Dangerous Anti-Vaccine Propaganda About Tetanus and Tetanus Vaccines

Do you want to get tetanus? This is how you get tetanus!

This is a story about a mom who seemed to know just enough about vaccines to be dangerous…

Fun Facts.- This copy pasta about tetanus has been going around the Internets since at least 2017…

A story about a mom who left her child at risk to get tetanus because she thought she knew more than the doctors taking care of her child…

Dangerous Anti-Vaccine Propaganda About Tetanus and Tetanus Vaccines

You won’t be surprised to hear that this is not the first time that an anti-vaccine influencer has posted misinformation about tetanus posing as facts.

This is simply the most recent…

Fun Facts - These myths about tetanus and tetanus vaccines are dangerous and can lead to your kids getting tetanus if you skip or delay getting them vaccinated and protected.

And like the other times, just about everything they posted about tetanus and tetanus vaccines is wrong!

How do we know they are wrong?

This child died with tetanus in 1953, just as the DPT vaccine began to be used more commonly.

For one thing, just look back to the pre-vaccine era when people used to die with tetanus!

Fun Fact - tetanus doesn’t kill you immediately! The incubation period is 3 to 21 days because that is how long it takes for tetanus spores to germinate, tetanus bacteria to grow and then produce neurotoxin, and then neurotoxin to be transported by blood and lymph to nerve cells at the neuromuscular junctions, and then inside axons to the rest of your nervous system.

But so that you don’t fall for this kind of misinformation, let’s review some real facts about tetanus and tetanus vaccines.

1. It is the tetanus spores that we are most worried about when you get a cut, scrape, or puncture wound. These spores, in the right environment, can germinate into Clostridium tetani bacteria. And the right environment includes “hypo-aerobic conditions of devitalized tissue and puncture wounds.”

2. Tetanus spores can be found everywhere and anywhere because they are hard to kill and can be present in soil, dust, and feces. So unless you are in a sterile environment, you can be exposed to tetanus.

3. In most cases, after a dirty wound, if you have been fully vaccinated, but it has been more than 5 years since your last tetanus containing vaccine, a booster tetanus shot is all that you need to make sure you have enough antibodies against the neurotoxin that the tetanus bacteria can make after they germinate.

4. If you are unvaccinated, you will need tetanus immune globulin and a tetanus containing vaccine. TIG alone might not be enough because those antibodies wear off in a few weeks and there might still be Clostridium tetani bacteria in your body making neurotoxin. We know this because when they tried to use TIG alone in the pre-vaccine era it sometimes didn’t work. And they were giving multiple doses at the time!

5. It is true that we no longer have just a ‘tetanus’ vaccine. Our tetanus containing vaccines instead are DTaP, Tdap, DT, and Td. And that is simply because protection from tetanus and diphtheria wears off at about the same time, so if you need one vaccine component, you almost certainly need the other one too.

6. Letting a wound bleed or cleaning it well, if you are unvaccinated, is no guarantee that you won’t get tetanus… You are simply gambling that the wound isn’t contaminated with tetanus spores.

7. Having a minor wound, if you are unvaccinated, is no guarantee that you won’t get tetanus… Again, you are simply gambling that the wound isn’t contaminated with tetanus spores.

8. Our tetanus containing vaccines are very safe. Remember that entries in VAERS do not prove causality or definitively say that an adverse reaction or side effect was caused by a vaccine.

9. Our tetanus containing vaccines are very effective and are well studied in clinical trials.

10. Tetanus is a big killer!

Even today, around 25,000 newborns die each year from neonatal tetanus and there are still up to 293,000 tetanus deaths each year, mostly in unvaccinated and partially vaccinated children and adults.

When anti-vaccine influencers cite a source that seems legit, always be sure to read it! They are typically misusing or mistating what the source says or simply lying about it. And the fact that there are ‘only’ an average of 7 deaths a year from tetanus is because most people are vaccinated and protected!

The only other thing to know is that tetanus is a horrible way to die.

“Most of the victims were bright active boys, aged from 6 to 18 years, and they were doomed to die the most awful death known to medical science, a death the agony of which is probably not paralleled even by the tortures of the Inquisition.”

Fourth of July Injuries and Tetanus. The Seventh Annual Compilation by the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Like many vaccine-preventable diseases, having tetanus is a most terrible way to die and has been equated to the “tortures of the Inquisition!”

Don’t gamble and take a chance that your child is going to get tetanus.

Get them vaccinated and protected.

References

Tetanus Key Facts. https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/tetanus

Tetanus: Causes and How It Spreads. https://www.cdc.gov/tetanus/causes/index.html

Fishman PS, Matthews CC, Parks DA, Box M, Fairweather NF. Immunization does not interfere with uptake and transport by motor neurons of the binding fragment of tetanus toxin. J Neurosci Res. 2006 Jun;83(8):1540-3. doi: 10.1002/jnr.20847. PMID: 16557581.

Fourth of July Injuries and Tetanus. The Seventh Annual Compilation by the Journal of the American Medical Association. JAMA, September 18, 1909, Vol. LIU, pp. 948-956