A few weeks ago one of my kids’ schools sent out an alert advising parents that some children had confirmed cases of whooping cough. “That’s weird” I thought, seeing that whooping cough was all but eradicated before I was even born. Oh well, silly me, I forgot that whooping cough, and many other diseases were eradicated before the modern day version of snake oil salesmen came along.
Thanks to a massive international vaccination effort, world-wide fatalities from smallpox fell from two million annually in 1967 to zero by 1980, when health authorities confirmed the complete eradication of the disease. The Salk and Sabin vaccines have saved five million people from paralytic polio, and eradication of that once common disease is in sight. Vaccination against infectious childhood diseases now prevents more than 2.5 million deaths annually, with an extremely low risk of serious side effects.
Yet these achievements have rendered the benefits less visible to young parents, enabling imagined dangers and the rare side effects of vaccines to capture heightened attention. Paradoxically, some of the strongest concerns about vaccines have arisen in the United States and Europe—the leading funders of global immunization efforts—and are prevalent among more highly educated, higher-income groups.
In the U.S., the prestigious Institute of Medicine released an important report in January that found “no evidence of major safety concerns associated with adherence to the childhood immunization schedule.” But the report is unlikely to have the last word in the blogosphere.
An anxious parent who Googles “Are vaccines dangerous?” will find four of the top five results offering an emphatic “yes”—despite compelling evidence to the contrary. Such sources typically are vocal opponents of current vaccine policies who have harnessed the power of the Internet.
Please read the whole thing if you can, especially if you’re the parent of an infant, toddler or school aged child that’s due for a vaccination. I never hesitate to point out government’s failures, but vaccinations is something I believe they got right. Deadly diseases that were all but a memory during my childhood are now on the rise. Now that’s alarming.
The childrem most in danger are those whose parents believe they are “immune” to all those diseases.
What they don’t usually realize is that they are “immune” because their parents made certain they were vaccinated when they were young… and have forgotten all about it. Their supposed “immunity” comes from the series of shots their parents made certain they received.
You hear what should be intelligent parents say nonsense like:
“My children don’t need any shots because they have inherited immunity from me.”
Then you later see them dragging sick kids to emergency rooms eveywhere.
I could give a damn if the parents are dumb as crowbars. What I resent is that they punish their kids with their stupidity.
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vitamin D is a help too.
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The approximate three million who come into our Country illegally each year, because of open borders or unenforced immigration policies, do not make sure that they have proper immunizations before entering. Expedited VISAs are waiving basic requirements for entry. Also, in the nineties, variations of the original vaccines were put in use that we are finding out have less protection. The article link is unavailable and said page not found.
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