Dad Pro Tip #5: Vaccinate Your Kids

I’m going to go ahead and saddle up right now and pull out my soapbox to climb on my high horse. Unfortunately, I’ll probably just be preaching to the choir.

So…ever met anybody with smallpox? No? Do you know why?

Motherfucking vaccines.

Vaccinations are one of the most unbelievably important discoveries of the last 200 years. They prevent a lot of the most awful diseases that used to ravage humanity. Smallpox killed between 300-500 million people in the 20th century ALONE. That’s not an insignificant number. Polio caused paralysis, death, and disfigurement. I’ve met a survivor, and this dude had a nearly useless arm; his fingers barely moved, his hand was clenched, and all the muscles had atrophied below his elbow. Measles and mumps are highly infectious diseases that have long lasting negative effects like infertility. The flu still kills almost 400,000 people a year, and the Spanish flu killed 50-100 million people in less than 3 years. You should be glad you’re alive to read this.

Yet here we are in 2018, and people are still actively fighting being vaccinated. Sadly, this isn’t a new problem. Considering that the smallpox vaccine was first used in 1796, the fact that 300 million people still died of the disease over 100 years later speaks to both the lethality of it and that people are stubborn.

The most recent anti-vaccination movement began in earnest after Andrew Wakefield authored a paper in 1998 that claimed the MMR vaccine caused autism. Fortunately, nobody was able to reproduce his results. At all. Wakefield was subsequently discredited, but his legacy unfortunately continues. You know what causes autism? Lots of things because it’s complicated. In fact, MMR vaccination has almost eliminated one of the causes, congenital rubella. Measles was declared eradicated from the US in 2000, and that was generally maintained by vaccinations (most cases were brought by carriers from overseas, where vaccinations weren’t as prevalent). But no, now people here choose not to vaccinate, and we get outbreaks. At Disneyland, no less. Think of the children.

Another wonderful result of this is that people question the ingredients in vaccines, and then prove that they don’t understand chemistry and biology by labeling them as bad without understanding how they interact with the body.

I pulled up a chart regarding vaccinations from the 2016 CDC Health Report which you can find here, specifically Tables 66, 67, and 68 (PDF page 274 is where it starts). For Table 68, the influenza vaccination table, I noticed something. People aged 65+ have consistently received the vaccine in significantly higher numbers than younger people. Now, there are a lot of factors (Medicare coverage, more frequent doctor visits due to other health issues, etc.) and correlation doesn’t mean causation. However, I’d wager that since they lost friends and family to diseases that are now largely preventable with a shot, they’re more inclined to vaccinate.

Herd immunity is important. It keeps the most vulnerable people healthy. Understanding biology and chemistry is important. Luckily, the people developing vaccines are biochemists and have lots of advanced degrees and years of experience (do you?). Vaccinating is important because dying from easily preventable diseases is fucking stupid.

We’ve survived this long, people. We survived long enough to bring you a device that can access the entirety of human knowledge in seconds and you can use it to find actual evidence of vaccine efficacy and refute disinformation.

Off my high horse and soapbox now. Go make smart choices. ~IAJ~