No, Virginia, vaccines are not safe

As I keep pointing out to little avail, to claim that vaccines are either intrinsically safe or intrinsically unsafe is to miss the point entirely:

Mexico’s public health system has suspended infant vaccines after two babies died and 29 were sickened in an impoverished community.

Six of the 29 babies are in grave condition after receiving vaccinations for tuberculosis, rotovirus and Hepatitis B, which are generally administered between 0 and 6 months, according to a national schedule. The cause of the adverse reactions is not known, the Mexican Institute for Social Security said Sunday.

The institute said it stopped vaccines nationwide on Saturday as a precaution.

To even attempt to discuss “vaccine safety” as a single, uniform subject is blitheringly stupid. I am neither an “anti-vaxxer” nor a “pro-vaxxer”, I simply believe that each vaccine, each combination of vaccines, and each vaccine schedule need to be considered separately, and to take the age, size, and risk profile of the recipient into account. People seem to understand that holistic “car safety” is a not a meaningful subject when contemplating the difference between the crash tests of an old Pinto and a modern Humvee, so it’s bizarre that they insist on lumping a single tetanus vaccine for a 200-pound adult in with a series of shots given to a 12-pound infant under the single topic of “vaccine safety”.