Update September 24, 2019: NBC reporters Brandy Zadrozny and Aliza Nadi have published an article on Evee Clobes’s death, and Catie Clobes’s changing story, How anti-vaxxers target grieving moms and turn them into crusaders.. The article includes the medical examiner's report and the sheriff's report, both of which confirm that Evee died of positional asphyxia caused by co-sleeping.

Evee Gayle Clobes was 194 days old when she died. I wept several times while reading and listening to her mother’s account of Evee’s life and tragic death. My heart goes out to her mother, Catie, and Evee’s surviving brother and sister.

But the fact remains: Evee died as a result of unsafe sleep practices. There is no sound scientific evidence for the notion that routine pediatric vaccines can adversely affect an infant’s respiration to the extent that the child would cease breathing and die.

The Facts

Catie Clobes has made public a number of still and video images of Evee, including ones taken within 24 hours of her death. Evee was a bright and lively baby, clearly deeply loved by her mother and siblings.

On Wednesday, February 27, Evee was 6 months, 7 days old. Ms. Clobes took Evee for her 6 months’ well-baby checkup. The vaccines recommended for that visit prevent diseases caused by: hepatitis B; diphtheria; tetanus; pertussis; pneumococcal; and poliovirus. Evee was given two vaccines: (1) Pediarix (which has been approved for use in the US since 2002), covering hepatitis B; diphtheria; tetanus; pertussis; and poliovirus; and (2) Prevnar 13 (which prevents pneumococcal disease, and has been approved for use in the US since 2010).

On Thursday, February 28, (according to Ms. Clobes's March 11 interview with Stop Mandatory Vaccination's Melissa Curtin), this is what happened:

Q: Can you describe more in detail about what happened? Catie: Evee was put to bed at 9 p.m. on 2/28/19. That whole day she was giggling as usual, eating solid foods, nursing just fine, no temperature, no other signs or symptoms that I could remember. Nothing out of the ordinary. She fell asleep in my arms before I laid her down, and when I did lay her down she didn’t wake up which she usually does. Almost every other night I lay down and go to sleep with her, but I stayed up to watch basketball. I went to bed around 11 p.m. and she was still alive, in her deep sleep and breathing. I kissed her and went to sleep. I woke up to go to the bathroom the next morning, 3/1/19, around 7 a.m., and I started singing her name as I came back in. I thought she was still sleeping hard. She was on her back, the same position that I left her in the night before. I picked rolled her face over and saw that she was passed. Ambulance was called and she was pronounced dead at the Buffalo Hospital. Preliminary autopsy has showed nothing, no abnormalities, no visible reason as to why she passed.

In a video interview with Del Bigtree aired September 12, 2019, Ms. Clobes's account morning went like this (timestamps indicate time from the start of the Highwire video)

44:37 CATIE The day I took her in for her 6-months vaccines she was doing this squealing and smiling thing (video image of Evee on her belly, playing with an older person.) She was in such a good mood. I didn’t even think twice about giving her her vaccinations. The nurse came back and administered two shots, one to each thigh. After four hours, her cheeks started getting really red and she was really warm. I remember messaging my sister “I think Evee’s teething. Later that night she just seemed a little bit “out of it”. The next day, I tried to feed Evee solid foods and she kept shaking her head. (Video of Evee in a chair, smiling and shaking her head "no". ). She was doing that head shaking on and off all day long. 45:19 CATIE It was about 9 pm and she fell into a deep sleep (Still picture of Evee on her side, on a rumpled blanket with a deep texture). The next morning, I was singing, “Evee, let’s wake up, it's time to eat” (reenactment video. An adult figure is standing over an adult bed with pillows present). (switch back to filmed interview with Catie, who is weeping) I kept calling her name, Evee, Evee. I said it with more panic. 45:44 CATIE (weeping and clearly reliving the experience) I looked at her chest and it wasn’t moving. I picked her up, she was pale and a little bit cold. I started screaming, “God don’t do this to me! Bring my baby back! I called 911. (More video reenactment.) We got into the hospital, I saw the shape of a blanket being put around my daughter. The doctor came up to me and said, I’m sorry but she has passed on. (Image switch back to video interview with Catie) I was in such shock pain is indescribable. And it stays with you and it’s with me now. 46:45 (back to reenactment, with voice-over by Ms. Clobes ) The medical examiner sent out their own investigator. (video interview) They asked me to think of anything I could that I did differently, and then I finally (switch to reenactment) said oh she got her vaccinations. and I’ll never forget it she looked up at me kind of rhetorically and said "She did”, like she’d seen this before. (back to picture of Evee looking rosy-cheeked and kind of out of it).

This is odd. In 2014, Minnesota adopted the CDC's Sudden Unexplained Infant Death Reporting Form (SUIDRF), which forms the basis of structured interviews with a baby's caregivers and other. The form explicitly asks about recent vaccinations. And sleep location.

