Greets and saluts from the NYC metro area. I am so glad and saddened that you wrote this article, because on the one hand, it’s so timely and needed, and on the other, it’s so timely and needed.
Anti-vaxxers are the scourge of the planet. They ignore how vaccines work, how immunity works, and how vaccines are far safer than the diseases they protect against - not only for those who get the vaccine, but those who can’t.
My mom is among those who can’t get vaccines, whether for the flu or other vaccines on the adult schedule because she’s immune compromised. She’s hardly alone as I know several other people who were or are in cancer treatment or remission and have to be careful as to the vaccines they can or can’t take. I worry for them that a disease that should be wiped from the earth like measles could end up harming any of them.
It’s an entirely preventable disease, and yet these idiots downplay the huge costs of outbreaks and the medical harms that result from cases.
145,000 people die of measles worldwide every year. 145,000. Before the major vaccine efforts, that number was 500,000 or more. This disease kills. It maims. It causes lasting harms.
Chicken pox is another disease with a deadly and disfiguring outcome. Before the vaccine became widespread in the US, 100 people died annually and 3-4 million came down with it. 11,000 cases were so severe as to require hospitalization.
There’s concern locally about a potential measles outbreak when a college student came through Penn Station and took Amtrak up to Albany and Buffalo. Turns out the student contracted it while in Germany. But an outbreak can be limited or prevented entirely if everyone was vaccinated.
Now think of the health care costs. And the costs of vaccination is so far less than that that everyone benefits from the vaccine directly and indirectly.
As it stands, many states have allowed religious or philosophical exemptions for allowing parents to keep their kids from getting vaccinations. In some states, that means that the herd immunity is threatened on some diseases because those diseases are so communicable (measles!). The only real solution to this isn’t closing borders as Chuckles Johnson, xenophobes, and anti-vaxxers might claim, but to eliminate the exemptions for all but the medical need (if you’re allergic to eggs or immune-compromised).
If West Virginia and Mississippi can have 99% vaccination rates for kids, so too can the rest of the nation. This is one area of public health policy where these two states that often rank at the bottom on most other health policy indicators have actually gotten it right.
This isn’t about individual choice. It’s about public health, and there’s no legitimate reason to not get vaccinated.
The anti-vaxxers like to claim BS about how vaccines are over-taxing immune systems of kids, causing all kinds of ailments. That completely ignores that an immune system encounters far more diverse triggers in a single breath of air or touch of a surface than a single vaccine jab.
It’s far safer and cheaper to get the vaccine than to risk getting measles, mumps, polio, diptheria, chicken pox, hepatitis, tetanus, HPV, shingles, and any other disease for which a vaccine is available.
After all, what’s the hospitalization costs run these days? Lost wages for being out of work to care for the kids (especially when the parents work at jobs that lack sick leave)? All those costs add up. Quickly.
That’s the long-winded rant.
The short version: Fuck the anti-vaxxers with a pitchfork sideways. They’re fucking with everyone’s health. And deserve to rot in a very hot part of hell.