Good idea, needs revision

I am referring to this post about low vaccination rates by Ms. Nicole Fisher.  The errors detract from the main point.  Original text in italics.

  1. For example, the conventional model for dispensing vaccines includes: four DTap, three polio, one MMR, three Hib, three Hep B, one varicella, and four PCV (4:3:1:3:3:1:4), for a total of 19 antigens being administered. ”  The confusion here is injections vs antigens.  19 = number of injections.  The number of antigens = 4 (DTap) + 1 (polio) + 3 (MMR) + 1  (Hib) + 1 (Hep B) + 1 (varicella) + 1 (PCV) = 12.
  2. But I miscounted.  The polio vaccine has 3 polio types (I, II, and III), so there are 3 antigens  PCV has 13  antigens(if we referring to current Prevnar).  So total antigens is 26 (12 + 3 + 13 – 2 for doublecounting).
  3. This begs the question, why don’t doctors use combination vaccines?  . . .  The sad answer is that doctors are not financially incentivized to.”  This is way more complicated than just negative financial incentives.  Directions for vaccine administration are part of the label.  MDs are free to administer their own way, but why should they?  Any bad sequelae and the MD will be responsible.
  4. Maybe there would interference after vaccines are combined.  It is possible.
  5. Low reimbursements mean doctors’ lives have more difficulty making ends meet  . . .”  Really confusing sentence.
  6. ” It’s time to recognize the significant and detrimental role monovalent shots are having . . .” 2 of 8 vaccines mentioned are multivalent.

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s