Vaccinations

As someone currently studying med, my standpoint on vaccinations should surprise no one: yeah, I support vaccinations. I know the concept of mandatory vaccinations is scary for some people- because it's like, "I don't really know what this is, what are you injecting into my body, what if this is some brain-control agent to turn me into sheep"- and I guess it doesn't help that the people who are pro vaccinations are like scary-ass looking doctors who look really smart but sound really distant. Despite all that... vaccinations actually work, you know...

I'm writing about all this because my friend linked me to some news report- apparently polio is a thing again. And I'm looking at all these anti-vaccination protesters, and I just like, "do you even know what polio is? do you know what polio could do to your children?" Polio has been eradicated in most parts of the world, but imagine if it got reintroduced to areas where it had been previously eradicated, and we didn't have the antibodies pass down or w/e. Then it'd just be a nationwide alert to get vaccinated, and those who don't get vaccinated will either get the disease themselves or pass it on to someone else- and I guess there's nothing stopping them from doing both...

This whole anti-vaccination thing is like... so fucking stupid. People spend so much effort, and public health is such a chore- then at the end of the day it doesn't even matter because fuck it people are scared and paranoid. It makes you kind of exasperated, doesn't it? Actually, I read this thread on reddit about vaccinations, and one of the guys who commented claimed to work in the health field, and he said some pretty gross things along the lines of "if parents don't wanna vaccinate their children, then let them die and watch them suffer, it's natural selection". People saying stuff like that really scares me, especially when they claim to be health workers. I know you get this cruel kind of satisfaction from watching people suffer when they don't heed your advice- it's the psychology of the whole "I TOLD YOU SO" statement- but once we grow out of that stage, then what? The purpose of giving them advice in the first place was so that the mistake would not be made- people would like to argue that some things can only be learnt through error- but in matters like these, to err is to (very completely) fuck someone's life over.

It's not fair for the kids to bear the consequences of an ill-informed choice. Sometimes parents say they weren't informed about the possible risks of NOT vaccinating their children- and people are all "wow bs you so dumb making fucking excuses". Except when you think about it, no sane parent would want to subject their children to shit like whooping cough and measles and rubella over the minimal risks of what- getting a mild fever for a couple of hours after vaccination? Some feelings of nausea? Might want to vomit. I'd rather vomit for a bit than end up not being able to breathe. And whoever the fuck said vaccinations lead to autism- like, what the fuck man. Why would you do that. There's like, no pathophysiological pathway to suggest that- but thanks to whoever the fuck came up with that theory, we pour all this money into investigating whether vaccination does lead to autism. Guess what the conclusion of the research was? IT FUCKING DOESN'T CAUSE AUTISM.

Mmm, I'm still not very good at convincing people that vaccines work- and I can't very well name every single component that a vaccine contains. But like, I still eat KFC and apparently the recipe of their "herbs and spices" is like one of the most expensive pieces of information in the world, up there with the formula for coke. Even an apple, just a normal, organic apple contains cyanide and formaldehyde and arsenic. Not many people die from cyanide poisoning as a result of eating apples, do they (k forget Alan Turing- on second thought, this is a terrible example). After all this waffle, what I really want to say is... if you believe that vaccines work, and that you have some confidence in scientific evidence- don't give up on those people who are against vaccinations. This must sound terribly strange, coming from me, because I'm like really bitter and cynical and whatever the fuck, but you only need to teach those who don't get it, right. You don't want to watch people suffer from their ill-informed choices and watch the collateral damage spread a generation later. It's easy to say that you want to give up because people are so stubborn and stupid, but on the other hand people probably think I'm just another kid being brainwashed by the government or getting bribed by pharmaceutical companies.

At this point I kind of want to quote anime, where the protagonist's friend says "why should we save these people, they are so weak and useless". The protagonist, being the protagonist, says, "because only people who cannot save themselves need saving". I suppose it'd be bad to compare ourselves to saviours, but it's a metaphor. Do your best, spread the "the diseases you're not vaccinated against will literally kill you" message. You don't have to be a doctor to save lives..