Image Source: https://www.cdc.gov/sids/pdf/suidi-reporting-form-508.pdf

Then, later in the Bigtree interview:

47:12 DEL: (back to live interview setting with Del).Where were your kids when this moment. Are your kids home, they... CATIE: They were in school. DEL: So you are all alone. You go in the check on Evee, and that’s when you find her there. Were you aware, was she conscious at all, was she breathing, you know... CATIE: No. She was gone. DEL: Did you know that, or did you have a sense of home, you know, not to... CATIE: I knew she was gone, in the bedroom,...

Ms. Clobes's narrative of that tragic day takes me back to my early days as a mother. I remember so clearly hovering over my baby's bassinet, staring at her sleeping form, looking to see her little chest rise and fall. Every time she was asleep...is she really breathing? I don't think I lost that worry until she was more than a year old, and physically could pull herself up.

By the time my daughter was 6 months old, she was out of the bassinet in the parental bedroom, and sleeping in a crib in her own room. She was still exclusively breastfed, and wasn't sleeping through the night reliably. She often woke up around 4 am, and I would walk down the hall to nurse her, then she would go back down to sleep, as would I, after trudging back down the hall. My older stepchildren were 8 and 10 at the time of my daughter's birth, and needed to leave the house, breakfasted and lunch provided, around 7:30. Usually I'd get up around 6:30, make sure the older children were up, make their lunches, and then eat my own breakfast with them, then their father (or another adult in the household) would take them to school. Sometimes my daughter would wake up as her siblings thundered around in the morning, but sometimes she wouldn't.

A couple of things struck me about Ms. Clobes's accounts of the morning of Evee's death. Where were the older children? 7 am is a bit early already be in school, and in any case, who got them ready and out the door? School start time in the Clobes's school district isn't until 8:15. Sunrise that day was 6:55 am, and it was quite chilly: -8 degrees F (-12.8 C). Of course, the older children could have been staying with their maternal grandparents, or their maternal aunt -- both of them quite close to Ms. Clobes. Ms. Clobes was not living with Evee's father -- indeed, he was not listed on Evee's original death certificate, or the obituary published on her first birthday.

In any case, Ms. Clobes or another adult summoned an ambulance, and Evee and her mother were transported to Buffalo Hospital (about a 25 minute drive from the town the Clobes family lived in), where Evee was pronounced dead. In her interview with Mr.Bigtree, Ms. Clobes mentions having "a feeling of hope" because she heard the EMTs in the ambulance

52:39 CATIE: I remember someone saying in the back, SATs are up, and I had worked in a nursing home in the past and I knew that that meant oxygen saturations are up, and I can’t even describe it it was a feeling of hope like it was the definition of hope my, and then I just started praying,

I can imagine Ms. Clobes' feelings at that time -- the hope, and then the dashed hope. She truly loved her daughter deeply. The pain of such a loss is like being submerged in a deep, cold, airless place, with no light, no air, ever to be possible again. In that state of mind, you reach for any hope, any support.

Evidently Ms. Clobes left her apartment immediately and moved in with her parents for several months. In the nights after Evee's death, Ms. Clobes said (in her interview with Mr. Bigtree):

54:28 CATIE: Following Evee’s death I was consumed with what could have happened to her and healthy babies do not just die. It prompted me to make a post on Facebook and I said if anyone has had an experience, or heard of a child or infant who had died, please get a hold of me. Within the first 24 hours we* had received hundreds and hundreds of messages. Mothers telling me their story of how their child died right after vaccinations.

(*aside: the "we" is not specified. Ms. Clobes was not living with Evee's father. She may have been at her parents' home, but who is supporting Ms. Clobes in her catastrophic grief at the time isn't clear.)

...and healthy babies do not just die

This assertion is made repeatedly by Ms. Clobes, and also by Mr. Bigtree in the introduction to the interview segment

42:55 DEL: SIDS, or in their case, Sudden Unexplained Death if the child is over 1 year — and it has an equally ridiculous moniker you know, unexplained death, sudden infant death as though children just spontaneously die.

The tragic and heartbreaking fact is, healthy babies and toddlers DO die. SIDS/SUIDS have been declining since the "safe sleep/back to sleep" campaign, but "In the U.S. alone, almost 4,000 babies die suddenly and unexpectedly each year at a rate of 0.93 deaths per 1,000 live births." -- from the American SIDS Institute

(image source: https://safetosleep.nichd.nih.gov/safesleepbasics/SIDS/fastfacts)

Who responded to Ms. Clobes's grieving Facebook post? Among others, the leadership of Health Choice Minnesota, which is a deeply anti-vaccine organization, and Melissa Curtin, a writer for Stop Mandatory Vaccination, Larry Cook's predatory anti-vaccine organization.

