Not Often Infrequent Consistency!

Don’t be a hater

Well, here's my first controversial post, I hope you're ready.

Let me begin by explaining that I'm NOT forcing my views on anyone.  I don't expect to change your mind.  I just want to start by reaching middle ground.  That being said, let's talk about vaccines.

I pass the most awesome billboard on my way to work everyday.  It was put up a week or two ago with a pretty simple but awesome message.

sorry for the tree in the way

The billboard says:

Vaccines Save Lives!

Vaccination Reduced Measles 99%

GET VACCINATED!

I want to hug the person that put up that sign.

Now,  I'm not saying we need to mandate everyone to get vaccinated (yet), I just want to simply point out how absurd it is to actively campaign against getting vaccinated.

There are certain facts that you have to look at when talking about getting vaccinated, and most of them were pointed out on that billboard:

• vaccines save lives
• vaccines work (do you even know what polio is?  It's not a type of shirt)

Frankly, that's all I need to know.  I'm sold.  But what about the downsides, and does the science back up those claims?

• vaccines are untested
• vaccines can get people sick or kill them
• vaccines are a gov't plot to control the population, man

Vaccines kind of have to be untested, or minimally so.  The things that get us sick are constantly changing to avoid getting caught by our bodies so they can wreak havoc on our systems.  Vaccines are like the virus definitions for your computer's anti-virus; they show your body what the bad cells look like so your body can recognize it and learn how to fight it.  To know if a vaccine is working, you have to see the effects over time of what it does to your body, but in the interim, that disease is out there possibly killing people.  Do you wait to do clinical studies while people die, or do you put it out as soon as possible to try to save lives?  Not a tough choice in my book.

Vaccines don't get people sick.  Yes, there can be complications from getting any medical procedure, but vaccines don't cause autism and the viruses they contain are either dead or engineered in a way that they can't hurt you.  Can you get sick from other things in a vaccine?  Yeah, sure, whatever.  The point of getting vaccinated means not getting a terrible disease, and if I have to suffer some inconveniences to not die, I'll do it.  Now, hypothetically (THIS IS NOT TRUE) vaccines hurt or kill a percentage of the population.  Clearly, it's a very small percentage (AGAIN, THIS IS HYPOTHETICAL I DON'T KNOW THE NUMBERS).  Isn't it still worth that risk to know that millions of people aren't dying from smallpox?  I'd rather take the chance of getting sick from a vaccine rather than knowing I'll die from polio.  I got swine flu last year, and it was the worst sickness I've ever had.  I couldn't walk, I couldn't eat, and I ended up in the emergency room and had to spend $2000.

Still in good spirits

This is because I DID NOT get vaccinated.  I didn't get vaccinated and I got sick.  I'd give anything to go back in time and get vaccinated (I didn't get the vaccine because I hate needles, I thought I'd never get sick and I didn't have time, not because I didn't think it would work).  I'm only one data point, but I didn't get vaccinated and I got sick.  I'd venture a guess that the vast majority of people who got the swine flu didn't get vaccinated against it.  I'd also guess (and I'm sure you'd agree) that, if any, a very small percentage of the people who got vaccinated got the swine flu.  These are odds I'd bet on!

As far as the vaccines and autism link is concerned (VACCINES DON'T CAUSE AUTISM) if vaccines did cause autism in a small percentage of children, I'd rather have an autistic child than a dead one.  Most people don't realize that measles, polio, and diphtheria are real diseases that can kill people because no one gets them anymore.  We get vaccinated against them and then we don't get them.

Now here's what I'm saying.  Don't actively campaign against getting vaccinated.  That's wrong.  Get vaccinated or don't, get your kids vaccinated or don't, that's your choice (I'd prefer if you did so we can reach the necessary thresholds for herd immunity).  But don't tell other people what to do, that makes you a hypocrite.  To use a tired analogy, seatbelts save lives but can also hurt people in rare cases, and no one actively campaigns against them.  They save lives, they work so many more times than not that it's not even a question that you should wear a seatbelt.  In fact, there are laws saying you HAVE to wear a seatbelt because they save so many lives.  As far as the risks, I'd rather have a neck injury from whiplash due to a seatbelt than be dead for not wearing one.  Same thing goes for vaccines.

Update:  This morning I called my county's Department of Health that put up that sign and personally thanked some operator on the other end.  I hope it made her day as much as seeing that sign made mine.