Highlights
· Technically, there is no meningitis vaccine. The shot referred to as such is the meningococcal shot given to teenagers. It’s designed to prevent meningococcal disease, which is not the same as meningitis.
· What is meningitis? In short, it’s an inflammation of a layer of membranes known as the meninges, which surrounds the key components of the central nervous system: the brain and spinal cord.
· Meningitis is attributed to many causes, and not all can be vaccinated against. If meningitis can be caused by things we can’t vaccinate against, herd immunity is impossible. And herd immunity has historically been the clarion call for vaccination.
· The CDC’s website features five major causes of meningitis: bacterial, viral, fungal, parasitic, and amebic. Tucked to the side on that same webpage are more potential causes they clearly did not want to feature: “injuries, cancer, certain drugs, and other types of infections.”
· Even the WHO has admitted that meningitis “cannot be eliminated or eradicated.” In other words, we cannot vaccinate meningitis away. But that fact doesn’t stop the WHO from planning a global vaccination campaign to “defeat meningitis” by 2030.
· We are no longer being told vaccines stop diseases. This happened very clearly in the COVID narrative around vaccines: “Stopping the spread” shifted to saying vaccines won’t stop disease, but you’ll get less sick. Vaccine failure was rebranded as “breakthrough infections” and painted as normal or even desirable because your “hybrid immunity” from the shot plus sickness was the best immunity money could buy.
· It brings the curious mind back to herd immunity. If vaccines can’t stop a disease, we can’t have herd immunity. If herd immunity can’t be an endpoint, what’s the point of a vaccine? If vaccines aren’t made to stop disease, why are they being made?
· It’s also important to note that developing meningitis after the MMR vaccine has been described as a “well-recognized complication.”
Many people have been wanting to know the story behind the meningitis vaccine. We must pause for a fact check: There is no meningitis vaccine.
Say what?
There is a shot referred to as the meningitis vaccine in the U.S., by health professionals and parents alike, and generally people understand it as the shot given to teenagers, and before college admissions. That adolescent-timed shot is the “meningococcal,” sold to prevent meningococcal disease, which is not the same as meningitis. In other words, a person can be diagnosed with meningococcal disease and never get meningitis. Or a person could have meningitis that came from another source.
You might be asking, “What does it matter what the shot is called, if we all know what we’re talking about, right? It’s a shot that prevents meningitis.”
“You say to-may-to, I say to-mah-to. Let’s call the whole thing off.”
If only we could.
Language matters: It shapes our thoughts, conversations, and communities. If you need proof of that, look no further than Missouri v. Biden, a First Amendment lawsuit challenging the Biden Administration’s purposeful and intentional manipulation of our modern town square on social media to change opinions and behaviors around COVID policy, suppressing information that could, quite literally, change the world if it were openly discussed.
Also ponder the labels applied to those with curious minds about public health: “anti-vaxxer,” “misinformation spreader,” “conspiracy theorist.” How do those labels shape the way people take in information or reject it?
So why does it matter, specifically, if Americans refer to the meningococcal vaccine as the “meningitis vaccine”?
Well, why do parents want their kids to get a meningitis vaccine? Because parents don’t want their kids to get sick — especially not with a disease associated with permanent disability or death. Diseases that affect the brain and nervous system are among the most feared in our society. Look no further than the fear of polio, which still resonates today, for an example.
If a parent was aware the child could still get a disease after vaccination, and there were sources of the disease that can’t be prevented by a vaccine, how would that change their risk/benefit analysis?
Are teenagers getting the meningococcal vaccine thinking along with their parents it will prevent them from getting meningitis?
As it turns out, there are four shots on the U.S. childhood schedule that are recommended with the goal of preventing meningitis, but only one is referred to as the “meningitis vaccine.” That scary term is reserved for the vaccine for teens, who traditionally have lower vaccine uptake than younger children or infants, and in some states can consent to medical treatments without parental involvement.
What’s more, meningitis is attributed to many causes, and not all can be vaccinated against.
We used to be told that vaccines would stop transmission of a disease (except tetanus, for those paying attention, since that’s a non-communicable disease). This was the story, as recently as 2021.
The strong statement in the following graphic has since proven to be the farthest thing from the truth. Interestingly, the language of stopping the spread shifted to lessening severity. That story isn’t limited to COVID, it’s spread like a virus throughout talking points for all vaccines, which will now take diseases “from wild to mild,” instead of stopping the spread.