Image Source: https://www.stopmandatoryvaccination.com/parent/vaccine-injury/mom-asks-why-her-6-month-old-infant-died-after-getting-6-vaccines/

It's likely that Ms. Clobes was directed to two "death following vaccination" autopsy protocols, one co-published by VacTruth (an antivaccine organization established by John Jeffery Aufderheide), and S.A.N.E Vax, founded by Norma Erickson. The second "autopsy protocol" was created by notorious anti-vaccine physician and discredited witness Toni Bark, and published at the anti-vaccine site Circle of Mamas.

Image Source: https://sanevax.org/sanevax-announces-a-parents-guide-what-to-do-if-your-child-dies-after-vaccination/

Image source: http://circleofmamas.com/health-news/death-after-vaccines-autopsy-protocol/

I have seen among my own circle how desperate bereaved parents can reach for answers, even when the child's cause of death is clear. The arguments for these special autopsy protocols can seem compelling, perhaps especially if the parent knows that the sleep behavior they had indulged in increased the risk of death.

The quote that follows is from Ms. Clobes's interview with Mr. Bigtree, September 14, 2019

1:02:43 DEL: so they are trying to use this as proof that this is really a problem co-sleeping, this is where they always try to go with SIDS. CATIE: I did safely co-sleep with Evee and I’m not ashamed of it. And there are tons of mothers that do it, and it’s no co-incidence that out of all the days that I co-slept with my daughter, that it just so happens, 36 hours after her vaccines, she passed from “positional asphyxiation" Give me a break!

"Safely co-sleeping" is an oxymoron. "Bed-sharing: Parent(s) and infant sleeping together on any surface (bed, couch, chair)" is inherently risky for the child. The American Academy of Pediatrics has had this position since 1994 (The Safe to Sleep® campaign (formerly known as the Back to Sleep campaign) began in 1994 as a way to bring public attention to SIDS and to educate caregivers on ways to reduce SIDS risk.) Some people allege that SIDs was unknown prior to 1969. Vince Ianelli MD disagrees:

"So just because SIDS finally got a name and an ICD9 code in 1969, that doesn’t mean that is when it first appeared."

The Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development is leading the "Safe to Sleep" campaign with a wealth of material, including the infographic below, on Accidental Suffocation and Strangulation in Bed (ASSB).

Image Source: https://safetosleep.nichd.nih.gov/resources/providers/downloadable/ASSB_SafeSleep

Ms. Clobes was not anti-vaccine before Evee's death. She vaccinated Evee according to the recommended schedule, and her older children were up to date for their vaccines. But the anti-vaccine lobby were able to convince Ms. Clobes that vaccines caused Evee's death. At some point, the anti-vaccine groups helped Ms. Clobes start a fundraising campaign for a second, private autopsy, by a neuropathologist who has testified in the vaccine court (unsuccessfully) a billboard based public awareness campaign, "Justice for Evee", with a website, promotional merchandise, and more. Law professor Dorit Rubenstein Reiss has written about Ms. Clobes's anti-vaccine journey at Skeptical Raptor, in Evee Gayle Clobes – another tragedy incorrectly blamed on vaccines. Dr. Ianelli has written about how Larry Cook's group actively stalks recently bereaved parents.

Where else could Ms. Clobes, in her grief and rage, find support? From other parents like her, whose children died in their sleep. I don't know if Ms. Clobes was offered grief support by the Midwest Medical Examiner’s Office, or by Evee's pediatrician. The Children's Grief Connection does good work in Minnesota. The Good Grief Network may have support meetings nearby. There are also online groups:

Bereavement support for families who have lost a baby is one of the cornerstones of our work at First Candle. Too often we sit with grief-stricken parents who never imagined accidental suffocation could happen to their baby. Every parent and caregiver must know that danger. First Candle is the national non-profit committed to ending these deaths but also providing bereavement support for anyone who has experienced a loss. Our bereavement counselor and CEO are both SIDS parents and understand all too-well the all-consuming grief. This is a safe space to discuss your grief openly. Any posts that are critical or negative will be deleted immediately. You may also call our grief line at 1-800-221-7437.

Charlie’s Kids Foundation was established in 2011 after Sam and Maura Hanke lost their first son, Charlie, to SIDS. It was founded with the purpose of increasing safe sleep awareness and education with the ultimate goal of reducing the SIDS mortality rate.

The Compassionate Friends is an international organization with chapters in every state that provides "highly personal comfort, hope, and support to every family experiencing the death of a son or a daughter, a brother or a sister, or a grandchild, and helps others better assist the grieving family."

Other parents who have lost children to disease have started awareness campaigns, such as Light for Riley, For Jude for Everyone, Meningitis Angels, and other similar organizations.

It's well-known that the grief following the death of a child, especially a sudden, unexpected death, is more intense that other forms of grief. I sincerely hope that Ms. Clobes, her surviving children, and her extended family can get the support they need and deserve.