Nobody said flu vaccination should be mandatory

OWEN Carson, of Invercargill (ODT, 15.2.18), criticised Dr Nikki Turner, of the Immunisation Advisory Centre, for her TV news item on February 8.2.18. It is surprising that the ODT apparently had not given Dr Turner the opportunity or the time to reply to Mr Carson’s letter before it was published.

Dr Turner’s TV item never said flu vaccination should be mandatory, as Mr Carson states. Incentives or exclusions may apply, but not compulsion.

Mr Carson quotes a report from the ‘‘National Academy of Science’’. This sounds impressive, but a brief check on the internet shows the report to be anything but definitive.

Mr Carson’s discussion of herd immunity sounds erudite, but makes no practical sense. Common experience of common illnesses like mumps, measles and chickenpox refutes his statements.

He states that ‘‘there has never been such a prevalence of flu since the advent of flu vaccines’’. He must not have heard of the 1918 flu, killing over 50 million, the Hong Kong flu, or even the Port Chalmers flu.

Such antivaccination propaganda would be just sad and misguided, if it were not for the preventable deaths, sickness and disability it leads to, when people are misled, and decline vaccinations.

In Auckland this year, there are now many young men likely to be made permanently sterile by mumps. A man in his 20s died of diphtheria in Queensland this year, an illness vaccines had almost freed us from fatalities.

This is not scaremongering, it is reality. We do not need these irresponsible antivaccination falsehoods. Dr David Crook

Dunedin