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General Parenting Discussion
Reply to "Devastating NYT article - please vaccinate your kids"
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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I grew up unvaccinated in the 1980s-90s. Before you all freak out, I got myself fully vaccinated as an adult and my kids have been vaccinated on schedule. I think that what my parents did with my and my brother's healthcare was reckless, dangerous, and misguided. ...And, it wasn't malicious. So often these conversations devolve (understandably) into finger pointing about how stupid and evil these antivax parents are, how they should be criminally prosecuted or shipped off to an antivax commune. First, these parents usually not evil. They've usually fallen prey to misinformation about scary-sounding things, like autism or the blood-brain barrier and heavy metals, or even real, but rare side effects. Stack up pseudoscience and statistically-small chances vs. a disease they haven't seen before (because, hey, vaccines worked to make them rare), and it's not necessarily surprising that their risk-reward calculation is off. My parents thought they were doing the right thing, sparing me the pain of a shot and avoiding potential autism/side effects, and it would be fine because nobody gets measles anymore anyway, and certainly healthcare had advanced since measles was prevalent, so if I did get it, I would be fine, right? Most parents want what's best for their kid and want their kid to be healthy. We're not going to change their minds by yelling louder about how we're right and they're wrong. When I was a kid, my mom taught me not to tell anyone I wasn't vaccinated, because then their parents might not let me play with them anymore. She obviously didn't intend for me to internalize the message that it was dangerous to be unvaccinated or that I should be ashamed, but that conversation was part of why I eventually got myself vaccinated. Anyway, if my family had been shunned, I wouldn't have been presented with so many healthy, vaccinated friends to counter the narrative that vaccines could damage children. Nor would I have had my annual visit to the school nurse (back when they used to vaccinate kids in school) to hear her argue with my mom about getting vaccinated. Our pediatrician was "vaccine friendly" so I wasn't going to hear vaccine information from him. When I had kids of my own, I did ask their daycare about vaccine requirements, because I don't want my kids around unvaccinated kids either, so I understand the impulse to shun these families. It just hurts me for the kids, because I know what it's like to be that kid who didn't choose this for themselves and can't do anything about it. And I don't think that shunning the parents is going to make them rethink their decision. For a long time, I didn't talk about growing up unvaccinated or about why I am so passionate about vaccines. Mostly, I didn't think my story was that interesting or consequential. Most of the pro-vaccine stories you see from people who were unvaccinated are about some horrible disease they contracted and the life-altering complications of it. [b]But my childhood wasn't a horror story of disease; I never got a vaccine-preventable illness and my parents weren't crunchy health nuts in other aspects of our lives.[/b] It wasn't until I was much older that I realized that my story is important too: sometimes unvaccinated kids are perfectly fine and nothing goes wrong and the choice works out. Not every parent who chooses not to vaccinate is going to have to rush their kid to the hospital with measles and learn sign language because their child goes deaf. The choice about vaccinating is not a binary between doing nothing on the one hand and hospitalization or death on the other, and when we present it that way, it comes off as fear-mongering, even when those are real possible outcomes. What makes the most difference is having someone the person knows and trusts deliver a consistent message with love. With my parents, talking head-on about vaccines never worked, because they got defensive and I got angry about my childhood and it always ended in a fight. When I had my own kids, my mom tried again to share some of her "research" and I shut it down by telling her we were going to take our advice from our pediatrician. I then spent years sending pictures of my happy kids after their shots, along with an update about their overall health, which shots they had received, and what we did after the visit (napped, played, got ice cream, etc). Basically, I started normalizing it for my parents and demonstrating that it wasn't a big deal to my kids. I didn't get preachy about protecting our community from disease or anything, just shared it like I would share any other normal milestone. My consistent positivity about vaccines laid the groundwork for my parents to be open to vaccines. When my daughter was born, they refused to get a whooping cough booster, but just a few years later, they both got the Covid vaccine and I think they're also getting annual flu shots now. [b]TLDR[/b]: Antivax parents are human; they make mistakes - sometimes misinformed, dangerous mistakes with life-altering consequences - but they're not malicious. The impulse to shun them is natural, but if you can be a trusted source of pro-vaccine information for someone in your life, I urge you not to cut them out and try to leave judgmental attitudes at the door when engaging them (vent your judgments here, instead). And for everyone else, just normalize getting your kids vaccinated. Share it like you share your kid's latest extracurricular accomplishment or that funny thing they said. You don't need to be an expert in vaccines (clearly the people spreading antivax lies aren't experts in health) to talk about why it's important to you.[/quote] When you were growing up vaccination rates were much higher than they are today. You were protected by all the other families who chose to vaccinate. It's much scarier now for families with newborns too young for certain vaccines or those who are immunocompromised. It's also possible for an unvaccinated child to get a mild version of a vaccine-preventable illness--so their family shrugs it off--but then they pass it along to someone else who gets much, much sicker. That may well have been what happened to the little girl in this article.[/quote] Yes, I was lucky to grow up at a time when my parents were in a severe minority and I benefited from community immunity. As that erodes and outbreaks become more common, I worry for today's unvaccinated kids (and for the infants and immunocompromised people around them). My point was more that the overwhelming narrative about not vaccinating your kid is the worst-case-scenario narrative of illness and death. Instead of just trying to combat fear of vaccine misinformation with fear of vaccine-preventable diseases, we need to [i]also [/i]share stories like mine where nothing bad happened and I still chose to catch up on my vaccines and get my kids vaccinated, because it demonstrates the different risk assessments and the positive emotion that go into the decision. Reinforcing the vaccine choice as something proactive, not negative. I didn't choose to get vaccinated because of a bad experience with illness, but because of a positive choice to improve/maintain my health through vaccines.[/quote] Of course many unvaccinated kids will be fine. That's not news, it's not important at all, frankly, and that's not the point. The point is other children won't be fine. They will be hurt or die from preventable disease because of people like your parents. I DO NOT REALLY CARE that they are not trying to be malicious. They are being RECKLESS with the lives of other people. Maybe they aren't evil, but they are still to blame. They are responsible for the outcomes of their decisions and their decisions are selfish and stupid. We don't let people drive drunk or people die. We can't let these people continue to be accommodated. They could be responsible for the death of someone they will never know and their kids might be fine, but what about someone like the mother who wrote the article. She will never be the same, her life is altered irrevocably. And it was entirely preventable and unnecessary. So, nope, don't care about their motivations. They can't be allowed to keep this crap up. I appreciate the vaccine scientist's perspective and agree that yelling at them won't help. But as a whole community, we must work to get these people on board. The price if we don't is too damn high.[/quote]
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