Vital Animal News: April 19, 2026

Vaccines: We're getting MORE hesitant / Least worst Rabies vax? / Pharma funding drying up for mRNA? Yay! / The Kaufman Institute 😂 / Bats & human rabies deaths, oh my! / Goats, gleaners, mad dogs…

1. Vaccine Hesitancy Growing: Get a Waiver!

2. Safest Rabies Vaccine?

3. Big Pharma Death Rattles

4. Medical Coincidence: We Treat It!

5. Bats and Rabies

6. Along the Natural Path

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Vaccine Concerns: Human and Veterinary Parallels

I really hate it when you worry, Mom. Just say No!

If you’ve followed my work for any length of time, you likely know I’ve long called your choice to vaccinate or not the #1 most significant decision you’ll make in raising your animals.

While food comes in second, the ability to improve health with a diet change is rather rapid.

The aftermath of vaccine-caused chronic disease in your animals is clearly not.

And while that damage often takes a month post-vaccine to start to show, those diseases like The Itch last and last and can be life long.

And conventional medicine is unable to cure anything chronic. That’s their long known “dirty little secret.”

But, We’re Waking Up!

The good news is, since the Covid mess, greater numbers of you have been questioning the need for vaccines, especially their repeated use over your pet’s life.

And, it turns out, that “vaccine hesitancy” has grown to a significant proportion of the populace now.

I’m happy to report this from a recent poll the folks at Children’s Health Defense have posted here on Substack:

Vaccine Skepticism in U.S. Is Widespread, Politico Poll Reveals

Per the article,

The poll results of 3,851 U.S. adults surveyed last month revealed that 46% of U.S. adults signaled their agreement with the statement that “facts on vaccines are still up for debate and it is damaging to enforce their uptake.”

Only 39% indicated they thought that “science on vaccines is clear and it is damaging to question it.”

While this is humans concerned with human vaccines, the parallels are clearly there in the animal parent population as well, and has the vet profession quite concerned. We covered that a bit earlier:

Bravery Against the Madness

In another recent post, also from CHD, this encouraging report of a doctor in Texas standing up to the crazy mandates saying medical students in that state must get a Covid-19 “vaccine.”

Texas Doctor Offers Free COVID Vaccine Exemptions to Medical Students Amid Mandate Dispute

Dr. Mary Talley Bowden is putting her license on the line, knowing that these rushed to market shots were are clearly neither ever tested safe or effective.

I will write a medical exemption for any student in Texas facing this mandate — free of charge,” Bowden wrote in a post on X. “If they deny my exemption, I will help you find a lawyer and raise money to sue them,” she added.”

Wow. That takes some ovaries!

Vaccine Waiver Letters: Useful Tools

I regularly wrote vaccine waivers for my patients while I was in active homeopathic practice.

Most had obvious logic: they were seeing me because their animals were ILL. That alone is an automatic waiver (even if most vets ignore that fact).

If you need a waiver for ordinary things like grooming or boarding (or apartment managers?!) you can search out a holistic vet or, better perhaps, a homeopathic one. My Recommended Resources page has lists of both.

Share my templates with them if they are interested in seeing the language I used to write my letters.

My success rate with these letters was ~ 98%. And, though dated and on my letterhead, I’d tell the client they did NOT expire.

Waiver Presentation: Key Point

This last point is critical: do not beg. Do not even ask if you can give the business a waiver.

Walk in confidently, “like you own the place.”

“Here’s a letter from my vet waiving vaccines for Sadie. Please keep this in your files. I’ll bring her by Monday. Thanks.”

After all, does your groomer or kennel person understanding immunology? Duration of immunity? Not likely, right?

And if your animal become chronically ill after an unnecessary round of shots, who’s going to be left holding the bag and paying the bills?

Only you, dear one, only you and your family.

So, “vaccine hesitancy” and vaccine awareness is in your best interests.

Carry on, you’ve got a near majority now understanding caution is well worth the effort for this major decision.

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Rabies Vaccine Question

Photo by Towfiqu barbhuiya on Unsplash

Well, I truly hope this recent message is the exception, but I probably just have to swallow hard, knowing it’s all too common:

Which of the rabies vaccines is the safest for a senior cat. His numbers are t high enough and he is diagnosed with diabetes. Thank you, T.”

I’m assuming the “numbers” she refers to are titer results, the test run by the Kansas State Vet Diagnostic Lab that measures antibodies to rabies in your animal’s blood.

No-brainer Waiver: Diabetes

As mentioned in the prior piece, the low hanging fruit is that automatic waiver based on every vaccine label: “Only for Use in Healthy Dogs, Cats, (ferrets, etc, key word HEALTHY)

Clearly, there’s no one in the world who would consider diabetes as a state of health, right?

Remind the vet of that, and if there’s blow back, see the close to this section.

