Vaccines seem to be all the rage these days. And by rage, I mean rage in the typical usage of that colloquial phrase, and rage as in rage. The concept of vaccination has managed to become the divisive topic that few would expect could even be divisive. So called anti-vaxers have emerged seemingly from nowhere in an era that is supposedly more trusting of science more so than other sources than any generation up to this point, to the lamentation of the scientific community. As an individual who is free of measles, mumps, chickenpox, polio, tetanus and many more preventable diseases, due to the diligence of my parents and the parents of countless others in vaccinating their children, it is a question I am greatly curious about. So I took this opportunity to educate myself on the movement and how it has managed to spread ironically at a similar rate to some of the diseases they choose to let their children be susceptible to.
Some searching yielded some surprisingly satisfying results. This New York Times article actually did a good job of getting to the point and delivering on the title of the article. It discussed numerous factors that could contribute to the rise of vaccine apprehension, without claiming that any were the sole cause of the movement. Among the reasons cited, there was one quote that stood out to me: “Vaccines are a victim of their own success”. This is actually a quote from a doctor quoted in the article, who went on to explain that widespread vaccination has led to a severe decline in the diseases they were made to prevent (big surprise), so many individuals today do not know of anyone who has faced these diseases, and therefore see vaccines only as shots that are made by big pharma and required by the government. Conspiracy theorists would likely be skeptical of vaccines on this reason alone but I can see how it would play a role in diminishing the trust of vaccines in the eyes of someone who has little other knowledge to go by, given the fact that big pharma and the government are often seen these days as giant suspicious institutions.
This trend is inherently dangerous to public health, with a prime example being polio, a debilitating disease thought to be on the verge of eradication. The vaccine for this comes in two flavors; the intravenous IPV, and the oral OPV, with the OPV in recent history generally being the method of choice for vaccination in areas with civil unrest or lack of resources due to its ease of access and use. However, as shown in an article from the disease prevention news site Healio, the OPV vaccine has recently recreated a strain of polio, leading to numerous cases in these areas. The article listed the cause as the weakened virus making its way from a vaccinated child to the GI tract of multiple other unvaccinated children, which gave it time to mutate back into a virulent form. Given the low vaccination rates in these areas, the cases of polio have managed to rise again, and now threaten more developed areas where polio was eliminated from due to pockets of non-vaccination forming. On top of that, other pockets of wild type polio have also reemerged at the same time in more developed areas that never fully eliminated the disease, allowing it to take hold again. If you’re going to be an anti-vaxer, at least wait until the disease is actually eradicated before putting people in danger.
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