If meningitis can be caused by things we can’t vaccinate against, herd immunity is impossible. And herd immunity has historically been the clarion call for vaccination. As the story goes, we can eliminate diseases if everyone gets enough shots. It’s for the “greater good.” Now the story is: You’ll still get sick, but you’ll get less sick.
Now that you have a 50,000-foot view of the “meningitis vaccine,” we hope you’re feeling curious. Let’s zoom in and get informed.
Words convey more information than we realize.
You may have looked up “meningitis vaccine” on popular search engines and seen something like this:
A web search in a popular search engine will not easily straighten this out for you. The term “meningitis vaccine” is commonly used when referring to the meningococcal vaccine and it pops right up in searches. A search result like this, which reinforces the misuse of the term, isn’t necessarily the path to informed consent when you don’t know what you don’t know.
What is informed consent?
Let’s do a little sidebar to talk about informed consent. What does it really mean? It may seem obvious, but there’s an interpretive dance of ethics and law trying to balance patient rights with health policy.
Doctors are legally and ethically required to explain the information in a way the patient can understand. How much and what type of information is desired and digestible varies from person to person. We might say we want “all” the information out there to make an informed decision. But that might be an overwhelming mixture of useful info and nonsense, or as bare bones as it was when COVID jabs were rolled out under emergency use authorizations (EAUs) with an empty Vaccine Information Statement (VIS), or when Jonas Salk’s polio vaccine was rushed to schoolchildren across the nation
Having informed consent means a person has key information needed to understand the risks and benefits of their choices. It’s the information someone would hang a decision on, meaning that this info makes a person say yes or no.
For vaccines, the federal government didn’t initially require any information about risks and benefits, though doctors would have still been bound by their own rules of ethics or state laws. That changed in 1976, when parents of a child who got vaccine-induced paralytic polio sued for lack of informed consent and won.[i] The court put the responsibility of warning about risks on manufacturers — the norm in most industries that create products. This set America straight down the path of vaccine shortages, with skyrocketing costs shouldered by taxpayers (since the federal government is the pharmaceutical industry’s biggest customer). As described in Shining a Light on Pertussis and DPT: The vaccine that closed the courthouse doors, the legal system was properly penalizing makers of unsafe products, and dangerous products were disappearing from the market. But the federal government wanted Americans vaccinated and stepped in to assume responsibility for the warnings, eventually removing liability altogether from those who make or give vaccines with the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act (known as the 1986 Act).[AS4] [EC5]
Interestingly, in the early 1990s, the amount of information being given to parents was deemed too much. “It was even suggested that the [vaccine information pamphlet’s] length discouraged careful reading, resulting in patients who were actually less informed than they would have been given simpler materials.” [ii] Read that again if your eyes are bulging and know that you read it right: The government claimed they would increase informed consent by limiting information.
Agreement may increase with less information, but consent turns into coercion when “yesses” rest on lies of omission.
So even though informed consent might seem an obvious baseline for your relationship with your health provider, it’s unexpectedly complicated. As the history of Vaccine Information Statements shows us, when providers give patients information about medical treatments, it’s only the tip of the iceberg of what people would consider as being informed before giving consent. This is why it’s totally reasonable, rational, and responsible for a parent to ask questions about immunizations.
What if, when parents ask questions about vaccines, we call them loving, caring, protective, thorough, and curious instead of names meant to derail the real conversation?
What is meningitis?
In short, meningitis is an inflammation of a layer of membranes known as the meninges, which surrounds the key components of the central nervous system — the brain and spinal cord.[i]
The CDC’s website features five major causes of meningitis: bacterial, viral, fungal, parasitic, and amebic.[ii] Tucked to the side on that same webpage are more potential causes they clearly did not want to feature: “injuries, cancer, certain drugs, and other types of infections.” That’s a lot of different causes!
Given the fact that meningitis is inflammation of a certain part of the body, and that inflammation can be caused by a large variety of sources, saying a person has meningitis is as precise as saying they have a cold, a sore throat, a stomachache, or a headache. As we have seen with polio, and influenza, it appears that the term “meningitis” is widely used to describe a bucket of symptoms that can have many causes, even though there’s also a medical definition. Symptoms include headaches, stiff neck, fever, nausea, irritability, lethargy, confusion, sensitivity to light, and more, with the confirmation of diagnosis and its cause coming from laboratory testing of blood or spinal fluids.