Seniors: Reason Enough for Vitamin N (NO!)

I’ve seen cases and heard many others where well intentioned owners bowed to the pressure to revaccinate their seniors.

It’s never turned out well.

One prime example lead to this blog post:

The bottom line, according to well respected veterinary immunologist Dr. Ronald Schultz (now deceased, our loss), was stated clearly in more than one place:

Vaccinating more often than necessary increases occurrences of adverse reactions, including type I to IV hypersensitivity reactions, autoimmune diseases, etc. The immune system is absolutely essential for protection from infectious diseases, but it can be over-stimulated and cause disease and death from immune mediated diseases.

Don’t ever believe anyone that suggests “well, even if the vaccine doesn’t help, it can’t hurt!” — RD Schultz, PhD

Important to note: Dr. Schultz researched vaccines for the major companies that sold them. He didn’t mince words, nor obviously, profit from those vaccines, so his was always a voice to trust.

This is Malpractice

People, if you run into this insistence of vaccinating an ill animal, it should be reported. Every state has a board of Vet Medicine, and if enough of you tell them of these occurrences, maybe there’s a sliver of a chance that conventional medical minds will wake up to this reality.

There’s an allowance for the “off label” use of drugs, but in case of a senior and one who’s already clearly unhealthy, rabies “law” or no, giving an unnecessary vaccination to an ill animal is pure malpractice.

If you wanted to push that further, I’m sure there are ears to hear it and lawyers to defend your right of refusal.

But, Wait: The Question?

If we ignore the “senior who’s sick” part of this person’s question (sorry for that aside, but I wanted to make the point: there IS NO BEST RABIES VACCINE FOR A SICK SENIOR).

Okay?

Okay so, say you need a rabies vaccine, you’ve explored all the angles and decided your animal really needs one, what’s the “least worst” one?

Fair question.

It’s clearly NOT the new RNA gene therapy excuse for a vaccine.

See this lede story as to why:

…and this one to tell what your vet has and get your 10 foot pole sharpened up to avoid it, if it’s RNA:

Of the “old fashioned” rabies vaccines, like Imrab or similar killed virus shots, the “TF” version is going to be the least worst. TF stands for thimerosal free, the main mercury component in the vaccine stew that’s long been used as a preservative.

Ask for that. Mercury has no redeeming values once in a body!

But also know you may not have dodged the mercury bullet entirely, so no smug looks or brags to friends just yet.

Why?

It’s a little thing called “excipients,” which is a mini-combo of teeny tiny ingredients manufacturers don’t have to reveal to anyone. Mercury can hide in that catch all and you’d never know it. Sigh.

Still, while TF is not brag worthy, it’s the less-likely-to-damage version of killed rabies vaccines.

And now you have two answers.

• One to hold out for (“Nope, none at all for my sick senior pet!”)

• And one if you gotta do the deed (“Gimme the least worst rabies vaccine you got. And show me the label before you draw it up into your syringe, in front of me.”)

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Signs of Big Pharma’s Demise

He was such a profitable one, gonna miss BP…

Some good news is seeping out, though the lame stream media fails to take notice. Maybe not surprising, as they have strong financial ties to Big Pharma that have compromised their reporting for years now, at least since the Covid debacle, but likely long before that.

This from Coffee and Covid:

On April Fool’s Day —but it was no joke— Reuters reported, “Exclusive: Pfizer, BioNTech halt US COVID vaccine study after recruitment struggles.” They wanted to get 25,000-30,000 participants. Can you guess why Pfizer and BioNTech halted recruitment for a large U.S. covid vaccine trial targeting healthy adults aged 50-64? They couldn’t get enough people to sign up.

Last week, they sent a letter to trial sites instructing them to stop recruitment. Shut it down. They notified the FDA that they were ending the study.

The official reason was “recruitment challenges.” They couldn’t find enough human guinea pigs!

The real reason is that only about 18% of eligible Americans got a covid booster this season. The trust is gone. —

☕️ MORE MIRACLES ☙ Monday, April 6, 2026 ☙ C&C NEWS 🦠

In the same article, the author is reporting about a guy in Sydney who, on his own with ChatGPT, is curing his dog’s tumor!

And in a related headline earlier in the year from Reuters,

Moderna curbing investments in vaccine trials due to US backlash, CEO tells Bloomberg TV

It’s all about voting with your wallet and your feet.

If they’re offering a rushed to market “experimental” injection for free, it’s your feet you vote with. No free donuts will get you to step up.

And if it’s annual vaccinations for your pet, you can vote with your wallet until that craziness dies off. What’s even more powerful than “No, thanks?”

Fire ‘em! The pet world will be far healthier when it sinks in that annual vaccines ain’t flying. Zero science, 100% greed.

