By Karen Ernst
Dear Vaccine Refusing Parents,
I get it. Vaccine Advocates like me have
put a lot of pressure on you. Refusing to vaccinate your child is not as
popular as it used to be, and some of your peers consider you a pariah, fearing
that your children will make them sick. So you’ve gone underground.
You’ve been encouraged to go underground
by charlatans, like the anti-vaccine Dr. Bob Sears, who uses fear of
vaccines to promote his brand. In his book, he told you not to share with your
neighbors the fact that you have left your children vulnerable to disease, and
to “hide in the herd.” He probably didn’t bank on the fact that the herd would
thin out and your choices would leave us all vulnerable. He sold you two lies:
one–that you should be afraid of vaccines, and two–that disease would never
visit your children.
So you’ve decided to lie about not
vaccinating your children. You’ve told ER doctors that your children are
up-to-date on immunizations. You’ve told nurses that your children have
allergies that they do not have so that you could avoid vaccinating. And you’ve
rationalized it all with the falsehood that if your child ever did become ill,
you would keep her at home and not expose others.
But your children, as they’ve grown,
have not learned that last part. They have only learned, as you have stated
time and again, that they only need to be concerned about their own well being
and that they don’t owe anyone the truth or anything else.
It turns out that one of you brought
your unvaccinated children to Disneyland while they were
contagious with the measles. Because measles is so infectious–90% of
those not immune can catch measles from a space where a contagious person had
been for up to two hours after he leaves–other unvaccinated people caught it.
One woman went home to Pasadena and
visited her unvaccinated sister, who is now refusing to be quarantined. Her
mother defended her, saying "It's not nice when my daughter is threatened
like this because she's not even sick.”
Of course she can pass along measles
before becoming ill with it. Chances are she will. But you’ve been lied to.
Someone told you that your children were special and they couldn’t get measles.
Someone told you that your children were owed more than children like Ben, who
had to be quarantined after a potential measles exposure because his
chemotherapy had wiped out all his immunity to the disease.
Someone told you it was okay to lie and
to hide from the consequences of your decision not to vaccinate. And now it is
time for you to own the truth. Are your children unvaccinated? Be honest about
it so ER doctors can treat them appropriately, so schools can exclude them
during outbreaks (for their own protection), so your neighbors will know not to
visit you and catch diseases we can easily and safely prevent.
I know I’ve been tough on you, and that
you disagree with me and all the science showing vaccines are safe. But you
still need to have some honesty about your vaccine refusal so that we have some
choices about how to protect our children best.
