Meryl Dorey, of the ever-inaccurately named Australian Vaccination Network, tweets this gem every so often from scheduled tweet service SocialOomph:
Taken purely at face value, this tweet is almost true. Almost.
You could almost imagine a similar version coming from a competent immunologist. "No vaccination is 100% effective 100% of the time. Even after you receive a vaccination, there may be circumstances in which you could develop a symptomatic infection".
Thing is, that's not what Meryl is trying to get across, as you'll see from this screen cap of an email from Meryl herself:
Yes, Meryl really seems to believe, and has repeated on many occasions, that if a vaccine is not 100% effective, then it doesn't work at all.
This is the fallacy of the excluded middle, and it's a favourite refuge of lunatics all over the world, exemplified by "If you're not with us, you're against us" - a phrase used by everyone from war-mongering presidents to burgeoning Sith Lords. Time and time again, Meryl Dorey has, implicity and explicitly, claimed that vaccines just don't work.
In employing an excluded middle where in fact a continuum of grey areas exist, Meryl demonstrates a truly staggering ignorance of reality, and this black-and-white worldview marks her out as a singularly unsuitable source of reliable information in most fields, especially that of public health. Meryl's self-appointed "vaccine watchdog" status, and that claimed by her analogues in other countries, is a major problem.
Yes, there are people who cannot or should not receive vaccines. Yes, there are people for whom vaccines will do little good. A vaccinated person undergoing, say, treatment for cancer, or suffering auto-immune disease, is vulnerable to the infections they were originally vaccinated for, but this does not mean what Meryl claims it means.
Seatbelts don't always save people. Nevertheless, I always wear my seatbelt.
In fact, out here in the real world, the effectiveness rates for vaccines varies, often hovering around the 80-90% mark, as these examples demonstrate
And the trend goes on and on. These examples are neither hard to find nor hard to understand. This list took me maybe five minutes of cursory examination via Google Scholar. The medical literature is brimming with studies demonstrating the effectiveness of vaccines, but still in Meryl's world, if it's not 100%, it's nothing.
Just another reason Meryl is not qualified to comment. On anything, ever*.
*see what I did there?