My Experience with and Thoughts on Vaccination

28 Marcheshvan 5779

Measles cases top last year's total

NEW CITY, N.Y. – The number of measles cases in the United States so far this year has surpassed 2017 with the potential for about a quarter of the highly contagious respiratory infections to be occurring in one New York county north of New York City.

Nationwide as of Oct. 6, the most recent nationwide data available, 142 measles cases had been reported, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The number of people sickened, mostly unvaccinated, [meaning some were] exceeded the 2017 total of 120 in mid-August.

As of Friday, Rockland County had 46 confirmed cases and nine suspected cases, according to the county's health commissioner, Dr. Patricia Ruppert. A month ago, Rockland County Health Department officials were worried about an outbreak and offering emergency measles vaccination clinics because a traveler from Israel had visited an ultra-Orthodox Hasidic synagogue and a sukkah, a temporary structure built for the week-long Jewish festival of Sukkot, near a Jewish boys school in New Square, New York.

"There's a component ... that are not in favor of vaccines," said Dr. Howard Zucker, New York state's health commissioner. "We need to dispel any worries that they have." 

Mankind has a new enemy. Right now, government agencies, pharmaceutical companies, the medical establishment and media are waging a propaganda war against this enemy and are trying their best to enlist families and neighbors as foot soldiers in their war against this "enemy." They are the so-called "ANTI-VAXXERS." They are average citizens who are against some or all vaccinations for children because (1) they prefer their children to obtain guaranteed lifelong immunity from having had the disease, or (2) they question the efficacy, the advisability, the sanity of injecting chemicals, dead viruses, and who really knows what else into infants and young children.

I will be 65 on my next birthday. That puts me growing up at a time before most of the vaccines that are available today. As the eldest of six children, when I went off to public school (starting in first grade, not kindergarten), I was the one who introduced all the "childhood" diseases into the rest of the family. First, I had the mumps. Then, I had measles (Roseola) in second grade and chickenpox in fourth grade. German measles (Rubella) did not follow until high school when I was fifteen, but I was glad to get it out of the way before I would start a family five years later, knowing that it was linked to birth defects.

I was of that generation who had the same tell-tale mark - a scar on the upper arm (gone now) - left behind after having the smallpox vaccination. I can clearly recall the day when school opened on a Saturday. All the kids in the neighborhood walked, along with their parents, the few blocks to our local elementary school to line up and eat pink sugar cubes. It was a mass inoculation drive to eradicate a terrifying disease with a brand new vaccine - the oral polio vaccine.

I dutifully took my own babies (all four) to get all their vaccines and on time - DPT (diphtheria, pertussis and tetanus), oral polio, and the new MMR (measles, mumps, rubella). All went well, thank God. The side effects for the MMR were minimal and short-lived, a bit of soreness at the injection site and a slight fleeting fever. Unfortunately, the chickenpox vaccine took longer to develop, so all of them had the chickenpox. I don't recall it being a major event.

By the time I became a registered nurse, after my children had all gone off to school, there were a couple of more vaccines available - Hib (against bacterial meningitis in children) and hepatitis B. As soon as I began working in a hospital, I was required to have a 3-dose injection of hepatitis B vaccine. I did. And every time I went to a new hospital to work, I had to undergo the series again...and again. Three times, nine injections over four years. And to this day, I still have NO immunity to hepatitis B. The vaccine simply did not work for me. Vaccines do not work on everyone.

Then, I became a public health nurse. Every Friday from 8-12, I would give 150-200 vaccines to children - mostly babies. It started then at two months of age. The oral polio went in the mouth first before the crying started from the painful injections. MMR in the upper arm, DPT in one thigh, Hib in the other thigh. Precious punctured newborn skin, but if it saved a life, wasn't it worth it?  That's what I had to keep telling myself. I did not like giving so much all at the same time and at such a young age, but nobody asked me. Public health policy-makers felt that if parents had to make too many separate trips to get it done, compliance would go down. I'm sure they were right.

I've been out of that business for thirty years now, so I was quite shocked to learn recently how it has progressed.

CDC Recommended Vaccination Schedule
Birth - 15 months

CLICK TO ENLARGE IMAGE

18 months - 18 years

CLICK TO ENLARGE IMAGE

Knowing what I do as a trained and educated medical professional and human being with six and a half decades of life on this planet, there is no way I would inject all this stuff into my own children or into someone else's children. In all my years, I never knew anyone or heard of anyone who died from a childhood disease, until two days ago when the picture of a baby with a measles rash was widely circulated along with the report of a toddler's death due to measles. It's rare. Accidents account for the highest number of deaths in children.

One thing that has been reported sparingly, but is not being emphasized is that college-age students are coming down with measles. That tells me that the MMR does not confer lifetime immunity. Every doctor and nurse knows that "childhood" diseases are safer and have less serious complications than when contracted in adulthood. 

I won't bring all the quotes here that I have seen recently to back up my contention, but it's clear to me from the reportage, the scare tactics and the hysteria being generated, that this is not strictly about concern for public health. I personally believe that this is much more about worry over loss to pharmaceutical revenues should the "anti-vaxx" movement catch on and be spread like an airborne disease.

People need to do their research, use their heads, stop trusting the "authorities" to be looking out for the best interests of the public and accept that we do not live in a risk-free world. Trading freedom and civil liberties (like parents deciding what's best for their children) for some perceived guarantee of personal safety is a deadly trap. Only those with constant exposure to the mass media will fall into it, but today, that's almost everyone.

It's obvious that as soon as one disease is eradicated, another comes to take its place.

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This is the way HKB"H runs His world. As the saying goes, nobody gets out of this world alive. Risk can be minimized. It cannot be eliminated. And if one were to succeed in eliminating a risk, another one will come to take its place. That's life.