My vaccine story from yesterday – humor, horror, and engrained habits of thought

This is a story of my brush with vaccines yesterday. It is instructive as to how pervasive they are in society.

As Oksana was feeling sick. I planned to spend the whole day with my daughters. In the morning, we picked and pickled grape leaves to make dolmas for our upcoming karaoke party. In the afternoon the girls wanted to go fishing. We put a fishing rod on my bicycle. Marianna rode in the child seat and Zoriana on her own bike to the beach half a mile away.

Zoriana asked me to hold the fishhook while she went to get a worm. It was on the end of a line, attached to her fishing rod. She tripped over the rod, pulling the hook deep into my index finger. I broke the line, put the rod back on the bicycle, put Marianna on the child seat, and we rode home with the leader and the sinker dangling from my finger.

I asked Eddie to look on the Internet. to see what you do if you are caught by a fishhook. I knew there had to be a right way to take it out. His analysis said that the best approach was to drive it all the way through, in a circle, until the barb emerged, then use diagonal pliers to cut it, then take the shank and barbed halves out separately. The diameter of the curve was only about a third of an inch, so it would have gone no deeper than about a quarter inch.

I asked Eddie to do that. He was squeamish. Meanwhile, Oksana was agitating that we had to go to the emergency room. I asked Eddie once again, please just do it. He refused. I considered that if I did it myself and anything went wrong, I would get blame from all quarters. I reluctantly agreed to let Oksana drive me to the emergency room.

We had a 45-minute wait for the doctor. When we got to see him, Oksana took over and explained the whole situation to the doctor. My Russian is good enough that I have always been successful communicating with doctors, but using Ukrainian they of course could communicate better than I. They treated me like a potted plant, rattling on in Ukrainian as I struggled to get an inkling of what was transpiring.

When I came to understand that they were talking about a tetanus vaccine, my ears perked up and my back got stiff. I said, absolutely not, “Oksana we’re going home.”

When they finally calmed me down and included me in the conversation, it turned out that my misapprehension was misplaced. The doctor had said that their protocol required that they offer me the tetanus vaccine. He further explained that the only tetanus vaccines that they had was in the DPT, diphtheria, pertussis and tetanus multi-vaccine. Protocol dictated that the doctor had to offer it, but he thought that on account of my age it might not be a good idea. If anything I should go elsewhere to get a tetanus-only shot. Once I was talking directly to the doctor, things became clear.

I relented and agreed that the doctors could take the fishhook out. The nurse swathed the wounded finger in Betadine and injected it with lidocaine so it wouldn't hurt. They pulled the book out the same way you or I would. They grabbed the shaft with a pair of pliers and just pulled. It came right out. It didn't hurt because of the anesthetic, although I would've been happier to have avoided the trip to the hospital and put up with the pain.

The nurse bandaged the finger well and I came home with on three prescriptions in my pocket and a full set of instructions what to do. Keep the bandage on, wash it, soak it, yada yada.

The bandage came off on its own after an hour, the wound was already healed dry and barely visible, and I didn't put anything on it. Oksana wanted to swab the dried wound with Betadine, but there was by then not any way for the antiseptic to get into the wound or my bloodstream site, so it would have done no good. As far as I'm concerned, the problem is over.

There remains the question of tetanus. I went online to read what I could about tetanus. I find that, according to the vaccine adverse effects system database. There have been 3255 reported deaths from the tetanus vaccine. I assume that that's mostly DPT vaccines – they don't often give the separate tetanus vaccine. Since VAERS has about a 40-fold underreporting factor, the true number is probably on the order of 120,000 over a 35-year period, or about 3,500 per year.

Tetanus Vaccine Injury and Death - National Vaccine Information Center

12 Apr 2024As of May 30, 2025, there have been 215,706 adverse events reported to the Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS) in connection with tetanus and tetanus-containing vaccines combined with additional vaccines since 1990, including 3,255 related deaths, 23,065 hospitalizations,

Here is a graph of the number of annual tetanus deaths. Seven per year, or 500 times fewer.

We find anecdotes such as one about an unvaccinated farmer's son who is stepped on a rusty nail got tetanus. He had a severe case but got over it. Reading further about tetanus, they say that the listed sources of infection are dirt, soil, feces, and rusty implements that might carry these. None of that applied in this case. The fishhook was shiny, and had never been anywhere near dirt or animals.

The chance that it was carrying tetanus bacteria are very remote. The chance that it would be carrying enough to overwhelm my immune system is even more remote. Moreover, tetanus is highly treatable with antibiotics, for which the doctor gave me a prescription should I need it.

So, let's review the bidding here. Assume I was a kid being brought to the doctor by his mom. Mom believes in doctors and doesn't believe in home medicine, because she has been brainwashed into thinking that every little emergency should go to the emergency room. That's the mentality in our household. We always go to the emergency room for things we could easily treat at home.

Every hospital has its cover-your-ass protocols so that they don't get sued for having done nothing. They have to offer the tetanus vaccine. If I refuse, and anything happens, it’s a question of “Stupid – you should have taken the vaccine.” If I did take the vaccine and something happened, the answer would be, “Well. these things happen. We did our best. Didn’t you read the fine print?”

In this case, I was fortunate to have a doctor who could assess relative risk. Most doctors won't do that. This guy looked at the balance of risk between me taking the vaccine and getting tetanus and said that he had to offer it, but wouldn't strongly recommend it.

A younger doctor probably would've just gone with the protocol and wanted to give me a jab. Surely had I been a kid who had showed up with his mother, I would've gotten the jab and taken whatever consequences. Most of the time, of course getting a tetanus shot doesn't kill you. If it could be counted on to kill you, they wouldn't give them. But it is a not such a rare side effect, as we learn from the VAERS system.

I'll close in noting that this is an example of how the system is programmed by the bigger corporate interests - the pharmaceutical companies the hospital chains and so on - to treat you in a prescribed way, without investigating on whether it's optimal or not.

Nobody, for instance, asked my question as to whether that shiny new fishhook would be a dangerous vector for tetanus. No, such a question is not in their protocol. Judgment is not in their protocol. The questions they asked were the ones that they were programmed to ask. And if I had gotten the vaccine and had an adverse reaction, it would have been blamed on anything except the vaccine. My advanced age, anything else, but it certainly would not have been the vaccine.

That's my cautionary tale for the day. And another cautionary note is, for God's sake, do your own talking! Don't let your wife talk for you. Public education, the healthcare establishment and government have programmed her to act according to the interests of big money, often against yours. If you're not your own advocate, don't expect good results in medicine.

Graham