With so many possible causes of a scary condition that can sometimes result in lifelong disability or death, we can see how the field is ripe for creating vaccines against as many causes as possible. There are four vaccines with the claim of preventing meningitis on the CDC’s childhood schedule: meningococcal, pneumococcal, Hib, and MMR. The U.K.-based Meningitis Research Foundation[i] has a handy visual to explain:
The World Health Organization (WHO) also cites Streptococcus agalactiae (more commonly known as group B Streptococcus, or GBS) as one of the main causes. The FDA has been considering GBS vaccines since at least 2018 when their advisory committee, the Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee (VRBPAC) heard about a Pfizer vaccine that’s been in development since 2016.[i] In July 2023, Pfizer published their hopeful observations that their clinical trials were yielding a safe and effective new vaccine against GBS.[ii] (Industry experts had been unsure of the “market potential” due to “the relatively low incidence of GBS,” but the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation financially supported the trials. It will be informative to watch whether we see GBS added to the growing list of shots recommended during pregnancy.)
“Meningitis,” as a general or all-cause term, is not a vaccine-preventable disease because it can result from injuries, use of pharmaceutical products, and illnesses for which there are no vaccines. Even the WHO has admitted that meningitis “cannot be eliminated or eradicated.” In other words, we cannot vaccinate meningitis away. But that fact doesn’t stop the WHO from a global campaign to “defeat meningitis” by 2030. Would you be surprised to learn that vaccinations are the foundation for their plan?
The WHO’s Global Road Map to Defeating Meningitis by 2030
The WHO’s road map for “defeating meningitis by 2030,” was published in 2021 amid the declared emergency for COVID, which we were told was the worst pandemic in a century.[iii] Meningitis had nothing to do with the pandemic, but the WHO determined that “[g]lobal action to implement this road map and achieve the ambitious goals to defeat meningitis is needed now.”
The document lists many causes of meningitis around the globe, citing those with vaccines (or pending vaccines) as the main culprits. In 2022, a year after this road map came out, the FDA granted Pfizer “breakthrough therapy designation” for their GBS vaccination for pregnant women.[iv]
Look at that wordsmithing. As previously stated, words are powerful. The WHO knows this too, which is why they partnered with Google, social media, and other digital companies starting in 2020 to suppress speech and manipulate searches for information,[i] [ii]and are working to legally bind countries around the world to stop the spread of what they call misinformation through instruments like the pandemic treaty[VB1] .
“Our collective vision is ‘Towards a world free of meningitis…There will be no ‘world free’ moment for meningitis, but we are committed…” (emphasis added).
As long as they say they’re working “towards” a goal, despite the impossibility of achieving that goal, they can flash headlines about “defeating meningitis” all they want, knowing most won’t read the fine print beyond the façade, thus creating the impression we can get rid of this disease with their guidance (to use vaccines).
This language is in perfect lockstep with the current shift in our collective story around vaccines. We are no longer being told vaccines stop diseases. This happened very clearly in the COVID narrative around vaccines: “Stopping the spread” shifted to saying they won’t stop it, but you’ll get less sick. Vaccine failure was rebranded as “breakthrough infections” and painted as normal or even desirable because your “hybrid immunity” of the shot plus sickness was the best immunity money could buy.
It brings the curious mind back to herd immunity. If vaccines can’t stop a disease, we can’t have herd immunity. If herd immunity can’t be an endpoint, what’s the point of a vaccine?
If vaccines aren’t made to stop disease, why are they being made?
The new narrative is a story of costs and savings — of money, not just lives. A search of the CDC’s archive, CDC Stacks, will show you the increasing attention paid to the costs expected to be saved by using vaccines. Those who watch the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) will note that in the last few years, for products planned to be added to the immunization schedule, discussion of economics seems to have replaced efficacy.
U.S. recommendations for the many meningitis shots
In the name of preventing meningitis, 16 doses of vaccines are advised for children under age 18 on the CDC’s childhood schedule. This does not include additional doses that may be recommended for travel, those considered “increased risk,” or alternative vaccines for those with chronic medical conditions.
