Once again, Mainstream media is caught lying to vulnerable parents about the safety, necessity and efficacy of vaccines
If anyone takes Sarah Booth's advice regarding flu vaccination and their child is harmed or, God forbid, killed by the jab, I believe she should be held personally and financially responsible
I would like to thank Greg Beattie, author of Fooling Ourselves on the Fundamental Value of Vaccines and Vaccination - A Parent’s Dilemma for his very kind assistance in helping me to source the data needed for this article.

This morning, I read an article written by Sarah Booth, the Health Reporter at the Herald Sun called The vaccine myths Aussie parents are falling for. In this incredibly misinformed piece, Sarah claims that:
It’s [influenza] a leading cause of preventable death in young kids – but an astonishing survey reveals many parents are misinformed about this dangerous illness. See the facts all parents should know.
Now, Sarah in her ‘wisdom’ doesn’t define what age these young kids are, but for the sake of argument, I will say that it could be anyone under the age of 14. If I look at the statistics for those up to 19 (not what I would call a young kid), the figures are basically the same so let’s just look at the data from birth to age 14.
According to Australian Government deaths data from the Grim Books (General Record of Incidence of Mortality) published by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW), we can see how many children have died from various conditions including infectious diseases - specifically influenza, pneumonia and Influenza-Like Illness (ILI).
Looking first at deaths from all causes, we can see that in 2020 (the year of the ‘pandemic’ prior to the release of any experimental injectable), for Australia as a whole, we had 1,104 deaths in the 0-4 group, 86 deaths in the 5-9 age group and 139 aged 10-14. So totalling these up, the deaths from any cause in that cohort is 1,329 deaths.

Now, if influenza is, as Sarah claims, “a leading cause of death in young kids”, we would expect to see a significant percentage of these deaths being caused by influenza.
Let’s go back to the GRIM books to see what they say. Again, this is official government data.

In children across Australia aged between birth and 14 years of age, there was 1 child whose death was recorded as being due to influenza. One. Out of 1,329 deaths in total.
Wanting to give old-mate Sarah the benefit of the doubt here, I decided to check out deaths from Influenza-Like Illness (ILI), sometimes erroneously considered to be the same as influenza. These include deaths from pneumonia and other respiratory conditions.

As you can see, the total number of deaths from ILI and Pneumonia among children aged 0-14 years is 9. More than from influenza alone, but certainly not enough to be considered a leading cause of death.
In fact, according to the GRIM books, eight times more children were killed by assault in 2020 and eleven times more died from transport accidents than from the flu. And 25 children died from SIDS (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome - often related to vaccination) in children aged 0-1 vs only 1 child who died from influenza in that same age group.
More lies - more ignorance - more medically-negligent reporting
Going back to Sarah’s article, we see that she claimed:
Influenza is this country’s leading cause of vaccine preventable deaths in preschool-aged children, but a new survey of more than 2000 Australian parents has found just over half of children are likely to be vaccinated this winter.
So, we’ve gone from influenza being “A” leading cause of preventable death to “this country’s leading cause of death”. Which one is it, Sarah? And where is your proof? Is one death out of over 1,300 really the leading cause of death? I’m not a mathematician, but that does not compute for me.
The article goes on to quote Dr Anthea Rhodes from the Children’s Hospital as saying:
The Royal Children’s Hospital’s national child health poll, released on Sunday, also found one-in-three parents did not know the flu can cause serious illness in healthy children.
What that really means is that 1/3 of Australian parents are smarter and better informed about influenza than either Sarah or the staff at the Children’s Hospital.
In addition, according to the GRIM books, there is a discrepancy between the number of deaths in children from influenza (1) and the number of deaths from vaccine-preventable illnesses in 2020 (0)

What is the REAL risk?
According to the Database of Adverse Event Notifications (DAEN) Australia’s totally pathetic database collecting information on the 1% or so of reactions that actually get reported, when it comes to influenza-containing vaccines in 2020, the data shows:

I have scrolled through the reports and found that:
- 49 of 144 reports did not include any age information
- none of the reports mentioned death even though 3 deaths were reported to have occurred.

The table above lists the 18 reported reactions to influenza vaccines in children aged under 14. As far as we can tell, no follow-up has been conducted (follow-up is rare) so we don’t know the long-term outcomes for these children. What we do know is that the risk of death from influenza in children in Australia is close to nil.
In the Herald Sun article, Dr Rhodes posits that:
Other popular beliefs were that the “vaccine might not work well enough” (held by almost half of vaccine hesitant parents) and concerns for side effects (45 per cent).
One third of parents agreed their “child can get flu from flu vaccine” while another 20 percent were not sure if this was true or false.
Dr Rhodes said this myth continued to exist but there was “no possible way” anyone could catch the virus from the vaccine.
“This is not a live vaccine,” she said.
If you go through the reaction reports in the DAEN however, you will find many reports of either pneumonia, ILI or influenza reported after administration of this vaccine. So whether the jab is ‘live’ or not (how do you get a live virus vaccine when viruses are, by definition, not living? A question I’ve always had but never found an answer to), the fact is that people are developing influenza after receiving these jabs. This is not a myth - it is FACT!
There must be accountability for these lies
People like Sarah Booth do not appear to me to be taking their responsibility towards those who read her articles very seriously. Vulnerable parents may read what she has written, believe that it’s true and based on that, get their children the influenza vaccine. If those children then go on to have a reaction, develop a long-term disability or die as a result, they should be able to hold her accountable.
I guess Sarah thinks it’s OK to parrot government talking points without doing even a skerrick of research on her own. The information in the GRIM books is on the internet for all and sundry to read.
Lord knows how much a ‘Health Reporter’ from a mainstream newspaper gets paid, but it should be enough to require them to actually do their job. I guess doing that and being honest might see her out of work so she just spouts what she’s told to and ignores her conscience.
You may want to write to Sarah and let her know what you think about this article. You can reach her at this link or drop a comment on her Twitter link where she and others are more likely to read it. I will be sending her a link to this publicly-available article.
Hopefully, she will read it. It would be great to get some more comments from my readers as well if you have the time.
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