I don’t have kids, for a lot of reasons. One of the biggest is that, with all my conditions, I just didn’t have the energy a kid would require. It wouldn’t be fair to anyone involved if I brought a child into the world without the capacity to give them the necessary attention.
That doesn’t mean I don’t have incredibly close and rewarding relationships with several kids, especially the ones in my own family. In fact, I just got back from a kid birthday trip. And to come home to the news that a school aged child had died of measles hit hard. I “have” those kids. There’s the one who “glued” me to their hand so I wouldn’t leave, the one who drapes themselves on me for a 15 minute hug as a way of saying goodbye, the one who plays Hotel California for me on their guitar and asks if I’ve ever heard of it (I have a CD signed by Don Henley somewhere around here), the one whose hair products I am thinking of poaching, and the one who’s about to graduate, learning to drive in my car, and loves our late-night hangouts.
And now, for a family in Texas, their version of one of “my” kids is gone. For want of a free shot. I literally can’t imagine what that must feel like.
And how does our top health official – whose children are all vaccinated – respond? By saying that outbreaks are “not unusual” in the United States, downplaying the seriousness of the Texas outbreak.
Except they are. Measles had been eliminated in the U.S. as of 2000. Since then, we have seen increases as people began to believe vaccination was unsafe or no longer necessary. The increases started small, but have spiked since the first anti-vaccination administration and COVID-19.
To our leadership, dropping vaccination rates are a positive development. They believe and spread false information from “researchers” without any scientific qualifications. But because they have weight of celebrity and/or leadership behind them, people believe them, think them trustworthy.
They are not.
Anti-vaccine sentiment is not new. It’s been around since the first vaccine, for smallpox in the late 1700s. Of course people feared it. Science at that level was not widely understood. Doctors didn’t even start washing their hands regularly until the mid-1800s. They didn’t have the benefit of decades of structured and as-safe-as-possible research.
But we do. Smallpox was eradicated in 1979, and other diseases, including measles, were reduced to rare status because of vaccines.
I’m not saying not to ask questions, especially if you are uncomfortable. But if you are a person who needs to know more, make sure you are getting your information from people who actually know what they are talking about – career scientists instead of celebrities and journals that list the methods of their published research so you know the resulting information is credible. (The big study everyone cites as proof the measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine causes autism was a result of extreme scientific malpractice, and the journal retracted it, twelve years too late, but retracted it nonetheless.)
Anyone can log into the National Library of Medicine. My mom did when we couldn’t figure out what was wrong with me way back in 1997. It was a complication of diabetes I should have been too young to develop.
I know that even with all of this information available, some people just won’t be convinced. In which case, they must ask themselves: is the risk of a vaccine worth the possible result of visiting your child in the cemetery for the rest of your life?