The latte sipping, English majors sit down and discuss their reasons for not vaccinating their children. Mind you, they are intelligent people, who majored not in science, but the humanities and yet choose not to vaccinate their children based on false information.  Here are a few simple facts to discuss with those who have an open mind:

Vaccinated People Got Measles
Yes, of the 42 people whose vaccination status is known, 34 were unvaccinated, 3 were partially vaccinated, and 5 were fully vaccinated. The vaccine for measles is 97% effective in people who are fully vaccinated.

Vaccination depends upon a herd immunity. The more people in the herd who have a vaccine, the less likely a disease will find a vulnerable host to continue the spread. If enough people are protected by vaccines then it will severely limit the spread.

Vaccinated People Spread Measles
Measles is one of the most highly contagious diseases known to man. But if enough people have the vaccine, there will not be spread. Think of a forest fire- if a fire retardant is 97% effective on a tree – the more trees that you place the fire retardant on the less likely the fire will spread. Fire retardant isn’t even 70 per cent effective, and yet we still use it.

The Vaccine Doesn’t Work
It works quite well, but there was some older vaccine that did not work well, and those who were vaccinated with it (from 1963-1967) need to have a booster. But to blame the outbreak on a vaccine that is no longer used and is ineffective does not fit (and the age of those infected indicate this would not be the vaccine they would have obtained).

What doesn’t work is NOT vaccinating people. That means more people are available to host the disease, more will spread.

Measles isn’t that Bad
I had the measles as a child, but my single experience does not show what measles can do. But lets go through the figures:

• One in 20 children with measles develop pneumonia, which is the common way that people die from it.
• One in one thousand children develop brain swelling (encephalitis) leaving children permanently mentally disabled or deaf.
• For every 1000 children who develop measles two will die from it.  Then the world: 145,700 world-wide have died from measles in 2013 alone.
• Measles is a leading cause of sterility in young men (ask the hockey players who recently had measles sweep through their league).

Canada Doesn’t Vaccinate
They do. They recommend the vaccine, give it freely, and the major medical associations of Canada all support vaccination.

It has Severe Reactions to the Vaccine
Yes, all vaccines have severe reactions but in spite of Dr. Wakefield’s work (now retracted and proven incorrect) measles vaccine does not cause autism. Measles vaccine reactions are small, limited, and much less than severe reactions of measles.  Take this statistic you can choose between 2 in 1000 chance of death, or a 1 in 3000 chance of seizures from the vaccine.

Its Too Much Immunity At Once
No basis for this argument at all. Children are surrounded by bacteria, virus, parasites that challenge their immune system daily. They are not raised in a bubble or sterile environment.

Boost the Immune System With Food
For the latte sipping English majors- well, in science class you would have learned that there are no foods that will boost the immune system. That it works when it sees a foreign protein and will build more antibodies against that protein (measles protein) and the immune system builds them faster and better if it has seen it before. Food doesn’t make this system go faster.

Think of the immune system like this: the body finds a vaccine protein and makes antibody against it. Once it has that “template” to make antibodies, if the body becomes infected with the bug then the body will make lots and lots of antibodies and the person won’t get sick. There is no food that will make that faster.

Too Many Toxic Chemicals In The Vaccine
Formaldehyde is a product of metabolism that your body makes daily. Too much of it will kill you, but the body makes a bit of it, and can handle it.

Aluminum is the third most common metal on the planet. The amount in one vaccine is less than found in one liter of formula. The body will get rid of the majority of the aluminum in a week. Contrary to what “they” say there is NO correlation between Alzheimer’s or brain disease and aluminum. There is more aluminum in water than in most vaccines. While the GI tract is better at getting rid of aluminum than the bloodstream- it is still gone and is not an issue.

Ethylmercury – thiomersol, is not toxic and does not cause autism. Methyl mercury is bad (like methyl alcohol causes blindness but ethyl alcohol is what gives us the buzz in beer).

There is no radiator fluid in vaccines.

So while the latte sipping English Majors get their vitamin shots, that have not been regulated – they neglect the science that can save their lives, and the lives of their children, or the children that they come in contact with.  Science is difficult, and learning science is hard. Vaccines are the most tested products on the planet, with plenty of good data. There is no data to support not vaccinating your child. But the English majors avoided science because they didn’t like it, or didn’t do well in it. Just because they are intelligent does not mean that they are correct.  The facts are simple.  Besides do you really want your child to have this?

Measles in an infant – it isn’t benign