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@JoelPole12
We wash our hands after using the bathroom. We cover our faces when we cough or sneeze. We stay home sick if we catch the flu.
Every day, we take these safety precautions to minimize the chance of catching and transmitting diseases that otherwise would leave us enfeebled for a couple of days, and we do them multiple times a day without thinking.
If these precautions are just common sense, then why aren’t vaccinations treated the same way?
Since the days of Edward Jenner, humans have strived to curtail the crippling effects of diseases like smallpox that kill a third of the people they infect.
Jenner is credited for successfully inoculating his patients with the cowpox virus retrieved from milk maids, which is known as the first immunization from smallpox.
Because the cowpox infection was not as severe as smallpox, people survived the inoculation and developed an immunity to smallpox that would last a lifetime.
Nowadays, the process of vaccination is more refined and more effective. The last known case of smallpox, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, occurred in 1977, and the World Health Organization declared the disease completely eradicated two years later.
More and more diseases are approaching the same status as smallpox, especially in developed nations like the U.S.
However, recent outbreaks of measles, a virus easily preventable by an early childhood vaccine, have dominated news headlines.
Thanks to anti-vaccination proponents, or anti-vaxxers, we’re seeing the same horrors caused by a disease Jenner saw – a disease we have the power to eradicate like smallpox before it.
This radical and reasonless movement gained traction when Dr. Andrew Wakefield published falsified evidence making a connection between the increase in autism diagnosis rates and the increase in child vaccination rates.
Wakefield, now discredited and barred from practicing medicine, claimed the cause was the harmless and now eradicated mercury-based preservative for the measles vaccine.
Correlation does not equal causation.
There is more evidence that discredits this false hypothesis than there is evidence supporting it. In fact, Wikipedia has more credibility than Wakefield’s research.
The reason people still support this movement in spite of the overwhelming evidence against it is because of the popularization of the idea by celebrities such as Jenny McCarthy.
Anti-vaxxers like McCarthy believe they are right because they exercise their right to choose for their children.
What I do not understand is how schools can ban peanut butter because of the fear that a child might share a PB&J with someone who has a peanut allergy, but they cannot ban unvaccinated children, because they might share deadly communicable diseases with someone who is immunocompromised.
Politicians need to pass legislation that makes it more difficult for anyone who is healthy enough to receive a vaccine to choose not to receive those vaccinations.
There are people who are not healthy enough to receive a vaccine. They need herd immunity – where 95 percent of a population is vaccinated – to keep them safe.
I recently made my own choice not to vaccinate, and I regret that decision. I never received my flu vaccine for this flu season, and I, of course, ended up catching the flu.
Following the advice of the doctors I saw to treat my 104 degree temperature, I stayed home in quarantine for the following week and missed that whole week of school.
I will never again miss a vaccine even as simple as a yearly flu shot. My future children will safely receive almost 50 doses of 14 vaccines before their sixth birthday.
I will not see them blinded, sterilized or crippled by something I could have prevented, and all parents should do the same.