Letter: False assumptions and self-serving narratives on vaccines

Published 1:30 am Saturday, April 4, 2026

The Herald Forum article (Grandparents need to describe life for children before vaccines) read more like a familiar bedtime fable than a factual historical accounting.

Labeling some information about vaccines as disinformation can be a veiled attempt to discredit findings that don’t align with the mainstream narrative. History tells a different story.

The rate of death from so-called infectious diseases (typhoid fever, cholera, diphtheria, typhus fever, etc.) was at an all-time high in the late 1800’s in Europe and in the West (Canada, the U.S., New Zealand and Australia). From the late 1800’s to the 1960’s, the death rate dropped by 95%.

But mass vaccination did not begin until after the 1960’s.

The steep drop in deaths from infectious diseases occurred following the implementation of public health – after creating local health departments, water treatment systems, food safety, and human waste disposal systems.

What the medical industry has been calling death by infectious disease was often caused by contamination.

The ongoing infectious disease story has been passed down and retold decade after decade and has fooled a great many people, including doctors and lay people alike.

For many years conditions like rickets, pellagra, beriberi, and scurvy were first declared by the virus hunters to be the next scary infectious disease requiring prompt medical care in the form of drugs and vaccinations. It turns out people were getting sick and even dying from nutritional deficiencies (malnutrition) not from infectious diseases.

Life before vaccines was dirty and contaminated with human waste being tossed into streets and creeks. Drinking city water was a game of chance. And then human ingenuity and smart governance led to an improvement in public health greater than any drug or medical procedure. Public health saved – and still saves – millions of lives, not Big Pharma.

People may be dying with certain illnesses and diseases but not from them. After all, when I was growing up in Washington state, people would have measles or chickenpox sleepovers to get kids infected, which science showed would lead to the strongest and longest immune response and protection.

When measles and other so-called infectious diseases are declared eliminated, it does not mean there are no cases; it simply means the number of cases has reached a low threshold. And thirty children being hospitalized with measles in a country of 349 million people is statistically insignificant.

It appears that vaccine disinformation also comes from medical systems that have a hard time seeing the difference between an infection, contamination, and malnutrition.

Hopefully in the future, stories about vaccines will be based on historical records and not on false assumptions and self-serving narratives.

Ted Neff

Edmonds