In sum (taking into account the head-scratching CDC notes), a child following the schedule would get their first, second and third doses of Hib and pneumococcal at their 2-, 4-, and 6-month well checks (but could start as early as 6 weeks). At the 12-month well check, the baby would receive another dose of those, plus their first MMR shot (a three-dose shot). The second MMR happens at 4-6 years and after those three vaccines that total 14 doses, the CDC still recommends another two doses of meningococcal vaccine at 11 and 16 years old. That means a child is getting 16 doses of vaccines before they reach the commonly accepted legal age of consent, all claiming to address the same illness. And this is all to try to prevent an illness they can also get from other pharmaceuticals, from an injury, or even from strains of the “vaccine-preventable diseases” that the vaccines don’t cover (or create through driving mutations). Does that make sense?
To clarify, in case you’re wondering about the MMR, the CDC lists meningitis complications in relation to mumps in their Pink Book on vaccine recommendations and practice. But since the MMR is bundled, we must count all the doses administered, whether they boast meningitis prevention or not.[i] It’s important to note that developing meningitis after the MMR vaccine has been described as a “well-recognized complication.”[ii]
What is meningococcal disease?
Although even public health officials, like those in New York[iii] and Maryland,[iv] use the word “meningitis” interchangeably with “meningococcal disease,” the two are different.
The CDC does explain to teens, their target population for the meningococcal vaccine, that meningitis and meningococcal disease are not one and the same in their January 2023 Teen Newsletter on meningitis. Yet, they still tell teens that “vaccination is the best way to prevent meningitis infections.”
Conclusion
Words are powerful. They tell a story. They create our beliefs and trigger our emotions. Sometimes we can think we are making conscious, informed choices when certain loaded words or images are triggering our fears, subconsciously influencing our decisions.
So it’s safe to say there are multiple so-called meningitis vaccines but not one silver bullet for meningitis. But the words we use matter because the term “meningitis” conjures a specific fear in people’s minds about brain damage and death.
It also matters because when we get a vaccine, we think we are protecting ourselves or our children against the thing the vaccine is made for. Therefore, logically, a person could assume that the meningitis vaccine prevents meningitis when, in fact, a person can get meningitis from a variety of sources, many of which aren’t preventable by vaccine.
Another way words matter is how they are not defined. Think of the words emergency, epidemic, or vaccine, which do not have solid legal or policy definitions. When we don’t define words, they can mean whatever those using them want them to mean. We’ve seen this in the past year when two biologics that do not meet the traditionally understood meaning of vaccine were added to the childhood schedule. The first was the COVID jab, widely believed by many to not qualify as a vaccine, but instead a gene therapy, as was noted in Moderna’s initial EUA paperwork[VB1] . Second, we saw Nirsivemab, the first monoclonal antibody (mAbs) to be used to prevent RSV in infants, added to the schedule. CDC Director of Immunization Services Division Georgia Peacock declared to the ACIP at their meeting on August 3, 2023, that Nirsevimab could be added to the childhood schedule because there is no definition of vaccine. Listen here, at 1:04:00[VB2].
Given what you’ve learned in this article, do you feel better equipped to spot misinformation about the meningitis vaccine?
[i] Reyes v. Wyeth Laboratories, 498 F.2d 1264 (5th Cir.), cert. denied
[ii] https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/hcp/vis/downloads/vis-history.pdf
[iii] https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fncel.2021.703944/full
[iv] https://www.cdc.gov/meningitis/index.html
[v] https://www.meningitis.org/meningitis/vaccine-information
[vi] https://public4.pagefreezer.com/browse/FDA/01-02-2023T10:30/https://www.fda.gov/advisory-committees/advisory-committee-calendar/may-17-2018-vaccines-and-related-biological-products-advisory-committee-meeting-announcement
[vii] https://www.pfizer.com/news/press-release/press-release-detail/pfizer-announces-new-england-journal-medicine-publication
[viii] https://www.who.int/initiatives/defeating-meningitis-by-2030
[ix] https://www.pfizer.com/news/press-release/press-release-detail/fda-grants-breakthrough-therapy-designation-pfizers-group-b
[x] https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/481138-who-google-working-to-fight-spread-of-virus-disinformation/
[xi] https://www.who.int/news-room/spotlight/let-s-flatten-the-infodemic-curve
[xii] https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/pubs/pinkbook/mumps.html
[xiii] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11696855/
[xiv] https://www.immunyze.org/parents-vaccines-for-children/meningitis/
[xv] https://health.maryland.gov/phpa/OIDEOR/IMMUN/Shared%20Documents/MDH_896_form.pdf#search=meningitis
