Hey everyone, so you know organizations like UNICEF and whatnot that allow you to buy the kind of gifts where you donate mosquito nets or something in a person’s name? Well a lot of those organizations will let you donate vaccines, as it turns out. Like, right now on UNICEF’s site, providing 100 polio vaccines to kids in need is 19 USD. And I’m not saying you should buy it and then send a card to an anti-vax relative saying you’ve provided lifesaving vaccinations in their name, but actually that’s exactly what I’m saying
For the record, she actually abandoned the movement BEFORE they all got whooping cough, but abandoned it too late. There’d been a breakout of measles in her area that caused her to reassess, and she and her doctor had already drafted and started a catch-up vaccination schedule, but her kids caught whooping cough just before it could be started. Then she wrote a blog post for The Scientific Parent explaining how she and her husband had come to wrong decisions in the first place, how they changed their mind, the consequences they suffered as a result, and asking other parents to please vaccinate their kids. And now she’s an activist for destroying the misinformation of anti-vaxxers, and reaching out to anti-vaxxers because she’s understands their fears but knows their kids deserve better.
She was trying to the best for her kids and just didn’t know how to interpret the validity of information or its sources, an actual skill that can be actually difficult and that is under-taught and a necessary first step to being able to trust vaccination research, so chose no action over taking an action she wasn’t sure of. She kept looking into it with family and friends and even eventually came to the right conclusion before her kids became sick, but it was still too late.
Honestly it was pretty brave of her to publicly admit she was wrong. She could have just quietly vaccinated her kids and not become a national news story, but instead she spoke out, even saying “I’m writing this from quarantine, the irony of which isn’t lost on me.” and also “I am not looking forward to any gloating or shame as this ‘defection’ from the antivaxx camp goes public, but, this isn’t a popularity contest. Right now my family is living the consequences of misinformation and fear. I understand that families in our community may be mad at us for putting their kids at risk.”
She understood the consequences and still put herself and her story out there.
You know what, it does take a big person to admit they were wrong so publicly and work to undo the harm. I believe I made fun of her in the past, but timemachineyeah changed my mind.
So, I looked in the comments, expecting to see discourse or historical background etc, but I found none. Therefore, I decided to learn more and add background. Apparently this machine was used because of polio because polio paralyzes your lungs. According to the wiki article on this bad boy, patients would spend two weeks in there sometimes. They still have these machines, though much, much more modern but they’re barely used at all anymore: “In 1959, there were 1,200 people using tank respirators in the United States, but by 2004 there were only 39. By 2014, there were only 10 people left with an iron lung.” (x)
I’ve read about one man who still lives in an iron lung. He taught himself how to breathe again by gulping down air, but it’s quite laborious because of the paralysis. His name is Paul Alexander, and he’s a lawyer. He’s 71 years old and has spent 65 years in an iron lung. Wild, right? He’s been working on a memoir that he was inspired to write by the recent resurgence of cases of polio caused by anti-vaccers.
It’s amazing to me to recognize that we only defeated polio in this past century – that my mother’s father had it (he got lucky, it only deformed his feet and thereby kept him out of a couple wars); my mother got the big vaccination that left her upper arm scarred; and by the time I was vaccinated, polio basically didn’t exist. My grandfather must have been born like around 1900, so – in the space of less than 75 years, this was no longer something that parents dreaded the possibility of every summer.
Polio still thrives in a lot of countries, including India. I watched a documentary about it Netflix. The disease runs rampant in well-developed countries, and with more people traveling around the world there is more exposure to this and many other diseases. When polio survivors in India were interviewed and asked about the anti-vaccination movement in the USA they had this look of total disgust and shock. Idiot anti-vaxxers are placing a death sentence on their children, would rather they die or have permanent scars and disabilities, would rather listen to lies about vaccinations causing autism.
We had a big round of whooping cough tear through this tiny town I live in. Children DIED because they were too young for the vaccination. The people who caused this, the carriers, are anti-vaxxers. No idea what happened to them. One child died because the coughing broke a rib and damaged their lungs.
Some polio survivors have had to live in an iron lung their entire lives because the vaccination wasn’t readily available. Now the vaccine is and it’s fools and idiots sentencing the most vulnerable to a painful death because of ignorance.
Tangentally, if compulsory vaccination programs had continued to present day, measles would’ve been eradicated by now.
wupacing 