Reply to Devastating NYT article - please vaccinate your kids

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[quote=Anonymous]I appreciate both the utterly heartbreaking NYTimes story and the comment from the poster above who was unvaccinated as a child.

I am a public health scientist with a specific focus on vaccines and vaccine messaging. Many parents who do not vaccinate their children genuinely believe that they are preventing a horrendous outcome for their children like the one mentioned in the NYT article - that is, they possess an unshakeable, visceral, underlying belief that their kid could end up paralyzed or even dead from a vaccine. The terror is all-consuming, even if it is not grounded in the evidence. (There are also more moderate types of parents who opt out of specific vaccines, but I’m thinking less about them here since the public ire is more often directed at the former, and the former is more likely to truly endanger kids by forgoing *all* vaccines).

I make a point not to cut off people close to me when I hear them expressing doubts or fears about vaccines. I say something along the lines of “I know you’re the kid’s parent, and I cannot decide for you. I hear your fears. But I am going to tell you my strong opinion - and also my real-life actions - based on the decades I have spent *actually doing the research* on this. Please consider it.”

I also acknowledge real areas of disagreement or uncertainty in vaccine science and explain how we’ve arrived at current recs based on those. Frankly some vaccines are much more effective than others. I universally emphasize how critical the measles vaccine is given how unbelievably contagious measles is and the strong safety track record of the vax.

Much of my previous work on stories of change re: vaccine perceptions has found that people are much more likely to actually change their *views* when exposed to peer pressures from trusted people (family, friends, elders) in their immediate circles, from listening to their doctors, or from having a scary personal firsthand experience with an illness. Mandates are an important and crucial enforcement mechanism but actually changing minds and having conversations with people is a whole other thing.[/quote]

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