You Can Manipulate a Back, but You Can't Manipulate Reality

On Twitter, I like to try to keep my followers informed of outbreaks of diseases like measles and pertussis. Some may need to get up to date on boosters for themselves or their children. Some may not be able to receive a vaccine due to a medical condition and so need to take precautions if they are in an area affected by an outbreak. To help me in this, I have some alerts set up to forward news articles to me. For the most part, they are sane, reality-based articles discussing the diseases or the vaccines without spin. Occasionally, something like this article comes along.

Titled "Effectiveness of vaccines needs to be re-examined," it is an opinion piece, so I shouldn't really expect it to be as rigorous as an actual news story should be. However, I would, at the very least, like to see some measure of scholarship, especially considering the author, Ammitai Worob, has at least a college level education (degree in psychology from Hunter College, according to his bio). Why do I say this? Because he trots out a good number of anti-vaccine talking points that have been trounced numerous times over the years.

He begins by asking what seems a reasonable question:

The first question, and one that has become taboo to even ask, is whether childhood vaccines are actually effective.