It is distressing that this is being rendered as “You believe in vaccines, or you don’t”.
I’ve practiced Infectious Diseases medicine since 1979. I have extensive experience with all types of immunotherapy, including vaccines.
Saying “I believe in vaccines” is EXACTLY like saying, “I believe in pills”.
Some vaccines are very important for child health. Obviously, we don’t know (yet) the long-term effects of NOT getting polio, measles, mumps, rubella as the population ages, but that’s not a serious argument against prevention, in my opinion (>95% of polio infections don’t cause paralysis, but the virus has high epidemic potential, and 5% of the non-immune population is a lot of paralysis).
But the vaccine paradigm changed in the 1990s and continues to change today. One flu shot in 1980 helped prevent flu in 1980. Do 45 annual flu shots since 1980 have any interesting, important cumulative effects? Who knows? More important, who is looking? And are they looking in the right place?
“Lifestyle” vaccines like hepatitis B and HPV seem to do what they are supposed to do, but so does avoiding risky behavior. It’s technically true, in a nursery full of babies, that we “just can’t tell” who is going to be a drug addict. It’s technically true that among girls in kindergarten, we don’t know who will be promiscuous. But it seems right that requiring these types of vaccine should involve parental consent.
Nobody who knows anything about vaccinology should be “Pro” or “anti” any therapy JUST BECAUSE IT’S A VACCINE. It’s like pills - some do good, some don’t work, some cause harm. Some work for some people and not others.
Good comment. The CDC is treating Americans like the Ag business treats cattle, pumping them up with multiple vaccines and then off to the slaughter house.
One concern raised with the HPV vaccine, is that there were people who actually said that they were glad for it because now they didn't have to worry about cervical cancer.
The danger is that women would be foregoing annual PAP tests.
I d=could see that actually raising the cancer rates and bad outcomes because women are not being screened for it and it won't be caught until it's too late.
I often wonder about the chicken pox ( varicella) vaccine. How long does immunity last ? Are we going to have an outbreak of chicken pox when the children of today are in their 60-70s, when chicken pox can be lethal in that age group? I don’t have children, but if I did, I would use the vaccine schedule I had when I was a child with the addition of the RSV vaccine. If my child did not get chicken pox naturally ( which is now harder to do), I would then vaccinate when they are pre teen.
Well said. I did a career in the military, travelled all over the world, received a total of EIGHT Anthrax shots - but still had fewer shots than they now want the average kid to take by 18. Or maybe the same, but I retired at 50 with well under 100 shots total. At least if you exclude the annual flu shots...arghhh!
I’m not “anti-vax”. I am very “anti-endless vaccinations forever”!