Anti-Vaxxers and Universal Dangers

It finally happened.  Something many in the medical industry knew was coming down the line has materialized in a fantastically terrifying fashion.  A disease, we as a society had mostly conquered, has been rejuvenated by the actions of people who are convinced they know better than the undeniable proof in front of them.  Anti-vaccine advocates (anti-vaxxers), most of whom are relying on laughably bad science and math, refuse to acknowledge the reality around them, inoculations work, and the proof they insist is "flimsy at best," is the longevity of the undeniably healthier lives nearly all Americans enjoy due to vaccines.

A person who A) wasn't vaccinated against major, lethal, dangerous, contagious diseases, and B) knew they were sick with something serious, decided to visit the Disneyland Theme Park.  Why would they jeopardize so many people?  By the sounds of it, selfishness.  They wanted to go on a vacation, and didn't care about the consequences.  Regardless, they endangered many Americans with the measles virus and has created a real health crisis, far more serious than the made up Ebola hysterics from last Fall.  As of me writing this, 84 people have been infected in 14 states and it's expected to get far worse, especially in communities with high concentrations of anti-vaxxers.  Measles are extremely contagious.

The anti-vaxxers movement was started in earnest by Andrew Wakefield, a discredited British doctor who fraudulently put forward the idea of a smoking gun for parents desperately wanting one: Autism was caused by vaccinations.  This was a made up lie, a lie which has been researched over and over again, wasting valuable research dollars, to try to convince people who are un-convinceable of the truth, their smoking gun isn't real.  For them to continue to believe this lie, they've ignored the obvious proof in front of them, the surging life expectancy rates of Americans ever since the vaccines started to be widely used and the near extinction of diseases which used to annihilate families and communities.  Doctors warned if people started to opt out of taking vaccines, this exact scenario would eventually come to light.  Researchers also hammered on anti-vaxxers about their own math:  you're insisting on not taking vaccines because of a statistically slight risk of autism, and in turn giving yourself and children a far more likely chance of suffering from, and dying from, many other diseases.  It doesn't matter.  Anti-vaxxers think they know better than everyone else, that the American medical and scientific research community is lying, and if you're an American who has gotten inoculated and has not gotten a serious disease, you are part of the conspiracy.  

Melinda Gates, wife of Bill Gates, and a major advocate for vaccines, said it perfectly when asked about the current crisis, "[Americans have] forgotten what measles death looks like."  We have.  We've left in our past the days when a family would have ten children and six would not make it to 12, many because of diseases we readily inoculate for today.  It's the same reason we don't realize the warning signs of our current Conservative economic policies; the inevitable outcome of rewarding the 1% at the expense of the 99% is something we've seen before in the horrors of the Great Depression.  We insulate ourselves from the lessons of our past, and doom ourselves to repeat the mistakes.  Because we haven't seen widespread suffering and death at the hands of preventable diseases, not only have the anti-vaxxers downplayed the seriousness of the threat, they have taken the vaccines and turned them into "the real problem."  To help them get past the science they can't refute, they insist it's all about the profit margins for vaccination makers.  

There is also another bit of science the anti-vaxxers conveniently ignore.  We've had a few decades of this anti-vaxxer movement, and the stories you hear from children of the anti-vaxxers is heartbreaking.  Many of the anti-vaxxer kids spent long stretches of their youth in beds and in hospitals, suffering from serious health issues, which in turn have scarred them for life, even damaging their bodies.  These kids tell of how their inoculated friends never had the same problems they did, and ask the questions, "why did I have to suffer for my parents beliefs? Why did I have to be my parent's self righteous experiment?"  Not all anti-vaxxers get sick, but under their argument, they should all be far healthier than the rest of us, and that's just not true.

We all want answers to why autism rates have increased, but the obvious place to begin to try to find the answers is in the modern world in which we reside; the chemicals in our lives, the food we eat, cosmetics we use, clothes we wear, plastics and chemicals we surround ourselves with, and the workplace environments we commute too.  I guarantee none of these daily use products have been tested effectively in regards to what they really do to our health, and I know there has been extremely limited research in what these compounds do when they are combined with other compounds in other products.  It's much like the science of why the bees are dying off.  There is no one thing responsible, but rather a cocktail of chemicals from modern life which seem to be the culprit.  This modern life paradox would be the starting point of my research, unless you are looking for a quick, not necessarily correct, smoking gun.

At the end of the day, if a parent decides to not vaccinate their kid, I might laugh at them, but they have the right to be ignorant.  What they don't have the right to do is to spread their ignorance to others with glee and determination.  You want to not vaccinate your kid?  Fine.  You're not allowed to then ignore the dangers of taking that kid out into the world for them to potentially infect the rest of us.  If you feel your cause is so noble, then this should be a minor sacrifice, an inconvenience worth bearing.  What will stop this anti-vaxxer movement will be the inevitable lawsuit of a grieving family who lost their child to a disease contracted from the kid of an anti-vaxxer, an anti-vaxxer who knew the risks, and decided to be selfish instead of steadfast.  

What a wealthy world we live in when we can have a group of people make up their own science and math to validate what they want to believe, a belief which in turn jeopardizes the populace.  We've seen it play out over and over again.  Here is the link for the sensational Penn and Teller video about anti-vaccination.  It's worth viewing, but it does contain some swear words.  Viewer be advised:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RfdZTZQvuCo

As I wrote that warning about the Penn and Teller video, and viewed a discarded candy wrapper, something crossed my mind.  My kid's school has far more warnings and rules about peanut butter, than it does about people potentially exposing the school's population to serious deadly diseases.  That about sums up the world we live in today.