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Medical Coincidence

I’m really not sure about these hoomans…

Are you or a loved one suffering from a Medical Coincidence?

Turn on the audio and prepare for some guffaws:

Kaufman has you covered.

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Bats and Rabies

Austin’s famous Congress Ave Bridge, home to 1000’s of bats by design.

I went down a rabbit hole recently, and maybe you’d like to follow me down this one.

I’d noticed the CDC’s rabies incidence data way out of date some time back. It started me wondering if they were hiding the updates for some reason.

It turns out they’ve just moved that data largely to the AVMA journal, and it’s still public, if you search properly.

As I’ve long had an interest in this disease since my hire as an independent researcher for the State of Hawaii in 1989-90, this next piece caught my rapt attention. My job was to make a judgment on the need to continue the 80 year old rabies quarantine in the islands for every dog or cat entering.

I studied all the rabies experts and was awed by this strange virus, moving by saliva and nerve sheaths, taking over behavior (!) of the bitee, often with deadly outcomes.

Bats as a Rabies Vector

Although the human death rate from this disease is extremely low, these two deaths in 2024 are both attributable to rabid bat exposures, and neither woman thought the bat in their lives was significant.

In some South American countries, bats are a major mover of the rabies virus, with vampire bats biting cattle, often with disastrous outcomes.

In No. America, it’s a far tinier species of bat that can harbor rabies, and luckily, unlike dogs or other carnivores, the rabid bat doesn’t typically become overtly aggressive.

The more common presentation is one of paresis/paralysis, so a bat is seen flopping on the ground, unable to fly away.

Dog Training as Prevention

I’d suggest aversion training for your dogs if you live where bats are prominent. It turns out that bats as a rabies vector are in all 48 contiguous states. And Alaska. Hawaii is still rabies free, though they acted on my advice to loosen their stringent quarantine rules.

Here’s a somewhat out of date map of which wildlife species are the prominent carriers of the disease from the CDC:

As these things don’t shift rapidly, the 2019 map gives you an adequate means of revealing the significant wildlife species in your area that carry rabies.

As dogs are naturally curious and a rabid bat could easily be an “attractive nuisance,” aversion training is a means to prevent mouthing a flopping furry creature on the ground.

I know there are people who offer services in snake aversion training, so I’m guessing it’d be similar for grounded bats.

When I lived in Austin, we’d go see the bats swarm out from under the Congress Ave. bridge now and again, an especially striking site as dusk sets in and the nightly mosquito hunt begins.

It wasn’t unusual to see one or a couple flopping helplessly on the sidewalk. Rabid? Perhaps. But the percentages that test positive out of those suspects submitted every year is quite small.

Not Fear, But Awareness

So, please don’t take this as a fear piece, that’s clearly not my intent nor my style.

It’s just a preparedness piece, to save you from a possible exposure to a potentially fatal disease.

If your animal lives where rabies lives and in a way where exposure to its wildlife species is likely, a vaccine remains the surest way to protect. The new RNA version is to be avoided at all costs, and vaccination with the old style killed vaccine should confer long lived immunity.

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Along the Natural Path

I came across these lucky goats on this morning’s bike ride. Lucky? Yeah, like most cattle and buffalo in India, life is largely lived at the end of a short rope tied to a short post in the ground.

But these guys were FREE, and about to get some variety in their diet:

Gleaners Anonymous!

There are wheat fields like this all over U.P. right now, and these happy goats are getting full access. And that fairy like greenery? Cannabis, which the goats seems oblivious to, even though it’s the greenest, freshest looking plant around.

A bit further down the road…

The cattle and buffalo back home will get to eat the wheat straw, after it’s packed into huge cloth sacks and brought back to the farmstead.

Prior to these pictures, this is what the field looked like:

Sheaves, soon to be “bringing in the…”

Wheat stalks are all tied together prior to hauling, usually on someone’s head, to be manually threshed free of their prized grain.

But wait: why don’t we see strings anywhere? Ah, because India is the land of “make do,” so the harvesters are adept at weaving stalks into the needed binding material. 100% free and biodegradable.

Here’s one of the more showy foragers out this morning, the well named Indian Blue:

Well, that’s what’s going on around me besides the weather turning scorchingly hot. Over 100º daily now until the monsoons make their appearance in July.

Clocks don’t change in India, so dawn is cracking now around 5 am and the sun is showing its first rays before 6. Farmers and my milk delivery boy naturally start chores earlier, so they can avoid the heat of the day.

You remember Mad Dogs and Englishmen? While a cool band with Joe Cocker and Leon Russell, the phrase originated here. Who would go out in the mid-day sun in India?

Only mad (rabid) dogs and Englishmen!

Let us know in the comments what resonated for you this issue.

And keep on making those wise decisions for the innocents in your care,

Will Falconer, DVM