I was eating lunch today and I heard a woman behind me going on about vaccinations and how bad they were for you and how sick they made you.
I personally think that line of thinking is based in complete BS, which makes me wonder where it started.
Where did the idea that vaccinations are bad for you based on their supposed ingredients actually come from and why do people still cling to it even though it's been shown time and time and TIME again to be completely bogus?
I think it's very foolish; I think it's everyone's responsibility to vaccinate their children, for the sake of society's welfare.
Sixty years ago, the child mortality rate in the US was very high compared to what it is today.
It's low now due in large part to vaccinations for most of the once-common childhood illnesses that used to kill children or leave them permanently disabled.
On the other hand, vaccination is not without individual risk; many children have adverse reactions to vaccines, and a miniscule proportion of them die of these reactions each year.
Although if
your child was the one to draw the black ticket, the rarity of that event it would obviously be no comfort to you.
As a mother, I realize it is tempting to forgo vaccination, to avoid that risk to your child's health and life, however tiny a risk it is.
After all, these illnesses are nearly obsolete today.
If nearly everybody
else vaccinates their children, making it unlikely your child would ever come in contact with these illnesses, why
should you risk your child's life by getting him vaccinated? Is it really necessary?
The problem is that if everyone thought that way, these diseases would still be killing children at the epidemic rates they were a hundred years ago.
We must each assume the tiny individual risk presented by vaccination, in order to collectively avoid the much greater risk of an epidemic of potentially-fatal childhood disease.
Also, for those of us who live in a border states, there
is an ever-present possibility that our children might come into contact with a contagious illness not commonly found in the US, but still common in Mexico.
So it's best to get them vaccinated.
Everything in life is a risk. In this case, the benefits of vaccination outweigh the risks of it.
Because autism is more commonly diagnosed today than in the past, some parents attribute it to childhood vaccinations; specifically, I believe, to mercury levels in the vaccinations.
But I don't believe credible evidence for this exists.
These are just people clinging to a conspiracy theory which demonizes vaccination, in order to justify their selfish refusal to have their children immunized; selfish because their children are no more precious or important than anyone else's, and most other people
are willing to take the risk in the service of eradicating illnesses that used to kill large numbers of children annually.
My theory on vaccination is, it's okay to be scared. It's reasonable. It's understandable. But it's not okay not to do it.
It's one of those things where we have to be scared, but still do it anyway.
