So in the last few days I've seen a rise in vaccination posts again on Facebook and in the general media itself. They seem to ebb and flow with the times for no real reason that I can find other than someone posting or re-posting something that was said several years ago.
From all of these posts I've generally weeded people down to falling in one of 3 categories:
- Vaccinate no matter what. These parents/people believe that the CDC and their pediatricians/other doctors only want what is best for the child and will get vaccinated no matter what.
- The "alternative" vaccinator. These people still believe in the viability of vaccines, just not that a small child (or infant/toddler) should be given 5 injections at a time or immediately after birth.
- The anti-vaxxers. These people generally believe that all vaccines are evil. They cause autism (smh), they cause cancer (perhaps), they have nasty side effects (all medicines have potentially deadly side-effects, even common ones like aspirin), and that vaccines are just a way for Big Pharma to line their pockets.
I personally fall in the "alternative" vaccinator category. I know that vaccines save lives. I know that medicines can cause side effects in a small minority of people (I've had bad side effects to injectables in the past myself). To me (again this is me, you are more than welcome to your opinion as we are in the 21st century and everyone has one...or three), the benefits of vaccines, especially on a modified schedule, far outweigh the potential pitfalls.
A prime, and somewhat amazing example, of how well vaccination can work is smallpox. Prior to vaccination stopping smallpox before you contracted it, you had a 20-60% of dying from it (80% if you were a child). Thanks to vaccination efforts in the 19th and 20th century smallpox has not been documented since 1977. This was a disease that as recently as the 18th century still killed 400,000 people a year in Europe alone, and continued to kill in the millions into the 20th century. I find it totally bass-ackwards when people say "oh we don't vaccinate" but then turn around and have their kid in bubblewrap to go outside and play or eat nothing but "organic" food and no peanuts just in case they may have an allergy to it.
Again, you have your opinion, and if you are a parent, you have your choice. It's a hard one I know. Personally, I believe that a modified schedule of vaccines is much more safer than the pure "luck" of not getting them at all. Is there a chance your child can get autism? According to one report, filed by a doctor who has proven to have falsified data, sure... Is there a chance that your child could be the 1 in 100,000 who have an immune system response to a vaccine and spends in a week in a hospital room? Yes, of course. But IF smallpox was still around, and your kid and 9 others contracted it, is there a smaller chance that your kid will be one of 2 who would survive...yeah, I like the odds of vaccines.
Now, all of this having been said, I would like the government to tell us what is exactly in the vaccines that we are given and giving to our kids. I know that they are not the same as the ones that were given to me as a kid. I also know that there is no mercury in them, at least not to toxic levels. And no, I'm not stupid enough to just believe what the government gives us and say "OK looks good to me!". I want the vaccines to be picked up randomly from doctor's offices by two different facilities, a list of ingredients provided by the CDC and if the results don't match what they say is in them I want hell to come down upon them.
Too much to ask?
