A very vocal and very ignorant minority of people keep spouting their stupid beliefs, spreading both misinformation and diseases, diseases that we have had vaccines to protect against for as long as 100 years.
Measles is a respiratory infection that weakens your immune system and causes a total-body skin rash. Polio causes flu-like symptoms and potentially paralysis, which could be fatal. Cholera causes severe diarrhea, which often leads to severe dehydration and possibly death. Most people would agree that having to deal with these diseases would suck and would do anything they can to prevent themselves or their families from catching . That’s why most sane people get vaccinated and get their kids vaccinated.
The fact that thousands of parents around the world willfully choose not to save their kids from now easily preventable, life-threatening diseases both astounds and absolutely disgusts me. A totally false, totally harmful misconception we hear from people arguing against vaccines is that they cause autism, which is just plain wrong on so many levels. First of all, this claim stems from one outdated study that’s been proven inaccurate dozens of times, so no one should be basing any beliefs off of it. Second, almost any parent would say they love their children unconditionally, and their health and well-being is the top priority. If that’s truly the case, it is unfathomable to me that some parents would rather risk their kids catching a life-threatening, nearly extinct disease than have them be born with autism; some parents really believe autism is worse than death, and that is seriously jacked up. Babies born with autism (not that vaccines cause autism, but let’s just say they do) can easily grow up to live healthy, successful lives. Babies who aren’t vaccinated and die within a year of whooping cough cannot grow up to live healthy, successful lives.
Other opponents of vaccines (it’s absurd that they exist in the first place) think vaccines are made just for profits and refuse to give money to greedy, evil Big Pharma. In actuality, a 2015 statistic of the top 20 highest-earning products for pharma companies does not list any vaccines–they don’t make a lot of money. Even if they did, anyone refusing to protect their children against potentially fatal diseases just because of their principles is a lunatic and not fit to raise a child.
The only sane, relatively reasonable argument against vaccines is that they’re too expensive. It’s understandable to want to avoid any unnecessary spending, but if you just compare the cost of a vaccine to the cost of treating its associated disease (along with the threats to health it could bring), the vaccine becomes well worth the cost. For reference, a whooping cough vaccine costs about $100, while treating it can cost over $10,000, as well as your life.
If people just stopped clinging to the first bit of information they hear and if they stopped unquestionably believing whatever they’re told and just did a little bit more research, we could reduce the insanely high number of babies dying of diseases we’ve been vaccinating against for decades.
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