Throughout history, the greatest contributors to disease and early death in human populations have been poverty, poor sanitation and poor nutrition, 2 3 4 yet infectious diseases with pharmaceutical solutions dominated this list. And there was no mention of the major opioid addiction crisis crippling and killing tens of thousands of people in the U.S. and Europe, 5 6 or the iatrogenic medical error epidemic that every year claims more than 750,000 lives in Europe 7 and 250,000 lives in the U.S., where it is the third leading cause of death. 8

The immediate mainstream media response to the WHO's announcement was to focus on "vaccine hesitancy." On Jan. 19, the Editorial Board of the New York Times declared that "anti-vaxxers" are "the enemy" and called on the U.S. government to "get tough" by waging a "bold and aggressive" pro-vaccine campaign that includes "tightening restrictions around how much leeway states can grant families that want to skip essential vaccines." 9 By Jan. 23, The Hill announced that Washington state had declared a state of emergency because of 23 cases of measles reported in an "anti-vaccination community" near Portland, Oregon, 10 and there was a public call in the UK for social media platforms to "clamp down on fake news" and censor "misleading information and negative messaging around vaccination." 11 12