Thoughts on "Rare"

​A friend shared a post that spoke about autoimmune diseases and how frustrating it is to have one of these "invisible" diseases. People often make assumptions that people who suffer from them are "fine" because they "look" fine or they make annoying suggestions about how people can be healthier. I've heard this many times and it has made me more aware that I should never presume to know what is going on with another person's health. 

But the word that really jumped out at me was the word "rare". I feel like we are being programmed with this word. Yes, we are being duped. 

Sure - perhaps each specific autoimmune disorder is "rare" - but as a group, are they? Let's take a look:

Autoimmune diseases are the 3rd most common category of disease in the US, after cancer and heat disease. They affect approximately 5-8% of the population, or 14-22 million persons. Hmmm. I don't know about you, but that doesn't exactly fit my definition of "rare"! 

Why are we being conditioned to think of them as "rare", when they are clearly NOT rare?

What else are we told is extremely rare?

​Vaccine injuries! We are in the middle of the COVID vaccine rollout, and many people are very excited to receive it. Others don't want anything to do with it and some fall in the middle - cautiously watching and waiting before deciding whether they want the vaccine. 

​My newsfeed is full of news every day of various reactions to the new vaccine, ranging from sore arms, fevers and a couple days of being out of commission, to miscarriages, severe neurological injuries and death. Are these reactions really "rare"?

I wish it was as easy as pointing someone to a place where there were black and white statistics laid out for us - this percentage of people get sick/die from the disease and this percentage from the vaccine. Unfortunately it is not that simple. You have to be a detective and dig. You have to understand a lot of different aspects of the world and how it works. 

I will continue to point people to VAERS and the Harvard study funded by the Department of Health and Human services that showed that 1%, or even less, of vaccine reactions are captured by our reporting system. This means that any reactions reported represent a tiny fraction of the actual reactions occurring. So far 500 deaths have been reported to VAERS, so we know that the number is likely much larger than this. 

Children are increasingly suffering from chronic illnesses and these include autoimmune diseases. Robert F Kennedy Jr. has noted the explosion in chronic illnesses since the late 1980s. You can watch a video about that here.

I think many people intuitively sense that our overall health as a population is not at the level that we want it to be and what it should or could be. Why aren't we able to change these trends? What is stopping us from becoming healthier?

I invite you to reevaluate this definition of "rare". Perhaps we've been programmed to believe something that just isn't true. 

My friend on Facebook said it perfectly: 

People "apply circular reasoning. They start with the premise that vaccine injury is rare. Then, when something happens after vaccination, they immediately rule out the vaccine as the cause since vaccine injury is rare. Since that injury goes unreported, the low number of reported injuries reinforces the idea that vaccine injuries are rare."

People don't speak up about these things because there are a lot of rewards for doing so. In fact, one thing that is increasingly rare these days is the ability to have a calm, compassionate and rational discussion about difficult topics. I hope that this becomes more and more common, that all illness does in fact become more rare, and we all move towards a healthier lives. 

ps did you know that there is a whole text book that covers the topic of vaccines and autoimmunity?? Wild, right?? ​

---