celebrates medical science, then highlights the bad news…
…we’re not only passively turning away from science, we’re actively turning against it.
For an increasing minority, ‘science’ represents conspiracy – to force us into an oppressive UN world government, to infect school children with a ‘woke mind virus’, to destroy our economy by accepting the ‘climate hoax’, or to give our kids autism via vaccinations which may also insert microchips that assist UN control our every thought.
While we see this nonsense spread by fossil fuel interests to stall action on global heating, by the far Right to ‘flood the zone with shit’ and herd the worried working class toward fascism, and by the ‘Russian firehose’ of disinformation to destabilise Western democracies,– it’s not just the uneducated underclass swallowing the red pill*.
Subtitled, Science, reason and the threat to 200 years of progress, McIntyre’s Vaccine Nation celebrates the science that brought us the mechanism that has saved hundreds of millions of lives – immunisation by vaccination.
McIntyre takes us through the basics of how vaccines work, how lives are saved, how and why the myths and unfounded fears form, and, finally, how the fringe views of the anti-vaxxers have become insidiously mainstream – lodging even within the medical establishment.
COVID taught us many things, and McIntyre outlines how we got it wrong sometimes and how we mostly got it right.
In case you need reminding, there have been 7 million confirmed deaths from the virus and its variants, with an estimated total death number between 19 and 35 million.
While there was a rocky road in dealing with it, COVID vaccines saved an estimated 20 million people in the first year vaccines were rolled out, and far more since.
And that’s just vaccinations for a single viral disease; the totals of people saved from severe illness or death from all diseases prevented or mitigated by vaccines are incalculable. And yet, in an era when families don’t have to routinely have eight or more live births for two or three to survive past the age of five, we’re arrogantly dismissing vaccines as ‘deadly’ – as causing the disease and other great harms.
Influencers like Pete Evans in Australia, or RFK Junior in the US, have an inordinate reach with a powerful message of fear – that vaccines are unnecessary and dangerous, and an equally powerful call to action – to reject ‘Big Pharma’ and the corrupt medical establishment, and instead eat well and allow children to become ill in order to ‘naturally’ prime and strengthen their bodies’ own immune systems.
Claims against vaccination, especially for COVID, became ever more outlandish but, because ‘a lie travels half way around the world while the truth is still putting its boots on’, it suited the reactionary Right and New Age Left to echo the lies that provided them with a satisfying validation of their existing views. Trump’s presidency during the start of the outbreak saw mishandling and conspiracies win out over the science, and the US saw a death toll four times higher than the global average. Their extra economic losses went into the trillions.
Worse, the politicisation of public health departments and leaders left knowledge gaps, as some doctors without the most specific and up-to-date experience were given lead roles in decision-making and providing a public face for advice.
Some of the loudest voices of those with medical degrees weren’t public health specialists.
Remember the confusing delay about recommending the wearing masks in the early days because distancing and hand-washing would do the job of prevention?
Fortunately, Doctor McIntyre’s approach in Vaccine Nation is thorough, careful and extensive – providing positive approaches to handle the ongoing COVID epidemic, and a clear warning that we are, again, not yet prepared for the next pandemic.
Vaccination rates of all diseases are falling, distrust of medicine and science is growing – politicians and our public health services need to understand why, and act before the next pandemic. Vaccine Nation will immunise you against disinformation, and have you ready to celebrate the gifts that keep giving us life – vaccines.
Vaccine Nation is essential reading for public health nurses and doctors, and for all politicians needing to understand the complex and competing demands of public policy management during a health crisis.
*The ‘red pill’ is a meme used by the alt-Right to point toward an individual choosing to accept their version of harsh reality rather than comforting lies spread by ‘libtards’ and the Deep State. The origin is two sci-fi films, Total Recall and The Matrix, in which the protagonist is given the choice of taking a blue or a red pill – to remain ‘asleep’ or to ‘go down the rabbit hole to reality’.
Vaccine Nation, by Raina McIntyre, ISBN: 9781761170058, May 2025, 256pp, NewSouth Publishing, RRP: $34.99
B.P. Marshall is a scriptwriter and author (and had a previous career as critical care and remote area nurse).
